Patti Smith and her band perform Dec. 31, 2007 at the Bowery Ballroom, New York City
Patti Smith is 76 years old today.
A singer-songwriter, poet and visual artist, Smith became a highly influential component of the New York City punk rock movement with her 1975 debut album, Horses. Known as the "Godmother of Punk,” her work is a fusion of rock and poetry.
Smith's most widely known song is "Because the Night," which was co-written with Bruce Springsteen and reached #13 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in 1978.
In 2005, Smith was named a Commander of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French Minister of Culture, and in 2007, she was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. On November 17, 2010, she won the National Book Award for her memoir, Just Kids, on her life with Robert Mapplethorpe. She is also a recipient of the 2011 Polar Music Prize.
Born in Chicago, Patricia Lee Smith’s mother, Beverly, was a waitress, and her father, Grant, worked at the Honeywell plant. The family had Irish heritage. She spent her early childhood in Germantown, before her family moved to Woodbury Gardens, Deptford Township, New Jersey.
Her mother was a Jehovah's Witness. Patti had a strong religious upbringing and a Bible education, but left organized religion as a teenager because she felt it was too confining. Much later, she wrote the line, "Jesus died for somebody's sins, but not mine," in her cover version of Them's "Gloria" in response to this experience.
Smith had an avid interest in Tibetan Buddhism beginning at about age eleven, 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."
In 1967, she left Glassboro State College (now Rowan University) and moved to New York City. She met photographer, Robert Mapplethorpe, while working at a book store with a friend, poet Janet Hamill.
Smith 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 LPs, and they remained friends until Mapplethorpe's death in 1989. 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.
As a member of the St. Mark's Poetry Project, she spent the early 70's painting, writing and performing. In 1971, she performed — for one night only — in Cowboy Mouth, 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" and "Sam Shepard: 9 Random Years (7 + 2)" about her relationship with Shepard.
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. 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...").
The B-side describes the helpless anger Smith had felt while working on a factory assembly line and the salvation she discovered in the form of a shoplifted book, the 19th century French poet Arthur Rimbaud's Illuminations.
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. As the popularity of punk rock grew, the 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.
Smith then 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. The running joke at the time was that she married Fred only because she would not have to change her name.
They had a son, Jackson (b. 1982) who would go on to marry The White Stripes drummer, Meg White in 2009; and a daughter, Jesse (b. 1987). Through most of the 1980s, Patti 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, and original keyboard player, Richard Sohl. 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.
Here, Smith performs “Horses” and “Hey Joe” in 1976
Patti Smith with her children, Jackson and Jesse, in St. Clair Shores, Michigan, 1996
Photo by Annie Leibovitz