Patti Smith
Patti Smith
Patricia Lee "Patti" Smith is an American singer-songwriter, poet, and visual artist who became a highly influential component of the New York City punk rock movement with her 1975 debut album Horses...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPunk Singer
Date of Birth30 December 1946
CityChicago, IL
CountryUnited States of America
people purity
People like beauty and purity. They pretend that's what it's all about.
moving rocks voice
When I started making music, we'd lost a lot of our great people. Rock was moving in a direction I didn't like. Rock was my generation's revolutionary, sexual, poetic, and political voice, but it had become corporatized. It was going into stadiums. It was so far removed from its basic roots.
ideas talking happens
I had this idea that the coolest thing that could happen to you was talking with God.
style ginsberg beatnik
My style of performance poetry came from the beatniks, Allen Ginsberg.
stars role-models roles
All of my role models, whether it was the disciples, or John the Baptist or Arthur Rimbaud, slept under the stars.
I've always considered myself a writer.
writing aspect small-parts
I didn't write about aspects of my public life because that's a small part of my life.
hard-times stranger young
I wasn't a stranger to hard times. I used to read the Bible - well, I still do, but when I was young I read the Bible quite a bit.
I always wear the same thing onstage.
photography fashion magazines
My introduction to photography and a lot of how I developed aesthetically was through '50s and early-'60s fashion magazines like Harper's Bazaar and Vogue.
important public-life
My public life was so demanding that I wasn't doing the things that I deemed the most important.
wise writing self
I wasn't writing, I wasn't drawing, and personality-wise, I was just completely arrogant. I'm not trying to be overly apologetic for my behavior - I wasn't evil. The lifestyle I had was one that lent itself to becoming more and more self-involved.
book want catalogues
I want to keep my life as unfettered as possible. So maybe I'll just pretend to get rare books from my catalogue, and not really get them.
mother rock-and-roll rocks
My mother loved rock and roll. She loved high-energy music.