Background and career
Patricia Lee Smith (born December 30, 1946) is an American singer, songwriter, poet, and author. Her 1975 debut album, Horses, made her an influential member of the New York City–based punk rock movement earned her nicknames "Queen of Punk, and "Godmother of Punk". Smith has fused rock and poetry in her work. In 1978, her most widely known song, "Because the Night", co-written with Bruce Springsteen, reached number 13 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart and number five on the UK Singles Chart.
In 2005, Smith was named a Commander of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French Ministry of Culture. In 2007, she was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. In November 2010, Smith won the National Book Award for her memoir Just Kids, written to fulfill a promise she made to Robert Mapplethorpe, her longtime partner and friend. She is ranked 47th on Rolling Stone magazine's 100 Greatest Artists of all Time, published in 2010, and was awarded the Polar Music Prize in 2011.
Smith was born on December 30, 1946, at Grant Hospital in the Lincoln Park section of Chicago, to Beverly Smith, a jazz singer turned waitress, and Grant Smith, a Honeywell machinist. Her family is of partially Irish ancestry (though in her 2025 memoir Bread of Angels, Smith revealed that she learned at age 70 that Grant Smith was in fact not her biological father and her patrilineal lineage is Ashkenazi Jewish). Patti is the eldest of four children, with siblings Linda, Todd, and Kimberly.
When Smith was four, the family moved from Chicago to the Germantown section of Philadelphia, then to Pitman, New Jersey, and finally settled in the Woodbury Gardens section of Deptford Township, New Jersey. At an early age, Smith was exposed to music, including the albums Shrimp Boats by Harry Belafonte, The Money Tree by Patience and Prudence, and Another Side of Bob Dylan, Bob Dylan's fourth album, released in 1964, which her mother gave her.
In 1964, Smith graduated from Deptford Township High School, and began working in a factory. She briefly attended Glassboro State College, now Rowan University, in Glassboro, New Jersey.
How Patti Smith makes money
On January 23, 1977, while touring in support of Radio Ethiopia, Smith accidentally danced off a high stage in Tampa, Florida, and fell 15 feet onto a concrete orchestra pit, breaking several cervical vertebrae. On October 15, 2006, Smith performed a 3½-hour tour de force show to close out at CBGB, which was an immensely influential New York City live music venue for much of the late 20th and early 21st centuries.
