One of the most ambitious, eccentric, and difficult rock & rollers of all time, Patti Smith is the poet laureate of punk rock.
Smith’s music was praised when it first came out in the 1970s as the most thrilling blend of rock and poetry since Bob Dylan’s prime. Smith followed her muse wherever it led her, from structured rock songs to free-form experimentalism, with her androgynous, visual presentation emulating her unapologetically intellectual and demanding lyrics.
Her most experimental works, including 1975’s Horses and the following year’s Radio Ethiopia, drew on free jazz’s improvisation and interplay while remaining firmly rooted in primitive three-chord rock & roll. She was a frequent at CBGB’s in the early years of New York punk, and the artfulness and unpolished musicianship of her work had a significant influence on the movement among both followers and her contemporaries.
December 30, 1946 marked Smith’s birth in Chicago. When she was three years old, her family relocated to Philadelphia; nine years later, they made a similar relocation to the less urban hamlet of Woodbury, New Jersey.
Who were Patti Smith’s parents?
Of the four children Beverly Smith and Grant Smith had, Patti Smith was the oldest. At the Honeywell plant, her father worked as a machinist while her mother was a waitress.
