Born Patricia Lee Smith on December 30, 1946 in Chicago, IL, Patti Smith is a tremendously influential American singer-songwriter. Dubbed “The Godmother of Punk,” she is famous for entwining beat-style poetry with three-chord rock music, creating a soulful yet groundbreaking rock beat.
Inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2007, Smith has been a visionary presence within the music scene for over thirty years. Her 1975 debut album, “Horses,” is credited with being a huge influence on the New York punk rock movement.
Raised in Debtford Township, New Jersey by her jazz singer mother and plant-operator father, Smith was educated in the Jehovah’s Witness faith. She later left her upbringing as a teenager, saying that the organized religion was simply too confining for her. After graduating from the Township’s high school, where she was voted Class Clown, in 1964, she went to work in a factory.
She attended Rowan University (then called Glassboro State Teachers College) but left in 1967 for New York. There she got involved with several performance artists, poets, and other creative individuals, and took up various performances herself. By 1974, she was playing music on her own. A year later, she had a contract with Artista Records and her first album out.
The 1970s saw two more albums released from Smith, while the singer spent the 1980s with her new family–her husband, Fred “Sonic” Smith and their two children. Following the death of her husband and brother, and with the support of friends Allen Ginsberg and Michael Stripe (of R.E.M.), she decided to go back on tour.
Since then she has released several other albums and received a Grammy Award nomination. Smith is also a passionate activist; she is anti-war, and has campaigned and written songs to promote both the Democratic Party as well as the Green Party.
Smith’s most famous song is the hauntingly beautiful “Because the Night,” co-written with Bruce Springsteen, which hit number 13 on the 1978 Billboard Hot 100 chart. The singer is also an accomplished poet and visual artist, named a Commander of the Ordre des arts et des Lettres by the French Prime Minister of Culture.