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
bookstore factory family hardest picking since work
I come from a working-class family, and I've been working since I was 13, from babysitting to blueberry picking to factory work to bookstore work. And of course, being a mother and homemaker, the hardest work of all.
anyone art cape class dogs except museum pumps saw sunglasses white
I come from a real working class background, and I didn't know anyone sophisticated - except I saw Edie Sedgewick once at the Art Museum in Philly. She had these black leotards and little black pumps and this big ermine cape and all these white dogs and black sunglasses and black eyes. She was classy!
spent written wrote
I always wrote. I wrote every day. I don't think I could have written 'Just Kids' had I not spent all of the '80s developing my craft as a writer.
drug tools use
I use drugs to work. I never use them to escape or for pleasure. When you turn to drugs, all you're doing is turning inside, anyway. I only use drugs for construction. It's like one of my architectural tools.
thinking people trying
I really feel concerned about young people within our present culture. Our present culture, we have to change. Change is inevitable and I wasn't raised in our present culture but it has great pressure that as a young person I never had. Material pressure, social pressure, visual pressure, how you look, and I just try to appeal to young people to think for themselves, to be their own person, and to ask questions and also be very attentive to our planet and our environment.
heart phones cells
Put down your cell phones, put everything away, and feel your blood pulsing in you, feel your creative impulse, feel your own spirit, your heart, your mind. Feel the joy of being alive and free.
light tree inspire
Light inspires me. I'm drawn to architecture, often graves, statues, trees - things usually that are quite still. I've been taking pictures continuously since 1995 until the end of Polaroid film. I'm taking very few pictures nowadays because I have very little film left, most of it expired.
art stars queens
As much as I can, as much as I can afford, I keep ticket prices down. Rock 'n' roll was developed as the people's voice, the people's art, it was grassroots. I don't believe that the people should be estranged from their rock stars. They're not kings and queens - all rock stars are those who are able to give back a bit of culture to other people. It's people's heritage.
song teenager holiday
When I was a teenager, I dreamed of being an opera singer like Maria Callas or a jazz singer like June Christy or Chris Connor, or approaching songs with the kind of mystical lethargy of Billie Holiday, or championing the downtrodden like Lotte Lenya. But I never dreamed of singing in a rock-and-roll band.
art rooms produce
Hung-up women can't produce anything but mediocre art, and there ain't no room for mediocre art.
people giving energy
My mission is to communicate, to wake people up, just to give them my energy and accept theirs.
thinking ancestry gender
I've never felt grounded because of my ancestry or my gender. I think until women get away from that they're not going to be great writers.
rocks people generations
New generations have unprecedented power to make great changes. Take the music business for example. The new generations have toppled the music industry by file sharing, downloading, and Myspace. Rock 'n' roll belongs to the people.
thinking people healthy
I think it's really great that people share their work [on Myspace] and no one is paying for it. I think that's a very healthy thing and it's not a corporate thing.