You Say You Want a Revolution

I just finished reading Patti Smith's Just Kids, a book Robbie gave me last year for Christmas.  (We returned the favor and gave him a copy of it this year for Christmas.)  It took me a year to read it because I was, well, busy with other things.  I also knew hardly anything about Patti Smith and my interest wasn't immediately piqued.  But I'm glad that I took it with me over the holidays and that I finished reading it.  It made me want to listen to some Patti Smith records and look at some Robert Mapplethorpe photos, which, I assume, was the book's goal.  One thing near the end interested and amused me, though, especially because it connects with some of the concerns of my research.  

Describing her newly-formed band, Smith writes:

"We imagined ourselves as the Sons of Liberty with a mission to preserve, protect, and project the revolutionary spirit of rock and roll.  We feared that the music which had given us sustenance was in danger of spiritual starvation.  We feared it losing its sense of purpose, we feared it falling into fattened hands, we feared it floundering in a mire of spectacle, finance, and vapid technical complexity.  We would call forth in our minds the image of Paul Revere, riding through the American night, petitioning the people to wake up, to take up arms.  We too would take up arms, the arms of our generation, the electric guitar and the microphone."  

Pretty remarkable rhetoric.  This is at the top of page 245.  Near the bottom of that page, Jane Friedman introduces Smith and her band to Clive Davis.  On page 247, Smith signs a record contract with Davis.  Just saying.