Patti Smith Punk

Patti Smith Punk

Patricia Lee "Patti" Smith (born December 30, 1946) is an American singer–songwriter, poet and visual artist who was a highly influential component of the New York City punk rock movement with her 1975 debut album Horses. Called the "Godmother of Punk", she integrated the beat poetry performance style with three-chord rock. Smith's most widely known song is "Because the Night", which was co-written with Bruce Springsteen and reached number 13 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in 1978. In 2005, Patti Smith was named a Commander of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French Minister of Culture,[ and in 2007, she was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

Patti Smith was born in Chicago on December 30, 1946. Her mother, Beverly, was a jazz singer and her father, Grant, worked at the Honeywell plant. She spent her entire childhood in Deptford Township, New Jersey. Raised the daughter of a Jehovah's Witness mother, she claims she had a strong religious education and a very good Bible education, but left organized religion as a teenager because she felt it was too confining and much later wrote the opening line ("Jesus died for somebody's sins, but not mine") of her cover version of Them's "Gloria" in response to this experience. Smith graduated from Deptford Township High School in 1964. The family was not well-off, and Smith went to work in a factory. Patti Smith was voted "Class Clown" in her senior year.