Patti Smith - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

However, several of its songs, notably "Pissing in a River, " "Pumping," and "Ain't It Strange," have stood the test of time, and Smith still performs them regularly in concert.
While touring in support of the record, Smith accidentally danced off a high stage in , falling 15 feet into a concrete orchestra pit and breaking several neck vertebrae. The injury required a period of rest and an intensive round of physical therapy, during which time she was able to reassess, re-energize and reorganize her life, a luxury that had been denied her in her swift rise to fame.

The Patti Smith Group produced two further albums before the end of the 1970s. (1978) was her most commercially successful record, containing the hit single " " – co-written with Bruce Springsteen – which rose to #13 on the . was less successful, with "Frederick" and "Dancing Barefoot" receiving only minor radio airplay.

Following the release of Wave, Smith, now separated from long-time partner , met , former guitar player for legendary Detroit rock band the , who adored poetry as much as she did. The running joke at the time was that she only married Fred because she wouldn't have to change her name and with whom she had a daughter, Jesse, and a son, Jackson. Through most of the 1980s Smith was in semi-retirement from music, living with her family just north of Detroit in St Clair Shores.

In 1988, she released the album , which was well-received, even though she didn't go on tour and it was much more mainstream than her earlier punk-influenced work.
In 1994 Fred died of a heart attack, and following the unexpected death of her beloved brother Todd later that year, Patti was urged by John Cale and to seek help. She did, and subsequently became an active supporter of psychiatric treatment for mental illness and the maintenance of mental health.

Smith also advocated the formation of anonymous suicide hotlines for people in need but unwilling to seek help. When her son, Jackson, turned 12, Smith decided to move back to New York. Her son had a band called Back In Spades.

After the deaths of her husband and brother, her friends of and (whom she had known since her early years in New York) urged her to go back out on the road. She toured briefly with in December 1995 (chronicled in a book of photographs by Stipe). The next year, she worked with her long-time colleagues to record the haunting , featuring, "About a Boy", a tribute to .

Smith was a great fan of Cobain's, but was more angered than saddened by his suicide. She was quoted in , "When you watch someone you care for fight so hard to hold onto their life, then see another person just throw their life away, I guess I had less patience for that." (The contrast was in reference to Mapplethorpe.

) That same year she collaborated with Stipe on " ," a song on R.E.M.

's , which she has also performed live with the band. During this period, she returned to New York.
Since the release of Gone Again, the Patti Smith Group has recorded three new albums: (with the single "1959," about the Chinese invasion of ) in 1997, (with songs about and Smith's late father) in 2000, and in 2004 (which included several songs about motherhood, partly in tribute to Smith's mother who died in 2002).

This last album, Smith's first with a new label, , was critically acclaimed and returned her to the Billboard 200 for the first time in years. A boxed set of her work up to that time came out in 1996, and 2002 saw the release of , a two-CD compilation that includes a memorable cover of 's "When Doves Cry."
Smith curated the in during June 2005.

It was by all accounts one of the most successful Meltdown Festivals ever held, with virtually every event sold out. The line-up, all hand-picked by Smith, comprised an extremely diverse array of actors and musicians, from and , to the , to group which performed (as part of a tribute to ). The festival's penultimate event was a performance by Smith of her debut album in its entirety, the first time she has ever done so.

Guitarist (a former member of , who also played) took Oliver Ray's place. This live performance of was released later in the year as .
In August 2005 Smith and the band opened the German and played two shows in the festival’s renowned songwriter’s concert series .

Amongst unusual versions of her own material she performed very personal renditions of songs and classics by Bob Dylan and Jimi Hendrix. The next morning she held a literary lecture about the poems of Arthur Rimbaud and . On this occasion she also talked about the difference between (song-) lyrics and poems.

On , 2005, Smith was named a Commander of the by the French Culture Ministry. In addition to her influence on rock and roll, the Ministry also noted Smith's appreciation for .
During the course of her career, Smith has published a number of books of poetry, including 1980s Babel; Patti Smith Complete, a collection of her ; Early Work, collecting a number of the small poetry volumes and broadsides she published in the early 1970s; and The Coral Sea, an extended to Mapplethorpe.

In 2003 her artwork was exhibited in at the .
In January, March and May 2006 she gave several performances at the Burgtheater in Vienna, Austria, as part of Christoph Schlingensief's multimedia exhibition "Area 7 - Matthäusexpedition".
In September 2006 she gave two performances of The Coral Sea Sessions: An evening of poetry and music in remembrance of Robert Mapplethorpe which was recorded for a possible future record release.

The central part of the performance was a reading of the poem The Coral Sea accompanied by music by .
On Sunday, October 15, 2006 she performed the final show at in Manhattan. Her tour de force to close out CBGB's 33 year run lasted over 3½ hours, as she took the stage at 9:30 PM (EDT) and closed for the night (and forever for the venue) at a few minutes after 1:00.

On Friday, November 3, 2006, she performed live at the 2006 Edition of the , in , .
Smith will be inducted to the in March 2007.
On January 19, 2007, Smith appeared as a special guest during a show by Circle Sound (a one-off performance by of and of the ) singing one unnamed song.

Smith was an active supporter of 's 2000 presidential campaign, touring with him and playing "People Have the Power" and "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" before crowds of thousands at the campaign's "super-rallies." She also performed at several of Nader's subsequent "Democracy Rising" events. She nominally supported in the ; while she did not participate in the tour, "People Have the Power" was performed at all the shows involving Bruce Springsteen.

However, after the election she raised money to help Nader's 2004 campaign, deeply in debt from lawsuits by the Democratic Party. She also toured with Ralph Nader in late 2004 and early 2005 to hold rallies to end the and President . Her mentions of Nader at concerts are usually greeted with boos by a substantial portion of the audience (who may blame him for 's loss to Bush in 2000), to which she responds, "They booed , too.

"
Smith premiered two new protest songs in London in September 2006. Louise Jury, writing in The Independent characterized them as "an emotional indictment of American and Israeli foreign policy". One song ("Qana") was about the Israeli airstrike on the Lebanese village of , the other ("Without Chains") about the U.

S. detention center at .
Jury's article quotes Smith as saying, "I wrote both these songs directly in response to events that I felt outraged about.

These are injustices against children and the young men and women who are being incarcerated. I'm an American, I pay taxes in my name and they are giving millions and millions of dollars to a country such as Israel and cluster bombs and defense technology and those bombs were dropped on common citizens in Qana. It's terrible.

It's a human rights violation."
"Without Chains" is about Murat Kurnaz, a Turkish citizen who was born and raised in Germany, held at Guantanamo for four years. Jury quotes Smith, "He is the same age as my son, Jackson.

When I read the story, I realised how I would feel as a mother if my son had been taken away at the age of 20, put into chains, without any hope of leaving, without any direct charge."

November 7, 2006 (in Spanish), Artemisa Noticias.