I first heard Patti Smith in the Summer of ‘77. Guzman and I were driving south from West Point on the Jersey Turnpike. We were going to his girlfriend’s house and he may, or may not have been setting me up on a blind date. He put Patty Smith’s “Horses” on the cassette deck and I was blown away at the very first song, GLORIA. Redondo Beach, and Birdland followed. By the time Land/Horses came on, I was hooked, for life as it turned out.

I don’t remember anything eles about the day, except hearing Patti for the first time. I didn’t know what Punk was, but I knew I liked Patti Smith. Forty three years later, I’m still a fan. I find her words, and her music, make me think. Considered one of the founders of the New York Punk scene, over the course of her career she has done much more than that. She has never stayed confined to one definition of who she is and I think that is why I continue enjoying her.

She’s had an interesting life. After having affairs in the early seventies with Robert Mapplethorpe and Sam Shepard, both iconic artists in their own right, she married Fred “Sonic” Smith in 1980 and semi retired. She and her husband raised two children until his unexpected death in 1994. In 1995 she started reentering public life.

Part of what makes her so compelling, is the diversity of her music and her career. In addition to writing her own music and poetry, her covers of some of the classic songs of others are amazing. She makes Buddy Holly’s “Words of Love”, Neil Young’s “After the Gold Rush”, Prince’s “When Doves Cry” and Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit” her own. If you haven’t heard her renditions of any of those, I suggest you give them a try.

Anyone who listens to her songs knows she’s an accomplished wordsmith, but it’s more than with just her own music. When Springsteen was stuck while writing the lyrics to “Because the Night“, who completed the job? Patti.

She proved her writing abilities to the rest of the world in 2010 when she published her book “Just Kids” about her time with Maplethorpe. The book later won the National Book Award for Nonfiction and she has since published several other books of poetry and stories.

Due to her Punk background, and her opening line in Gloria, “Jesus Died for Somebody’s Sins, but not Mine…” some people formed an anti religious view about her. She dispelled that as well. Pope Francis invited her to sing at the 2014 Vatican Christmas concert. When she accepted, she angered both Catholics and many of her old Punk fans. Her response? “It’s a Christmas concert for the people, and it’s being televised. I like Pope Francis and I’m happy to sing for him. Anyone who would confine me to a line from 40 years ago is a fool!” She sang “O Holy Night” during the concert, and at the Pope’s request, her anthem “People have the Power”. She met with Pope Francis twice, and also sang for the Dalai Lama.

In 2016, who accepted the Nobel Prize for Literature on Bob Dylan’s behalf? Patti Smith, of course. After accepting the prize, she sang “A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall”. She momentarily lost her place in the second verse and stopped singing. Regaining her composure, she asked the orchestra to start over which they did. She received a standing ovation at the end of the song.

I’ve had a few other artists who stopped me dead when I first heard their music – most notably, Nina Simone and Miles Davis. The difference? The careers of Simone and Davis were already well established when I first heard them, and I played catch up going through their old catalogs. With Patti, she was brand new in ‘77 and you didn’t know what was coming next. That has never changed over the course of her career.

I’m not sure why I’ve written this blog about her. It’s a bit outside of my usual musings. I suppose there has been greater use of her song “People have the Power” lately and maybe that made me think more overtly about her. They now call her the “Godmother of Punk”, but that doesn’t seem quite enough. “Godmother of Punk” locks her into one period of her life in the early seventies, and she has done so much more since then.

Patti Smith is 73 now. We are both a little older than we were in the seventies. I still enjoy listening to “Horses“, and particularly the song “Gloria” – for me, they have stood the test of time. Even more, I enjoy new surprises from her, whether through her music, or her writings, including most recently, her books “M Train” and “Year of the Monkey”. I look forward to her continuing evolution as an artist. We should all be so spry at 73.

Addendum:

⁃ In 1989, Cathy and I caught Robert Mapplethorpe’s, The Perfect Moment Exhibition at the Washington Project for the Arts, after the Corcoran Gallery backed out of showing the exhibition. There was a huge uproar about the show, due to several controversial pieces. Mapplethorpe had died of AIDS just a few months before. At the time, I wasn’t yet aware of the connection between him and Patti Smith.

⁃ Everyone knows Sam Shepard from his Academy Award nomination for playing Chuck Yeager in “The Right Stuff”. You should take a look at the rest of his career as a playwright and director – he received 10 Obie Awards (most ever for a writer or a director) and also won the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1979.