Patti Smith became tearful while discussing her late husband, Fred 'Sonic' Smith, with Dua Lipa at London's Royal Festival Hall on October 25. The conversation centered on her memoir Bread of Angels and moved through memories of love, loss and the songs that keep those experiences close. It also brought lighter exchanges about possible covers and reflections on the everyday discipline of writing.
Patti Smith joined Dua Lipa at London's Royal Festival Hall on Sunday, October 25, for a conversation that moved from literature into deeply personal memories. The London Literature Festival event centered on Bread of Angels, then expanded to family, formative relationships and the way music connects different generations. At its most emotional point, Smith remembered her late husband, Fred 'Sonic' Smith.
Lipa observed that the book seemed to divide the musician's life into periods before and after Fred's death. The remark brought tears, but Smith continued by returning to their first meeting. She described it like a film scene in which time appears to stop and everything around two people falls away, remembering an immediate sense that this was someone she would marry.
Fred, a guitarist with MC5, married her in 1980. They had two children and remained together until his death in 1994. His absence continues to occupy a central place in her personal narratives and in the meaning of songs they created. Her account of their meeting combined the strength of that recognition with a memory that she had not previously wanted marriage.
Bread of Angels, published in 2025, takes a different route through her life from Just Kids, which chronicled her early New York years and relationship with Robert Mapplethorpe. The later memoir returns to childhood in Philadelphia and moves through other periods, linked with four dresses given to her by important people. Those objects become connections between experiences and the people who shaped them.
Patti Smith described wanting to write a book of gratitude for parents, siblings, teachers, friends and loves, including people with whom she had experienced conflict. Her account treats a life as something formed through relationships rather than in isolation. What remains meaningful includes not only pleasant memories, but lessons and encounters that continue to influence the person remembering them.
Patti Smith had not originally intended to produce another memoir. After Just Kids, written to fulfill a promise made to Mapplethorpe before his death, she had resolved to avoid returning to autobiography. The responsibility of telling their shared story had been difficult. Poetry and more imaginative forms had previously felt more natural than the task of organizing a personal history for publication.
A dream changed that intention. She recalled a messenger arriving with a white book containing different phases of her life arranged around dresses. After waking, she felt the image carried significance and wanted to preserve stories of people she did not wish to see forgotten. The dream supplied a creative route into material she had not planned to revisit.
The musical discussion included an event in Spain shortly before the London conversation. Patti Smith said approximately 3,000 people had joined choirs to sing People Have the Power in her honor. She found the experience especially moving because she imagined how happy Fred would have been to hear it. The Spanish performance was a separate event, not a choir appearance at Royal Festival Hall.
She and Fred wrote the song, released on 1988's Dream of Life, with the hope that it might one day help people express their convictions and draw strength together. He did not live to witness its later reach. Hearing thousands of voices return to the song brought that original ambition back into the present and renewed her sense of his place within it.
Asked about the memoir's title, Patti Smith said she had initially considered Dancing Barefoot, after the song from her 1979 album Wave. She ultimately chose a phrase from the book associated with small, spontaneous acts of kindness. That decision reflected the gratitude running through the work, linking its title to the experiences she wanted the memoir to preserve.
Other memories concerned Bob Dylan, from whom she said she had learned, and her attachment to New York's CBGB community. She also recalled Michael Stipe calling on Valentine's Day after Fred's death, before they had met personally. From San Sebastián, he offered companionship in a gesture that moved her and helped begin a friendship that has lasted for years.
A question from the audience asked each performer to choose a song by the other to cover. Patti Smith enthusiastically selected Houdini, while Lipa chose Dancing Barefoot, discussing its sensuality and expression of love for something larger than oneself. The exchange conveyed mutual admiration. It was not an announcement that either recording, a joint performance or another collaboration had been arranged.
The conversation also considered creative freedom and the pressures of different eras. Lipa spoke about the pace of content production and exposure facing younger artists. Smith remembered having more room to experiment and make mistakes without each action immediately reaching a vast audience. She maintained that artistic freedom remains possible, although the routes available for communicating have changed.
Patti Smith's advice to her younger self was to write every day, describing technique as something strengthened through regular practice alongside imagination. The event formed part of Lipa's Service95 Book Club program for the London Literature Festival and was recorded for its podcast, without confirming an episode had already been released. The evening connected writing, music and memory through the specific people both artists discussed.
