Legendary musician, poet and visual artist Patti Smith released her first book of prose earlier this year. The evocative memoir Just Kids offers a rare glimpse into the making of an artist and documents Smith’s relationship with provocative photographer Robert Mapplethorpe during their days as a couple of young bohemian unknowns trying to make a name for themselves in New York City.
Homeless, jobless, and dividing their dimes between art supplies and Coney Island hot dogs, Smith and Mapplethorpe embodied the cliché of the starving artist as they forged their own artistic identities while working side by side for hours drawing, painting, and writing poetry. Mapplethorpe was the first to discover his calling when he turned to photography, but Smith was the first to find fame, becoming an overnight sensation when she was transformed from poet to rock star during a reading one night in a church.
Patricia Lee “Patti” Smith was drawn to the arts from an early age. The eldest of four siblings, she was born in Chicago on December 30, 1946, and raised in South Jersey by her mother Beverly, a jazz singer-cum-waitress, and her father Grant, who worked at the Honeywell plant. Her childhood was fueled by books and Sunday school, poetry, prayer and pop music, though she lost the prayer part as a teenager when she found organized religion too confining.
Patti always felt on the fringes of high school society and was often punished by her teachers for daydreaming. She took refuge in the words of Bob Dylan, James Brown, The Rolling Stones, but most especially those of 19th century French poet Arthur Rimbaud, who in 1871, at age 16, wrote, “I want to be a poet, and I’m working to make myself a visionary: you won’t understand at all, and I can hardly explain it to you…The sufferings are enormous, but you have to be strong, to be born a poet, and I’ve realized I’m a poet.” A brief stint in Glassboro State Teacher’s College in 1967 ended when Patti got pregnant. She gave her infant son up for adoption and a few months later, boarded a bus for New York City with drawing pencils, a notebook, $32 she pinched from a purse left in a phone booth, and a shoplifted copy of Rimbaud’s Illuminations.
Smith met Robert Mapplethorpe while working at Scribner’s bookstore, a job she secured shortly after her arrival in New York. The two got a place together and supported each other's creative processes. They frequented the fashionable Max’s Kansas City and CBGB nightclubs, and eventually moved into the Hotel Chelsea where they became part of a community of artists, writers, and musicians. Smith and Mapplethorpe were regulars at a bar-restaurant next door to the hotel where they often found themselves among rock luminaries. “At the table to my left, Janis Joplin was holding court with her band,” says Smith. “To my far right were Grace Slick and the Jefferson Airplane, along with members of Country Joe and the Fish. At the last table facing the door was Jimi Hendrix, his head lowered, eating with his hat on.”
Patti Smith spent the early '70s painting, writing, and performing. She met guitarist, rock critic, and Bleecker Street record store clerk Lenny Kaye, who shared her love of early and obscure rock ‘n’ roll. When Smith gave a public poetry reading at St. Mark's Church in February 1971, she invited Kaye to accompany her on the electric guitar. In the audience that night were noted poets, Warhol Factory mainstays, as well as members from the music industry. The show, integrating Beat poetry with three-chord rock, caused a sensation that winter night, and Smith was suddenly inundated with offers from magazines, publishers, and record companies.
Over the next two years, Patti Smith continued to perform in plays and poetry readings. She also wrote for several rock magazines, published two volumes of her poems, and began contributing lyrics to the literary-minded metal band Blue Öyster Cult. By 1974 she was performing with a full band comprised of Kaye, Ivan Kral on bass, Jay Dee Daugherty on drums and Richard Sohl on piano. The band’s performances evolved into a unique blend of Beat-influenced poetry, improvised spoken word with equally spontaneous musical backing, and covers of rock ‘n’ roll oldies. Financed by her old friend Robert Mapplethorpe, The Patti Smith Group recorded their first single "Hey Joe/Piss Factory,” which caught the attention of Arista Records President, Clive Davis.
Patti entered the studio with The Velvet Underground’s John Cale serving as producer, and in late 1975, released her seminal debut album, Horses. With its fusion of punk rock and spoken poetry, Horses is considered to be a precursor of the punk movement on both sides of the Atlantic, anticipating the new wave in music by a year or so. It is cited as one of the greatest albums in music history, influencing musicians from R.E.M.’s Michael Stipe to Courtney Love to the English band The Libertines. Despite nonexistent airplay, the album sold well enough to climb into the Top 50. The austere cover photograph of Smith was shot by Mapplethorpe, the man who shared her transit from obscurity to stardom, and has become one of rock's iconic images.
As the Patti Smith Group toured the United States and Europe, punk's popularity grew. The band released a second album, Radio Ethiopia, which was considerably less accessible than its predecessor. It received poor reviews. And then in January 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. The injury required a period of rest and an intensive round of physical therapy.
Patti Smith’s band put out two albums before the close of the decade including her most commercially successful record, Easter (1978), which contained the single “Because the Night,” co-written with Bruce Springsteen, and Wave in 1979. Prior to the release of Wave, Smith met Fred "Sonic" Smith, former guitar player for Detroit rock band MC5 and his own Sonic's Rendezvous Band. The two bonded over their love of poetry. They married and had a son Jackson in 1982 (who would go on to marry The White Stripes drummer Meg White in 2009), and a daughter Jesse in 1987. Through most of the ‘80s Patti Smith was semi-retired from music, releasing only one album, 1988s Dream of Life, while living with her family north of Detroit, Michigan. Her husband Fred died on November 4, 1994. Shortly afterward, Patti faced the unexpected death of her brother Todd and original keyboard player Richard Sohl. When her son Jackson turned 14, Smith moved her family back to New York.
In the intervening years, Smith put out the haunting album Gone Again, which features “About a Boy,” a tribute to Kurt Cobain. She followed that up with Peace and Noise (1997) and Gung Ho (2000) and was twice nominated for a Grammy Award. Smith released Trampin' in 2004, which included several songs about motherhood, partly in tribute to Smith's mother, who had died two years before.
Smith performed at the CBGB nightclub in October 2006 with a 3½-hour tour de force to close out the Manhattan music venue and was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in March 2007. A documentary film entitled Patti Smith: Dream of Life was released in 2008 as was a live album by Smith and Kevin Shields called The Coral Sea.
These days Patti Smith is an empty nester. All the many projects she’s shelved over the last couple decades while raising her family can now be taken down and attended to. In her future Smith sees doing a couple short films and some visual work, and she has plans to write a song cycle.
Earlier this week, on November 17, Patti Smith won the National Book Award for Just Kids in a ceremony that was held in New York City.
