WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:02.419 Welcome back to the Deep Dive. Today we are looking 00:00:02.419 --> 00:00:05.780 at a resume that, frankly, just shouldn't exist. 00:00:06.040 --> 00:00:08.220 It really shouldn't. It's a resume that's just 00:00:08.220 --> 00:00:11.279 filled with contradictions. I mean, if I told 00:00:11.279 --> 00:00:13.500 you we were profiling a rock and roll hall of 00:00:13.500 --> 00:00:15.539 famer, you'd get one image in your head, right? 00:00:15.599 --> 00:00:17.679 Sure. Letter jackets, guitars, the whole thing. 00:00:17.780 --> 00:00:20.260 Exactly. Yeah. But then what if I added that 00:00:20.260 --> 00:00:23.239 this person is also a National Book Award winner, 00:00:23.440 --> 00:00:26.260 a distinguished photographer, a human rights 00:00:26.260 --> 00:00:32.399 activist, and oh. The image is just completely 00:00:32.399 --> 00:00:34.539 shattered. It creates a kind of cognitive dissonance 00:00:34.539 --> 00:00:36.840 for sure. It does. Usually you get to be one 00:00:36.840 --> 00:00:39.200 of those things, not all of them. We are, of 00:00:39.200 --> 00:00:41.039 course, talking about Patti Smith. And I feel 00:00:41.039 --> 00:00:43.420 like in pop culture, she gets flattened into 00:00:43.420 --> 00:00:46.159 this two -dimensional cutout. The godmother of 00:00:46.159 --> 00:00:48.299 punk. You know, the woman in the men's white 00:00:48.299 --> 00:00:51.579 shirt on the cover of horses. But looking at 00:00:51.579 --> 00:00:53.960 this stack of research we have, including her 00:00:53.960 --> 00:00:56.280 new memoir, Bread of Angels, that just hit shelves 00:00:56.280 --> 00:00:59.420 a couple of months ago, that label feels incredibly 00:00:59.420 --> 00:01:02.380 reductive. Oh, completely. It's like calling 00:01:02.380 --> 00:01:04.780 Leonardo da Vinci that guy who drew helicopters. 00:01:05.019 --> 00:01:08.159 Right. That's a perfect analogy. I think to really 00:01:08.159 --> 00:01:10.969 understand Patti Smith. Especially now that we're 00:01:10.969 --> 00:01:13.870 sitting here in January 2026, looking back at 00:01:13.870 --> 00:01:16.609 nearly 80 years of her life. You have to stop 00:01:16.609 --> 00:01:19.370 thinking of her as a musician. OK, that's a bold 00:01:19.370 --> 00:01:22.189 statement. Go on. She isn't a musician who writes 00:01:22.189 --> 00:01:26.069 poetry. She is a poet who hijacked rock and roll 00:01:26.069 --> 00:01:29.170 to get her words heard. And that is a fundamental, 00:01:29.430 --> 00:01:31.650 fundamental difference. So that's our mission 00:01:31.650 --> 00:01:34.250 for this deep dive. We want to figure out how 00:01:34.250 --> 00:01:37.120 a factory worker from New Jersey. who literally 00:01:37.120 --> 00:01:40.459 daydreamed that 19th century French poets were 00:01:40.459 --> 00:01:44.150 her boyfriends, managed to bridge that gap. between 00:01:44.150 --> 00:01:46.310 the Beat Generation and the Sex Pistols. It's 00:01:46.310 --> 00:01:48.329 an incredible story. And I really want to dig 00:01:48.329 --> 00:01:50.849 into her middle years, you know, the 80s and 00:01:50.849 --> 00:01:53.329 90s, because I think that's where the real story 00:01:53.329 --> 00:01:55.950 is, not just the loud, famous punk years. That's 00:01:55.950 --> 00:01:58.189 where the transformation happens, from icon to, 00:01:58.329 --> 00:02:01.430 I'd say, sage. Sage, I like that. But we have 00:02:01.430 --> 00:02:03.849 to start at the beginning. And usually biographies 00:02:03.849 --> 00:02:07.010 start with Born in Chicago, 1946, which is true 00:02:07.010 --> 00:02:09.849 for her. But the real story, her emotional story, 00:02:10.069 --> 00:02:13.800 starts in Deptford Township, New Jersey. And 00:02:13.800 --> 00:02:16.780 we have to talk about the Bread of Angels reveal 00:02:16.780 --> 00:02:19.319 immediately because it just completely rewrites 00:02:19.319 --> 00:02:21.419 her origin story. It does. It's a bombshell, 00:02:21.460 --> 00:02:24.479 really. For her entire career, Patti Smith's 00:02:24.479 --> 00:02:28.400 mythology was built on this idea of the Irish 00:02:28.400 --> 00:02:30.939 -American working class underdog. Blue -collar 00:02:30.939 --> 00:02:33.939 roots. Absolutely. Her father, Grant Smith, was 00:02:33.939 --> 00:02:36.419 a machinist at Honeywell. Her mother, Beverly, 00:02:36.699 --> 00:02:39.520 was a jazz singer who became a waitress. There's 00:02:39.520 --> 00:02:42.020 a very specific, you know, blue collar, slightly 00:02:42.020 --> 00:02:44.759 mystical Irish identity there. But in Bread of 00:02:44.759 --> 00:02:47.479 Angels, she just drops this bomb. At age 70, 00:02:47.560 --> 00:02:49.580 she finds out Grant Smith wasn't her biological 00:02:49.580 --> 00:02:52.539 father. Right. She discovers her biological lineage 00:02:52.539 --> 00:02:55.659 is actually Ashkenazi Jewish. So here's my question. 00:02:55.979 --> 00:02:58.879 Does that change the art? I mean, she spent 70 00:02:58.879 --> 00:03:01.819 years operating under one identity. Does finding 00:03:01.819 --> 00:03:04.919 this out so late in life, does it change the 00:03:04.919 --> 00:03:07.500 meaning of the work she did in her 20s? Or is 00:03:07.500 --> 00:03:09.620 it just sort of a footnote? That's the big question, 00:03:09.680 --> 00:03:11.419 isn't it? I don't think it changes the work itself, 00:03:11.599 --> 00:03:14.319 but I think it validates the feeling behind the 00:03:14.319 --> 00:03:16.780 work. How so? If you look at her childhood descriptions, 00:03:17.219 --> 00:03:20.139 she always felt like a changeling. She describes 00:03:20.139 --> 00:03:22.620 herself as the sickly, sometimes hallucinating 00:03:22.620 --> 00:03:24.680 child who didn't look like anyone else in her 00:03:24.680 --> 00:03:27.599 family. Like she did Blanc. Exactly. She felt 00:03:27.599 --> 00:03:31.650 genetically displaced. I think finding out about 00:03:31.650 --> 00:03:34.430 her Jewish ancestry later in life seems to have 00:03:34.430 --> 00:03:37.889 provided this click moment for her, an explanation 00:03:37.889 --> 00:03:40.710 for that bone -deep sense of otherness she carried 00:03:40.710 --> 00:03:43.569 all through the South Jersey suburbs. That otherness 00:03:43.569 --> 00:03:45.750 wasn't just internal, though. It became very 00:03:45.750 --> 00:03:48.030 externalized once she hit the workforce. We have 00:03:48.030 --> 00:03:49.949 to talk about the piss factory. The crucible. 00:03:50.050 --> 00:03:53.060 Right. So she graduates high school. Goes to 00:03:53.060 --> 00:03:55.099 work in a stroller factory. And this isn't a 00:03:55.099 --> 00:03:59.199 summer job to buy a car. This is 1960s hardcore 00:03:59.199 --> 00:04:02.300 industrial labor. It was brutal. And it's so 00:04:02.300 --> 00:04:04.280 important to understand why it was brutal. It 00:04:04.280 --> 00:04:06.740 wasn't just the physical labor, you know, hosing 00:04:06.740 --> 00:04:09.520 down baby buggies in extreme heat. No. It was 00:04:09.520 --> 00:04:12.439 the social isolation. She was weird. She was 00:04:12.439 --> 00:04:14.939 the girl reading a bilingual edition of Arthur 00:04:14.939 --> 00:04:16.939 Rimbaugh's Illuminations on her lunch break. 00:04:17.319 --> 00:04:20.240 Rimbaugh, who she literally imagined was her 00:04:20.240 --> 00:04:23.040 boyfriend. Yes. The other women in the factory 00:04:23.040 --> 00:04:25.699 who were, you know, trying to survive and feed 00:04:25.699 --> 00:04:28.040 their families, they didn't get it. And they 00:04:28.040 --> 00:04:29.860 essentially tortured her for it. Jumped their 00:04:29.860 --> 00:04:33.019 head in a toilet. Yeah. They bullied her relentlessly. 00:04:33.100 --> 00:04:35.639 That's the part that really interests me. Because 00:04:35.639 --> 00:04:38.819 usually the punk ethos is associated with solidarity. 00:04:39.339 --> 00:04:41.800 You know, us against the world. Right. The working 00:04:41.800 --> 00:04:45.680 class hero. But her punk origin story is actually 00:04:45.680 --> 00:04:48.600 about being rejected by the working class, not 00:04:48.600 --> 00:04:51.730 embraced by it. That's such a key insight. Piss 00:04:51.730 --> 00:04:54.870 Factory, the poem, and later the B -side to her 00:04:54.870 --> 00:04:57.430 first single. It isn't a protest song in the 00:04:57.430 --> 00:04:59.389 Woody Guthrie sense. It's not this land is your 00:04:59.389 --> 00:05:01.790 land. Not at all. It's a song about individual 00:05:01.790 --> 00:05:03.910 transcendence. The famous line, I'm going to 00:05:03.910 --> 00:05:05.089 get out of here. I'm going to go to New York. 00:05:05.129 --> 00:05:07.170 I'm going to be somebody. It was the realization 00:05:07.170 --> 00:05:09.870 that if she stayed in that factory, her soul 00:05:09.870 --> 00:05:12.810 would just atrophy. That hostility gave her the 00:05:12.810 --> 00:05:15.170 armor she needed for New York. So it taught her 00:05:15.170 --> 00:05:16.870 she didn't need to be liked. She needed to be 00:05:16.870 --> 00:05:21.720 free. So she runs. 1967. She hits Manhattan with 00:05:21.720 --> 00:05:24.480 almost nothing. And she's homeless, basically. 00:05:24.740 --> 00:05:28.019 Sleeping in parks, on the subways, stealing food 00:05:28.019 --> 00:05:30.939 from street vendors. She gets a job at Scribner's 00:05:30.939 --> 00:05:33.279 Bookstore, which is kind of her first safe haven. 00:05:33.420 --> 00:05:35.800 And then she meets Robert Mapplethorpe. And I 00:05:35.800 --> 00:05:39.360 feel like we can't overstate this. Without Robert 00:05:39.360 --> 00:05:42.009 Mapplethorpe, is there a Patti Smith? i would 00:05:42.009 --> 00:05:44.569 argue no or at least not the patty smith we know 00:05:44.569 --> 00:05:47.569 they were lovers yes for a time but it was so 00:05:47.569 --> 00:05:49.750 much deeper than that they were co -conspirators 00:05:49.750 --> 00:05:52.250 i love that phrase for them They lived in the 00:05:52.250 --> 00:05:55.110 Hotel Chelsea, often with no money to eat, but 00:05:55.110 --> 00:05:56.970 they had this pact. They just knew they were 00:05:56.970 --> 00:05:59.470 artists. And Robert believed she was a star before 00:05:59.470 --> 00:06:02.170 she did. He was the one who saw the performative 00:06:02.170 --> 00:06:04.550 aspect of her poetry, her drawings. There's that 00:06:04.550 --> 00:06:06.329 great line in Just Kids where she talks about 00:06:06.329 --> 00:06:08.610 them being just kids, obviously, but the dynamic 00:06:08.610 --> 00:06:10.250 was so intense. He was taking these incredible 00:06:10.250 --> 00:06:13.170 photos. She was drawing and writing. But let's 00:06:13.170 --> 00:06:15.079 talk about the transition to music. Because she 00:06:15.079 --> 00:06:17.519 didn't start as a singer. No, not at all. She 00:06:17.519 --> 00:06:20.439 started as a poet doing readings at St. Mark's 00:06:20.439 --> 00:06:23.100 Church, part of the poetry project. So how do 00:06:23.100 --> 00:06:25.199 you go from reading from a piece of paper in 00:06:25.199 --> 00:06:29.939 a church to fronting a rock band at CBGB? It 00:06:29.939 --> 00:06:32.459 was an evolution of delivery, a very organic 00:06:32.459 --> 00:06:35.740 one. She found that just reading the poems wasn't 00:06:35.740 --> 00:06:37.860 enough to capture the energy she felt inside. 00:06:38.399 --> 00:06:40.720 She was obsessed with the rhythm of the language, 00:06:40.819 --> 00:06:43.300 the sound of the words. The incantation. Yes. 00:06:43.399 --> 00:06:46.879 So in February 1971, for a reading celebrating 00:06:46.879 --> 00:06:50.459 Rimbaud's birthday, she asked Lenny Kay, who 00:06:50.459 --> 00:06:52.920 was a record store clerk and a rock writer she 00:06:52.920 --> 00:06:55.779 knew, to accompany her on electric guitar. But 00:06:55.779 --> 00:06:57.579 this wasn't, here are the chords, let's sing 00:06:57.579 --> 00:06:59.540 the melody. Absolutely not. And this is where 00:06:59.540 --> 00:07:01.579 the punk sound is really born. It wasn't about 00:07:01.579 --> 00:07:04.060 verse, chorus, verse. It was pure improvisation. 00:07:04.100 --> 00:07:06.959 Lenny would play these rhythmic, cyclic chords, 00:07:07.060 --> 00:07:09.730 almost like a drum. very velvet underground inspired. 00:07:10.009 --> 00:07:12.529 And Patti would just chant and improvise over 00:07:12.529 --> 00:07:14.589 them. So she was using her voice like a jazz 00:07:14.589 --> 00:07:16.990 instrument. 100%. She would speed up. He would 00:07:16.990 --> 00:07:19.290 speed up. It was a collision. It was jazz technique 00:07:19.290 --> 00:07:22.170 applied to a garage rock aesthetic. And it was 00:07:22.170 --> 00:07:24.230 electrifying. So it wasn't about learning to 00:07:24.230 --> 00:07:27.069 sing. It was about learning to project. Exactly. 00:07:27.290 --> 00:07:29.810 She used the guitar as a landscape to walk her 00:07:29.810 --> 00:07:32.110 words through. And that eventually morphed into 00:07:32.110 --> 00:07:34.970 the Patti Smith group. They added Richard Soule 00:07:34.970 --> 00:07:37.509 on piano, who she called her Fred Astaire. because 00:07:37.509 --> 00:07:40.529 he had this elegant classical touch. A great 00:07:40.529 --> 00:07:42.970 contrast to the raw guitar. A perfect contrast. 00:07:43.170 --> 00:07:45.430 And then later they filled it out with Ivan Kral 00:07:45.430 --> 00:07:47.990 on bass and J .D. Daugherty on drums, and suddenly 00:07:47.990 --> 00:07:50.589 it's a real rock and roll band. And they end 00:07:50.589 --> 00:07:54.529 up at CBGB in 1975. Now we hear CBGB and we think 00:07:54.529 --> 00:07:57.649 of... The t -shirts, the legend. But what was 00:07:57.649 --> 00:08:01.050 the actual vibe of that residency? It was grueling. 00:08:01.050 --> 00:08:03.250 I mean, it was a total dive bar in the Bowery, 00:08:03.250 --> 00:08:05.209 surrounded by flop houses. It smelled horrible. 00:08:05.370 --> 00:08:08.069 But that residency, two months, seven weeks, 00:08:08.230 --> 00:08:10.949 playing alongside the band Television, was the 00:08:10.949 --> 00:08:13.189 incubator. So they were sharing the bill. Night 00:08:13.189 --> 00:08:14.889 after night. And you have to imagine the friction. 00:08:15.089 --> 00:08:17.069 Television was very technical, all about these 00:08:17.069 --> 00:08:19.709 intricate, dueling guitar solos. Very precise. 00:08:19.990 --> 00:08:22.920 And Patty was the opposite. Total opposite. She 00:08:22.920 --> 00:08:26.120 was chaotic, emotional, raw, spitting words. 00:08:26.819 --> 00:08:29.980 And that contrast sharpened both of them. It 00:08:29.980 --> 00:08:32.179 was night after night of winning over a crowd 00:08:32.179 --> 00:08:34.320 that wasn't there to be polite. That's where 00:08:34.320 --> 00:08:36.340 she learned to control an audience, how to harness 00:08:36.340 --> 00:08:39.039 that chaos. And someone important was in that 00:08:39.039 --> 00:08:41.659 audience. Clive Davis, the head of Arista Records. 00:08:41.960 --> 00:08:44.940 He saw this raw power and, to his credit, didn't 00:08:44.940 --> 00:08:47.340 try to team it. He signed her. And we get horses. 00:08:48.299 --> 00:08:52.159 1975. Produced by John Cale of The Velvet Underground. 00:08:52.419 --> 00:08:54.600 A very contentious production, by the way. Cale 00:08:54.600 --> 00:08:56.460 and Smith fought constantly. He wanted a more 00:08:56.460 --> 00:08:59.340 polished sound. She wanted it to be raw, live. 00:08:59.740 --> 00:09:01.679 And you can hear that tension all over the record. 00:09:01.899 --> 00:09:03.799 It's what makes it so powerful. You have to stop 00:09:03.799 --> 00:09:06.309 on the first track. Gloria. It's a cover of a 00:09:06.309 --> 00:09:08.509 Van Morrison song, technically. But she just 00:09:08.509 --> 00:09:10.370 blows it apart and rebuilds it. And she opens 00:09:10.370 --> 00:09:12.870 with, Jesus died for somebody's sins, but not 00:09:12.870 --> 00:09:15.610 mine. One of the most famous, most confrontational 00:09:15.610 --> 00:09:17.990 opening lines in rock history. And it's usually 00:09:17.990 --> 00:09:20.049 read as just straight blasphemy. She hates God. 00:09:20.710 --> 00:09:23.370 But looking at her later life, her Vatican performances, 00:09:23.529 --> 00:09:25.330 that doesn't track. What is she actually saying 00:09:25.330 --> 00:09:27.710 there? I think it's not atheism, it's autonomy. 00:09:28.110 --> 00:09:30.549 You remember, she was raised as a Jehovah's Witness. 00:09:30.909 --> 00:09:33.309 A very strict religion. Incredibly strict. She 00:09:33.309 --> 00:09:36.049 left because the dogma was too suffocating. That 00:09:36.049 --> 00:09:38.149 line is a declaration of spiritual independence. 00:09:38.690 --> 00:09:42.509 She is saying, I am responsible for my own soul. 00:09:43.120 --> 00:09:46.539 my sins are my own she isn't rejecting jesus 00:09:46.539 --> 00:09:49.139 as a figure she's rejecting the mechanism of 00:09:49.139 --> 00:09:51.799 salvation that requires submission and outside 00:09:51.799 --> 00:09:54.299 absolution it's a theological statement oddly 00:09:54.299 --> 00:09:57.320 enough yes a very profound one it's the ultimate 00:09:57.320 --> 00:10:00.120 punk statement i am my own authority and then 00:10:00.120 --> 00:10:02.679 there's the cover art The Mapplethorpe photo. 00:10:02.899 --> 00:10:05.919 In 50 years, we just had the anniversary re -release 00:10:05.919 --> 00:10:09.080 in late 2025, and that photo still stops you 00:10:09.080 --> 00:10:11.159 in your tracks. Because it completely defied 00:10:11.159 --> 00:10:14.320 the male days. In 1975, female rock stars were 00:10:14.320 --> 00:10:17.440 Linda Ronstadt or Stevie Nicks, you know, flowy, 00:10:17.440 --> 00:10:19.740 feminine, or at least sexualized in a traditional 00:10:19.740 --> 00:10:22.360 way. Right. And Patti just stood there. In a 00:10:22.360 --> 00:10:24.740 men's white button -down, a black ribbon for 00:10:24.740 --> 00:10:27.539 a tie, slinging a jacket over her shoulder like 00:10:27.539 --> 00:10:29.620 Sinatra. She wasn't trying to look like a boy, 00:10:29.679 --> 00:10:31.360 but she wasn't trying to look like a girl either. 00:10:31.539 --> 00:10:33.200 She looked like an artist. She looked like a 00:10:33.200 --> 00:10:35.200 poet. She looked like Mapplethorpe's subject. 00:10:35.399 --> 00:10:37.980 It was a signal to every outcast girl and boy 00:10:37.980 --> 00:10:40.259 in America. You don't have to dress up to be 00:10:40.259 --> 00:10:43.159 powerful. You just have to be yourself. So she 00:10:43.159 --> 00:10:46.120 conquers New York. She releases the follow -up, 00:10:46.179 --> 00:10:49.009 Radio Ethiopia. which is even more abrasive. 00:10:49.009 --> 00:10:50.610 She's touring the world. She's the biggest thing 00:10:50.610 --> 00:10:52.110 in the underground. She's on top of the world. 00:10:52.389 --> 00:10:57.450 And then, January 1977, Tampa, Florida, the lights 00:10:57.450 --> 00:11:00.629 go out. The accident. This is the moment the 00:11:00.629 --> 00:11:03.570 whole train just derails. Paint the picture for 00:11:03.570 --> 00:11:06.269 us. What happened? She's performing, opening 00:11:06.269 --> 00:11:09.669 for Bob Seger. She's in a frenzy. She's dancing, 00:11:09.710 --> 00:11:12.289 spinning around on stage, something she did every 00:11:12.289 --> 00:11:14.970 single night. But on this particular stage, in 00:11:14.970 --> 00:11:18.120 this arena, there was no lip. No marker to tell 00:11:18.120 --> 00:11:20.480 her where the edge was. Oh, no. And she spins 00:11:20.480 --> 00:11:22.759 right off the edge. And this wasn't like a small 00:11:22.759 --> 00:11:26.120 hop off the stage? No. It was a 15 -foot drop. 00:11:26.320 --> 00:11:28.299 What? Straight down into a concrete orchestra 00:11:28.299 --> 00:11:31.039 pit. Cool. She landed on her head and neck. She 00:11:31.039 --> 00:11:33.759 broke several cervical vertebrae. The doctors 00:11:33.759 --> 00:11:35.740 told her she was incredibly lucky to be alive 00:11:35.740 --> 00:11:37.879 and even luckier not to be paralyzed. That's 00:11:37.879 --> 00:11:41.059 terrifying. And that physical break, it necessitated 00:11:41.059 --> 00:11:44.720 a psychological break. She had to stop. months 00:11:44.720 --> 00:11:47.120 of physical therapy, wearing a neck brace. She 00:11:47.120 --> 00:11:49.419 had to completely reassess everything. It feels 00:11:49.419 --> 00:11:51.820 like that fall knocked the star out of her and 00:11:51.820 --> 00:11:54.299 forced the human back in. Because when she comes 00:11:54.299 --> 00:11:57.220 back, she does have a hit. A big one. A huge 00:11:57.220 --> 00:12:00.379 one. Easter in 1978. And the single, Because 00:12:00.379 --> 00:12:02.470 of the Night. Co -written with Bruce Springsteen. 00:12:02.649 --> 00:12:05.870 Right. Springsteen had the chorus and the melody 00:12:05.870 --> 00:12:08.029 but couldn't finish the lyrics. He gave it to 00:12:08.029 --> 00:12:10.769 her and she wrote the verses from the perspective 00:12:10.769 --> 00:12:13.509 of waiting for her future husband, Fred, to call 00:12:13.509 --> 00:12:15.970 her. It became her biggest commercial success, 00:12:16.250 --> 00:12:18.429 reached number 13 on the Billboard charts. So 00:12:18.429 --> 00:12:20.909 she's finally a mainstream rock star. And then 00:12:20.909 --> 00:12:22.549 she does something that I think is even more 00:12:22.549 --> 00:12:25.870 punk rock than playing CBGB. She quits. She quits. 00:12:25.929 --> 00:12:29.129 The Great Retreat. 1979. She just walks away 00:12:29.129 --> 00:12:31.169 from all of it. She marries Fred Sonic Smith, 00:12:31.429 --> 00:12:34.190 the legendary guitarist from the MC5. She moves 00:12:34.190 --> 00:12:36.570 to St. Clair Shores, Michigan, a suburb of Detroit. 00:12:37.190 --> 00:12:39.389 And for the entirety of the 1980s, the decade 00:12:39.389 --> 00:12:43.070 of excess of MTV, of Madonna Patti Smith is, 00:12:43.169 --> 00:12:46.250 what, doing laundry? Effectively, yes. And this 00:12:46.250 --> 00:12:48.169 is the part of her life that confuses so many 00:12:48.169 --> 00:12:50.009 people, but I think it's the most fascinating. 00:12:50.429 --> 00:12:53.470 She went from being the absolute queen of New 00:12:53.470 --> 00:12:56.970 York cool. to a housewife in the suburbs. It's 00:12:56.970 --> 00:13:00.009 a radical act. A truly radical act. She baked 00:13:00.009 --> 00:13:02.509 bread. She raised her two children, Jackson and 00:13:02.509 --> 00:13:05.110 Jesse. She didn't have a nanny. She didn't tour. 00:13:05.269 --> 00:13:08.970 She just... Why? I mean, she had the world at 00:13:08.970 --> 00:13:10.450 her feet. She could have been as big as anyone. 00:13:10.590 --> 00:13:13.149 I think she recognized that fame was becoming 00:13:13.149 --> 00:13:15.990 its own kind of cage. She wanted to live a life, 00:13:15.990 --> 00:13:18.450 not just perform one. And there's a real discipline 00:13:18.450 --> 00:13:20.610 in that. It takes a lot of confidence to say, 00:13:20.710 --> 00:13:22.909 I am an artist even if no one is watching me 00:13:22.909 --> 00:13:25.279 right now. So she was still creating. Every single 00:13:25.279 --> 00:13:28.279 day. She wrote, she studied, she read voraciously, 00:13:28.399 --> 00:13:30.600 she raised her kids. She jokes that she married 00:13:30.600 --> 00:13:32.399 Fred because she didn't have to change her name, 00:13:32.500 --> 00:13:35.600 Smith to Smith. But the reality was they had 00:13:35.600 --> 00:13:38.779 this deep, quiet, domestic love. It was a real 00:13:38.779 --> 00:13:40.679 partnership. It really challenges our idea of 00:13:40.679 --> 00:13:42.799 success, doesn't it? We think success is more, 00:13:42.919 --> 00:13:46.559 more, more. She decided success was just enough. 00:13:47.279 --> 00:13:50.139 For a while, yes, until the 90s. And this is 00:13:50.139 --> 00:13:52.720 where the story gets incredibly dark. The era 00:13:52.720 --> 00:13:55.960 of loss, it's just brutal. It starts with Mapplethorpe 00:13:55.960 --> 00:13:59.720 dying of AIDS in 1989. And that was like losing 00:13:59.720 --> 00:14:02.440 her other half, her artistic twin, a huge blow. 00:14:02.700 --> 00:14:06.019 But it gets worse. Much worse. In 1994, Fred 00:14:06.019 --> 00:14:08.519 Smith, her husband, her anchor, the reason she 00:14:08.519 --> 00:14:11.080 left New York, dies of a heart attack. He was 00:14:11.080 --> 00:14:14.210 only 45. Unimaginable. Just completely unimaginable. 00:14:14.210 --> 00:14:16.190 And then literally one month later, her brother 00:14:16.190 --> 00:14:19.750 Todd dies of a massive stroke. No. Yes. So in 00:14:19.750 --> 00:14:21.929 the span of about 30 days, she loses the two 00:14:21.929 --> 00:14:24.610 most significant men in her daily life. She's 00:14:24.610 --> 00:14:26.809 a widow with two young kids in Michigan. The 00:14:26.809 --> 00:14:29.429 silence in that house must have been just deafening. 00:14:29.450 --> 00:14:32.330 It was a total collapse of her world. And she 00:14:32.330 --> 00:14:34.110 has said in interviews that she didn't know if 00:14:34.110 --> 00:14:36.169 she could go on. She was in a state of profound 00:14:36.169 --> 00:14:39.049 grief. But this is where her community, her artistic 00:14:39.049 --> 00:14:42.179 family, saved her. Who stepped in? Allen Ginsberg, 00:14:42.440 --> 00:14:45.059 the great beat poet, and Michael Stipe from R 00:14:45.059 --> 00:14:47.419 .E .M. They basically staged an intervention. 00:14:47.879 --> 00:14:49.419 What did they do? They told her, you have to 00:14:49.419 --> 00:14:51.600 work, you have to get out. Stipe, especially, 00:14:51.799 --> 00:14:53.340 just kind of dragged her back into the light. 00:14:53.460 --> 00:14:56.759 He got her to perform again. Then Bob Dylan asked 00:14:56.759 --> 00:15:00.600 her to open for him on his 1995 tour. They understood 00:15:00.600 --> 00:15:03.659 that for Patti, creation was survival. If she 00:15:03.659 --> 00:15:05.759 didn't get that grief out, it would kill her. 00:15:06.019 --> 00:15:08.860 And the result of all that pain was the album 00:15:08.860 --> 00:15:12.679 Gone Again in 1996. A masterpiece of grief. It's 00:15:12.679 --> 00:15:15.799 not an angry punk album. It's a haunting, largely 00:15:15.799 --> 00:15:18.720 acoustic, atmospheric record. It's the sound 00:15:18.720 --> 00:15:20.559 of someone trying to find their footing after 00:15:20.559 --> 00:15:22.580 the world has been pulled out from under them. 00:15:22.779 --> 00:15:25.299 There's an incredible song about a boy, which 00:15:25.299 --> 00:15:27.639 is a tribute to Kurt Cobain. Yes, who had also 00:15:27.639 --> 00:15:29.700 just died. She was metabolizing all this death. 00:15:30.080 --> 00:15:34.259 Fred, Todd, Robert, Kurt. Richard Soul, her pianist, 00:15:34.259 --> 00:15:36.620 had also died a few years earlier, and turning 00:15:36.620 --> 00:15:39.379 it into something beautiful and lasting. This 00:15:39.379 --> 00:15:41.419 really marks the shift to what I call the sage 00:15:41.419 --> 00:15:44.279 phase, because post -2000, she becomes less of 00:15:44.279 --> 00:15:47.159 a rock star and more of a public intellectual, 00:15:47.519 --> 00:15:49.340 a literary figure. Which culminates, of course, 00:15:49.379 --> 00:15:51.600 in Just Kids in 2010. The National Book Award 00:15:51.600 --> 00:15:54.980 winner. I think that book changed how a whole 00:15:54.980 --> 00:15:57.570 new generation saw her. people who'd never even 00:15:57.570 --> 00:16:00.309 heard horses it absolutely did it's a memoir 00:16:00.309 --> 00:16:03.169 but it reads like a fairy tale a bohemian fairy 00:16:03.169 --> 00:16:07.070 tale it's not a rock bio with stories about trashing 00:16:07.070 --> 00:16:09.210 hotel rooms and doing drugs yeah it's a love 00:16:09.210 --> 00:16:12.490 letter it's a love letter to art to youth and 00:16:12.490 --> 00:16:14.309 to a new york city that doesn't exist anymore 00:16:14.309 --> 00:16:16.850 she wrote it because she promised robber on his 00:16:16.850 --> 00:16:19.129 deathbed that she would tell their story it took 00:16:19.129 --> 00:16:21.860 her 20 years But she kept the promise. And she's 00:16:21.860 --> 00:16:24.500 kept writing these incredible memoirs. M Train 00:16:24.500 --> 00:16:27.440 in 2015, which is sort of this meditation on 00:16:27.440 --> 00:16:30.320 coffee and loss. Year of the Monkey in 2019. 00:16:31.220 --> 00:16:33.980 And now Bread of Angels. Which features another 00:16:33.980 --> 00:16:35.940 Mapplethorpe photo on the cover, by the way. 00:16:36.039 --> 00:16:38.379 One he took of her that she describes as capturing 00:16:38.379 --> 00:16:41.470 a... Deeply transitional moment. It all comes 00:16:41.470 --> 00:16:43.570 full circle. But I want to pivot for a second 00:16:43.570 --> 00:16:45.649 to her visual art. Yeah. Because while she's 00:16:45.649 --> 00:16:47.190 writing these bestsellers, she's also taking 00:16:47.190 --> 00:16:50.009 photographs. And like her music, her photography 00:16:50.009 --> 00:16:53.250 has a very specific, almost ritualistic methodology. 00:16:53.450 --> 00:16:56.269 It's what she calls pure photography. She uses 00:16:56.269 --> 00:16:59.389 a vintage Polaroid Lens 250 camera. Okay, for 00:16:59.389 --> 00:17:01.649 the non -gearheads listening. What does that 00:17:01.649 --> 00:17:03.909 actually mean? It means it's incredibly difficult. 00:17:04.089 --> 00:17:06.250 It's an old bellows camera. You have to manually 00:17:06.250 --> 00:17:08.970 focus it. You pull the film out. You wait for 00:17:08.970 --> 00:17:10.829 it to develop. You have to peel it apart just 00:17:10.829 --> 00:17:13.930 right. There is no negative. Each photo is a 00:17:13.930 --> 00:17:17.109 unique, one -of -a -kind object. There's no fixing 00:17:17.109 --> 00:17:19.930 it in post? None. And she refuses to use a flash. 00:17:20.440 --> 00:17:23.420 She only uses natural light. So she's just chasing 00:17:23.420 --> 00:17:25.779 natural light around the world. She calls it 00:17:25.779 --> 00:17:29.000 capturing the atmosphere or the aura of the object. 00:17:29.299 --> 00:17:31.900 She travels the world like a pilgrim, going to 00:17:31.900 --> 00:17:34.720 the homes and graves of her heroes. She photographs 00:17:34.720 --> 00:17:37.619 Virginia Woolf's writing desk, Rimbaud's spoon, 00:17:38.019 --> 00:17:41.599 Mapplethorpe's slippers. Blake's life mask. It 00:17:41.599 --> 00:17:44.099 sounds almost animistic. Like she believes the 00:17:44.099 --> 00:17:46.440 objects have souls. I think she absolutely does. 00:17:46.619 --> 00:17:48.960 She treats these objects as holy relics. In a 00:17:48.960 --> 00:17:51.039 world of digital instant gratification where 00:17:51.039 --> 00:17:53.279 we take a thousand photos a day on our phones. 00:17:53.420 --> 00:17:55.599 And none of them mean anything. Right. She is 00:17:55.599 --> 00:17:58.259 taking one photo, waiting minutes to see if it 00:17:58.259 --> 00:18:00.670 even worked. And then accepting the result, flaws 00:18:00.670 --> 00:18:03.630 and all. It's about latency. It's about respect 00:18:03.630 --> 00:18:06.309 for the subject. It's the opposite of punk in 00:18:06.309 --> 00:18:10.210 a way. It's slow. It's quiet. It's contemplative. 00:18:10.369 --> 00:18:13.009 That respect extends to her activism, too. She's 00:18:13.009 --> 00:18:15.430 never been a shut up and sing kind of artist. 00:18:15.630 --> 00:18:18.549 Never. Not for a second. Her politics are interesting. 00:18:18.670 --> 00:18:20.549 She's not necessarily partisan in the traditional 00:18:20.549 --> 00:18:23.049 sense, is she? No, she's a humanist above all 00:18:23.049 --> 00:18:25.509 else. She supported the Green Party and Ralph 00:18:25.509 --> 00:18:29.390 Nader in 2004 and 2008, which got her some flack 00:18:29.390 --> 00:18:32.250 from Democrats who saw it as taking votes from 00:18:32.250 --> 00:18:34.589 their candidate. She was also fiercely against 00:18:34.589 --> 00:18:37.410 the Iraq War. Oh, fiercely. She was calling for 00:18:37.410 --> 00:18:39.910 the impeachment of George W. Bush very early 00:18:39.910 --> 00:18:42.670 on. She wrote the song Kana about the Israeli 00:18:42.670 --> 00:18:45.250 airstrikes in a Lebanese village. She wrote Without 00:18:45.250 --> 00:18:48.019 Chains. about Murat Kirnaz, who was a detainee 00:18:48.019 --> 00:18:49.940 at Guantanamo Bay. And more recently, she's been 00:18:49.940 --> 00:18:53.680 very active. Very. In 2021, she signed an open 00:18:53.680 --> 00:18:56.759 letter boycotting performances in Israel. She's 00:18:56.759 --> 00:18:59.759 been a vocal supporter of Ukraine, even translating 00:18:59.759 --> 00:19:02.940 their national anthem into English. And climate 00:19:02.940 --> 00:19:05.339 change has become a huge focus. She performed 00:19:05.339 --> 00:19:08.220 at the QP26 summit. But if you listen to her 00:19:08.220 --> 00:19:11.460 speak about these things, it's rarely about policy 00:19:11.460 --> 00:19:14.269 details. It's always about suffering. Exactly. 00:19:14.329 --> 00:19:17.170 Her famous line is, I believe in human rights. 00:19:17.190 --> 00:19:19.529 That's her entire platform. And that leads us 00:19:19.529 --> 00:19:21.289 to the Vatican connection, which is the one that 00:19:21.289 --> 00:19:24.150 always throws people. The godmother of punk performing 00:19:24.150 --> 00:19:27.309 for the pope. She loves Pope Francis. She's performed 00:19:27.309 --> 00:19:29.609 at the Vatican Christmas concert multiple times 00:19:29.609 --> 00:19:32.630 in 2014 and 2021. But she's not Catholic, right? 00:19:32.750 --> 00:19:35.069 Not at all. But she sees St. Francis of Assisi 00:19:35.069 --> 00:19:37.390 as the original environmentalist, someone who 00:19:37.390 --> 00:19:39.710 cast off his wealth to live in nature and help 00:19:39.710 --> 00:19:42.230 the poor. She sees a kinship there with Pope 00:19:42.230 --> 00:19:44.170 Francis. So she's not interested in the dogma? 00:19:44.250 --> 00:19:47.269 No, she calls those man -made laws. She's interested 00:19:47.269 --> 00:19:49.690 in the spirit of compassion and she's willing 00:19:49.690 --> 00:19:52.269 to go wherever she finds that spirit, even if 00:19:52.269 --> 00:19:54.329 it's inside the Vatican. It's another example. 00:19:54.440 --> 00:19:57.000 of her refusing to be pinned down. She refuses 00:19:57.000 --> 00:20:00.299 to be tribal. She won't hate the Pope just because 00:20:00.299 --> 00:20:03.279 it's cool for a punk to hate the Pope. Exactly. 00:20:03.440 --> 00:20:05.380 And it's the same reason she won't call herself 00:20:05.380 --> 00:20:08.140 a feminist, which upsets some people. She says, 00:20:08.200 --> 00:20:10.240 I have a son too. I believe in human rights. 00:20:10.759 --> 00:20:13.380 She refuses any label that she feels divides 00:20:13.380 --> 00:20:15.839 her from other people. She wants to be universal. 00:20:16.279 --> 00:20:19.089 Let's talk about her legacy. Her influence. Because 00:20:19.089 --> 00:20:21.130 you look at the bands that came after her. REM, 00:20:21.450 --> 00:20:24.869 U2, The Smiths, Florence and the Machine, Courtney 00:20:24.869 --> 00:20:27.809 Love. They all have Patty DNA. It's everywhere. 00:20:27.930 --> 00:20:29.950 Michael Stipe has said explicitly, I started 00:20:29.950 --> 00:20:33.269 a band because I heard horses. U2 had her perform 00:20:33.269 --> 00:20:35.730 Mothers of the Disappeared with them on stage. 00:20:36.640 --> 00:20:38.220 Courtney Love has said that the song Rock and 00:20:38.220 --> 00:20:40.440 Roll Nigger is the greatest rock song ever written. 00:20:40.579 --> 00:20:42.920 And that horses kept her out of trouble in Juvenile 00:20:42.920 --> 00:20:46.019 Hall. Yes. And the list goes on. Madonna, Shirley 00:20:46.019 --> 00:20:48.940 Manson from Garbage, Elliot Page. She showed 00:20:48.940 --> 00:20:51.220 people, especially women, that you didn't have 00:20:51.220 --> 00:20:53.660 to be a virtuoso musician to be a rock star. 00:20:53.720 --> 00:20:55.380 You just had to have a vision and something to 00:20:55.380 --> 00:20:57.700 say. She's gotten all the awards, too. Rock and 00:20:57.700 --> 00:21:00.880 Roll Hall of Fame in 2007. Polar Music Prize 00:21:00.880 --> 00:21:04.660 in 2011. The French Legion of Honor. Just a couple 00:21:04.660 --> 00:21:06.380 of years ago, the Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis 00:21:06.380 --> 00:21:08.599 Medal here in New York City. But there's one 00:21:08.599 --> 00:21:11.319 moment, fairly recently, that I think defines 00:21:11.319 --> 00:21:14.380 her legacy better than any award. And that's 00:21:14.380 --> 00:21:17.339 the Nobel Prize ceremony in 2016. Oh, this is 00:21:17.339 --> 00:21:19.680 the defining moment of her late career. Absolutely. 00:21:20.119 --> 00:21:22.980 So set the scene for us. Bob Dylan wins the Nobel 00:21:22.980 --> 00:21:26.000 Prize in literature. In a very Dylan move, he 00:21:26.000 --> 00:21:28.839 doesn't show up. He doesn't show up and he asks 00:21:28.839 --> 00:21:31.420 his friend, Patti Smith, to go and accept it 00:21:31.420 --> 00:21:33.539 for him by performing one of his songs. And she 00:21:33.539 --> 00:21:36.819 chooses Hard Rains Are Gonna Fall. An absolutely 00:21:36.819 --> 00:21:39.640 brutally difficult song, seven minutes long, 00:21:39.779 --> 00:21:42.440 just dense, prophetic lyrics one after another. 00:21:42.640 --> 00:21:45.619 And she has to perform it in the Stockholm concert 00:21:45.619 --> 00:21:48.019 hall in front of the king and queen of Sweden, 00:21:48.220 --> 00:21:51.279 the world's intelligentsia, broadcast live. The 00:21:51.279 --> 00:21:55.039 pressure is immense. It's stiff, formal. You 00:21:55.039 --> 00:21:56.859 can see it in the video. She's nervous. She's 00:21:56.859 --> 00:21:58.839 shaking. And about two minutes in, she hits the 00:21:58.839 --> 00:22:02.500 line. I saw a newborn baby with wild wolves all 00:22:02.500 --> 00:22:05.259 around it. And she blinks. Just total silence. 00:22:05.420 --> 00:22:07.579 She freezes. The orchestra keeps playing for 00:22:07.579 --> 00:22:09.640 a second, then it kind of trails off. It is the 00:22:09.640 --> 00:22:12.099 absolute nightmare scenario for any performer. 00:22:12.420 --> 00:22:15.599 I can't even imagine the panic. My heart is racing 00:22:15.599 --> 00:22:17.549 just thinking about it. But watch what she does. 00:22:17.589 --> 00:22:20.569 She doesn't run. She doesn't try to fake it or 00:22:20.569 --> 00:22:23.549 mumble through. She stops the music. She walks 00:22:23.549 --> 00:22:25.450 to the microphone and she just says, I'm sorry. 00:22:25.589 --> 00:22:28.890 I apologize. I'm so nervous. And she asks the 00:22:28.890 --> 00:22:30.950 conductor if they can start that section again. 00:22:31.089 --> 00:22:33.910 And what's the reaction in the room? They melted. 00:22:34.009 --> 00:22:36.529 You could physically feel the tension break. 00:22:36.630 --> 00:22:39.170 They just started applauding her because in that 00:22:39.170 --> 00:22:42.849 single vulnerable moment, she wasn't a star performing 00:22:42.849 --> 00:22:45.829 perfection. She was a human being struggling 00:22:45.829 --> 00:22:48.180 with. a massive task. She became one of them. 00:22:48.240 --> 00:22:50.759 She became all of us. And when she restarted 00:22:50.759 --> 00:22:52.839 and finished the song, it was triumphant because 00:22:52.839 --> 00:22:55.759 she had fallen. It's the wabi -sabi of performance, 00:22:56.019 --> 00:22:59.779 you know, the Japanese idea that the flaw makes 00:22:59.779 --> 00:23:02.680 the thing beautiful. The flaw made it real. She 00:23:02.680 --> 00:23:04.660 later wrote this beautiful essay about it in 00:23:04.660 --> 00:23:07.160 The New Yorker. She said she felt humiliated 00:23:07.160 --> 00:23:09.779 at first, but then she realized she had inadvertently 00:23:09.779 --> 00:23:12.039 demonstrated the very struggle the song was about. 00:23:12.200 --> 00:23:14.880 It's about navigating a hard rain. She stumbled. 00:23:15.390 --> 00:23:17.569 And then she got back up. That is Patti Smith. 00:23:17.849 --> 00:23:22.130 And that brings us to today, January 2026. She's 00:23:22.130 --> 00:23:25.410 approaching 80 years old. She's posting on Instagram 00:23:25.410 --> 00:23:27.789 every single day pictures of her coffee, her 00:23:27.789 --> 00:23:30.789 cat, her books, the sky. She's still touring 00:23:30.789 --> 00:23:33.309 constantly. She's writing these incredible memoirs. 00:23:33.309 --> 00:23:36.450 She has not slowed down one bit. She has become 00:23:36.450 --> 00:23:39.190 a kind of public philosopher, hasn't she? She's 00:23:39.190 --> 00:23:41.869 modeling how to age with curiosity. Most people 00:23:41.869 --> 00:23:43.690 calcify as they get older. You know, they stop 00:23:43.690 --> 00:23:45.750 liking new music. They stop changing their minds. 00:23:45.869 --> 00:23:48.109 Patty is still evolving. She's still that girl 00:23:48.109 --> 00:23:50.150 from the factory looking for a way out, looking 00:23:50.150 --> 00:23:52.369 for the next poem, the next photograph, the next 00:23:52.369 --> 00:23:56.470 song. So if we look at this massive, messy, beautiful 00:23:56.470 --> 00:24:00.589 life factory worker, punk rocker, mother, widow, 00:24:00.789 --> 00:24:04.259 photographer, author. What is the takeaway? Why 00:24:04.259 --> 00:24:05.940 does she matter to the person listening to this 00:24:05.940 --> 00:24:08.299 right now who maybe doesn't even like punk rock? 00:24:08.539 --> 00:24:10.740 She matters because she grants you permission 00:24:10.740 --> 00:24:13.519 to be incoherent. She proves that you don't have 00:24:13.519 --> 00:24:15.599 to pick a lane in life. You can be spiritual 00:24:15.599 --> 00:24:18.380 and profane. You can be a mother and a rebel. 00:24:18.599 --> 00:24:21.039 You can love the past and fight for the future. 00:24:21.299 --> 00:24:24.279 She destroyed the binaries. She teaches us that 00:24:24.279 --> 00:24:27.299 the only consistency you really need is authenticity 00:24:27.299 --> 00:24:30.700 to yourself. Precisely. That's it in a nutshell. 00:24:30.920 --> 00:24:32.519 So I want to leave you with a challenge today. 00:24:32.859 --> 00:24:35.660 Patti Smith once said, I don't like being pinned 00:24:35.660 --> 00:24:38.460 down and I'll do what the fuck I want. We live 00:24:38.460 --> 00:24:40.559 in a world that is obsessed with categorization. 00:24:41.299 --> 00:24:43.319 Social media algorithms want to know what you 00:24:43.319 --> 00:24:46.359 buy. Politics wants to know how you vote. Everything 00:24:46.359 --> 00:24:48.500 wants to put you in a box. And keep you there. 00:24:48.900 --> 00:24:51.279 What part of you have you suppressed because 00:24:51.279 --> 00:24:54.230 it didn't fit the rest of your profile? Maybe 00:24:54.230 --> 00:24:55.829 it's time to pick up that old Polaroid camera 00:24:55.829 --> 00:24:58.789 or write a bad poem or just go scream in a garage. 00:24:59.309 --> 00:25:01.609 Find your inner Patty. And don't be afraid to 00:25:01.609 --> 00:25:03.690 stumble while the world is watching. Thanks for 00:25:03.690 --> 00:25:05.549 diving in with us. Thank you. We'll catch you 00:25:05.549 --> 00:25:06.410 on the next deep dive.