Patti Smith Hits the Big Screen in Untraditional Rock Doc: Exclusive Clips

From 1996 to 2007, photographer Steven Sebring periodically filmed Patti Smith as she traveled the globe playing concerts, visiting the graves of poets and hanging out with friends like Bob Dylan and Michael Stipe. The end result is Patti Smith: Dream of Life, a film that opens on August 6th in New York and in other cities soon after. With no interviews, little narration and a non-chronological story line, the atmospheric film is not a traditional rock documentary. "Filming over so many years was great because the scenes are like they came out of her memory," says Sebring. "It's like her Alice in Wonderland."

(Click above to watch exclusive clips from the film, including Smith prepping for a show with Bob Dylan and performance footage, and keep reading to check out the trailer).

Sebring first met Smith when he went to shoot her for Spin magazine in 1995, shortly after her husband Fred "Sonic" Smith of the MC5 died. "We immediately had a connection," he says. "She's this cute, low key, attractive girl offstage. When I saw her onstage at Irving Plaza she was a completely different woman, spitting and spewing out poetry. I was like, 'Holy shit.' I was looking for an outlet to film somebody. I convinced her to let me start filming her. Years and years of just showing up. Once there was the trust factor, she started to invite me to show up and film her."

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Song Stories

“Smells Like Teen Spirit”

Nirvana | 1991

"Smells Like Teen Spirit," named after a brand of deodorant marketed to girls, was Kurt Cobain's attempt to "write the ultimate pop song," he said, using the soft-loud dynamic of his favorite band, the Pixies. Cobain "had that dichotomy of punk rage and alienation," the song’s producer, Butch Vig, told Rolling Stone, "but also this vulnerable pop sensibility. In 'Teen Spirit,' a lot of that vulnerability is in the tone of his voice." Sadly, by the time of Nirvana's last U.S. tour, in late '93, Cobain was tortured by the obligation to play "Teen Spirit" every night. "There are many other songs that I have written that are as good, if not better," he claimed.

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