Patti Smith

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For the lead singer of the former band Scandal, see Patty Smyth.

Patricia Lee ("Patti") Smith (born December 30, 1946) is an American musician, singer, and poet.

Smith 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 musicians.

Although Smith's success has been limited in commercial terms (she has never had an RIAA certified record and has had just one Top 20 single), she is often regarded as one of the most influential artists in rock history: Rolling Stone magazine placed her at #47 in its list of the 100 Greatest Artists of All Time[1]. On March 12, 2007, she was inducted[2] into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame by Rage Against the Machine frontman Zack de la Rocha.

Beginnings

Early life in Chicago and New Jersey

Smith was born in Chicago, Illinois, and raised in Woodbury, New Jersey[1]. Her father was an atheist and her mother was a devout Jehovah's Witness. The family was not wealthy and, with her formal education temporarily over at 16, Smith went to work in a factory – an experience she found excruciating.

She also bore a child whom she gave up for adoption while attending Glassboro State College, now Rowan University, in Glassboro, New Jersey. Smith dropped out after giving birth.

New York City

In 1967 she left New Jersey for good, moved to New York City 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. They began frequenting Max's Kansas City nightclub at this time, and Smith appeared with Wayne County in the play Femme Fatale by Jackie Curtis in 1969. (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 poetry—frequently at St. Mark's Poetry Project. In 1971 she performed – for one night only – 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 "Debbie Denise" (after her poem "In Remembrance of Debbie Denise"), "Career of Evil," "Fire of Unknown Origin," "The Revenge of Vera Gemini," and "Shooting Shark."

Early career

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 were you gettin' 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 album was recorded and mixed by Bernie Kirsh. 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.

Retreat

Following the release of Wave, Smith, now separated from long-time partner Allen Lanier, 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. Patti and Fred had a son, Jackson, and later a daughter, Jesse. Through most of the 1980s Patti was in semi-retirement from music, living with her family north of Detroit in St. Clair Shores. In 1988, she released the well-received album Dream of Life. This album was considered more mainstream than her earlier punk-influenced work.

In 1994 her husband, Fred died of a heart attack, and shortly after she faced the unexpected death of her beloved brother Todd. When her son, Jackson, turned 12, Smith decided to move back to New York. Her son had a band called Back In Spades.

Re-emergence

After the deaths of her husband and brother, 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). The next year, she worked with her long-time colleagues to record the haunting Gone Again, featuring, "About a Boy", a tribute to Kurt Cobain. Smith was a great fan of Cobain's, but was more angered than saddened by his suicide. She was quoted in Rolling Stone, "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."[3]

On Sunday, October 15, 2006 she performed the final show at CBGB in Manhattan. Her tour de force to close out CBGB's 33 year run lasted over 3½ hours, as she took the stage at 9:30 PM (EDT) and closed for the night (and forever for the venue) at a few minutes after 1:00.

Smith was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame March 12, 2007. Zach de la Rocha of Rage Against the Machine gave Smith's induction speech. Smith dedicated her award to the memory of her late husband, Fred. Smith gave a performance of the Rolling Stones classic Gimme Shelter, a song she termed a great anti-war song. As the closing number of 2007 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction evening, Smith's "People Have the Power" was used for the big celebrity jam that always ends the program. Among those playing or singing were Eddie Vedder, Stephen Stills and Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones. All the other inductees to the Hall that night joined: Sammy Hagar and Mike Anthony of Van Halen, the Ronettes, Grandmaster Flash and Furious Five and R.E.M. including Bill Berry on drums.[4]

Political engagement

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 may blame him for Al Gore's loss to Bush in 2000), to which she responds, "They booed Thomas Paine, too."

Smith premiered two new protest songs in London in September 2006. Louise Jury, writing in The Independent characterized them as "an emotional indictment of American and Israeli foreign policy". One song ("Qana") was about the Israeli airstrike on the Lebanese village of Qana, the other ("Without Chains") about the U.S. detention center at Guantanamo Bay.

Jury's article quotes Smith as saying, "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."

"Without Chains" is about Murat Kurnaz, a Turkish citizen who was born and raised in Germany, held at Guantanamo for four years. Jury quotes Smith, "He is the same age as my son, Jackson. When I read the story, I realised how I would feel as a mother if my son had been taken away at the age of 20, put into chains, without any hope of leaving, without any direct charge."[5]

Discography

Studio albums

Live albums

Compilations

Singles

Year Title Chart positions Album
US Hot 100 US Modern Rock US Mainstream Rock UK
1978 "Because the Night" #13 - - #5 Easter
1978 "Privilege (Set Me Free)" - - - #72 Easter
1979 "Frederick" - - - #63 Wave
1988 "Up There Down There" - #6 - #85 Dream of Life
1988 "People Have The Power" - - #19 #97 Dream of Life

Bibliography

  • 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 second (paperback) edition, published in 1999, contains additional material and a revised title: Patti Smith Complete : Lyrics, Notes and Reflections. The third edition published in 2006 is titled Patti Smith Complete 1975 - 2006 : Lyrics, Reflections & Notes for the Future.
  • Wild Leaves (1999)
  • Strange Messenger: The Work of Patti Smith (2003) – 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)

Notes

  1. ↑ The Immortals: The First Fifty. Rolling Stone Issue 946. Rolling Stone (April 15, 2004)..
  2. ↑ Ben Sisario, Jan. 8, 2007, The New York Times, "Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Backs New Members", available at http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/08/arts/music/08cnd-rock.html?_r=1&oref=slogin&pagewanted=print .
  3. ↑ Rolling Stone, July 11, 1996, quoted in South Coast Today (Massachusetts)
  4. ↑ Patti Smith Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction evening show
  5. ↑ Louise Jury, Patti Smith rails against Israel and US, The Independent (UK), 9 September 2006. Accessed online 7 Oct 2006.

Seven (2007)

External links

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