Patricia Lee Smith (born December 30, 1946) is an American singer, songwriter, poet, painter, author, and photographer. Her 1975 debut album Horses made her an influential member of the New-York-City-based punk rock movement.[1] Smith has fused rock and poetry in her work. In 1978, her most widely known song, "Because the Night", co-written with Bruce Springsteen, reached number 13 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart[1] and number five on the UK Singles Chart.
Smith was born on December 30, 1946, at Grant Hospital in the Lincoln Park section of Chicago,[6][7] to Beverly Smith, a jazz singer turned waitress, and Grant Smith, a Honeywellmachinist.[8] Her family is of partially Irish ancestry,[9] and Patti is the eldest of four children, with siblings Linda, Kimberly, and Todd.[10]
In 1969, Smith went to Paris with her sister, and started busking and doing performance art.[13] When Smith returned to Manhattan, she lived at the Hotel Chelsea with Robert Mapplethorpe. They frequented Max's Kansas City on Park Avenue, and Smith provided the spoken word soundtrack for Sandy Daley's art film Robert Having His Nipple Pierced, starring Mapplethorpe. The same year, Smith appeared with Jayne County in Jackie Curtis's play Femme Fatale. She also starred in Anthony Ingrassia's play Island. As a member of the Poetry Project, she spent the early 1970s painting, writing, and performing.
In 1969, Smith also performed in the one-act playCowboy Mouth,[16] which she co-wrote with Sam Shepard. The published play's notes call for "a man who looks like a coyote and a woman who looks like a crow". She wrote several poems about Shepard and her relationship with him, including "for sam shepard"[17] and "Sam Shepard: 9 Random Years (7 + 2)", that were published in Angel City, Curse of the Starving Class & Other Plays (1976).
On February 10, 1971, Smith, accompanied by Lenny Kaye on electric guitar, opened for Gerard Malanga, which was her first public poetry performance.[18][19]
Smith was briefly considered as lead singer for Blue Öyster Cult. She contributed lyrics to several Blue Öyster Cult songs, including "Debbie Denise", which was inspired by her poems "In Remembrance of Debbie Denise", "Baby Ice Dog", "Career of Evil", "Fire of Unknown Origin", "The Revenge of Vera Gemini", on which she performs duet vocals, and "Shooting Shark". At the time, she was romantically involved with Allen Lanier, Blue Öyster Cult's keyboardist. During these years, Smith was also a rock music journalist, writing periodically for Rolling Stone and Creem.[18]
The Patti Smith Group
On October 15, 2006, Smith performed a 3½-hour tour de force show to close out CBGB, the famed New York City live music venue.Smith performing at Primavera Sound Festival in Barcelona, in June 2007Smith performing at Haldern Pop in North Rhine-Westphalia, Germany, in August 2014Smith performing in Berlin, in June 2022
In 1973, Smith teamed up again with musician and rock archivist Lenny Kaye, and later added Richard Sohl on piano. The trio developed into a full band with the addition of Ivan Král on guitar and bass and Jay Dee Daugherty on drums.[18] Kral was a refugee from Czechoslovakia who had moved to the US in 1966 with his parents, who were both diplomats. After the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in August 1968, Kral decided not to return.[20]
Financed by Sam Wagstaff, the band recorded their first single, "Hey Joe/Piss Factory" in 1974. The A-side was a version of the rock standard with the addition of a spoken word piece about Patty Hearst, a fugitive heiress. The B-side describes the helpless alienation Smith felt while working on a factory assembly line and the salvation she dreams of achieving by escaping to New York City.[1] In a 1996 interview on artistic influences during her younger years, Smith said, "I had devoted so much of my girlish daydreams to Rimbaud. Rimbaud was like my boyfriend."[21]
In March 1975, Smith's group, the Patti Smith Group, began a two-month weekend set of shows at CBGB in New York City with the band Television. The Patti Smith Group was spotted by Clive Davis, who signed them to Arista Records.
Later that year, the Patti Smith Group recorded their debut album, Horses, produced by John Cale amid some tension.[18] The album fused punk rock and spoken poetry and begins with a cover of Van Morrison's "Gloria", and Smith's opening words: "Jesus died for somebody's sins but not mine", an excerpt from "Oath", one of Smith's early poems. The austere cover photograph by Mapplethorpe has become one of rock's classic images.[22]
As punk rock grew in popularity, the Patti Smith Group toured the U.S. and Europe. The rawer sound of the group's second album, Radio Ethiopia, reflected this. Considerably less accessible than Horses, Radio Ethiopia initially received poor reviews. However, several of its songs have stood the test of time, and Smith still performs them live.[23] She has said that Radio Ethiopia was influenced by the band MC5.[21]
On January 23, 1977, while touring in support of Radio Ethiopia, Smith accidentally danced off a high stage in Tampa, Florida, and fell 15-feet onto a concrete orchestra pit, breaking several cervical vertebrae.[24] The injury required a period of rest and physical therapy, during which she says she was able to reassess, reenergize, and reorganize her life.
The Patti Smith Group produced two further albums. Easter, released in 1978, was their most commercially successful record. It included the band's top single "Because the Night", co-written with Bruce Springsteen. Wave (1979) was less successful, although the songs "Frederick" and "Dancing Barefoot" received commercial airplay.[25]
Through most of the 1980s, Patti lived with her family in St. Clair Shores, Michigan, and was semi-retired from music. She ultimately moved back to New York City.
Michael Stipe of R.E.M. and Allen Ginsberg, whom she had known since her early years in New York City, urged her return to live music and touring. She toured briefly with Bob Dylan in December 1995, which is chronicled in a book of photographs by Stipe.[16]
In 1996, Smith worked with her long-time colleagues to record Gone Again, featuring "About a Boy", a tribute to Kurt Cobain, the former lead singer of Nirvana who died by suicide in 1994.
On April 27, 2004, Smith released Trampin', which included several songs about motherhood, partly in tribute to Smith's mother, who died two years earlier. It was her first album on Columbia Records, which later became a sister label to her Arista Records, her previous label. Smith curated the Meltdown festival in London on June 25, 2005, in which she performed Horses live in its entirety for the first time.[29] This live performance was released later in 2004 as Horses/Horses.
On October 15, 2006, Smith performed a 3½-hour tour de force show to close out at CBGB, which was an immensely influential New York City live music venue for much of the late 20th and early 21st centuries. At the CBGB show, Smith took the stage at 9:30 p.m. (EDT) and closed her show a few minutes after 1:00 am. Her final song was "Elegie", after which she read a list of punk rock musicians and advocates who had died in the previous years, representing the last public song and words performed at the iconic venue.[30]
On September 10, 2009, after a week of smaller events and exhibitions in Florence, Smith played an open-air concert at Piazza Santa Croce, commemorating her performance in the same city 30 years earlier.[31]
Smith's 11th studio album, Banga, was released in June 2012. American Songwriter wrote that, "These songs aren't as loud or frantic as those of her late 70s heyday, but they resonate just as boldly as she moans, chants, speaks and spits out lyrics with the grace and determination of Mohammad Ali in his prime. It's not an easy listen—the vast majority of her music never has been—but if you're a fan and/or prepared for the challenge, this is as potent, heady and uncompromising as she has ever gotten, and with Smith's storied history as a musical maverick, that's saying plenty."[34]Metacritic awarded the album a score of 81, indicating "universal acclaim".[35]
Also in 2012, Smith recorded a cover of Io come persona by Italian singer-songwriter Giorgio Gaber.[36][37]
In 2015, Smith wrote "Aqua Teen Dream" to commemorate the series finale of Aqua Teen Hunger Force. The vocal track was recorded in a hotel overlooking Lerici's Bay of Poets.[38] On September 26, 2015, Smith performed at the American Museum of Tort Law convocation ceremony.[39]
In 2016, Smith performed "People Have the Power" at Riverside Church in Manhattan to celebrate the 20th anniversary of Democracy Now, where she was joined by Michael Stipe. On December 10, 2016, Smith attended the Nobel Prize Award Ceremony in Stockholm on behalf of Bob Dylan, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, who could not be present due to prior commitments.
After the official presentation speech for the literary prize by Horace Engdahl, the perpetual secretary of the Swedish Academy, Smith sang the Dylan song "A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall".[41] She missung one verse, singing, "I saw the babe that was just bleedin'," and was momentarily unable to continue.[42] After a brief apology, saying that she was nervous, she resumed the song and earned jubilant applause at its end.[43][44]
Art and writings
In 1994, Smith began devoting time to what she terms "pure photography", a method of capturing still objects without using a flash.[45]
From November 2006 to January 2007, an exhibition called 'Sur les Traces'[46] at Trolley Gallery, London, featured polaroid prints taken by Smith and donated to Trolley to raise awareness and funds for the publication of Double Blind: Lebanon Conflict 2006, a book with photographs by Paolo Pellegrin, a member of Magnum Photos. She also participated in the DVD commentary for Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film for Theaters.
From March 28 to June 22, 2008, the Fondation Cartier pour l'Art Contemporain in Paris hosted a major exhibition of the visual artwork of Land 250, drawn from pieces created by Smith between 1967 and 2007.[47]
In 2010, Smith's book, Just Kids, a memoir of her time in Manhattan in the 1970s and her relationship with Robert Mapplethorpe, was published. The book won the National Book Award for Nonfiction later that year.[4][49] In 2018, a new edition of Just Kids, including additional photographs and illustrations, was published. Smith also headlined a benefit concert headed by bandmate Tony Shanahan, for Court Tavern in New Brunswick, New Jersey.[50] Smith's set included "Gloria", "Because the Night", and "People Have the Power".
In 2011, Smith announced the first museum exhibition of her photography in the U.S., Camera Solo. She named the project after a sign she saw in the abode of Pope Celestine V, which translates as "a room of one's own", and which Smith felt best described her solitary method of photography.[45] The exhibition featured artifacts that were everyday items or places of significance to artists Smith admires, including Rimbaud, Charles Baudelaire, John Keats, and William Blake. In February 2012, she was a guest at the Sanremo Music Festival.[51]
Also in 2011, Smith was working on a crime novel set in London. "I've been working on a detective story that starts at the St Giles in the Fields church in London for the last two years", she told NME, adding that she "loved detective stories" and was a fan of British fictional detective Sherlock Holmes and U.S. crime author Mickey Spillane in her youth.[52][53]
In 2017, Smith appeared as herself in Song to Song opposite Rooney Mara and Ryan Gosling, directed by Terrence Malick.[55][56] She later made an appearance at the Detroit show of U2's The Joshua Tree 2017 tour and performed "Mothers of the Disappeared" with the band.[57]
In 2019, Smith performed "People Have the Power" with Stewart Copeland and Choir! Choir! Choir! at Onassis Festival 2019: Democracy Is Coming. Later that year, she released her latest book, Year of the Monkey.[61] "A captivating, redemptive chronicle of a year in which Smith looked intently into the abyss", stated Kirkus Reviews.[62]
One of the first musicians to reference Smith was Todd Rundgren. In the liner notes of his 1972 album Something/Anything?, Rundgren wrote that "Song of the Viking" was "written in the feverish grip of the dreaded 'd'oyle carte,' a chronic disease dating back to my youth. Dedicated to Miss Patti Lee Smith." Seven years later, Rundgren produced the final Patti Smith Group album, Wave.[65]
Hole's "Violet", released in 1994, features the lyrics, "And the sky was all violet / I want it again, but violent, more violent," alluding to lyrics from Smith's song "Kimberly".[68] In 2010, Hole singer Courtney Love said that she considered Smith's "Rock N Roll Nigger" the greatest rock song of all time,[69] and credited Smith as a major influence. Love received Smith's album Horses in juvenile hall as a teenager, and "realized that you could do something that was completely subversive that didn't involve violence [or] felonies. I stopped making trouble."[70]
In 1998, Michael Stipe of R.E.M. published a collection of photos, titled Two Times Intro: On the Road with Patti Smith. Stipe sings backing vocals on Smith's "Last Call" and "Glitter in Their Eyes". Smith sang background vocals on R.E.M.'s "E-Bow the Letter" and "Blue".[71] A decade later, in 2008, Stipe say that Smith's album Horses was one of his inspirations. "I decided then that I was going to start a band," Stipe said about the impact of listening to Horses.[72]
In 2004, Shirley Manson of Garbage spoke of Smith's influence on her in Rolling Stone's issue "The Immortals: 100 Greatest Artists of All Time", in which Smith was ranked 47th.[74]The Smiths members Morrissey and Johnny Marr share an appreciation for Smith's Horses, and revealed that their song "The Hand That Rocks the Cradle" is a reworking of one of the album's tracks, "Kimberly".[75] In 2004, Sonic Youth released an album called Hidros 3 (to Patti Smith).[76]
In 2005, U2 cited Smith as an influence.[77] The same year, Scottish singer-songwriter KT Tunstall released "Suddenly I See", a single, as a tribute of sorts to Smith.[78] Canadian actor Elliot Page frequently mentions Smith as one of his idols and has done various photo shoots replicating famous Smith photos, and Irish actress Maria Doyle Kennedy often refers to Smith as a major influence.[79]
"She was the epitome of a literate, intelligent woman taking charge and being respected by her peers," observed Maria McKee in 2005.[80]
In 2012, Madonna named Smith as one of her biggest influences.[81]
In 2012, Smith was awarded an honorary doctorate in fine arts from Pratt Institute in Brooklyn.[82] Following conferral of her degree, Smith delivered the commencement address[83] and played two songs along with long-time band member Lenny Kaye. In her Pratt Institute commencement address, Smith said that when she moved to New York City in 1967, she would never have been accepted into Pratt but most of her friends, including Mapplethorpe, were students at Pratt, and she spent countless hours on the Pratt campus. She added that it was through her friends and Pratt professors that she learned many of her own artistic skills.[84]
In 2018, the English band Florence and the Machine dedicated the High as Hope album song "Patricia" to Smith. The lyrics reference Smith as Florence Welch's "North Star".[85] Canadian country musician Orville Peck cited Smith as having had a big impact on him, stating that Smith's album Horses introduced him to a new and different way to make music.[86]
Poetic singer songwriter Joustene Lorenz also cites Patti Smith as a 'powerful influence' on her life and music.[87]
In November 2020, Smith was set to receive the International Humanities Prize from Washington University in St. Louis in November 2020; however, the ceremony was canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.[88] In 2022, she was awarded an Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters from Columbia University.[89] Also in 2022, Smith was named an Officer of the French Legion of Honor (Officier de l’Ordre national de la Légion d’honneur). The award was presented to her at the "Night of Ideas" cultural celebration in Brooklyn, by the French ambassador to the United States, Philippe Étienne.[90]
I wrote both these songs directly in response to events that I felt outraged about. These are injustices against children and the young men and women who are being incarcerated. I'm an American, I pay taxes in my name and they are giving millions and millions of dollars to a country such as Israel and cluster bombs and defense technology and those bombs were dropped on common citizens in Qana. It's terrible. It's a human rights violation.
In a 2009 interview, Smith stated that Kurnaz's family had contacted her and that she wrote a short preface for the book that he was writing,[100] which was released in March 2008.[101]
In March 2003, ten days after the murder of Rachel Corrie, Smith appeared in Austin, Texas and performed an anti-war concert, and subsequently wrote "Peaceable Kingdom", a song inspired by and dedicated to Corrie.[102] In 2009, in her Meltdown concert in Festival Hall, she paid homage to the Iranians taking part in post-election protests by saying "Where is My Vote?" in a version of the song "People Have the Power".[103]
In 2015, Smith appeared with Nader, spoke and performed the songs "Wing" and "People Have the Power" during the American Museum of Tort Law convocation ceremony in Winsted, Connecticut.[104] In 2016, Smith spoke, read poetry, and performed several songs along with her daughter Jesse at Nader's Breaking Through Power conference at DAR Constitution Hall in Washington, D.C.[105]
In 2020, Smith contributed signed first-edition copies of her books to the Passages bookshop in Portland, Oregon after the store's valuable first-edition and other books by various authors were stolen in a burglary.[111] Smith regards climate change as the predominant issue of our time, and performed at the opening of COP26 in 2021.[112]
On February 24, 2022, Smith performed at The Capitol Theatre (Port Chester, New York) for the first time,[114] saying, "I would be lying if I said I wasn't affected by what is happening in the world" referencing the Russian invasion of Ukraine earlier that day. "Peace as we know it is over in Europe", she said.[115] "This is what I heard in my sleep and goes through my head all day all night long like a tragic hit song. A raw translation of the Ukrainian anthem that the people are singing through defiant tears", she wrote on Instagram on March 6, 2022.[116]
Beliefs
Religion
Smith was raised a Jehovah's Witness and had a strong religious upbringing and a Biblical education. She says she left organized religion as a teenager because she found it too confining. This experience inspired her lyrics, "Jesus died for somebody's sins, but not mine", which appear on her cover version of "Gloria" by Them.[117] She has described having an avid interest in Tibetan Buddhism around the age of 11 or 12, saying "I fell in love with Tibet because their essential mission was to keep a continual stream of prayer," but that as an adult she sees clear parallels between different forms of religion and has concluded that religious dogmas are "…man-made laws that you can either decide to abide by or not."[21]
In 2014, she was invited by Pope Francis to play at Vatican Christmas concert.[118] "It's a Christmas concert for the people, and it's being televised. I like Pope Francis and I'm happy to sing for him. Anyone who would confine me to a line from 20 years ago is a fool! I had a strong religious upbringing, and the first word on my first LP is Jesus. I did a lot of thinking. I'm not against Jesus, but I was 20 and I wanted to make my own mistakes and I didn't want anyone dying for me. I stand behind that 20-year-old girl, but I have evolved. I'll sing to my enemy! I don't like being pinned down and I'll do what the fuck I want, especially at my age...oh, I hope there's no small children here!" she said.[119]
In 2021, she performed at the Vatican again, telling Democracy Now! that she studied Francis of Assisi when Pope Benedict XVI was still the pope. Smith called Francis of Assisi "truly the environmentalist saint" and said that despite not being a Catholic, she had hoped for a pope named Francis.[120]
Feminism
According to biographer Nick Johnstone, Smith has often been "revered" as a "feminist icon",[121] including by The Guardian journalist Simon Hattenstone in a 2013 profile on the musician.[122]
In 2014, Smith offered her opinion on the sexualization of women in music. "Pop music has always been about the mainstream and what appeals to the public. I don't feel it's my place to judge." Smith historically and presently declines to embrace feminism, saying, "I have a son and a daughter, people always talk to me about feminism and women's rights, but I have a son too—I believe in human rights."[123]
In 2015, writer Anwen Crawford observed that Smith's "attitude to genius seems pre-feminist, if not anti-feminist; there is no democratizing, deconstructing impulse in her work. True artists, for Smith, are remote, solitary figures of excellence, wholly dedicated to their art."[124]
In 2024, Smith, along with Yoko Ono and Sandra Bloodworth, was awarded the Municipal Art Society of New York’s highest honor, the Jaqueline Kennedy Onassis Medal. The Medal is awarded annually to individuals who, through vision, leadership, and philanthropy, have made a lasting contribution to New York City.[129]
In 1967, 20-year-old Smith left Glassboro State College (now Rowan University) and moved to Manhattan, where she began working at Scribner’s bookstore with friend and poet Janet Hamill. On April 26, 1967, at age 20, Smith gave birth to her first child, a daughter, and placed her for adoption.[15]
While working at the bookstore she met photographer Robert Mapplethorpe, with whom she began an intense romantic relationship, which was tumultuous as the pair struggled with poverty and Mapplethorpe's sexuality. Smith used Mapplethorpe's photographs of her as covers for her albums, and she wrote essays for several of his books, including his posthumous Flowers, at his request.[130] The two remained friends until Mapplethorpe's death in 1989.[131]
Smith considers Mapplethorpe to be among the most influential and important people in her life. She calls him "the artist of my life" in her book Just Kids, which tells the story of their relationship. Her book and album The Coral Sea is an homage to Mapplethorpe.
Smith (left) and her daughter Jesse Smith at the Time 100 gala in 2011
In 1979, at approximately age 32, Smith separated from her long-time partner Allen Lanier and met Fred "Sonic" Smith, the former guitar player for Michigan-based rock band MC5 and Sonic's Rendezvous Band. Like Patti, Fred adored poetry. "Dancing Barefoot", which was inspired by Jeanne Hébuterne and her tragic love for Amedeo Modigliani, and "Frederick" were both dedicated to him.[132] A running joke at the time was that she married Fred only because she would not have to change her name.[133] They had a son, Jackson (b. 1982), who went on to marry Meg White, drummer for The White Stripes, from 2009 to 2013,[134] and a daughter, Jesse Paris (b. 1987), who is a musician and composer.[135]
Fred Smith died of a heart attack on November 4, 1994. Shortly afterward, Patti faced the unexpected death of her brother Todd.[13]
^LaGorce, Tammy (December 11, 2005). "Patti Smith, New Jersey's Truest Rock-Poet". The New York Times. New York City. Archived from the original on July 24, 2009. Retrieved July 20, 2010. But of all the ways to know Patti Smith, few people, including Ms. Smith, would think to embrace her as Deptford Township's proudest export.
^ ab"Patti Smith: Biography". The Rolling Stone Encyclopedia of Rock & Roll. 2001. Archived from the original on December 12, 2007. Retrieved February 4, 2008.
^Carson, Tom (January 29, 2010). "The Night Belongs to Us". The New York Times. Archived from the original on February 5, 2010. Retrieved February 10, 2010.
^"Violet" includes the line, "And the sky was all violet / I want it again but violent, more violent." "Kimberly" also includes the phrase "violent, violet sky".
^Love, Courtney. "Fashion Faux Paus". Running Russell Simmons. November 20, 2010. Oxygen Network.
^"Courtney Love". Behind the Music. June 21, 2010. VH1.
^Crawford, Anwen (October 6, 2015). "The Theology of Patti Smith". The New Yorker. Archived from the original on April 25, 2017. Retrieved June 1, 2017.
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