Patti Smith interview in UnCut

Patti Smith in an interview in UnCut:

Rock and roll is a genre, it's people who work within the genre; whatever is happening within the genre reflects the people who are creating and the needs or desires are of the people listening. I have great faith in the genre, and continue to work within it, but I wish that people would think about the greatest aspect of rock and roll which to me is its grass-roots voice that can embrace poetry and revolution and political situations, love; it embraces everything from a grass-roots level, but can be evolved as the person writing or [performing] the work. It can be as evolved as Jim Morrison or Jimi Hendrix or just as beautiful and pure as Darlene Love singing with the Crystals. I really think that the history of rock and roll has given us so much to be proud of, and so much to draw from and so much to aspire to, and I would hope that people would draw from that, and not merely the materialistic gains that one can get - the fame and the fortune and the exploitative aspects of it, and try to dig deeper into themselves and into our history and reconnect with the great aspects of rock and roll.

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