Patti Smith, the poet who became a rock legend

Long before she was a rock ‘n’ roll legend, Patti Smith (Chicago, 78 years old) was a poet who worked at Scribner, a bookstore next to New York City’s Rockefeller Center. She lived with her partner at the time, the photographer Robert Mapplethorpe, in the Chelsea Hotel, to which Leonard Cohen dedicated a song and in which he also resided, as did other cultural icons like Arthur Miller, Bob Dylan and Janis Joplin. Smith was pure bohemia personified. She might also be called a flaneuse, the French word popularized by Baudelaire that refers to a street person, who walks with no destination in mind, and who utilizes observation as part of their creative process. Hers was a life told through books, particularly Just Kids (Ecco, 2010), which among its many honors counts the prestigious National Book Award for non-fiction, has sold more than a million copies, and has been translated into 43 languages.

Smith is a valiant woman. She’s never bitten her tongue to remain likable, nor cared about the consequences of not being politically correct. Activism has been a major part of her career, with the fight against climate change one of her great causes. She campaigned for the Green Party’s Ralph Nadar in the 2000 presidential election and for John Kerry in 2004. She led protests against the war in Iraq and in February, she posted on Instagram that “Palestine belongs to the Palestinians.” Recently, alongside Robert De Niro and Martin Scorsese, she sent letters to New York Mayor Eric Adams to ask him not to destroy the Elizabeth Street Garden in Little Italy, where the construction of new buildings has been announced. Michael Stipe, R.E.M. frontperson, has said on multiple occasions that Horses was the album that most inspired him to make music. He presented her with the Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis Medal, a recognition that pays homage to everyday NYC citizens who have done extraordinary work in public service. In his introduction of Smith, Stipe highlighted her human side: “She is a great mother and grandmother. She is a pacifist, activist. A reference for me and millions of people. A beacon of hope, of action and refuge in all senses.”

The daughter of a machinist and a waitress with the voice of a jazz singer, Smith grew up the oldest of four siblings in a family that was poor, but artistic and close-knit. She began to work when she was 10 years old in cranberry fields and as a babysitter. She got used to being a nomad from an early age — her family moved from Chicago to Philadelphia and then to New Jersey. Although she was brought up a Jehovah’s Witness, her true religion was poetry, beginning at 16, when she discovered Illuminations by Arthur Rimbaud, who she considered her secret love.

Her story is built on resilience and determination. Where others fell, she became stronger. When she became pregnant at 20 by accident — she gave the baby up for adoption — and got kicked out of university, she had the feeling that everything would work out, and that she would eventually become a creative. “An overwhelming sense of mission eclipsed my fears […] I would be an artist. I would prove my worth,” she wrote in Just Kids. Soon after giving birth, Smith got to New York by bus, with no plan and no savings. There, she would write poems, take photos, and write music reviews as a way of expressing herself and existing. She enjoyed reciting spoken word in the iconic St. Marks church with Lenny Kaye on the guitar and Andy Warhol and Lou Reed in the audience, in that creative and dangerous New York of the 1970s. She wrote that she didn’t mind the poverty of her chosen profession. Perhaps that’s why, when visionary music producer Sandy Pearlman saw her read and proposed recording an album, Smith responded with a laugh.

In 1975, her debut Horses would see the light, complete with an album cover by Mapplethorpe. It was an LP that would not just revolutionize music, but also many people’s lives, and that this year is celebrating it 50th anniversary. It was the starting point of a brilliant career that saw the publication of 10 books and 11 albums. Horses stayed faithful to the band’s live performances, and Smith even rejected an offer from producer John Cale, co-founder of The Velvet Underground, to arrange the tracks and polish the sound.

Smith arrived to the height of punk rock fame without wielding the self-destructive element that seemed inherent to its artists. She never got wrapped up in alcohol, drugs, and scandals, surely to the benefit of her creativity. Lenny Kaye was surprised when Smith moved to the outskirts of Detroit to start a family with fellow musician Fred “Sonic” Smith, with whom she had two children. After the success of the band’s first album, the singer’s decision to step away from public life puzzled many. But as Smith explained in an interview with Harvard Business Review at the time, she needed to stop because she felt that “while I was growing as a potential rock-and-roll star, I wasn’t growing as an artist.” That fame was always much greater in Europe than in her birth country. During the years that followed, she led a quiet life, prioritizing her own schedule over the market’s demands.

After the death of her husband in 1994, Smith returned to her musical career with the album Gone Again (1996), for which she reunited with her band as if no time had passed. The friendship between Smith and Kaye has lasted for more than a half-century. “She hasn’t changed much since I met her in 1971, she has never compromised her ideals or gotten carried away by industry trends. She continues to believe in the transcendence of exhibiting her creative vision,” says the legendary guitarist via Zoom. “She’s my soul sister. We communicate very easily, and we support each other and get each other excited with our independent creations.”

That’s not the only link that Smith has maintained since she began to eat up the stage. Andi Ostrowe has been her assistant since 1976. “I read that she was going to record Radio Ethiopia and sent a note to her recording studio saying that I had just gotten back from Ethiopia. Patti called me right away, which was surprising. We decided to meet up and we connected immediately,” Ostrowe says by email.

Smith’s authenticity has also resonated with other big names who took the stage at Carnegie Hall on March 26 to pay tribute to her at an event called “People Have the Power.” Among her friends on the lineup were Kim Gordon, Bruce Springsteen, Jim Jarmusch, Scarlett Johansson, Johnny Depp, Sean Penn, Angel Olsen, and Sharon Van Etten, who read her poems and sang her songs.

This fall, Smith will return to the stage with a commemorative tour of Horses with dates in the United States and Europe.

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