Patti Smith
Author of Just Kids
About the Author
Patti Smith was born in Chicago, Illinois on December 30, 1946. She is a singer-songwriter, writer and visual artist. She gained recognition in the 1970s for her revolutionary mergence of poetry and rock. Her album Horses has been hailed as one of the top 100 albums of all time. She has recorded show more twelve albums. In 2007, she was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. She has written several books including Witt, Babel, Woolgathering, The Coral Sea, Auguries of Innocence, M Train, and Just Kids, which won the Nonfiction category of the National Book Award in 2010. Her drawings, photographs, and installations have been shown at numerous venues including the Andy Warhol Museum and the Fondation Cartier Pour l'Art Contemporain in Paris. In 2005, she was awarded the title of Commandeur des Arts et des Lettres by the French Ministry of Culture, which is the highest honor awarded to an artist by the French Republic. (Bowker Author Biography) show less
Disambiguation Notice:
Not to be confused with Patty Smyth.
Image credit: Patti Smith à la 81e édition de la Mostra de Venise en 2024.
Series
Works by Patti Smith
Patti Smith Complete 1975-2006: Lyrics, Reflections, and Notes for the Future (1998) 228 copies, 1 review
Work Songs 3 copies
Patti Smith (sound recording) 3 copies
Voz M 3 copies
Patti Smith. Poesie e canzoni 2 copies
Set Free 2 copies
A Small Entreaty — Author — 2 copies
A Normal Day 2 copies
Gloria (In Excelsis Deo) 2 copies
Poesie 1 copy
Om å skrive 1 copy
“Time”April 29, 2024 1 copy
Gloria in Excelsis Deo 1 copy
Piss Factory 1 copy
Patti Smith dream of life 1 copy
Adanmışlık 1 copy
Patti Smith - Rote Fabrik 1 copy
ATP Patti Smith 1 copy
Patti Smith 35 1 copy
A Useless Death 1 copy
Poesie rock 1 copy
Wicked Messenger 1 copy
Home For The Holiday 1 copy
The Beavers of Popple's Pond 1 copy
Two More (A Perfect Day / Here I Dreamt I Was An Architect) — Artist — 1 copy
Smith, Patti Archive 1 copy
Associated Works
The Rolling Stone Book of the Beats: The Beat Generation and American Culture (1999) — Contributor — 181 copies, 2 reviews
Dead Man Walking : Music from and inspired by the motion picture {sound recording} (1995) — Contributor; [Walkin Blind] — 27 copies
Until The End Of The World: Music From The Motion Picture Soundtrack (1991) — Contributor — 25 copies, 1 review
Democracy in Print: The best of the Progressive Magazine, 1909-2009 (2009) — Contributor — 14 copies
KCRW Rare On Air, Volume Three — Contributor — 3 copies
Smash 4 — Contributor — 1 copy
CUZ 3 — Author — 1 copy
In'hui, No.9 — Contributor — 1 copy
No Alternative [sound recording] — Contributor — 1 copy
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Canonical name
- Smith, Patti
- Legal name
- Smith, Patricia Lee
- Birthdate
- 1946-12-30
- Gender
- female
- Education
- Deptford Township High School
- Occupations
- singer-songwriter
poet
artist
writer - Awards and honors
- Ordre des Arts et des Lettres (2005)
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (2007)
Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize (2022) - Relationships
- Smith, Fred Sonic (husband)
- Short biography
- Patti Smith is an American singer-songwriter and poet. She was influential in the birth of punk rock with her 1975 debut album "Horses". Called "Godmother of Punk" she integrated the beat poetry performance style with garage rock. Her allusions introduced American teens to 19th century French poetry, while her "unladylike" language defied the disco era. Smith is most widely known for the song "Because the Night", which was co-written with Bruce Springsteen and reached number 13 on Billboard Hot 100 chart.
- Nationality
- USA
- Birthplace
- Chicago, Illinois, USA
- Places of residence
- Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA
New Jersey, USA
New York, New York, USA
St. Clair Shores, Michigan, USA - Map Location
- Illinois, USA
- Disambiguation notice
- Not to be confused with Patty Smyth.
Members
Reviews
All through college, I had a Maplethorpe self-portrait on my wall. This book is as much about youth and memory as it is about the love and friendship and collaboration between these two artists. Made me think a lot about growing up and who we lose and who we become along the way.
I saw Patti Smith play live for the umpteenth time this summer. I don't think she could give a bad concert if she tried, but this was one I was a bit wary about: Like all aging rock stars, she was going to play her most popular album (Horses) live in its entirety. It's a setup that, for most artists, becomes a dull exercise in nostalgia and note-perfect reproduction. As Jim Reid of the Jesus And Mary Chain pointed out in an interview when they set out to play Psychocandy live a few years show more ago, their concerts back then were never faithful reproductions of the studio material, yet if they were to sound NOW like they did back then, fans who only knew the album would complain about it not being authentic.
I shouldn't have worried, though, because if there's anyone who can pull this sort of thing off, it's Patti Smith. Not only because she's kept working with (as far as life and death allows) the same musicians ever since, but also because her entire career and Horses in particular have always been about subsuming yourself in what Lethem called the ecstasy of influence. Horses was always basically a sermon using rock'n'roll and poetry as holy writ; 40 years on, she just has to acknowledge that Horses itself has become part of that gospel. The 2015 version doesn't sound dated or nostalgic, nor is it a radical rearrangement as Dylan or Reed might have done, it's just ... lived in, a bit grey and wrinkled, not as limber as it once was but still refusing to back down.
Come on, man! I am PURE! I am ready to change the fucking world! Come on, motherfuckers! Come on! Come and get me!
Which leads us to M Train, her second memoir after the brilliant Just Kids, but this time starting in the Now: Patti Smith, grey, creaky-jointed, widowed and literal Grandmother of Punk, sits in her favourite cafe in the Village, sipping coffee and reading and taking notes. Not for anything in particular, but she just woke up from a dream where she was told that "It's not so easy to write about nothing." "I could do it, if only I had nothing to say," she responds. And sets about doing that, which of course in a way means trying to say everything.
Where Just Kids had a central story set squarely in the past - her dream of becoming an Artist (irrelevant which kind), her relationship/friendship with Robert Mapplethorpe, their respective rise to fame and self-awareness, with a coda set after his death - M Train is far less focused. That's not necessarily a bad thing; I'd gladly listen to Patti Smith ramble on about the phone book. Much like Dylan's Chronicles, it's not a tell-all memoir for those who want to know juicy personal details; you get to know a lot about Patti Smith, but little that concerns her actual career (the few times she even acknowledges that she's a musician can be counted on the fingers of one hand), and much more about how she sees the world and how it shapes her. She talks about books she's read and loved from Rimbaud to Murakami, people she's admired, TV shows she's following, the house she bought just a week before hurricane Sandy hit it, her various private travels all over the world (or just across the street) to visit other drifters alive and dead and collect memories with her notepad and her camera... And the still lingering grief from her husband's death 20 years earlier, that's mellowed but never goes away. She sleeps in Frieda Kahlo's bed, she visits Ozu's grave, she gets mugged, she drinks copious amounts of coffee, and she never stops thinking about it, filtering it through all that holy writ of how others have experienced the same things.
I saw a quote the other day to the effect that books are how humans update their software. M Train, using that metaphor, is one long personal debug, going over alternately hilarious and deeply moving, and sure, once or twice it goes overboard and becomes exactly as hippyish as you'd expect of an aging cat lady poet. But that's part of what Patti Smith is, and it wouldn't be her without it. At least twice, she seems to read my mind and responds (very specifically) from the written page to something I'd been thinking aboout IRL just hours earlier. In most books, I'd write that off as coincidence; but this is that rare memoir that feels not like a monologue but a dialogue, and I feel honoured to have gotten a chance to talk to her. show less
I shouldn't have worried, though, because if there's anyone who can pull this sort of thing off, it's Patti Smith. Not only because she's kept working with (as far as life and death allows) the same musicians ever since, but also because her entire career and Horses in particular have always been about subsuming yourself in what Lethem called the ecstasy of influence. Horses was always basically a sermon using rock'n'roll and poetry as holy writ; 40 years on, she just has to acknowledge that Horses itself has become part of that gospel. The 2015 version doesn't sound dated or nostalgic, nor is it a radical rearrangement as Dylan or Reed might have done, it's just ... lived in, a bit grey and wrinkled, not as limber as it once was but still refusing to back down.
Come on, man! I am PURE! I am ready to change the fucking world! Come on, motherfuckers! Come on! Come and get me!
Which leads us to M Train, her second memoir after the brilliant Just Kids, but this time starting in the Now: Patti Smith, grey, creaky-jointed, widowed and literal Grandmother of Punk, sits in her favourite cafe in the Village, sipping coffee and reading and taking notes. Not for anything in particular, but she just woke up from a dream where she was told that "It's not so easy to write about nothing." "I could do it, if only I had nothing to say," she responds. And sets about doing that, which of course in a way means trying to say everything.
Where Just Kids had a central story set squarely in the past - her dream of becoming an Artist (irrelevant which kind), her relationship/friendship with Robert Mapplethorpe, their respective rise to fame and self-awareness, with a coda set after his death - M Train is far less focused. That's not necessarily a bad thing; I'd gladly listen to Patti Smith ramble on about the phone book. Much like Dylan's Chronicles, it's not a tell-all memoir for those who want to know juicy personal details; you get to know a lot about Patti Smith, but little that concerns her actual career (the few times she even acknowledges that she's a musician can be counted on the fingers of one hand), and much more about how she sees the world and how it shapes her. She talks about books she's read and loved from Rimbaud to Murakami, people she's admired, TV shows she's following, the house she bought just a week before hurricane Sandy hit it, her various private travels all over the world (or just across the street) to visit other drifters alive and dead and collect memories with her notepad and her camera... And the still lingering grief from her husband's death 20 years earlier, that's mellowed but never goes away. She sleeps in Frieda Kahlo's bed, she visits Ozu's grave, she gets mugged, she drinks copious amounts of coffee, and she never stops thinking about it, filtering it through all that holy writ of how others have experienced the same things.
I saw a quote the other day to the effect that books are how humans update their software. M Train, using that metaphor, is one long personal debug, going over alternately hilarious and deeply moving, and sure, once or twice it goes overboard and becomes exactly as hippyish as you'd expect of an aging cat lady poet. But that's part of what Patti Smith is, and it wouldn't be her without it. At least twice, she seems to read my mind and responds (very specifically) from the written page to something I'd been thinking aboout IRL just hours earlier. In most books, I'd write that off as coincidence; but this is that rare memoir that feels not like a monologue but a dialogue, and I feel honoured to have gotten a chance to talk to her. show less
Patti Smith foi fundamental na minha formação musical e poética, tendo nascido um mês antes de minha mãe, Patti é uma espécie de mãe intelectual que moldou minhas afinidades e voltar a ler esse livro é sempre um lembrete que mulher extraordinária ela foi e ainda de fato é, numa prosa acachapante de deliciosa ela demonstra todo o afeto que nutriu por esse amigo/amante e que não se perdeu pelo caminho, sem um pingo de ressentimento ou picuinha, ela delineia a construção de um show more amor verdadeiro que perpassou pouco mais de duas décadas e o qual nós comumente chamamos de amizade, mas que aqui se mostra tão elevado que não podemos achar palavra que contemple tal plenitude de relacionamento.
Livro fundamental para entender a história - dos anos 60/70, da arte, da música, da poesia, da literatura, da moda, de Nova York - um tratado pleno dos sentimentos e acontecimentos de uma geração. show less
Livro fundamental para entender a história - dos anos 60/70, da arte, da música, da poesia, da literatura, da moda, de Nova York - um tratado pleno dos sentimentos e acontecimentos de uma geração. show less
When people have romantic notions of NYC, quite often they're thinking of the city in the 1960's and 1970's. This is the world brought to life in Patti Smith's memoir JUST KIDS. She takes the reader through Brooklyn and the East Village, into the apartments, clubs, cafes, and bookshops of the day. We have lunch with Alan Ginsberg, attend movie showings at Andy Warhol's factory, chat with Jimi Hendrix, and stock shelves at The Strand bookshop. After reading this book, I felt as though I could show more close my eyes and see this world and experience its sounds and smells.
But this is not a memoir about New York; it's focus is on the relationship between the author and the artist Robert Mapplethorpe. Finding each other haphazardly, they shared apartments, studio space, and their souls with each other. The reader follows along on their paths of discovering their artistic callings and themselves as humans in the modern world. There are creative highs and lows - many examples of the "starving artist" are found in these pages - but together they weathered them all. Their deep friendship outlasted their romantic relationship and they kept in contact up until Mapplethorpe's death from AIDS in the late 1980's.
While the memoir is incredibly heartfelt and moving, the way that Patti Smith chose to transcribe it is what makes it truly memorable. Each sentence has a power and emotion behind it, so that the writing is not only powerful but powerfully poetic. You share in the tragedies and triumphs, and really feel their world. show less
But this is not a memoir about New York; it's focus is on the relationship between the author and the artist Robert Mapplethorpe. Finding each other haphazardly, they shared apartments, studio space, and their souls with each other. The reader follows along on their paths of discovering their artistic callings and themselves as humans in the modern world. There are creative highs and lows - many examples of the "starving artist" are found in these pages - but together they weathered them all. Their deep friendship outlasted their romantic relationship and they kept in contact up until Mapplethorpe's death from AIDS in the late 1980's.
While the memoir is incredibly heartfelt and moving, the way that Patti Smith chose to transcribe it is what makes it truly memorable. Each sentence has a power and emotion behind it, so that the writing is not only powerful but powerfully poetic. You share in the tragedies and triumphs, and really feel their world. show less
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Awards
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Statistics
- Works
- 130
- Also by
- 40
- Members
- 12,977
- Popularity
- #1,799
- Rating
- 3.9
- Reviews
- 445
- ISBNs
- 329
- Languages
- 25
- Favorited
- 34
