PATTI SMITH

Patti Smith, Rio de Janeiro, 2006

Patti Smith, also known as the Godmother Of Punk. She started out as a poet in a underground environment in New York. Her album Horses is very central for the punk-movement in 1975, and she quickly became a highly influential component for New York City. She also had a strong religious upbringing, in Jehovah's Witness, but left organized religion when she became a teenager. She later wrote the famous line " Jesus died for somebody's sins, but not mine"

Smith moved from New Jersey to New York City, and met photographer Robert Mapplethorpe. They had an intense romantic relationship. Later when Smith wrote the book "Just Kids" she refers to Mapplethorpe as "the artist of my life", and he's the one who took the cover photographs for the Patti Smith Group LP record.

Picture of Patti Smith by Robert Mapplethorpe

In 1969 she moved to Paris and started busking and doing performance art, and when she moved back to New York, she appeared in a play. As a member of the St. Marks Poetry Project, she spent the early 70's painting, writing and performing.

In the Patti Smith Group where several of the members people from different environments, for example Ivan Kral (which she wrote lot of lyrics with later on)

Their music was often about how they were raised and how the society had influenced them in regards of feelings, change and rights. Lots of the lyrics could be called political criticisms, though they're rather filled with a different perspective than the government or society had.

Their first album Horses fused punk rock and spoken poetry, where lot's of the lyrics are inspired from her earlier poetry. The group got popular, and they released Radio Ethopia with a rawer sound, considerably less accessible than Horses, Radio Ethopia initially received poor reviews, however these are the two albums that has influenced the punk movement the most, and Smith regularly performs them in her concerts.

The Patti Smith Group, 1978

Example of poetry from the Patti Smith Group

Elegie

I just don't know what to do tonight,

My head is aching as I drink and breathe

Memory falls like cream in my bones, moving on my own.

There must be something I can dream tonight,

The air is filled with the moves of you,

All the fire is frozen yet still I have the will, ooh, ah.

Trumpets, violins, I hear them in the distance

And my skin emits a ray, but I think it's sad, it's much too bad

That our friends can't be with us today.

Chiklets

last night i awoke up from a dream came face to face with my face facing the

tombstone teeth of a man called chiklets he came down through the ages with

the desperate beauty of a middleweight boxer came beating the force field

with elegant grace trying to get a perfect grip there was no absolute grip

he was in a sail boat a glass bottom boat the bottom of a boat he was coming

down through the ages sea molten sea spilling down the tube the spiny eye of

the village the spinal eye of the victim the spiny eye like a question mark

hovering over him what do you want what do you want from him down on a dream

too much unexplained what do you think do you think there was an actual

connection i can't imagine a connection going down there i can't imagine any

connection at all a boxing ring with gold ropes soft desperate karat top

spinning and coming down through the ages forty one BC