Patti Smith: 'Amy Winehouse's death saddened me"

 "I felt very saddened by her death. I thought she was extremely gifted. I loved her voice": Patti Smith was so moved by Amy Winehouse's death that se ended writing a song for the late english singer. The song, "This is the girl" is set to appear in Patti Smith's new album, "Banga", due next week. "I thought it was a very important voice, very authentic, and I just wrote a little poem for her when she died and my bass player (Tony Shanahan) happened to write this little piece of music that expressed the same sentiment. So we made it a little song, right at the end of the record. It was an unexpected gift that just sort of appeared", Patti Smith told Billboard.

The record, her first of original material since 2004's "Trampin" was recorded in New York, with her usual band and a guest appeareance from Tom Verlaine: "I have certain core things I want to say, and as I get older, that changes," Smith recalled to Billboard. "All of my records reflect some kind of study or questions I'm asking myself... but this particular record really reflects the things I was studying, the books I was reading. A lot of things I wanted to do morphed into other things; you can't always predict how an album's going to go. I knew I wanted it to be an album that explored new territory, but I wanted to add reflections on the state of our environment. That was the political issue that I was most concerned about." The album also includes a rendition of Neil Young's "After the gold rush". Hear the first single, "April fool".