it was when i was 15 years old that i discovered the cbgb punk rock scene in new york and patti smithand i bought her record the day it came out, and then i kind of never looked back. but i took photographs the whole time that i was performing and writing and singing with rem. and i've used photography in my life almost like a diary, because i don't really write anything down, and so the images, for me, are kind of a way of remembering my extraordinary and very, very lucky life. i've had a sneak preview of the book of photographs and images which you are currently releasing and it's fascinating to me because it's partly, it seems, a visual memoir. there are people in that book, pictures of people in that book who — well, there you go — who clearly have been very important to you. some very personal, family members. some very famous — very famous writers and actors and artists. why have you chosen to profile these particular people? my best friend, tom gilroy, when he saw the book for the first time — and he's in it — he said, "this is like the james brown" — there's a james brown song

was a time when had already been listening to many different kinds of music -- bowie, punk rock, patty smiththe clash, all of which owed so much to this band. i did not really know that that was the case, and i think this is true for a lot of people. you kind of discover things in a strange, circuitous way, and you link backwards to original sources, and so it made tremendous sense to me when i finally sort of found this music. it identified a route, and it identified an original series of sort of ris and attitudes that leapt out from the norm, even at a time when the norm was being challenged in general during t 1960's. >> you're not the only person to turn your lens on the velvet underground. andy warhol also filmed them for documentary he made, and i wondered how that film and the persona of andy warhol fit in or influenced your film. >> andy warhol basically was moving his attentions from making visual art to making films, and he was very interested in of a guard cinema. he was growing and roasting around the 1960's. from that, there was various steps away from being a visual artist. he

who is patti smith? - yes. - school of rock for $800.ort, the legacy of this california kid, the first chicano rock star, lives on.