The legendary influential singer songwriter punk poet laureatte Patti Smith turns 72 today. Smith was born in Chicago in om 30/12/1946, and was raised in New Jersey to former Jazz singer Beverly and mechanist Grand Smith. Even as a child, Smith felt that she was born to do great things despite her physical reality as an unpopular young girl who was not especially talented in school. Her vivid young imagination helped her through a difficult childhood. She was bullied by other kids due to her sickly appearance and poor background. The vague sense that she would grow up into something amazing was what kept her going, in spite of the odds.
After graduating high school in 1964, Smith immediately went to work in a factory, a short experience she hated so much that she titled the song about her time there as ‘Piss Factory’, which was her first single alongside the song ‘Hey Joe’. Putting meaningless drudgery behind her, Smith then decided to pursue art, and was set on becoming an art teacher until she was rejected for her refusal to abide by traditions.
Piss Factory - Patti Smith
Determined as ever, Smith then moved to New York in 1967 and worked in bookstores, where she began writing poetry.Patti Smith has been influenced by artists as diverse as Arthur Rimbaud, Antonin Artaud and William Blake, Jimi Hendrix,Bob Dylan and the Rolling Stones. As a high school student she was interested in jazz and poetry, and her early creative works were poems. Drawn to the act of performing her work, she read her poems with a guitarist, eventually adding an entire band. Spurred by her love for music dating back to her youth, Smith would eventually team up with her friends, playwright Sam Sheppard, Robert Mapplethorpe the photographer and writer/composer Lenny Kaye to read poetry, which soon would lead to her musical future.
Smith first published her poems in 1972, the same year she co-wrote a play, Cowboy Mouth, with Sam Shepard. Since then she has published a number of collections of verse, including Babel (1978), Early Work, 1970–1979 (1994), The Coral Sea (1996), and Patti Smith Complete: Lyrics, Reflections & Notes for the Future (1998). Spurred by her love for music dating back to her youth, Smith would eventually team up with her friends, playwright Sam Sheppard, Robert Mapplethorpe the photographer and writer/composer Lenny Kaye to read poetry, which soon would lead to her musical future.
Smith’s 1975 debut album ‘Horses’ is still her most popular work of art to this day, and is one of the most acclaimed debut albums of all time. It was a wild commercial success at the start and loved by the critics too, who praised Smith’s amateur-yet-passionate vocals, combined with an an explosive mix of androgyny , rebellion ,and relentless energy long have I thought of her as incendiary. At the time, Smith had feared that Rock and Roll was dying, and so she wished to help shake things up and inject some new life in a way that only she could.
Gloria - Patti Smith
Re-billing her act as the Patti Smith Group to give due credit to her band, ahe released her second album Radio Etthiopia in 1976. The Patti Smith Group then acieved a commercial breakthrough with Easter in 1978.All seminal pieces of art in my humble opinion, that I treasure.
Patti Smith - Dancing Barefoot
In 1979 she fell off the punk rock scene radar completely, for her own choice. She married, she moved to Detroit and she had two children with the former MC5 guitarist Fred Smith. But such an artist as Patti Smith couldn’t live without it for long, so she came back with Dream of Life in 1988. The new album featured her husband and it included People Have the Power, another successful single.
Patti Smith - People have the power
Patti only started touring again after a series of tragedies in her life. Some friends of hers, her husband and her brother died over a short period of time and she decided to keep making music to honour them. She moved back to New York around 1994 and she started touring with Bob Dylan in 1995 and released a new album in 1996, Gone Again.
Her work a fusion of rock and poetry, she writes in a stream-of-consciousness style, often meditating on questions of mortality and faith. Of her 2008 Auguries of Innocence, critic Donna Seaman wrote that Smith “presents lithe works unsettling in their spiritual inquiry, archetypal imagery, and dissonant juxtapositions.” Being a social activist most of her life, she’s always focused her poetic vision on topics that concern the world., believing that poetry, music, and art should be used as a link to expose what’s going on with the world. But that’s not enough. It must work as inspiration to make people aware and push them to act.Patti Smith, is not only the rock icon of a whole generation but also a committed artist visionary in every possible manner, whose spirit has nurtured generations. Smith holds to a deeply romantic belief that the true artist is an outsider and a visionary, someone who is able ‘to see what others could not’, as she puts it in her memoir Just Kids (2010). She believes in the power of art and the mythology of rock and roll, believes in poetry and music as means of transcendence. She believes that poetry makes things happen. ‘i haven’t fucked much with the past,’ she declares in the prose poem ‘Babelogue’, ‘but i’ve fucked plenty with the future.’ She is, above all, a believer. all this has all earned her a Commander of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French Ministry of Culture in 2005, 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.
Feedback and Poetry - Patti Smith
She still remains a pivotal figure in the New York arts scene and probably her most prolific and deepest works were created in the last 20 years. Perhaps experience and the multiple tragedies she’s experienced throughout her life made her more acute to understand the human experience better. There are many forms of magic Smith just a particle.With her powerful voice she has left her mark in music history and culture forever. My love for Patti Smith’s music, has been one of joyous liberation , intoxication and education.So happy birthday to this warrior poet, still fighting for beauty truth and and justice. Long may she continue to inspire.
Patti Smith - Because the night
clip from Stephen Sebring's 2008 film documentary
"Patti Smith- Dream of Life.
Patti Smith Interview - Poems are like Prayers
