Patti Smith 1975

Patti Smith 1975, hand-drawn from the cover of her debut album “Horses” in 1975 age 28, photo reference by Robert Mapplethorpe.

Patricia Lee Smith is an American singer-songwriter, poet, and visual artist who became an influential component of the New York City punk rock movement with her 1975 debut album “Horses”.

Called the “punk poet laureate,” Smith fused rock and poetry in her work. Her most widely known song is “Because the Night”, which was co-written with Bruce Springsteen.
It reached number 13 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in 1978.

In 1967, She met photographer Robert Mapplethorpe while working at a bookstore with friend and poet Janet Hamill. She and Mapplethorpe had a life-long relationship.
Smith considers Mapplethorpe to be one of the most important people in her life, and in her book “Just Kids” refers to him as “the artist of my life.”
Mapplethorpe’s photographs of her became the covers for the Patti Smith Group albums, and they remained friends until Mapplethorpe’s death in 1989.
In 1969, she met actor and writer Sam Shepard, with whom she had a relationship for several years.

That same year Smith was briefly considered for the lead singer position in Blue Öyster Cult. She contributed lyrics to several of the band’s songs, including “Debbie Denise” (inspired by her poem “In Remembrance of Debbie Denise”), “Baby Ice Dog”, “Career of Evil”, “Fire of Unknown Origin”, “The Revenge of Vera Gemini” (on which she performs duet vocals), and “Shooting Shark”.

The Patti Smith Group was signed by Clive Davis of Arista Records, and in 1975 recorded their first album, Horses, produced by John Cale amid some tension.
The album fused punk rock and spoken poetry and begins with a cover of Van Morrison’s “Gloria”.

Before the release of Wave (1979), Smith, married Fred “Sonic” Smith, former guitar player for Detroit rock band MC5 and his own Sonic’s Rendezvous Band, who adored poetry as much as she did.
They had a son, Jackson (b. 1982) who would go on to marry The White Stripes drummer, Meg White in 2009. Through most of the 1980s Smith was in semi-retirement from music, living with her family north of Detroit in St. Clair Shores, Michigan.
In June 1988, she released the album Dream of Life, which included the song “People Have the Power”. Fred Smith died on November 4, 1994, of a heart attack.

In 1996, Smith worked with her long-time colleagues to record Gone Again, featuring “About a Boy”, a tribute to Kurt Cobain. After the release of Gone Again, Patti Smith recorded two new albums: Peace and Noise in 1997 and Gung Ho in 2000.
Songs “1959” and “Glitter in Their Eyes” were nominated for Grammy Award for Best Female Rock Vocal Performance.

Smith has been a great source of inspiration for Michael Stipe of R.E.M. Listening to her album Horses when he was 15 made a huge impact on him; he said later, “I decided then that I was going to start a band.”
Other musicians she’s influenced: Sonic Youth, U2, Courtney Love Of Hole, Madonna and Florence and the Machine.

In 2007, she was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

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