As a child, Patti experienced gender confusion.  Described as a tomboy, she shunned "girly" activities and instead preferred roughhousing with her predominantly male friends.  Her tall, lean and somewhat masculine body defied the images of femininity she saw around her.  It was not until a high school art teacher showed her depictions of women by some of the world's great artists that she came to terms with her own body. Art totally freed me, Patti recalled.  I found Modigliani, I discovered Picasso's blue period, and I thought, 'Look at this, these are great masters, and the women are all built like I am.' I started ripping pictures out of the books and taking them home to pose in front of the mirror. Patti attended Deptford High School, a racially integrated high school, where she recalls both befriending and dating her black classmates.  While in high school, Patti also developed an intense interest in music and performance.  She fell in love with the music of John Coltrane, Little Richard and the Rolling Stones and performed in many of the school's plays and musicals.

Upon graduating from high school in 1964, Patti took a job working at a toy factory—a short-lived but terrible experience that she described in her first single, Piss Factory.  Later that fall, she enrolled at Glassboro State Teachers College—now known as Rowan University—with the intention of becoming a high school art teacher, but she didn't fare well academically and her insistence on discarding traditional curricula to focus exclusively on experimental and obscure artists did not sit well with school administrators.  So in 1967, with vague aspirations of becoming an artist, Patti moved to New York City and took a job working at a Manhattan bookstore. While working at the bookstore Patti met and became romantically involved with a young artist named Robert Mapplethorpe.  Although their romantic relationship ended when Robert discovered his homosexuality, Patti and Robert maintained a close friendship and artistic partnership for many years to come. Choosing performance poetry as her favored artistic medium, Smith gave her first public reading on February 10, 1971, at St. Mark's Church in the Bowery.  The now legendary reading, with guitar accompaniment from Lenny Kaye, introduced Smith as an up-and-coming figure in the New York arts circle.  Later the same year, she further raised her profile by co-authoring and co-starring with Sam Shepard in his semiautobiographical play Cowboy Mouth. Over the next several years, Patti dedicated herself to writing.  In 1972, she published her first book of poetry, Seventh Heaven, earning flattering reviews but selling few copies.  Two further collections, Early Morning Dream (1972) and Witt (1973), received similarly high praise.  At the same time, Patti also wrote music journalism for magazines such as Creem and Rolling Stone.

Robert Mapplethorpe & Patti Smith

Patti, who had experimented earlier with setting her poetry to music, began to more fully explore rock 'n' roll as an outlet for her lyric poetry.  In 1974, she formed a band and recorded the single Piss Factory, now widely considered the first true "punk" song, which garnered her a sizable and fanatical grassroots following.  The next year, after Bob Dylan leant her mainstream credibility by attending one of her concerts, Patti landed a record deal with Arista Records. Patti's 1975 debut album, Horses, featuring the iconic singles Gloria and Land of a Thousand Dances, was a huge commercial and critical success for its manic energy, heartfelt lyrics and skillful wordplay.  The definitive early punk rock album, Horses is a near-ubiquitous inclusion on lists of the best albums of all time. As The Patti Smith Group with Lenny Kaye (guitar), Ivan Kral (bass), Jay Dee Daugherty (drums) and Richard Sohl (piano) patti released her second album, Radio Ethiopia, in 1976.  The Patti Smith Group then achieved a commercial breakthrough with its third album, Easter (1978), propelled by the hit single Because the Night, co-written by Patti Smith and Bruce Springsteen.

Wave, Patti's fourth album, released in 1979, received only lukewarm reviews and modest sales.  By the time of Wave's release, Patti had fallen deeply in love with MC5 guitarist Fred "Sonic" Smith, and the pair married in 1980.  For the next 17 years, Patti largely disappeared from the public scene, devoting herself to domestic life and raising the couple's two children.  She released only one album during this time, 1988's Dream of Life, a collaboration with her husband.  The album was a commercial disappointment despite including one of Smith's most iconic singles, People Have the Power. When Fred "Sonic" Smith died of a heart attack in 1994; the last in a series of many close friends and collaborators of Patti's who passed away in quick succession; it finally provided Patti Smith the impetus to revive her music career.  She achieved a triumphant return with her 1996 comeback album Gone Again, featuring the singles Summer Cannibals and Wicked Messenger. Since then, Patti Smith has remained a prominent fixture of the rock music scene with her albums Peace and Noise (1997), Gung Ho (2000) and Trampin' (2004), all of which were highly praised by music critics, proving Patti's ability to reshape her music to speak to a new generation of rock fans.  Her 2007 album Twelve featured Patti's cover of a dozen rock classics, including Gimme Shelter, Changing of the Guards, Smells Like Teen Spirit and Jimi Hendrix's Are You Experienced.  Patti followed with the critically acclaimed Banga (2012), proving that after 35 years of music and 11 albums, she is ever evolving.

This page is for the memory of Samantha Cicciaro, whom I met on the pages of City On Fire by Garth Risk Hallberg.  His first novel that captures the culture and spirit of New York City, from the 1976 bicentennial summer to the blackout of July 13, 1977.

Wanderin' Spirit
February, 2016
"Horses"

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