Patti Smith
A New Jersey girl who came to New York clutching a volume of Rimbaud set poetry on the rock 'n' roll stage.
At a glance 🔭💭
Some coordinates adapted from GeoNames (CC BY 4.0) · Pleiades (CC BY 3.0)
Members and companions ⏳🌊
- InfluenceBob Dylan
Her teenage idol, he invited Smith on his 1995 tour and opened her way back.
- LoverRobert Mapplethorpe
A photographer who went from lover to lifelong companion, he shot the cover of Horses and became the central figure of her memoir Just Kids.
- Band memberLenny Kaye
Her musical partner, who has played guitar at her side for more than half a century, ever since her first reading in 1971.
- FriendshipTom Verlaine
As Television's guitarist, he played on her first single and shared the CBGB residency.
- FamilyFred “Sonic” Smith
Guitarist of the MC5 and her husband, he co-wrote “People Have the Power” with her.
- FriendshipBruce Springsteen
He handed over an unfinished song that became “Because the Night,” Smith's biggest hit.
I. The New Jersey dreamer · 1946–1967
(Birth) She was born in December 1946 in Chicago, Illinois. Her father, Grant, was a factory machinist; her mother, Beverly, had once sung in jazz clubs before working as a waitress. She was the eldest of four, followed by Linda, Todd and Kimberly. By way of Philadelphia, the family settled in the mid-1950s in a working-class neighborhood outside Woodbury, New Jersey. (Faith) Her mother was a Jehovah's Witness and raised the children on the Bible. Smith was deeply enthralled by its language and imagery, but as she grew older she slipped beyond the bounds of the church. Even after she drifted from the faith, a way of writing and reciting as if in prayer remained her idiom for life. (Rimbaud) As a teenager, Smith fell headlong into Arthur Rimbaud's poems, Bob Dylan's songs and John Coltrane's jazz. She pinned a photograph of Rimbaud to her bedroom wall and revered the poet like a saint. She studied at Glassboro State College with dreams of becoming a teacher but did not last long there, and worked in a factory to make ends meet. The memory of that monotonous, grinding labor would, a few years later, become the subject of her first single. (Resolve) In 1967 Smith gave birth to a child and gave it up for adoption, as she herself later revealed in a memoir. That summer she boarded a bus to New York with what little money she had. It was a resolve, vague but unshakable, to become a poet.
II. The poet of the Chelsea Hotel · 1967–1974
(Robert) Soon after arriving in New York, Smith met an art student named Robert Mapplethorpe in Brooklyn. The two became lovers and shared a cramped room, buying bread and art supplies with what she earned working in bookstores. Their romance ended as Mapplethorpe came to accept his sexuality, but their friendship — each believing in the other as an artist — lasted until his death. (Chelsea) In 1969 the two moved into the Chelsea Hotel. There, among a jumble of writers, musicians and painters, Smith co-wrote the play Cowboy Mouth with the playwright Sam Shepard and chose poetry over painting as her path. She began earning her living by her pen, writing rock criticism for music magazines such as Creem. (Recitation) In February 1971, at a poetry reading at St. Mark's Church, Smith read her poems to the electric guitar of Lenny Kaye, a record-store clerk and critic. It was the first experiment in putting spoken word — poetry recited over music — and rock and roll on the same stage. In 1972 she published her first collection of poems, Seventh Heaven, and in 1974 the pianist Richard Sohl joined, making them a trio. (Single) In June 1974 the trio recorded a first single at Electric Lady Studios, founded by Jimi Hendrix. Mapplethorpe paid for the session. On the A-side, “Hey Joe,” Television's Tom Verlaine played guitar; the B-side, “Piss Factory,” spun a teenage summer spent in a factory into recitation and piano. The resolve to escape the factory for New York became, quite literally, a song.
The B-side of her first single, it set to recitation the memory of factory work and the resolve to leave for New York. Mapplethorpe paid for the recording.
- The setting is spare. Richard Sohl's piano repeats a short, jazz-tinged figure, and Lenny Kaye's guitar lies thinly over it. There are no drums and no bass.
- Smith speaks more than she sings. Follow how she begins by calmly describing a day at the factory, then lets the pace and heat of her words climb as the piece goes on.
- There are passages where the piano, rather than holding strictly to the beat, pushes and pulls with the breath of the recitation. It sounds like the improvisation of the poetry reading carried over into the studio.
- The climax comes in the second half, where the voice shifts into the tone of a declaration of resolve. This spoken-word approach would become the foundation of Horses the following year.
III. Horses · 1975–1976
(CBGB) In the spring of 1975, the Patti Smith Group and Television held a residency of nearly seven weeks at CBGB, a club on Manhattan's Bowery. These shows are counted as the decisive moment when the New York underground scene — with the Ramones and Talking Heads coming and going from the same stage — took shape. With the arrival of the bassist Ivan Kral and the drummer Jay Dee Daugherty, the band's frame was complete. (Contract) That year Clive Davis of Arista Records offered a contract. Smith chose John Cale, formerly of the Velvet Underground, as producer. Rather than polishing the band's improvisations, Cale had them push to the very end, and the work went forward amid taut tension. That tension, in the end, is credited with feeding the album's raw vitality. (Horses) Released in November, Horses opened with “Gloria,” which grafted one of her old poems onto a Van Morrison song. Jim Morrison met in a dream, a memoir written by Wilhelm Reich's son, an elegy recorded on the anniversary of Jimi Hendrix's death — all became songs. The cover was a black-and-white photograph Mapplethorpe took in natural light; her unadorned look, in a white shirt with a jacket slung over her shoulder, flew in the face of the conventions for female singers' album covers at the time. (Impact) The album reached No. 47 on the Billboard album chart, and critics received it as a fusion of poetry and raw rock and roll (punk). R.E.M.'s Michael Stipe has said many times that hearing it as a teenager made him decide to make music. The second album, Radio Ethiopia, produced by Jack Douglas in 1976, ventured into longer and rougher improvisation, but the response was cold.
She grafted one of her old poems onto a garage-rock song by Them, the group led by Van Morrison, and set it as the opening track of Horses.
- In the opening, Richard Sohl's piano slowly sounds three chords, and Smith begins above them as if reciting a poem. Even those who know the original may not recognize it at first.
- The song gradually quickens. Follow, from start to finish, how Lenny Kaye's guitar and Jay Dee Daugherty's drums join one by one as the tempo and volume rise like a staircase.
- From the midpoint, the original's simple three-chord repetition comes fully to the fore. John Cale left the band's build-up raw rather than smoothing it out.
- Smith's voice crosses over from recitation to outcry. The climax is the final stretch, when the whole band surges forward as a single mass.
A debut album bringing together John Cale's production, Mapplethorpe's cover photograph and a band forged at CBGB. The video is found under its signature track, “Land.”
- The album's signature track, “Land,” runs over nine minutes in three parts. Listen section by section to the flow: a recitation like a hallucination of violence suffered by a boy, the repetition of the 1960s dance song “Land of a Thousand Dances,” and the return to recitation.
- On “Land,” Smith recorded several different improvised recitations and layered them (overdubbing). On headphones there are passages where different voices speak at once from the left and the right.
- “Birdland” starts from Richard Sohl's piano and stretches out through the band's long improvisation. Instead of set verses and choruses, a story flows over the piano's waves.
- The final track, “Elegie,” was recorded on the anniversary of Jimi Hendrix's death. After the earlier ferocity subsides, the album closes with quiet piano and voice.
IV. Fall and return · 1977–1979
(Fall) In January 1977 in Tampa, Florida, while opening for Bob Seger, Smith fell from the dark stage and badly injured her neck. During months of rehabilitation she turned from performing back to writing, gathering poems and prose that she published the following year as the book Babel. (Fred) Earlier, in 1976 in Detroit, Smith had met Fred “Sonic” Smith, the MC5's guitarist. The two soon fell deeply in love, and a long-distance romance between New York and Detroit began. The songs of the following years were steeped in this love. (Night) In 1978 Jimmy Iovine, producer of the album Easter, handed her a demo of a song Bruce Springsteen had left unfinished. Smith is said to have written the lyrics and completed “Because the Night” on a night spent waiting for Fred to call from Detroit. The song climbed to No. 13 on the Billboard singles chart, becoming her biggest hit. The singer who had fallen from the stage was back atop the charts little more than a year later. (Wave) Wave, produced by Todd Rundgren in 1979, included “Frederick,” dedicated to Fred, and “Dancing Barefoot,” written with Ivan Kral. Ten years later U2 covered “Dancing Barefoot” as a single B-side. That September, after a huge open-air concert in Florence, Italy, Smith abruptly left the stage. At the height of her fame, she chose love.
Smith completed an unfinished Bruce Springsteen song by dressing it in lyrics drawn from the night she spent waiting for Fred. It is her biggest hit.
- The song opens with a repeated piano figure. Listen for how this simple introduction builds tension as it accumulates.
- The melody is Springsteen's; the lyrics and the way of singing are Smith's. The voice that once recited here sings a long, soaring melody head-on.
- Jimmy Iovine's production is far sleeker than that of Horses. The drums and guitar come forward, loud and clear, making a sound made for radio.
- The backbone of the song is the contrast between the chorus, where the whole band bursts open, and the return to the verse, where it sinks back down.
A song from Wave, written with Ivan Kral. It holds the rapture and absorption of a time when she had fallen deeply in love, and U2 later covered it.
- What holds the song up is Ivan Kral's bass. Follow its slowly undulating line and you can feel the whole song sway as it moves.
- The guitar lays down a shimmering backdrop by breaking chords apart and plucking them one note at a time (arpeggio). Rather than a flashy solo, it builds a hypnotic mood through repetition.
- Smith begins low and hushed, then gradually lets her voice grow. A tone like a confession spoken to someone comes to sound, toward the end, like a prayer.
- Todd Rundgren's production leaves space between the sounds. Listen for the moment in the middle recitation when the instruments draw back.
V. Silence in Detroit · 1980–1994
(Marriage) In March 1980 Smith married Fred and settled in St. Clair Shores, outside Detroit. Their son Jackson was born in 1982, their daughter Jesse in 1987. For the next decade or so she lived not as a rock star but as a wife and mother, and as someone who wrote alone in the early hours of the morning. (Learning) Smith remembered this period not as a retreat but as a time of learning. Between household chores she read and wrote, and polished songs with Fred. Some looked askance at her choice to set aside a dazzling career, but she has always said it was the life she wanted. (Dream) In 1988 came Dream of Life, produced by Fred and Jimmy Iovine. “People Have the Power,” written by the couple together, was an anthem to the belief that ordinary people, gathered together, can change the world. The album did not sell much, but the song would later become the one that closes her concerts. (Loss) Then losses came one after another. In March 1989 Mapplethorpe died of complications from AIDS, and in 1990 Richard Sohl died. In November 1994 Fred died of heart failure, and a month later her younger brother Todd was struck down by a stroke. At forty-seven, Smith was left alone with two children.
A song written with her husband Fred in the kitchen and living room in Detroit. An anthem of faith in the power of ordinary people, it still closes her shows today.
- The big, booming drum sound and synthesizers of the late 1980s come to the fore. Set beside the raw recording of Horses, the difference in era and producer is stark.
- The song moves forward at a steady pace, like a march. The bass and drums hold the beat without wavering, building a frame that makes it easy for many voices to sing along.
- In the verses Smith describes scenes as if telling a story; in the chorus she opens her voice as if calling out to the whole audience. It is the moment one person's words turn into a crowd's song.
- In live videos the chorus often stretches on as the audience and guests sing it together. It is worth listening to the album version and a live version side by side.
VI. Singing, once more · 1995–2009
(Return) There were people who led the grieving Smith back to the stage. Her younger brother Todd, while he was alive, had urged his older sister to perform again, and in December 1995 Bob Dylan invited her on his East Coast tour. Before a single microphone with the man she had idolized as a teenager, she sang “Dark Eyes.” (Mourning) In 1996 Smith returned to New York with her children. Gone Again, released that same year, was filled with the last songs she had written with Fred and with mourning for those who were gone. That year she also lent her voice to R.E.M.'s “E-Bow the Letter,” setting down on record her long friendship with Michael Stipe. (Persistence) Peace and Noise (1997), Gung Ho (2000) and Trampin' (2004) followed. Lenny Kaye and Jay Dee Daugherty had stood beside her since the 1970s, and the songs gradually widened from mourning into anger at war and power, and on to the environment and human rights. She never held back from political statements, but beneath them always lay a faith in the dignity of ordinary people. (Hall of fame) In 2005 the French government made her a Commandeur of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres. In 2007 she was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, with the induction speech delivered by Zack de la Rocha of Rage Against the Machine. That same year, on the covers album Twelve, she remade Nirvana's “Smells Like Teen Spirit” as a slow, banjo-led acoustic song, sending a greeting across the generations to Kurt Cobain.
Her comeback record, made after she lost Fred and her brother and returned to New York. Look for videos under its signature song, “Beneath the Southern Cross.”
- The signature song “Beneath the Southern Cross” begins with a quiet, repeating acoustic guitar and gradually swells. Follow, from beginning to end, how grief moves from resignation toward release.
- Jeff Buckley lent his voice to this song. Listen for the second voice that layers in behind Smith's singing.
- The title track “Gone Again,” written with Fred, sets a funeral-procession gait over a rhythm that thuds dully like a drum.
- Malcolm Burn's production strips away the sleekness of the 1980s and brings the instruments close to the ear. Lenny Kaye's guitar is once again near to raw.
VII. The chronicler · 2010–2026
(Promise) In 2010 came Just Kids, a memoir of the young days she spent with Mapplethorpe. The book kept, 20 years on, a promise made to Mapplethorpe just before his death: to write their story. That year it won the National Book Award for Nonfiction, and a readership emerged that met Smith through her books before her music. (Prose) After the 2012 album Banga, she carried on through prose collections such as M Train (2015) and Year of the Monkey (2019), records that wander among dreams and loss, morning coffee and travel, and the graves of dead writers. In 2011 she received Sweden's Polar Music Prize. (Nobel) In December 2016, at the Nobel Prize ceremony in Stockholm, she sang “A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall” in place of the absent Bob Dylan. When nerves made her lose the lyrics, she stopped, asked for forgiveness, and began again, and the hall answered with applause. She wrote about the experience herself, calmly, in The New Yorker. (Now) In 2015 she toured for the 40th anniversary of Horses, and in 2025, marking the 50th, she again toured playing the album in full. That autumn she published Bread of Angels, a memoir looking back on her life from childhood on. Well past seventy, Smith still writes, reads and sings.
Lesser-known stories
In the summer of 1970, Smith went to the opening party of Electric Lady Studios and, overcome by shyness, sat on the stairs, where she crossed paths with Jimi Hendrix. According to Just Kids, Hendrix said he wanted to make the studio a place where musicians from all over the world could gather and converse in sound. Hendrix died a few weeks later, and 5 years on Smith recorded Horses in that very studio, leaving “Elegie” on the anniversary of his death. The encounter became widely known through the memoir. The provocative declaration that opens “Gloria” was not written as a song. It is the first line of “Oath,” a poem written in 1970, which she set to Van Morrison's song a few years later. Smith has explained in many interviews that it was the declaration of someone raised in faith resolving to live on her own responsibility. Overshadowed by the song's fame, the original poem is talked about mostly among fans and scholars. Before he was Smith's guitarist, Lenny Kaye was a record collector and critic. Nuggets, the compilation Kaye assembled in 1972, gathered songs by obscure American garage bands of the 1960s; it spread the term garage rock and became a direct textbook for the punk generation. The raw sound of the Patti Smith Group is steeped in this collector's ear. “Because the Night” was a song Springsteen had left unfinished and set aside while working on Darkness on the Edge of Town. It came to life thanks to Jimmy Iovine, who was working in both of their studios and passed along the demo. Springsteen later recalled that at the time he could not bring himself to finish a love song like that.
A note on terms 📚🔎
Punk
(Word origin) The English word punk was originally a derogatory term meaning something like a good-for-nothing or a greenhorn. Musicians took up that scornful name with pride. (In rock) Short, fast, rough rock and roll that came out of New York and London in the mid-1970s. It valued the attitude of saying what you have to say right now over dazzling instrumental skill. Picture friends who have only just picked up their instruments turning the stage upside down at a school festival, clumsy but thrilled. Patti Smith is counted as the one who opened that door with poetry. (Elsewhere) In fashion it can also refer to a rebellious look: torn clothes, safety pins, hair spiked up into points.
Spoken word
(Word origin) In English, spoken word means words said aloud. The name was given to distinguish them from words that are sung. (In rock) A performance in which, instead of singing to a melody, one reads poetry or speaks as if telling a story. There may or may not be musical accompaniment. When you recite a poem in language class and a friend plays guitar behind you, the same poem sounds entirely different. Patti Smith began her musical career by setting this kind of recitation to electric guitar.
Garage rock
(Word origin) A garage is where a car is kept. The music got its name because it came from neighborhood bands rehearsing in their home garages. (In rock) Simple, loud rock and roll made by American teenage bands in the 1960s. It repeats three or so chords, and the recordings are rough. It is like neighborhood friends jamming clumsily in a corner of the gym. That roughness became the direct root of 1970s punk.
Cover
(In rock) Playing and recording anew a song first released by another musician. It means more when the singer makes the song their own rather than copying it exactly. It is like a class singing a famous song in its own arrangement in music class. Patti Smith turned “Gloria” and “Smells Like Teen Spirit” into something that sounds like a completely different song from the original. (Elsewhere) In everyday use, cover means a lid or a jacket, and it is also used for filling in for someone else's work.
Residency
(Word origin) The English word residency means dwelling, or staying. It comes from the idea of staying and living in one place. (In rock) A band playing a regular series of shows at the same venue for weeks or months. It is the opposite of a tour, which moves to a different city each time. It is like a club putting on a show in the same classroom every Friday until word spreads and the audience keeps growing. That is just how the 1975 CBGB residency became the heart of New York punk. (Elsewhere) In medicine it refers to the training period a doctor spends at a hospital to become a specialist; in art, to a program in which an artist stays somewhere for a set time to work.
Improvisation
(Word origin) Jeukheung (卽興) means 'inspiration (興) arising on the spot (卽).' It means making something by the feeling of the moment rather than arranging it in advance. (In rock) Inventing melodies or words on the spot while performing, without a score or a set order. It matters especially in jazz, but Patti Smith extended her poetry recitations through improvisation, growing songs on the spot together with the band. It is like playing a word-chain game with friends and coming up with the next word immediately. In improvisation, though, the members listen to one another and change direction together.
Overdubbing
(Word origin) In English, over means on top, and dubbing means laying on sound. The term means recording a new sound layered over one already recorded. (In rock) A technique of playing back a recorded performance and separately recording another instrument or voice over it, then merging them into one. A single person can do the work of several. It is like drawing pictures one at a time on clear cellophane sheets and stacking them into a single image. On “Land,” from Horses, several of Smith's different improvised recitations are layered on top of one another. (Elsewhere) It shares its root with dubbing, the word for putting voices to the picture in film and animation.