Patti Smith
For the former lead singer of the band Scandal, see Patty Smyth.Patti Smith (born
December 30,
1946) is an
American musician,
singer, and
poet. She came to prominence during the
punk movement with her
1975 debut album
Horses. Called "punk rock's
poet laureate", she brought a
feminist and intellectual take to punk music and became one of rock and roll's most influential female musicians.
She was born
Patricia Lee Smith in
Chicago,
Illinois, and raised in
New Jersey. Her father was an
atheist and her mother was a devout
Jehovah's Witness. The family was not wealthy and, with her formal education over at 16, Smith went to work in a factory â€" an experience she found excruciating. She also bore a child whom she gave up for adoption. In 1967 she left New Jersey for good, and moved to
New York and met
Robert Mapplethorpe while working at a book store. The two were lovers for a time, in spite of Mapplethorpe's homosexuality, and they remained close friends until Mapplethorpe's death from
AIDS in 1989. In 1969 she went to
Paris with her sister and started
busking and doing
performance art. When Smith returned to
New York City, she lived in the
Chelsea Hotel with Mapplethorpe. (Among Smith's other well-known lovers were poet
Jim Carroll and
Television member
Tom Verlaine). She spent the early 1970s painting, writing, and performing spoken-word poetryâ€"frequently at
St. Mark's Poetry Project. In 1971 she performed â€" for one night only â€" in the play
Cowboy Mouth, a collaboration with the playwright and actor
Sam Shepard (the published play's notes call for "a man who looks like a coyote and a woman who looks like a crow").
Smith subsidized her career in these years by publishing rock
journalism, especially in
Creem magazine. She also wrote songs during this period in connection with
Allen Lanier of
Blue Öyster Cult, who recorded several songs to which Smith contributed, including "Career of Evil," "Fire of Unknown Origin," "The Revenge of Vera Gemini," and "Shooting Shark."
|
Patti Smith in concert in Copenhagen, October 1976 |
By 1974, however, Patti Smith was performing
rock music herself, initially with guitarist and rock archivist
Lenny Kaye, and later with a full band comprising Kaye,
Ivan Kral (
guitar),
Jay Dee Daugherty (
drums) and
Richard Sohl (
piano). Financed by Robert Mapplethorpe, the band recorded a first single, "Piss Factory/
Hey Joe," in 1974. The A-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 B-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 will you get it every night from a black revolutionary man and his women...").
The Patti Smith Group was signed by
Clive Davis of
Arista Records, and 1975 saw the release of Smith's first album
Horses, produced amidst some tension by
John Cale, formerly of
The Velvet Underground. The record fused
rock and roll, proto-
punk rock with spoken poetry and is widely considered one of rock's greatest debuts. The album begins with a cover of
Van Morrison's "Gloria," and Smith's opening words are some of the most famous in rock: "Jesus died for somebody's sins ... but not mine." The austere cover photograph by Robert Mapplethorpe has become one of rock's classic images.
As the Patti Smith Group toured the
United States and
Europe, punk's popularity grew. The rawer sound of the group's second album,
Radio Ethiopia, reflected this. Considerably less accessible than
Horses,
Radio Ethiopia received poor reviews. However, several of its songs, notably "Pissing in a River, " "Pumping," and "Ain't It Strange," have stood the test of time, and Smith still performs them regularly in concert.
While touring in support of the record, Smith accidentally danced off a high stage in
Tampa, Florida, falling 15 feet into a concrete orchestra pit and breaking several neck vertebrae. 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, a luxury that had been denied her in her swift rise to fame.
The Patti Smith Group produced two further albums before the end of the 1970s.
Easter (1978) was her most commercially successful record, containing the hit single "
Because the Night" – co-written with
Bruce Springsteen – which rose to #13 on the
Billboard Hot 100.
Wave was less successful, with "Frederick" and "Dancing Barefoot" receiving only minor radio airplay.
Following the release of
Wave, Smith, now separated from long-time partner Jim Carroll, met
Fred "Sonic" Smith, former guitar player for legendary Detroit rock band the
MC5, who adored poetry as much as she did. The running joke at the time was that she only married Fred because she wouldn't have to change her name. Through most of the 1980s Smith was in semi-retirement from music, living in Detroit with her family. In
1988, she released the album
Dream of Life, which was well-received, even though she didn't go on tour and it was much more mainstream than her earlier punk-influenced work. In
1989, close friend
Robert Mapplethorpe died of AIDS.
In 1994 Fred died of a heart attack, and following the unexpected death of her beloved brother Todd later that year, Patti was urged by John Cale and
Allen Ginsberg to seek help. She did, and subsequently became an active supporter of psychiatric treatment for mental illness and the maintenance of mental health. Smith also advocated the formation of anonymous suicide hotlines for people in need but unwilling to seek help. Reflecting on the deaths of Mapplethorpe, Fred and Todd, Patti toured briefly with Bob Dylan in December of 1995. When her son, Jackson, turned 12, Smith decided to move back to New York.
After the deaths of her husband and brother, Patti's friends
Michael Stipe 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). The next year, she worked with her long-time colleagues to record the haunting
Gone Again, featuring tributes to her late husband and
Kurt Cobain (and almost certainly reflecting, as well, the deaths of Robert Mapplethorpe, Richard Sohl, and Todd Smith). That same year she collaborated with
Michael 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. During this period, she returned to New York.
Since the release of
Gone Again, the Patti Smith Group has recorded three new albums:
Peace and Noise (with the single "1959," about the Chinese invasion of
Tibet) in 1997,
Gung Ho (with songs about
Ho Chi Minh and Smith's late father) in 2000, and
Trampin' in 2004 (which included several songs about motherhood, partly in tribute to Smith's mother who died in
2002). This last album, Smith's first with a new label,
Sony, was critically acclaimed and returned her to the Billboard 200 for the first time in years. A boxed set of her work up to that time came out in 1996, and 2002 saw the release of
Land, a two-CD compilation that includes a memorable cover of
Prince's "When Doves Cry."
Smith curated the
Meltdown Festival in
London, England during June
2005. It was by all accounts one of the most successful Meltdown Festivals ever held, with virtually every event sold out. The line-up, all hand-picked by Smith, comprised an extremely diverse array of actors and musicians, from
Tilda Swinton and
Miranda Richardson, to the
London Sinfonietta, to
Tuvan
throat-singing group
Yat-Kha which performed
Purple Haze (as part of a tribute to
Jimi Hendrix). The festival's penultimate event was a performance by Smith of her debut album
Horses (album) in its entirety, the first time she has ever done so. Guitarist
Tom Verlaine took Oliver Ray's place. This live performance of
Horses (album) was released later in the year as
Horses Horses.
In August 2005 Smith and the band opened the German
RuhrTriennale and played two shows in the festival's renowned songwriter's concert series
Century of Song. Amongst unusual versions of her own material she performed very personal renditions of
Phil Spector songs and classics by Bob Dylan and Jimi Hendrix. Next morning she held a literary lecture about the poems of Arthur Rimbaud and
William Blake. On this occasion she also talked about the difference between (song-) lyrics and poems.
On
July 10, 2005, Smith was named a Commander of the Order of Arts and Letters by the French Culture Ministry. In addition to her influence on rock and roll, the Ministry also noted Smith's appreciation for
Arthur Rimbaud.[
1][
2]
During the course of her career, Smith has published a number of books of poetry, including 1980's
Babel;
Patti Smith Complete, a collection of her
lyrics;
Early Work, collecting a number of the small poetry volumes and broadsides she published in the early 1970s; and
The Coral Sea, an extended
elegy to Mapplethorpe. In 2003 her artwork was exhibited in
Pittsburgh at the
Andy Warhol Museum.
Although Smith has never had a RIAA certified record, has had just one Top 20 single, and has yet to be inducted into the
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, she is regarded as one of the most influential and important artists in rock history.
Rolling Stone magazine recently placed her at #47 in its list of "The 100 Greatest Artists of All Time." She recently performed with Red Hot Chili Peppers at one of their concerts at Earls Court on the 18 July.
Smith has been nominated for the
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame six times (every year since
2001) but has never received the requisite number of votes for induction. [
3]
Smith was an active supporter of
Ralph Nader's 2000 presidential campaign, touring with him and playing "People Have the Power" and "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" before crowds of thousands at the campaign's "super-rallies." She also performed at several of Nader's subsequent "Democracy Rising" events. She nominally supported
John Kerry in the
2004 election; while she did not participate in the
Vote for Change tour, "People Have the Power" was performed at all the shows involving Bruce Springsteen. However, after the election she raised money to help Nader's 2004 campaign, deeply in debt from lawsuits by the Democratic Party. She also toured with Ralph Nader in late 2004 and early 2005 to hold rallies to end the
Iraq war and
impeach President
George W. Bush. Her mentions of Nader at concerts are usually greeted with boos by a substantial portion of the audience (who blame him for
Al Gore's loss to Bush in 2000), to which she responds, "They booed
Thomas Paine, too."
Studio albums
* 1975 -
Horses* 1976 -
Radio Ethiopia * 1978 -
Easter* 1979 -
Wave* 1988 -
Dream Of Life (#65 US)
* 1996 -
Gone Again (#55 US)
* 1997 -
Peace and Noise (#152 US)
* 2000 -
Gung Ho (#178 US)
* 2004 -
trampin' (#123 US)
* 2005 -
Horses HorsesCompilations
* 2002 -
Land (1975-2002)*
Seventh Heaven (1972)
*
A Useless Death (1972)
*
kodak (1972)
*
Early morning dream (1972)
*
WITT (1973)
*
The Night(Aloes Books 1976)Patti Smith & Tom Verlaine
*
Ha! Ha! Houdini! (1977)
*
Babel (1978)
*
Woolgathering (1992)
*
Early Work, 1970 - 1979 (1995)
*
The Coral Sea (1996)
*
Patti Smith Complete : Lyrics, Reflections and Notes for the Future (1998). The paperback edition, published in 1999, contains additional material and a revised title:
Patti Smith Complete : Lyrics, Notes and Reflections.
*
Wild Leaves (1999)
*
Strange Messenger: The Work of Patti Smith (2003) â€" the catalog for a show of Smith's artworks at the
Andy Warhol Museum, compiled by Patti Smith, David Greenberg and John W. Smith
* Foreword to
An Accidental Biography: The Selected Letters of Gregory Corso April
2005*
Auguries of Innocence: Poems, October 2005
*
Official web site*
Patti Smith on AudioKat*
Concert setlists 1971 to date*
Patti Smith Yahoo group*
Interview (along with
Lenny Kaye)
November 11,
2005 on
KEXP; 53 minutes, includes three songs. (
Windows Media Player,
RealPlayer).
*
