Punk rock's only poet, Patti Smith ranks among the most influential
female rock & rollers of all
time. Ambitious, unconventional, and challenging, Smith's music was seen as the most exciting fusion of rock and poetry since Bob Dylan. If that hybrid remained distinctly uncommercial for much of her career, it wasn't a statement against accessibility so much as the simple fact that Smith followed her own
muse wherever it took her -- from structured rock songs to
free-form experimenting, or even completely out of music at times. Her most avant-garde outings
drew a sense of improvisation and interplay from free
jazz, though they remained firmly rooted in noisy, primitive three-chord rock & roll. She was a powerful concert presence, singing and chanting her lyrics in an untrained but expressive voice, whirling around the stage like an ecstatic shaman delivering incantations. A regular at CBGB's during the early days of NYC Punk, she was the first artist of the bunch to
get a record deal and release an album, even beating The Ramones to the punch. The artiness and the amateur musicianship of her work both had a major impact on the Punk Movement, whether in New York or England, whether among her contemporaries (
Television, Richard
Hell) or followers. What was more, Smith became an icon to subsequent generations of
female rockers. She never relied on sex appeal for her success -- she was unabashedly intellectual and creatively uncompromising, and her appearance was usually lean, hard, and androgynous. She also never made an issue of her
gender, calling attention to herself as an artist, not a woman; she simply dressed and performed in the spirit of her aggressive, male rock role models, as if no alternative had ever occurred to her. In the process, she obliterated the expectations of what was possible for women in rock, and stretched the boundaries of how artists of any
gender could express themselves.
Its going down tonight in this town
Cause they stare and growl
They all stare and growl
I take a scar everytime i cry
Cause it aint my style no it aint my style
Going down to the gravel head to the barrel
Take this life and end this struggle
Los Angeles come
scam me please
Emptiness
never sleeps at Cliftons 6 am
With your bag lady friend and your mind descending
Stripped of the
right to be a human in control
Its warmer in
hell so down we go
They say this is the city
The city of angels
All i see is dead wings
City Of Angels-Patti Smith
