The mid 1970’s was a time of huge change in popular music. Punk and new wave swept across the western world but in amongst the tide of angry young men there were surprising number of genuinely talented women, women like Deborah Harry in Blondie, Susie Suh and Nina Hagen but the godmother of them all was Patti Smith.
Patti Smith was unique. She was the first performer to sell out a fragile recycle of New York’s legendary CBGB. The underground venue that was one of the main birthplaces of punk in the U.S. Patti’s musical reputation began with her 1975 debut album, ‘Horses’ but the style was formed much earlier.
Patti Smith: You know, we did free punk rock music or I’m a great punk rock guitar player, but in terms of music the things that I aspired to are infinite. I don’t aspire to one motive expression.
Patti was born in Chicago in 1946 and raised in New Jersey that deal over the jazz scene is her weakness. She rejected her mother’s religion in her teens. At the age of 21, she left her country job and headed to New York. Working at the bookstore she met the influential photographer Robert Mapplethorpe and her creative life truly began.
Patti Smith: It’s my little prayer for New York. Every time you see a journalist that calls me a punk rocker it’s because they don’t have the imagination or the professional intelligence or curiosity to see the full breath of what I’ve done and what my band has done. So it’s really just lazy journalism.
Forming the Patti Smith Group, she started performing at CBGB regularly. The band released its first single in 1974. Financed by Mapplethorpe, the A-side was the cover version of Jimi Hendrix’s ‘Hey Joe’ with an added spoken words section to justify her perilous, notorious heroism kidnapped Patty Hearst eluding to Patti’s stay from future work and the revelation she discovered in the half lifted copy of Illumination by the French poet Arthur Rimbaud.
Never simply a rock or punk performer, Patti spent over 30 years pushing the limits of her craft. She’s known mainstream success particularly with her latest hit single, ‘Because The Night’, a Bruce Springsteen song that happened to a female who was captive and released in 1978 but the legacy far half way the old rock monster hit she was instead remembered for such things as the first track off the Horses, a cover of the band Morrison song ‘Gloria’ with the spoken words introduction in which he says, “Jesus died for somebody’s sin but not mine.”
In the late 70s she met her soul mate, guitarist Fred “Sonic” Smith. Their love code was seen in Tuxedo. All over joke ran that she can be married and because she wouldn’t have to change her name, Patti set to retire for music and they lived together until his death from a heart attack at the age of just 45 in 1994. They have two children together Jackson and Jesse.
Fred’s death was followed soon after that by her brother Todd and Patti found herself encouraged to return to New York and take up her music career again that she did. Touring for a short period with Bob Dylan in 1995 collaborating with friends like R.E.M,’s Michael Stipe Immaterial and pinning a new protest songs about the American Foreign Policy and when CBGB’s finally closed its doors on the 15th of October 2006 it was to Patti the owners turn to see them off. She played a three and a half hours set to a rapturous reception and five months later she was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, dedicating her reward to her late husband Fred.
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