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Jesus died for somebody's sins but not mine

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Freedom is inside of me,
it means that I'm not hung

up with like anybody's
idea of how I should be.

I'm outside of society, I'm
an artist, rock and roll is my art

and I'm free because I can leap up and
scream, I can put my fist up in the air.

I don't give a shit.

In 1975, the rock scene was completely
shaken up by an extraordinary woman,

unlike any other.

Personifying the '70s New
York underground scene,

Patti Smith revolutionized rock
through her poetry as well as her style.

If you have the balls or the
conceit to call yourself a poet,

then you should only want
to be as great as the greats.

Punk in her soul, she blurred the
boundaries of the genre, wielding art

as a political weapon.

Patti Smith according to a
lot of rock critics is unique

among female rockers
for an awful lot of reasons.

One of them is that, unlike
most female rock singers,

she doesn't play the vamp
and she doesn't play the victim.

Take me now, baby, here as I am,

pull me close try and understand.

During her fifty-year career,
with only one commercial hit,

Patti Smith managed to
become a living legend

without ever minimizing her fringe spirit.

On which we feed.

Because the night belongs to lovers,

Because the night belongs to lust.

A complex, introverted, electrifying personality,
she represents the ultimate essence of the artist.

It's the story of a free woman who
shaped her life into how she'd dreamed it.

Kids Are People Too
MPC - ABC, 1979

What did you want to
be when you were a kid?

I always wanted to be something
special most, most of all.

I just generally felt estranged,

but not only from the other kids,
I felt estranged from the planet.

Well, I felt sort of like an ugly duckling,

I spent most of my childhood
believing that I was an alien.

I used to walk through
forests and feel completely free.

It's like a pony would walk up
out of, out of a field and talk to me.

I just felt telepathic with everything.

I felt like in tune with the universe.

All my life, I've been trying to
like, get back to that freedom.

PATTI SMITH
ELECTRIC POET

Summer 1967: That year, it was all
happening on the American West Coast.

Flower power overran San Francisco.

The musical cream of the crop
flocked to the Monterey Pop Festival,

which epitomized the values
of the growing counterculture.

While the young generation
dreamed of peace and love,

the government escalated
its presence in Vietnam,

and capital cities erupted in race riots.

The incandescent Jim Morrison turned
the heat up a notch with “Light My Fire,”

The Ed Sullivan Show
Sullivan Productions - CBS, 1967

the perfect soundtrack for a
country on the verge of imploding.

Come on baby light my fire.

Try to set the night on fire.

Landing in Manhattan,
20-year-old Patricia Lee Smith

was about to experience
another Summer of Love.

Having left rural New Jersey
with only a few bucks in her pocket,

she'd packed up her
most precious possessions:

a copy of Rimbaud's Illuminations,

a few colored pencils and a notebook.

I had no money, no friends.

I slept in sidewalks, I
slept on the subways.

The cops beat me up. I had no food, but
like, I was so happy, you know, because like,

well, I guess I was romantic,
but I read all these books

about Brancusi, Modigliani,

Rimbaud, all of them. None
of them had money, all poor.

In 1964, I found a book of
Illum inations, and I opened it up.

The beautiful face of Rimbaud, the
language in it just totally seduced me and

I fell in love.

Relationship stuff was in your head anyway

so what was the difference
whether I had a crush on some boy

in class who ignored me or Rimbaud, who,

so that I could pretend
he didn't ignore me?

With its oppressive heat and
through-the-roof crime rates,

families were fleeing
drug-riddled New York City as,

for many, the metropolis
resembled a kind of hell.

They robbed me, they robbed me
and if you don't think I'm gonna do it,

I'm gonna kill them up my fist.

In that setting of chaos and grime,

Patti-by contrast-was in heaven.

I didn't have any dough.
Maybe I'd have 50 cents,

so 50 cents on 42nd Street,
you can be there all day.

You can hang out and play land,
watch the real slick dudes shoot pinball.

When you have trouble with
your bosses, remember one thing:

there's one big boss
for all of us, oh my god,

Squalid slum or realm of all possibilities,

New York was the perfect
place for reinvention.

The first time I came to
New York, he camerized me.

Filmed me with nothing.

''I'm going to put you in my Rip
Van Winkle movie'', and I went,

''Oh, rocket to stardom.''

It was here, amidst this backdrop,
that Patti felt she could transform.

Empowered by poetry and words,
she dreamed of becoming an artist.

I was very poor when I was young,

and what always concerned me was like

the richness of my imagination.

I mean, material things,
they just didn't matter.

What mattered to me was developing my mind.

She'd no sooner arrived when an
encounter changed the course of her life.

His name was Robert Mapplethorpe:
he was devilishly handsome

and exuded bad-boy allure.

An arts school graduate, he'd cut ties with
his family and was hanging out in Brooklyn.

They became lovers, and were inseparable.

We were both 20 years old

and we were both struggling,
idealistic, somewhat misfit.

She could tell him anything,
even the toughest confessions.

Like how she'd gotten pregnant and
had a baby just three months earlier;

and had given the child up for adoption.

I just wasn't ready as a human being,

and that although I knew that I
would be responsible and loving,

that I just was not equipped
to embark on that path.

It would have been
difficult for everyone, I think.

This was a widespread phenomenon
amongst young women in the '60s.

Consequently, Patti
made a promise to herself:

she'd make her dreams
come true, without regrets.

In just the same story
that could be in any country.

But I never stopped believing.

I felt the desire to
live. And like, I rose up.

This secret sealed the intimacy
of her relationship with Robert.

When he later came out
regarding his attraction to men,

their romance evolved into
an indestructible friendship.

We both felt we had a calling.

And both of us magnified one another.

In 1969, they decided to share
a room at the Chelsea Hotel,

the den of counterculture.

It was both an artistic
residency and utopian nest.

Here, you could spend
one night or several years.

It was a very heightened
time at the Chelsea.

If one was sitting in the lobby of
the Chelsea, one might encounter

in one evening, Janis Joplin,

Jimi Hendrix, William
Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg.

All of these people were trying to

make enough money to pay
their bill at the Chelsea Hotel.

A lot of people think that the Chelsea is
full of freaks mixed with the bohemian, -

STANLEY BARD
MANAGER OF THE CHELSEA HOTEL

It was the avant garde, the Chelsea was the avant
garde, the forefront of every, every kind of creative.

Why do you think it all took place?
Because the cheap rooms, no?

Cheap rooms, fun people.

In Room 1017, the hotel's
smallest living quarters,

Patti spent hours writing.

She pinned up sources of
inspiration onto the walls:

Jean Genet alongside James Dean,

Albert Camus, Brian Jones,
Vladimir Mayakovsky, Bob Dylan...

Whether high culture or pop culture,

they all had pride of place
on Patti's personal altar.

She added a drawing
practice to her writing practice,

but her poetry quickly took precedence.

New York is the thing that seduced me.

New York is the thing that formed me.
New York is the thing that deformed me.

New York is the thing that perverted me.

New York is the thing that converted me.

And New York is the thing I love too.

Living here brought Patti and Robert
closer to the artistic avant-garde.

To partake in it, this was where
you had to be, which is to say:

downtown, where the rebellious
heart of the metropolis beat,

ever since the maestro of Pop Art and
his Factory had moved in a few black away.

A hybrid establishment-part
gallery, film studio and concert hall...

Andy Warhol's Factory gathered together

New York's artists, eccentrics,
druggies and jet-setters.

We're sponsoring a new band,
it's called The Velvet Underground,

and we have this chance
to combine music and art

and films all together.

Acting as a benefactor,

Warhol also produced the soundtrack that
accompanied this subversive subculture.

The Velvet Underground
crystallized a dissonant, dark sound:

one of heroin and amphetamines,

an urban reality in which
one longed for their drug dealer

as one would a lover.

This fascinating, intimidating
world was walled off from the rest;

Robert and Patti were
determined to vanquish it.

The first place they conquered
was Max's Kansas City.

Max's Kansas City, a
restaurant near the factory,

is the gathering place for
New York's underground.

Almost every evening,
Warhol's clan can be found here.

Kansas City functions as both
an unofficial casting agency

and a public playground.

It's here that Warhol's
films continue on in real life.

While they weren't in the foreground
yet, it wouldn't be long before they were.

Robert and I, we were both outsiders,

kind of wallflowers.

But it was a very creative atmosphere,

everyone exchanging ideas
and very competitive atmosphere.

And, I found it very inspiring.

That night, back at the Chelsea Hotel,

Patti made a radical decision.

She vowed to stop being a wallflower.

She grabbed a pair of scissors,

and an hour later, Keith
Richards' little sister materialized.

Patti decided to embraced her
androgynous side, and it worked for her.

She was cast in Femme Fatale,

a play written by and
starring Jackie Curtis,

Andy Warhol's transgender leading lady.

I carried his baby.

And then I ditched him.

In a church in the Bowery.

No!

I hate him!

Oh oh, here she comes!

Hey Cabrini, any mail today?

At experimental theater La Mama,

Patti replaced a male actor at
last minute, in the role of a junkie.

Boy or girl, it didn't matter; in this
queer scene where trash mixed with glamor,

one thing was certain: everyone
was free to be who they wanted.

The excitement of waiting
for the curtain to open,

when you're in front of the curtain,

it's like a surge power you feel
when people are applauding for you.

Man, what a great feeling.

I have to admit it's even
better than being with a man,

it's almost better than that.

A man: Patti was madly in love with one,

actor/playwright Sam Shepard,

with whom she continued her
foray into the world of theater.

Together, they wrote and
performed Cowboy Mouth.

I was still a fledgling writer.

He encouraged me and
was one of the people that

got me in motion to perform.

It was a meta-play featuring their passion.

But at the third performance,

Sam took off to rejoin the wife
and child he'd left behind in Canada.

The play was canceled.
Patti didn't let it break her;

she was undeterred in
pursuing her artistic future.

I found a fairy land
right inside myself here,

because when I lived in South Jersey
or whatever, life was simpler there.

Life was simpler because,
you know, we worked,

we slopped the hogs, you know, we
picked the peaches and all that stuff.

And then you came in and you ate your supper, and
you thanked the Lord, and then you went to bed.

But that's all there was. There
was no chance for extension.

There was no chance to be
destroyed or really be creative there.

You just lived.

And that's OK for some people, but I always
felt something different stirring in me.

Ever since she'd met William
Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg

and Gregory Corso-the giants of the
Beat Generation at the Chelsea Hotel.

Patti no longer had
doubts about her calling.

She too wanted to update poetry,
make it less snobby and refined.

Brilliant and provocative,

the Beats were literary bad boys

who spurred the protest
movements of the '60s,

with their rejection of
the American way of life

and politically-fueled writings.

The young poets rise

to kiss the soul of the revolution

in Vietnam the body is burned

to show the truth of only the body...

In my train seat I renounce

my power, so that I do

live I will die.

Ex-cons, druggies, broke or gay,

Patti loved everything about them;

they would soon serve as her guides.

On February 10, 1971,
Patti turned a corner.

At the Holy of Holies
of avant-garde poetry,

namely the Poetry Project
at St. Mark's Church,

she opened for Gerard Malanga,

an artist and Warhol's personal assistant.

It was the first time she'd
performed under her own name.

Tonight, Patti Smith,
she's a terrific poet.

Patti Smith.

She felt enormous pressure.

Every Factory hipster and Beat
Generation luminary was in attendance.

The murdered boy, the
murdered boy. Oh I was bad.

I got to do something special
because if I don't do something special,

Gregory Corso, who was
mentoring me not to be a boring poet,

is gonna, you know, throw
tomatoes at me or something.

She shoved me in a hole.

With a small lamp, a humble little set-up,

I wanted to perform my poetry.

I had just met Lenny and I asked
him if he would do some electric guitar

in a poem about a car crash.

No one had ever done that.

No one had brought an electric
guitar in the church before.

Certainly not a girl.

The audience was wowed by her writings,

which she performed with
the fervor of a preacher.

I've been reading the
bible since I was a child and

always found it inspiring, not
only spiritually but poetically.

I was a Jehovah witness, and in those days,

Jehovah witnesses were stricter

about one's pursuits outside of...

being a witness.

I was about 12, I went to the Philadelphia
Museum of Art with my father and

saw art in person and immediately
wanted to become an artist.

My desires sort of
collided with their teachings,

so I left the witnesses
to become an artist.

At age 25, enriched by various influences,

Patti was honing her own voice,
somewhere between poetry and song.

With the musical touch of Lenny
Kaye to boot, she had something unique.

The hype that surrounded
Patti from that point on

opened new doors for her.

She published her
first collection of poems,

Seventh Heaven, immediately
followed by Kodak, then Witt.

When I started writing the poems,
I used to put the Rolling Stones on,

to be able to get me into a rhythm
where my word and my body connected.

And I was writing poetry.

Get in my typewriter, get into a rhythm,

you know, and start writing, you know,

start writing in the rhythm of the Rolling
Stones, but I'd write my own language.

Poetry was the most releasing drug for me.

More and more convinced that the rhythm of
her writing would be sublimated through music,

she decided to record two songs at Jimi
Hendrix's famous Electric Lady Studios.

Thanks to money from Robert,
the single was an immediate hit.

In the wake of this, she did a series of
live performances with her fledgling group.

Alright, this is my guys:
Richard Sohl on piano,

Lenny Kaye on guitar, and me Patti, this
is our single, it's called Piss Factory.

She took her androgynous look
up a notch with a shirt and tie,

borrowing a boyish wardrobe-and attitude.

Sixteen and time to pay off

I got this job in a piss
factory inspecting pipe

Forty hours a week,
thirty-six bucks it's real bullshit

But you know it's a paycheck, Jack.

It's really hot in here
too, hot like Sahara

But all these bitches are
just too lame to understand

They're just too grateful
to get this job to realize

they're getting screwed up the ass

Through both her body and her lyrics,

Patti firmed up her style.

With “Piss Factory” she
exorcized her demons,

recounting the ordeal of working a summer
job in a factory in her native New Jersey.

Floor boss comes up to me and he says

''Hey Smith, come here

You know you're doin'
your piece work too fast,

You screwin' up the quota,

You get off your mustang sally

''Cause you ain't goin' nowhere,
you ain't goin' nowhere.''

I lay back. I take a swig of Romilar

Patti's juxtaposition of poetry
and music were working,

all that she was missing was
a place she'd feel at home.

CBGB's was a little bar down in the Bowery,

right near where William Burroughs lived,

where the winos and the
bums slept on the streets,

you know, were dogs peed in front of and

it was just a little bar
that nobody cared about.

In this seedy setting, the band Television

was experimenting with
songs several nights a week.

The emerging group played experimental
rock, without compromising or posturing.

I was so excited to see this band.

Tom Verlaine and Richard
Hell, both being poets,

they were doing a lot
of what we were doing.

A little wild raggedy, like ourselves.

And I saw a real future, I felt
a real brotherhood with them.

The attraction was mutual. Television's band members recognized within Patti's masculine, experimental
vibe a bit of their own intellectual rage and deconstructive spirit. They soon suggested sharing a bill.

Television's band members recognized
within Patti's masculine, experimental vibe

a bit of their own intellectual
rage and deconstructive spirit.

They soon suggested sharing a bill.

Crashing his head against the locker

It was an opportunity for Patti
and her band to test their songs

in front of a young, cynical audience

who rejected established values.

When suddenly Johnny gets the
feeling he's being surrounded by

We played there for weeks and weeks and months, and young people started
coming from all over to come to CBGB's because at last we had a place.

And young people started coming from all over to
come to CBGB's because at last we had a place.

To come to CBGB's
because at last we had a place.

I think what's happening, we're at a big transitional period. I think that rock'n'roll was down and was
sleeping, and I feel that all these new bands and my band saw this, we're doing our best to say 'wake up'.

I think that rock'n'roll was down
and was sleeping, and I feel that

all these new bands and my band saw this,
we're doing our best to say 'wake up'.

The wake-up call was intense,
electric and highly charged.

Within a few months, CBGB became an
incubator of the New York punk movement.

It encompassed not only
the birth of a music scene,

but also a state of mind, a community.

You call them punk because you
got nothing else to say about them.

No other way to link them.

But it's like the heartbeat that
links them. You know, the beat.

With her weekly appearances, Patti
quickly became the club's figurehead.

She was soon joined by the Ramones;

Blondie and the band's alluring
lead singer, Debbie Harry,

and the Talking Heads.

It didn't matter if you
knew how to play well;

energy and attitude
mattered above all else.

The buzz around Patti continued to grow.

Her unconventional magnetism
drew people from all corners of the city.

It took only one night for Clive
Davis, who had discovered Janis Joplin,

to sign her to his new label, Arista.

With a contract worth
several thousand dollars,

Patti was now in the big leagues.

She could afford a studio
session with John Cale,

the genius producer once
part of the Velvet Underground.

That collaboration led to the
creation of a unique album.

Rimbaud's self-appointed kid
sister turned every code upside down.

The standard verse/chorus
template was knocked aside,

singing and sermon coexisted, the
urban and the mystical intertwined.

The lyrics were intimate, political
manifestos. It was groundbreaking.

I was consciously trying to make a record

that would make a certain
type of person not feel alone.

People like me, different
since they were a kid.

I wasn't targeting the whole world,
I wasn't trying to make a hit record,

but I thought if a hundred
people liked it, that would be great.

Saturday Night Live NBC, 1976

On November 10, 1975,

the album Horses was released.

The very first track, “Gloria,”
set the tone right away.

Jesus died for somebody's
sins, but not mine.

Meltin' in a pot of thieves

Wild card up my sleeve

Thick heart of stone

My sins my own

They belong to me, me

I ain't afraid to say anything like that,

I'm not afraid of being
struck down by lightning,

and if I do, I know it'll
be an ecstatic experience.

So maybe some people can alleviate

guilt through me, you
know, let me be bad for them.

In addition to competing with God,

she took up Van Morrison's
song and his masculine refrain,

addressed to the titular Gloria.

Patti took his place, bellowing
out her desire for another woman.

When you came to my room

And you whispered to me
and I took the big plunge

And oh, you were so
good, oh, you were so fine

And I gotta tell the world

that I make her mine, make
her mine, make her mine...

G-L-O-R-I-A Gloria G-L-O-R-I-A

NOT EVERY BOY DREAMS
OF BEING A MARINE

Providing a platform for
marginalized communities,

Patti echoed the demands
of the gay community,

which was mobilizing and becoming visible.

She pushed back against
voices of the conservative majority,

which dominated television sets.

If we were going to go on a crusade across the
nation and try to do away with the homosexuals...

Let's pray for him right now, Anita.

Father, we wanted to
ask that you forgive him

and that we're praying
for him, and I just...

If you are male and
choose other than female,

you must take the responsibility
of holding the key to freedom

Equally disturbing and fascinating,

the album received both
critical and popular success.

It sold 200,000 copies and
placed at the top of the charts.

The impact was both musical and visual.

Photographed by her best friend Robert Mapplethorpe,
the album cover blurred the boundaries of gender.

Patti posed in a man's shirt and
tie, a blazer flung over her shoulder.

No makeup, no hairstyling, and
a clearly visible downy mustache:

She looked like no one else, and certainly
not what anyone expected of a woman.

My record company, they
wanted to doctor the picture,

hairbrush my hair to
make it look a little better,

and they were trying to improve
me. But that wasn't what I wanted.

So the shot stands as it was shot.

Patti had no interest whatsoever
in performing the female gender.

She'd been unclassifiable for a long time.

So when it came to finding role
models, she followed her heart.

I think that all the performers that affected
me have basically, all they've been male.

I loved Rimbaud so much,
but Bob Dylan was alive.

I was so smitten with him aesthetically,

he influenced me in the way I walk,

sometimes the way I dress or
the way I wear pants, you know,

it's just, I adored him.

She was sixteen when Bob
Dylan participated, in August 1963,

in the March on Washington.

The '60s spawned
the fight for civil rights.

I have a dream.

There was opposition to the
Vietnam War and, more broadly,

a demand for a new social order.

Criticism is very patriotic.

It is this our duty to protest if
we think that things are unjust.

It's part of the American way.

A tree in paradise

Major figures of protest
music, like Joan Baez,

set the tempo for those activist years.

I think that, you know, someone's
going to sell five million records,

they should be saying something
within those five million records.

They should be communicating
something than just, dull wiretap.

I mean, to me, most people that
are selling that many records right now

aren't doing anything
really to communicate.

They're just, they're just
taking people's money

and giving them sort of mediocre
entertainment in exchange.

We today have concluded an agreement

to end the war and bring
peace with honor in Vietnam.

THE WAR IS OVER!

Within that socio-political context,

Patti's activism grew.

When the end of the Vietnam War was
celebrated in Central Park, in May 1975,

she was only just becoming a public figure.

But it felt self-evident for
her to partake in the event,

and she took the stage alongside
her teenage idol, Joan Baez.

We're really opting for peace,
especially our generation, which really

worked really hard to stop war.

But we come from

from centuries and
centuries of being warriors,

we have to do something
with that physical kind of energy.

This is our instrument of war,

and for my generation, this
is our instrument of battle.

This is the only instrument
of battle that we want left.

We want to get rid of all machine guns

and all the bombs and all that shit,

and we just want to fight
each other out with sound.

With this new weapon in hand, Patti was
determined to spread the good word of rock.

My band and myself,

we are not a career driven band.

We have always been driven by
political, revolutionary spiritual ideas.

The whole idea of rock and roll
was that it was a revolutionary art

and that people had a grassroots
way of expressing themselves.

Move!

Ask the angels who they're calling,

Go ask the angels if
they're calling to thee

Ask the angels while they're falling

Who that person could possibly be

And I know it's hard sometimes,

You got accuse accuse across the floor?

And I know it's hard sometimes

Committed to this mission,
the workaholic musician

released a new opus less
than a year after Horses,

filled with references to Rimbaud's
exile and to Rastafarianism.

Radio Ethiopia is the
name of our new record,

and it represents to us

a naked field where in

anyone can express
themselves, it's a free radio.

The more people submit

and the more I submit, the
greater show it's going to be,

the greater we're going to be.

Do you not go to the palace
of answers with me Marie?

Backed by electric guitars
and shamanic drums,

Patti performed before audiences
who awaited her like the messiah.

On stage, she sang-screamed-in
what seemed, at times,

like a nearly trance-like state.

Her concerts were
unforgettable performances.

She might extend a
song for over 20 minutes,

and she required her band to improvise,

never letting them repeat
their approach twice.

Every day I want to feel some sensation,

every day I want to create, every
day I want to know that I'm alive,

I want to know that I'm on the Planet.

And when I'm on the
stage, my time of the day

to like go through
every sensation possible.

Performing involves so much
of your, of your physical brainiac,

moral energy, all your energies into one and
you extend and expend so much of yourself

that the idea of saving up life, you know

for later just seems
to me totally pointless.

And it has totally made me
not afraid of dying anymore.

With their succession
of promotional tour dates,

covering the United States and Europe,

It's Radio Ethiopia!

Patti and her band were
on the road for an entire year.

Radio Ethiopia got mixed reviews,

and Patti's theatrical
meanderings cost her with critics,

who didn't understand them.

She is socially approved
how the loony of rock and roll.

She is good at times and
excessive at other times.

The pressure mounted.

During a live radio show, Patti
got carried away and said “fuck” live.

Officially prohibited by federal law,

this cost her an on-air
ban for the rest of the tour.

Scandalized, she published an article in
which she decried this act of censorship.

You Can't Say Fuck in Radio Free America

They don't like me to
come on the station live

because they're afraid of what
I'll say, because I talk about

too many things that disturb
the middle class, you know?

At a press conference in London, a
journalist criticized her lengthy songs.

Enraged, she threw sandwiches at him.

The tide was turning.

She was now being reproached for
everything people had loved about her.

They even made fun of her look on TV.

THE MIKE DOUGLAS SHOW
Westinghouse Broadcasting Company, 1978

You're wearing some of the
strangest outfits on our show.

What do you mean strange,
this stuff cost a fortune.

What are you talking about?

Nothing matches Patti.

Matches?

They're all striped. Everything.

The jacket isn't striped.

It's like a... Well, it's all silk.

I don't know, already I'm insulted.

I've been on here a little three and a
half minutes, I've been insulted 14 times.

It was all happening fast-too fast.

On January 23rd, 1977,

dancing like a whirling
dervish, Patti fell.

Skirting a true catastrophe, she got
away with just two broken vertebrae.

Bedridden and under sedation for weeks,

she was thrown back into a state
she had known well in childhood.

I was very sickly most of my childhood.

I was like seven years old
and I had scarlet fever and

it stuck me in such a state like
where I'd start hallucinating really early.

I slept right next to a coal stove,

and I was watching this
blue flame and it just felt like

I was being suffocated by comets, skulls

and animals like foxes with like
human faces coming at me real fast

and all that kind of stuff,
and it sort of never went away

and it just made me feel alien

from everybody because I
couldn't really express it, you know?

This reconnection with her
imagination enabled her to write Babel.

The collection of poems contained a
tidal wave of hallucinations and ecstasies.

She is unique in the rock and roll world,

she is also a serious poet.

Literary critics do take her
very seriously and say she is a

creative woman to be reckoned with.

And her latest book, Babel,

was lengthily reviewed
by no lesser a publication

than the New York
Times review of books.

The high priestess of rock made
her comeback by way of literature.

She even shared a book-signing,
surrounded by her heroes.

For an artist so fond of symbolism, a
brush with death inevitably had meaning.

I continually want to communicate with God,

even though I know it's
very dangerous territory,

which is one of the reasons
why I had my accident,

but I don't want to die. This
is my chance on the world.

I'm here right now and I want
right now to be the greatest time.

This is my golden age,
this is our golden age.

I'm not there in the past, I'm not
there in the future, I'm right here.

You see what I mean?
The time to flower is now.

Be it divine will or fate's helping hand,

Patti retrieved a melody
sketched out by Bruce Springsteen,

which would propel her next
album, Easter, to the top of the charts.

Take me now, baby, here as I am

Pull me close, try and understand

“Because the Night” became
her first mainstream hit,

released in the spring of 1978.

Because the night belongs to lovers

Because the night belongs to lust

Because the night belongs to lovers

Because the night belongs to us

Have I doubt when I'm alone

Love is a ring, the telephone

Love is an angel disguised as lust

The song rang so true
because Patti was in love.

At a concert in Detroit,

she met the legendary
Fred “Sonic” Smith of MC5,

one of the wildest bands
on the American rock scene.

For her longtime fans, the radio-friendly
romantic ballad didn't go down well.

I was criticized, they said, ''Well'',

you're supposed to be a punk rocker
and you have a popular song'', and I said:

punk rock does not mean not
to be popular, it means freedom,

and I'll do what I want.

At age 31, Patti had managed
to climb to the top of the charts,

without ever compromising.

It took her less than five
years to become a rock icon,

whose faithful following came in
droves to attend her high mass.

Every time you do a
performance, you're trying to seduce

anywhere from three hundred
to three thousand strangers

and it becomes a very
intimate, you know, sexual thing,

and not the only way to have
sex is to be in bed with each other.

Patti was playing with
fire, giving everything to

audiences who energized
her yet totally consumed her.

People even talked about it on
TV, but she remained oblivious.

THE MIDNIGHT SPECIAL. NBC, 1978 You
have some really maniac fans, why do you

think the kids get so
crazy at your concerts?

Well, I was pretty maniac kid myself.

I mean, I still am. I
mean, I feel that a concert,

you know, like, like Mick Jagger
said at Altamont is not just for people

coming to see a performer,
but for a mutual experience.

Moving from an underground scene
into the spotlight, Patti had her doubts.

How do you stay true to yourself,
once you've become adored?

Covering a song by the Byrds on
the emptiness of the star system,

Patti sent out a thinly-veiled message
on the irony of her own condition.

A little insane.

You're a little insane,

All the things that you gain

Is the public acclaim

Don't forget who you are,

Don't forget who you are,

Don't forget who you are,

You're a rock and roll star

In that song,

there's a line that you sing ''Don't forget
who you are, you're a rock and roll star''.

And I'd just like to know
what that means to you now.

Mm-hmm. I don't like
how I look on that... thing.

Her inner malaise grew in
tandem with stadium capacities.

On September 10th, 1979, in Florence,
in front of more than 80,000 people,

Patti made her decision.

It was over. She was bowing
out at the height of her career.

The following day it was straight
to the airport, destination Detroit.

On March 1st 1980,

Patti Smith married Fred Smith,
and went off the radar for nine years.

In 1988, to everyone surprise,

Patti return with a new album
''Dream of life'', co-written with Fred.

One day I was in the kitchen, cooking,

and he looked at me and he said:

People have the power, write it.

And I said, ok.

They made only a single
appearance, in March 1990,

for Arista's 15th anniversary.

That's What Friends Are For: Arista
Records 15th Anniversary Concert. CBS, 1990

through our union

We can turn the world around

We can turn the earth's revolution

We have the power

People have the power

The people have the power

The people have the power

The power to dream

Although the song became an anthem, returning
to public life was out of the question.

After that brief detour,
it was back to family life.

People say to me,

Gee, you didn't do any work
in the eighties and I want to like

strangle them, you have no idea how hard,

I mean, how hard, you know, a mother works.

I mean, I was born an artist, you know,

I believe that I have a
calling to be an artist and

my gifts are God given.
But my domestic skills,

I had to learn from scratch.

On November 4, 1994, unimaginable sadness:

Fred “Sonic” Smith died of a
heart attack, at the age of 46.

After my husband died, I
didn't want to do anything,

I didn't even want to get out of bed,

but I had children and I have work to do

and my brother really made
me get out of bed and said,

well, instead of, you know,
mourning Fred and not

getting up, you should
be writing songs for him.

A year later, the album
Gone Again was released.

Her life had fallen apart;

Patti leaned on
self-expression to rebuild it.

It's been a hard time

And when it rains

It rains on me

The sky just opens

And when it rains

It pours

It's like the checks and balances of life.

We have beautiful things
happen. We have terrible things.

Patti encountered yet more grief.

In under five years, she lost her best friend
Robert Mapplethorpe, her husband Fred Smith,

her pianist Richard Sohl,
and her brother Todd.

Grieving is a very complex thing.

Some of it is very draining,

but sometimes in the middle of
grieving, for no apparent reason,

one feels extreme joy,
I think just to be alive.

At age 49, Patti got her group
back together and went on the road.

Artists don't retire,
they just shift conditions.

After a 17-year absence, the
public was still there for her.

But there was no way Patti was going
to play the game for the mainstream.

I was told just today that the
reason an artist such as myself

can't get airplay is because
I'm too issue orientated.

What better time to

speak about issues than at a time when
people don't want to hear about them?

And music is an excellent forum to

talk about the things that we need to do.

At the turn of the millennium, Patti Smith was
more connected than ever to the world around her.

It is the people that must wake up

and take more civic duties
and more responsibility.

If you see things around you,

unjust, unclean, that need change,

don't seat on your ass, use your voice!

Take it to the streets!

And it's election year, use
your voice, use your voice!

I still get enraged,

I imagined that I was going to
return and be a little bit more stately

and be a little, a little wiser, maybe
a little more, a little conservative,

but it's not like that.

Still consumed by that
same creative impulse,

Patti added photography to her
music, poetry and drawing practices.

Thanks to her Land 250
camera from the 1960s,

she created sensitive,
vintage-looking Polaroids.

Robert Mapplethorpe's
slippers, Virginia Woolf's bed,

Arthur Rimbaud's tomb:

Patti unveiled her relics, her memories,
and her wanderings to the public.

She dialogued with the dead,

with those who had inspired her as
well as those whose lives she'd shared.

EXPOSITION LAND 250, 2008 She never created a
hierarchy, and always stayed true to herself.

I started taking Polaroids very
seriously after the death of my husband

because its simple, gave me
immediate response to a creative need.

After words and music, she was
being recognized as a visual artist.

In 2010, at the age of 64,

Patti published Just Kids,
her first autobiography.

Through this narrative, she made good on
her promise to Robert to tell their story.

Digging through her memories, she conjured
up her move to New York and her beginnings.

I accepted a date with an older man

and he walked me down
to Tompkins Square Park

and I was so nervous and we sat down. And then he said,
“Would you like to come up to my apartment for a cocktail?”

And I thought, “Oh, I'm done”, I was
so scared, I didn't know what to do.

And this boy appeared
as if the clouds parted.

This boy that I had just
casually met once or twice,

and I ran up to him and said,

“Will you pretend you're my
boyfriend?” And he said, “Sure”.

He rescued me and then we never separated.

We were so in tune in kind that

when we did a work, we
wanted the other to see it ;

when we leapt to a new place, when we

had an illumination, it felt truer,
more magnified in the eyes of the other.

Now over 70 years old,
Patti has lived many lives.

Always navigating the margins, she
represents-through her radical nature...

The very essence of an artist.

But above all, she personifies a
spirit of freedom, of fully being oneself.

Once you finish a work,
it belongs to the people,

but what belongs to the artist is the process.
But it's a struggle that I'm proud to have.

It's decreed, the people rule.

I've never been normal, but I'm
just a normal eccentric person.

Vengeful aspects became
suspect, and bending low as if to hear

My public life is something
I do to share my energy or

ideas with the people.

But when I finish my
concerts, I'm just myself,

you know, I don't turn into
a rock star to to perform,

I'm wearing the same
clothes I'm, I just go on stage,

I spend two hours or so with the people,
and then, you know back on my way.