Patti Smith

Patricia Lee Smith was born on 30 December 1946 at Grant Hospital of Chicago in Chicago[5][10]to Beverly Smith, a jazz singer turned waitress, and Grant Smith, who worked as a machinist at a Honeywell plant.[11] The family was of part Irish ancestry[12] and Patti was the eldest of four children, with siblings Linda, Kimberly, and Todd.[13] At the age of 4, Smith's family moved from Chicago to Germantown, Philadelphia,[14] before heading to Pitman, New Jersey[15] and later to The Woodbury Gardens section of Deptford Township, New Jersey.[16][17]

At this early age Smith was exposed to her first records, including Shrimp Boats by Harry Belafonte, Patience and Prudence's The Money Tree, and Another Side of Bob Dylan, which her mother gave to her. Smith graduated from Deptford Township High School in 1964 and went to work in a factory.[1][18] She gave birth to her first child, a daughter, on April 26, 1967, and chose to place her for adoption.[18]

In 1967, she left Glassboro State College (now Rowan University) and moved to New York City's Manhattan. She met photographer Robert Mapplethorpe there while working at a bookstore with friend and poet Janet Hamill. She and Mapplethorpe had an intense romantic relationship, which was tumultuous as the pair struggled with times of poverty, and Mapplethorpe with his own sexuality. Smith considers Mapplethorpe to be one of the most important people in her life, and in her book Just Kids refers to him as "the artist of my life." Mapplethorpe's photographs of her became the covers for the Patti Smith Group albums, and they remained lifelong friends until Mapplethorpe's death in 1989.[19] Her book and album The Coral Sea would be an homage to the life of Mapplethorpe and Just Kids would tell the story of their relationship. She would also write essays for several of Mapplethorpe's books, starting from one, at his request, for his posthumous Flowers.[20]

She went to Paris with her sister in 1969, and started busking and doing performance art.[16] When Smith returned to Manhattan, she lived in the Hotel Chelsea with Mapplethorpe; they frequented Max's Kansas City and CBGB. 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 Wayne County in Jackie Curtis's play Femme Fatale. Afterward, she also starred in Tony Ingrassia's play Island. As a member of the St. Mark's Poetry Project, she spent the early 1970s painting, writing, and performing. In 1971 she performed – for one night only – in Cowboy Mouth,[21] a play that 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, "for sam shepard"[22] and "Sam Shepard: 9 Random Years (7 + 2)"[23] about her relationship with Shepard.

Smith was briefly considered for the lead singer position in Blue Öyster Cult. She contributed lyrics to several of the band's songs, including "Debbie Denise" (inspired by her poem "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". She was romantically involved at the time with the band's keyboardist, Allen Lanier. During these years, Smith also wrote rock journalism pieces, some of which were published in Rolling Stone and Creem.[24]

Smith performing at Cornell University, 1978

By 1974, Patti Smith was performing rock music, initially with guitarist, bassist and rock archivist Lenny Kaye, and later with a full band comprising Kaye, Ivan Kral on guitar and bass, Jay Dee Daugherty on drums and Richard Sohl on piano. Kral was a refugee from Czechoslovakia who had moved to the United States in 1966 with his parents, who were diplomats. After the Warsaw Pact invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, he decided not to return.[25] Financed by Sam Wagstaff, the band recorded a 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 fugitive heiress Patty Hearst ("Patty Hearst, you're standing there in front of the Symbionese Liberation Army flag with your legs spread, I was wondering were you gettin' it every night from a black revolutionary man and his women ...").[26] A court later heard that Hearst had been confined against her will, and had been repeatedly threatened with execution and raped.[27] The B-side describes the helpless alienation Smith had felt while working on a factory assembly line and the salvation she dreams of achieving by escaping to New York.[1] In a 1996 interview which discusses artistic influences during her younger years, Smith said, "I had devoted so much of my girlish daydreams to Rimbaud. Rimbaud was like my boyfriend."[28]

Smith performing with the Patti Smith Group, in West Germany, 1978

Later that same year, she performed spoken poetry on "I Wake Up Screaming" from Ray Manzarek's The Whole Thing Started with Rock & Roll Now It's Out of Control album.

The Patti Smith Group was signed by Clive Davis of Arista Records, and in 1975 recorded their first album, Horses, produced by John Cale amid some tension. 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 her early poems). The austere cover photograph by Mapplethorpe has become one of rock's classic images.[29] As the popularity of punk rock grew, Patti Smith Group toured the United States 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 regularly in concert.[30] She has said that Radio Ethiopia was influenced by the band MC5.[28]

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 into a concrete orchestra pit, breaking several neck vertebrae.[31]

The injury required a period of rest and an intensive round of physical therapy, during which time she was able to reassess, re-energize and reorganize her life. Patti Smith Group produced two further albums before the end of the 1970s. Easter (1978) was her most commercially successful record, containing the single "Because the Night" co-written with Bruce Springsteen. Wave (1979) was less successful, although the songs "Frederick" and "Dancing Barefoot" both received commercial airplay.[32]

Smith with her daughter Jesse Smith at the 2011 Time 100 gala

Before the release of Wave, Smith, now separated from long-time partner Allen Lanier, met Fred "Sonic" Smith, former guitar player for Detroit rock band MC5 and his own Sonic's Rendezvous Band, who adored poetry as much as she did. Wave's "Dancing Barefoot" (inspired by Jeanne Hébuterne and her tragic love for Amedeo Modigliani) and "Frederick" were both dedicated to him.[33] The running joke at the time was that she married Fred only because she would not have to change her name.[34] They had a son, Jackson (b. 1982), who would go on to marry The White Stripes drummer, Meg White, in 2009;[35] and a daughter, Jesse Paris, who is also a musician and composer[36] (b. 1987).

Through most of the 1980s Smith was in semi-retirement from music, living with her family north of Detroit in St. Clair Shores, Michigan. In June 1988, she released the album Dream of Life, which included the song "People Have the Power". Fred Smith died on November 4, 1994, of a heart attack. Shortly afterward, Patti faced the unexpected death of her brother Todd.[16]

When her son Jackson turned 14, Smith decided to move back to New York. After the impact of these deaths, her friends Michael Stipe of R.E.M. and Allen Ginsberg (whom she had known since her early years in New York) urged her to go back out on the road. She toured briefly with Bob Dylan in December 1995 (chronicled in a book of photographs by Stipe).[21]

In 1996, Smith worked with her long-time colleagues to record Gone Again, featuring "About a Boy", a tribute to Kurt Cobain. That same year she collaborated with Stipe on "E-Bow the Letter", a song on R.E.M.'s New Adventures in Hi-Fi, which she has also performed live with the band.[37] After the release of Gone Again, Patti Smith recorded two new albums: Peace and Noise in 1997 (with the single "1959", about the invasion of Tibet) and Gung Ho in 2000 (with songs about Ho Chi Minh and Smith's late father). Songs "1959" and "Glitter in Their Eyes" were nominated for the Grammy Award for Best Female Rock Vocal Performance.[38] A box set of her work up to that time, The Patti Smith Masters, came out in 1996, and 2002 saw the release of Land (1975–2002), a two-CD compilation that includes a cover of Prince's "When Doves Cry". Smith's solo art exhibition Strange Messenger was hosted at The Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh on September 28, 2002.[39]

On April 27, 2004, Patti Smith released Trampin' which included several songs about motherhood, partly in tribute to Smith's mother, who had died two years before. It was her first album on Columbia Records, soon to become a sister label to her previous home Arista Records. Smith curated the Meltdown festival in London on June 25, 2005, the penultimate event being the first live performance of Horses in its entirety.[40] Guitarist Tom Verlaine took Oliver Ray's place. This live performance was released later in the year as Horses/Horses.

Smith performing at Primavera Sound Festival (2007)

On July 10, 2005, Smith was named a Commander of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French Ministry of Culture.[6] In addition to Smith's influence on rock music, the Minister also noted her appreciation of Arthur Rimbaud. In August 2005, Smith gave a literary lecture about the poems of Arthur Rimbaud and William Blake. On October 15, 2006, Patti Smith performed at the CBGB nightclub, with a 3½-hour tour de force to close out Manhattan's music venue. She took the stage at 9:30 p.m. (EDT) and closed for the night (and forever for the venue) at a few minutes after 1:00 am, performing her song "Elegie", and finally reading a list of punk rock musicians and advocates who had died in the previous years.[41]

Smith was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on March 12, 2007.[7] She dedicated her award to the memory of her late husband, Fred, and gave a performance of The Rolling Stones staple "Gimme Shelter". As the closing number of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony, Smith's "People Have the Power" was used for the big celebrity jam that always ends the program.[42]

From November 2006 to January 2007, an exhibition called 'Sur les Traces'[43] at Trolley Gallery, London, featured polaroid prints taken by Patti Smith and donated to Trolley to raise awareness and funds for the publication of Double Blind, a book on the war in Lebanon in 2006, 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 Patti Smith, Land 250, drawn from pieces created between 1967 and 2007.[44] At the 2008 Rowan Commencement ceremony, Smith received an honorary doctorate degree for her contributions to popular culture.

Smith with National Book Critics Circle President Jane Ciabattari and NBCC board member John Reed. Smith's memoir Just Kids was an NBCC autobiography finalist at the 2010 awards.[45]

Smith is the subject of a 2008 documentary film by Steven Sebring titled Patti Smith: Dream of Life.[46] A live album by Patti Smith and Kevin Shields, The Coral Sea was released in July 2008. On September 10, 2009, after a week of smaller events and exhibitions in the city, Smith played an open-air concert in Florence's Piazza Santa Croce, commemorating her performance in the same city 30 years earlier.[47] In the meantime, she contributed with a special introduction to Jessica Lange's book 50 Photographs (2009).[48]

Smith's book, Just Kids, a memoir of her time in 1970s Manhattan and her relationship with Robert Mapplethorpe, was published in 2010; it later won the National Book Award for Nonfiction.[8][49] In 2018 a new edition with many added photographs and illustrations was published. She also headlined a benefit concert headed by bandmate Tony Shanahan, for The Court Tavern of New Brunswick.[50] Smith's set included "Gloria", "Because the Night" and "People Have the Power." She has a brief cameo in Jean-Luc Godard's 2010 Film Socialisme, which was first screened in the Un Certain Regard section at the 2010 Cannes Film Festival.[51]

In 2012 Patti Smith received an honorary doctorate in fine arts from Pratt Institute, along with architect Daniel Libeskind, MoMA director Glenn Lowry, former NYC Landmarks Commissioner Barbaralee Diamonstein-Spielvogel, novelist Jonathan Lethem, and director Steven Soderbergh.[52] Following the conferral of her degree, Smith delivered the commencement address[53] and sang/played two songs accompanied by long-time band member Lenny Kaye. In her remarks, Smith explained that in 1967 when she moved to New York City (Brooklyn), 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 their Pratt professors that she learned much of her own artistic skills, making the honor from the institute particularly poignant for Smith 43 years later.[54]

Patti Smith was one of the winners of the 2011 Polar Music Prize.[55] She made her television acting debut at the age of 64 on the TV series Law & Order: Criminal Intent, appearing in an episode called "Icarus".[56] 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" having been a fan of British fictional detective Sherlock Holmes and U.S. crime author Mickey Spillane as a girl.[57] Part of the book will be set in Gothenburg, Sweden.[58]

Following the death of her husband in 1994, Smith began devoting time to what she terms "pure photography" (a method of capturing still objects without using a flash).[59] In 2011, Smith announced the first museum exhibition of her photography in the United States, 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.[59] The exhibition featured artifacts which were the everyday items or places of significance of artists whom Smith admires, including Rimbaud, Baudelaire, Keats and Blake. In February 2012, she was a guest at the Sanremo Music Festival.[60]

Smith recorded a cover of Buddy Holly's classic "Words of Love" for the CD Rave on Buddy Holly, a tribute album tied to Holly's seventy-fifth birthday year which was released June 28, 2011.[61] She also recorded the song "Capitol Letter" for the official soundtrack of the second film of the Hunger Games-series The Hunger Games: Catching Fire.[62]

Smith's 11th studio album, Banga, was released in June 2012. Music Journalist Hal Horowitz wrote : "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."[63] The critical aggregator website Metacritic awarded the album a score of 81, indicating "universal acclaim".[64]

Also in 2012 Patti Smith recorded the cover of Io come persona by the Italian singer-songwriter Giorgio Gaber, translated into English "I as a person", contained in the anthological album ...io ci sono.[65][66]

Patti Smith performing at Haldern Pop 2014

In 2015, Adult Swim offered Smith the opportunity to perform a song to commemorate the series finale of Aqua Teen Hunger Force. Smith, an avowed fan of the series, recorded the song "Aqua Teen Dream" with the help of her children and band. The vocal track was recorded in a hotel overlooking Lerici's Bay of Poets.[67] On September 26, 2015, Smith performed during the American Museum of Tort Law convocation ceremony.[68]

In 2016 Smith performed "People Have the Power" at Riverside Church, Manhattan, to celebrate the 20th anniversary of Democracy Now. 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 himself could not be present due to prior commitments. After the official presentation speech for the literary prize by Horace Engdahl, a member of the Swedish Academy, Smith sang the Dylan song "A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall". Possibly overcome by nerves she sang "I saw the babe that was just bleedin’", the wrong words to the second verse and became unable to continue.[69] She stopped, and after a brief apology, resumed the song, which earned her a jubilant applause at the end.[70][71]

In 2017, Smith appeared as herself in Song to Song directed by Terrence Malick, opposite Rooney Mara and Ryan Gosling.[72][73] 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.[74]

In 2018, Smith's concert-documentary film Horses: Patti Smith and her Band premiered at the 2018 Tribeca Film Festival to wide acclaim.[75] In addition, Smith narrated in Darren Aronofsky's VR experience Spheres: Songs of Spacetime alongside Millie Bobby Brown and Jessica Chastain.[76]

In 2019, Smith performed her anthem "People Have the Power" with Stewart Copeland and Choir! Choir! Choir! at Onassis Festival 2019: Democracy Is Coming, co-presented by The Public Theatre and Onassis USA. Later that year she released her latest book, Year of the Monkey.[77] "A captivating, redemptive chronicle of a year in which Smith looked intently into the abyss." stated Kirkus Reviews.[78]

Smith is set to receive the International Humanities Prize from Washington University in St. Louis in November 2020.[79]

Smith is the artist in residence throughout January 2021 for Circa.art where she is performing poetry, songs and featuring artists who have influenced her life and career. Her work goes live at 20:21 GMT every night on the advertising screens of Piccadilly Lights in London and streamed on the website. The residency began on New Year’s Eve with a special collaboration[80] alongside artist Anne Imhof. Prints of Smith’s new poem ‘The Cup’, dedicated to Greta Thunberg on her 18th birthday, are being sold to support the cultural community which is struggling due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

Smith was raised a Jehovah's Witness and had a strong religious upbringing and a Biblical education. She left organized religion as a teenager because she felt it was too confining. In response to this experience, she wrote the line "Jesus died for somebody's sins, but not mine" in her cover version of "Gloria" by Them.[114] She has described having an avid interest in Tibetan Buddhism around the age of eleven or twelve, 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 come to the conclusion that religious dogmas are "... man-made laws that you can either decide to abide by or not."[28] In 2019 Smith released Mummer Love, a collaborative album made in tribute to poet Arthur Rimbaud and his fascination with Sufism.[115]

According to biographer Nick Johnstone, Smith has often been "revered" as a "feminist icon",[116] including by The Guardian journalist Simon Hattenstone in a 2013 profile on the musician.[117]

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." As at points earlier in her life and career, she declined to embrace politicized feminism: "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."[118]

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."[119]