NEW YORK (AP) -- Seventies proto-grunge rocker Patti Smith was a major fan of '90s grunge icon Kurt Cobain. She just can't feel his pain.

The lead singer of Nirvana's suicide left her more infuriated than sad.

Watching a friend, photographer Robert Mapplethorpe, die of AIDS put Cobain's death in perspective.

``When you watch someone you care for fight so hard to hold onto their life, then see another person just throw their life away, I guess I had less patience for that,'' Smith says in the July 11 issue of Rolling Stone.

``You want to take a person by the scruff of the neck and say, `OK. You're suffering? THIS is suffering. Check it out.'''

Smith just released her first album in eight years, ``Gone Again.'' She spends most of her time raising her two sons, but looks back on her days as a full-time performer fondly.

``I'm proud that I can actually say, `Yes, for a brief period of my life, I was a rock 'n' roll star,''' she says. ``I cherish that.''