Patricia Lee Smith was born on December 30,1946 and is an American singer, songwriter, poet, painter, and author who became an influential component of the New York City punk rock movement with her 1975 debut album Horses.
81 Facts About Patti Smith
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In 2005, Patti Smith was named a Commander of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French Ministry of Culture.
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In November 2010, Patti Smith won the National Book Award for her memoir Just Kids.
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Patti Smith is ranked 47th on Rolling Stone magazine's 100 Greatest Artists of All Time, which was published in 2010 and was a recipient of the 2011 Polar Music Prize.
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The family was of part Irish ancestry and Patti Smith was the eldest of four children, with siblings Linda, Kimberly, and Todd.
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When Patti Smith was four, the family moved from Chicago to the Germantown section of Philadelphia, then to Pitman, New Jersey, and finally settled in the Woodbury Gardens section of Deptford Township, New Jersey.
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At this early age, Patti Smith was exposed to her first records, including Shrimp Boats by Harry Belafonte, Patience and Prudence's The Money Tree, and Another Side of Bob Dylan, which her mother gave her.
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Patti Smith graduated from Deptford Township High School in 1964 and, following graduation, began work in a factory.
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Patti Smith gave birth to her first child, a daughter, on April 26,1967, and placed her for adoption.
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Patti Smith later entered Glassboro State College in Glassboro, New Jersey.
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In 1967, Patti Smith left Glassboro State College and moved to Manhattan in New York City, where she met photographer Robert Mapplethorpe while working at a bookstore with friend and poet Janet Hamill.
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Patti Smith considers Mapplethorpe to be one of the most influential and important people in her life, and referred to him as "the artist of my life" in her book Just Kids.
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Mapplethorpe's photographs of Patti Smith became the covers for Patti Smith's albums, and they remained lifelong friends until Mapplethorpe's death in 1989.
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Patti Smith's book and album The Coral Sea is an homage to Mapplethorpe and Just Kids tells the story of their relationship.
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Patti Smith wrote essays for several of Mapplethorpe's books, including one, at Mapplethorpe's request, for his posthumous Flowers.
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Patti Smith went to Paris with her sister in 1969, where she started busking and doing performance art.
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When Patti Smith returned to Manhattan, she lived in the Hotel Chelsea with Mapplethorpe; they frequented Max's Kansas City.
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Patti Smith provided the spoken word soundtrack for Sandy Daley's art film Robert Having His Nipple Pierced, starring Mapplethorpe.
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Later in 1969, Patti Smith performed one night in Cowboy Mouth, a play she co-wrote with Sam Shepard.
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Patti Smith was briefly considered for the lead singer position in Blue Oyster Cult.
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Patti Smith was romantically involved at the time with the band's keyboardist, Allen Lanier.
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In 1973, Patti Smith teamed up again with musician and rock archivist Lenny Kaye, and later added Richard Sohl on piano.
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The B-side describes the helpless alienation Patti Smith felt while working on a factory assembly line and the salvation she dreams of achieving by escaping to New York.
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In March 1975, Smith's group, the Patti Smith Group, began a two-month weekend set of shows at CBGB in New York City with the band Television.
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The Patti Smith Group was spotted by Clive Davis, who signed them to Arista Records.
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Patti Smith has said that Radio Ethiopia was influenced by the band MC5.
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On January 23,1977, while touring in support of Radio Ethiopia, Patti Smith accidentally danced off a high stage in Tampa, Florida, and fell 15 feet into a concrete orchestra pit, breaking several neck vertebrae.
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The Patti Smith Group produced two further albums before the end of the 1970s.
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Shortly afterward, Patti Smith faced the unexpected death of her brother Todd.
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When her son Jackson turned 14, Patti Smith decided to move back to New York City.
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Patti Smith toured briefly with Bob Dylan in December 1995, which is chronicled in a book of photographs by Stipe.
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In 1996, Patti Smith worked with her long-time colleagues to record Gone Again, featuring "About a Boy", a tribute to Kurt Cobain, the former lead singer of Nirvana who committed suicide in 1994.
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Patti Smith was nominated for the Grammy Award for Best Female Rock Vocal Performance for two of the "1959" and "Glitter in Their Eyes".
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In 2002, Patti Smith released Land, a two-CD compilation that includes a cover of Prince's "When Doves Cry".
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Patti Smith curated the Meltdown festival in London on June 25,2005, in which she performed Horses live in its entirety for the first time.
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In July 2005, Patti Smith was named a Commander of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French Ministry of Culture.
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Patti Smith was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on March 12,2007.
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Patti Smith dedicated her award to the memory of her late husband, Fred, and performed a cover of The Rolling Stones' "Gimme Shelter".
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Patti Smith's cover of "Gimme Shelter" appeared on her tenth album, Twelve, an all-covers album released in April 2007 by Columbia Records.
40.
From November 2006 to January 2007, an exhibition called 'Sur les Traces' at Trolley Gallery, London, featured polaroid prints taken by Patti Smith and donated to Trolley to raise awareness and funds for the publication of Double Blind: Lebanon Conflict 2006, a book with photographs by Paolo Pellegrin, a member of Magnum Photos.
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Patti Smith participated in the DVD commentary for Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film for Theaters.
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At the 2008 Rowan Commencement ceremony, Patti Smith received an honorary doctorate degree for her contributions to popular culture.
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On September 10,2009, after a week of smaller events and exhibitions in Florence, Patti Smith played an open-air concert at Piazza Santa Croce, commemorating her performance in the same city 30 years earlier.
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Patti Smith contributed the introduction to Jessica Lange's book 50 Photographs, published in 2009.
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Patti Smith headlined a benefit concert headed by bandmate Tony Shanahan, for Court Tavern in New Brunswick, New Jersey.
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In 2010, Patti Smith had a brief cameo in Jean-Luc Godard's Film Socialisme, which was first screened at the 2010 Cannes Film Festival.
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In 2012, Patti Smith was awarded an honorary doctorate in fine arts from Pratt Institute in Brooklyn.
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Patti Smith added that it was through her friends and Pratt professors that she learned many of her own artistic skills.
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In 2011, Patti Smith was one of several Polar Music Prize winners.
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In 2011, Patti Smith was working on a crime novel set in London.
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In 2011, Patti Smith announced the first museum exhibition of her photography in the US, Camera Solo.
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Patti Smith named the project after a sign she saw in the abode of Pope Celestine V, which translates as "a room of one's own", and which Smith felt best described her solitary method of photography.
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The exhibition featured artifacts that were everyday items or places of significance to artists Patti Smith admires, including Rimbaud, Charles Baudelaire, John Keats, and William Blake.
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Patti Smith recorded a cover of Buddy Holly's "Words of Love" for the CD Rave on Buddy Holly, a tribute album tied to Holly's 75th birthday, which was released June 28,2011.
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Patti Smith recorded the song "Capitol Letter" for the official soundtrack of the second film of the Hunger Games' series The Hunger Games: Catching Fire.
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Also in 2012, Patti Smith recorded a cover of Io come persona by Italian singer-songwriter Giorgio Gaber.
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In 2015, Patti Smith wrote "Aqua Teen Dream" to commemorate the series finale of Aqua Teen Hunger Force.
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On September 26,2015, Patti Smith performed at the American Museum of Tort Law convocation ceremony.
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In 2016, Patti Smith performed "People Have the Power" at Riverside Church in Manhattan to celebrate the 20th anniversary of Democracy Now, where she was joined by Michael Stipe.
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On December 10,2016, Patti Smith attended the Nobel Prize Award Ceremony in Stockholm on behalf of Bob Dylan, winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, who could not be present due to prior commitments.
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Patti Smith sang "I saw the babe that was just bleedin'", the wrong words to the second verse, and was momentarily unable to continue.
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In 2017, Patti Smith appeared as herself in Song to Song directed by Terrence Malick, opposite Rooney Mara and Ryan Gosling.
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Patti Smith later made an appearance at the Detroit show of U2's The Joshua Tree 2017 tour and performed "Mothers of the Disappeared" with the band.
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In January 2019, Patti Smith's photographs were displayed at the Diego Rivera gallery in the San Francisco Art Institute and she performed at The Fillmore in San Francisco.
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Patti Smith was set to be awarded receive the International Humanities Prize from Washington University in St Louis in November 2020; however, the ceremony was canceled due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
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In 2023, Patti Smith was nominated for induction to the Songwriters Hall of Fame.
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Canadian country musician Orville Peck cited Patti Smith as having had a big impact on him, stating that Patti Smith's album Horses introduced him to a new and different way to make music.
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In 1993, Patti Smith contributed "Memorial Tribute " to the AIDS-benefit album No Alternative.
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Patti Smith supported the Green Party and backed Ralph Nader in the 2000 United States presidential election.
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Patti Smith supported Democratic candidate John Kerry in the 2004 election.
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Patti Smith premiered two new protest songs in London in September 2006.
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In March 2003, ten days after Rachel Corrie's death, Patti Smith appeared in Austin, Texas and performed an anti-war concert.
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Patti Smith subsequently wrote "Peaceable Kingdom", a song which was inspired by and is dedicated to Corrie.
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In 2015, Patti Smith appeared with Nader, spoke and performed the songs "Wing" and "People Have the Power" during the American Museum of Tort Law convocation ceremony in Winsted, Connecticut.
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In 2016, Patti Smith spoke, read poetry, and performed several songs along with her daughter Jesse at Nader's Breaking Through Power conference at DAR Constitution Hall in Washington, DC.
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In 2020, Patti Smith contributed signed first-edition copies of her books to the Passages bookshop in Portland, Oregon after the store's valuable first-edition and other books by various authors were stolen in a burglary.
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On February 24,2022, Patti Smith performed at The Capitol Theatre for the first time, saying, "I would be lying if I said I wasn't affected by what is happening in the world" referencing the Russian invasion of Ukraine earlier that day.
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Patti Smith was raised a Jehovah's Witness and had a strong religious upbringing and a Biblical education.
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Patti Smith left organized religion as a teenager because she felt it was too confining.
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Patti Smith called Francis of Assisi "truly the environmentalist saint" and said that despite not being a Catholic, she had hoped for a pope named Francis.
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True artists, for Patti Smith, are remote, solitary figures of excellence, wholly dedicated to their art.