Patricia Lee Smith (born December 30, 1946) is an American singer-songwriter, poet, and visual artist who became an influential component of the New York City punk rock movement. She was born in Chicago and was the eldest of four children. The family moved from Chicago to Philadelphia and then to New Jersey.
In 1967, she left Glassboro State College and moved to Manhattan. She met photographer Robert Mapplethorpe there while working at a bookstore with friend and poet Janet Hamill. She went to Paris with her sister in 1969, and started busking and doing performance art. When Smith returned to Manhattan, she lived in the Chelsea Hotel with Mapplethorpe; they frequented Max's Kansas City. Smith provided the spoken word soundtrack for Sandy Daley's art film Robert Having His Nipple Pierced, starring Mapplethorpe. The same year Smith appeared with Wayne County in Jackie Curtis' play Femme Fatale. Afterward, she also starred in Tony Ingrassia's play Island. As a member of the St. Mark's Poetry Project, she spent the early 1970s painting, writing, and performing.
By 1974, Patti Smith was performing rock music, initially with guitarist, bassist and rock archivist Lenny Kaye, and later with a full band comprising Kaye, Ivan Kral on guitar and bass, Jay Dee Daugherty on drums and Richard Sohl on piano. Financed by Sam Wagstaff, the band recorded a first single, "Hey Joe / Piss Factory", in 1974. The Patti Smith Group was signed by Clive Davis of Arista Records, and in 1975 recorded their first album, Horses, produced by John Cale. The album fused punk rock and spoken poetry and begins with a cover of Van Morrison's "Gloria". The austere cover photograph by Mapplethorpe has become one of rock's classic images.
As
the popularity of punk rock grew, Patti Smith Group toured the United
States and Europe. The rawer sound of the group's second album, Radio
Ethiopia, reflected this. Considerably less accessible than Horses,
Radio Ethiopia
initially received poor reviews. However, several of its songs have
stood the test of time, and Smith still performs them regularly in
concert. She has said that Radio Ethiopia was influenced by the band
MC5. On
January 23, 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 pit, breaking several neck vertebrae. The injury
required a period of rest, during which time she was able to reassess,
re-energize and reorganize
her life. Patti Smith Group produced two further albums before the end
of the 1970s. Easter (1978) was her most commercially successful record.
Wave (1979) was less successful, although the songs "Frederick" and "Dancing Barefoot" both received commercial airplay. Through most of the 1980s Smith was in semi-retirement from music, living with her family north of Detroit. In June 1988, she released the album Dream of Life, which included the song "People Have The Power".
Smith is still active, releasing records, playing and publishing books. She was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2007.
