Coordinates	33°51′35.9″N151°12′40″N
name	Tom Verlaine
background	solo_singer
birth name	Thomas Miller
born	December 13, 1949Morristown, New Jersey, U.S.
occupation	Musician Vocalist
instrument	Guitar VocalsPiano
associated acts	Television Neon Boys
genre	PunkArt punkNew Wave
notable instruments	Fender Jazzmaster Fender Jaguar Fender Stratocaster Danelectro Shorthorn Deluxe }}

Tom Verlaine (born Thomas Miller, December 13, 1949, in Morristown, New Jersey) is a singer, songwriter and guitarist, best known as the frontman for the New York rock band Television.

Biography

Tom Verlaine began his life as Thomas Miller. He began studying piano at an early age but switched to saxophone in middle school after hearing a record by Stan Getz. Verlaine was initially unimpressed with the role of the guitar in both rock and jazz, and was only inspired to take up the instrument after hearing the Rolling Stones' "19th Nervous Breakdown" during his adolescence, at which point he began a long period of experimentation to develop a personal style. Verlaine also had an interest in writing and poetry from an early age. As a teen he was friends with future bandmate and punk icon Richard Hell (Richard Meyers) at Sanford School, a boarding school which they both attended. They quickly discovered that they shared a passion for music and poetry.

After one failed attempt, Verlaine (with Hell) succeeded in escaping from school and moved to New York City. He then created his stage name, a reference to the French symbolist poet Paul Verlaine. He is quoted as saying this name was inspired by Bob Dylan's name change and was a way of distancing himself from his past. He and Hell formed The Neon Boys, recruiting drummer Billy Ficca. The Neon Boys quickly disbanded after failing to recruit a second guitarist, despite auditions by Dee Dee Ramone and Chris Stein. They reformed as Television a few months later, finding a guitarist in Richard Lloyd, and began playing at seminal punk clubs like CBGB and Max's Kansas City. In 1975, Verlaine kicked Hell out of the band for his erratic playing and behavior, and they released their first single with Fred Smith replacing Hell. Verlaine dated poet and musician Patti Smith when they were both up-and-coming artists in the burgeoning New York punk scene. Television released two albums, ''Marquee Moon'' and ''Adventure'', to great critical acclaim and modest sales before breaking up in 1978.

Verlaine soon released a self-titled solo album that began a fruitful 1980s solo career. He took up residence in England for a brief period in response to the positive reception his work had received there and in Europe at large. In the 1990s he collaborated with different artists, including Patti Smith, and composed a film score for ''Love and a .45''. In the early 90s, Television reformed to record one studio album (''Television'') and a live recording (''Live at the Academy, 1992''); they have reunited periodically for touring ever since. Verlaine released his first new album in many years in 2006, titled ''Songs and Other Things''.

Verlaine is regarded by many as one of the most talented performers of the early post punk era. His poetic lyrics, coupled with his accomplished and original guitar playing, are highly influential and widely praised in the music media. He and Television bandmate Richard Lloyd are known as one of rock's most acclaimed and inventive guitar duos. Verlaine is placed #56 on ''Rolling Stone'' magazine's 100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time. In spite of the adoration he receives from the media, Verlaine rarely reciprocates this attention in the form of interviews.

Collaborations

Verlaine was in discussion with Jeff Buckley to produce his second album, before Buckley's accidental death by drowning in 1997.

He has guested as guitarist on numerous releases by other artists, including the album Penthouse by the band Luna. He played on Patti Smith's Grammy-nominated "Glitter in Their Eyes" from her 2000 album Gung Ho. This was not the first time Verlaine had collaborated with one-time romantic partner Smith; four years earlier, he played on the song "Fireflies" from Patti Smith's 1996 album ''Gone Again'', and in the 1970s he played guitar on her debut single "Hey Joe" and on "Break It Up" from her debut album ''Horses''. He also co-authored that song with Smith.

He is part of The Million Dollar Bashers, a supergroup also featuring Sonic Youth stars Lee Ranaldo and Steve Shelley, Wilco guitarist Nels Cline, Bob Dylan bassist Tony Garnier, guitarist Smokey Hormel and keyboardist John Medeski. Their work appears on the original soundtrack to ''I'm Not There'', a biographical film reflecting the life of Bob Dylan.

Guitars

Throughout his career Verlaine has played a variety of Fender guitars. Most famously in the heyday of Television he played a Fender Jazzmaster and a Fender Jaguar through Fender and Vox amps. These guitars were an unusual choice for a rock musician at that time. Verlaine is credited as being instrumental in bringing what were seen as "surf" guitars, the Jaguar and Jazzmaster, into the rock arena. Verlaine is pictured inside the compilation ''The Miller's Tale'' playing both types of guitars. Recently, at solo concerts and at Television concerts, Verlaine has played a Fender Stratocaster, including one that has been modified with Danelectro pickups. He has also been seen using a standard Fender Telecaster with a rosewood neck in a video where he tries to teach Richard Hell the song "Venus" (though this was probably just a guitar owned by the studio they were in).

Guitar style and effects

Verlaine is an advocate of keen and unusual (yet subtle) guitar sounds and recording techniques including close miking, delay, reverb, slap echo, phasing/flanging, tremolo, etc. Television's first commercially released recording, "Little Johnny Jewel", saw Verlaine plugging his guitar straight into the recording desk with no amplification. Going against the prevailing tradition of rock guitar for the past 40 years, he rarely uses distortion.

Vibrato is a large part of Verlaine's style and he makes extensive use of the Jazzmaster's unique tremolo bar. In terms of guitar scales and note selection, Verlaine utilises the mixolydian and minor pentatonic scale like most rock guitarists, but his sequencing, phrasing, tone and approach to legato and other techniques is unconventional.

His style may be a product of the way he learned to play; he told a Guitar Player interviewer in 2005 "I never played guitar along with records, so I never learned all the speed licks everybody gravitates to when starting out. I know 19-year-old guitarists who can play Danny Gatton solos note-for-note. They don’t really know what notes they’re playing, but they do them flawlessly."

Verlaine uses a thin pick and heavy strings (gauges .050 to .013) and tunes down a half step or more. In contrast to most modern rock guitarists, he uses a wound 3rd string. Verlaine usually plays with the bridge pickup on, but picks over the neck pickup. This, according to him, gives a "full yet clear sound"

Discography

Solo albums

''Tom Verlaine'' (1979)

''Dreamtime'' (1981)

''Words from the Front'' (1982)

''Cover'' (1984)

''Flash Light'' (1987)

''The Wonder'' (1990)

''Warm and Cool'' (1992) (Reissued in 2005)

''The Miller's Tale: A Tom Verlaine Anthology'' (1996)

''Around'' (2006)

''Songs and Other Things'' (2006)

Singles

"Always" (1981)

"Postcard from Waterloo" (1982)

"Let Go the Mansion" (1984)

"Five Miles of You" (1984)

"A Town Called Walker" (1987)

"Cry Mercy, Judge" (1987)

"The Funniest Thing" (1987)

"Shimmer" (1989)

"Kaleidoscopin" (1990)

References

Guinness Rockopedia - ISBN 0-85112-072-5

The Great Rock Discography (Fifth Edition) - ISBN 1-84195-017-3

External links

The Wonder

Interview with Tom Verlaine by Sadi Ranson-Polizzotti

Category:1949 births Category:Living people Category:American male singers Category:American punk rock guitarists Category:American punk rock singers Category:American rock singer-songwriters Category:American rock guitarists Category:People from Morristown, New Jersey Category:People from Wilmington, Delaware

ca:Tom Verlaine da:Tom Verlaine es:Tom Verlaine fr:Tom Verlaine it:Tom Verlaine he:טום ורליין nl:Tom Verlaine ja:トム・ヴァーレイン pt:Tom Verlaine ru:Верлен, Том sv:Tom Verlaine

Coordinates	33°51′35.9″N151°12′40″N
name	Richard Hell
background	solo_singer
birth name	Richard Lester Meyers
born	October 02, 1949Lexington, Kentucky, United States
instrument	Vocals, bass guitar
genre	Punk rock, rock & roll, protopunk
occupation	Musician, singer, songwriter, writer
years active	1973–present
label	Sire, Warner Bros., Red Star, Matador, Rhino
associated acts	The Voidoids, Television, Neon Boys, The Heartbreakers, Dim Stars
website
notable instruments	}}

Richard Hell (born Richard Lester Meyers; October 2, 1949) is a singer, songwriter, bass guitarist, and writer.

Richard Hell was an innovator of punk music and fashion. He was one of the first to spike his hair and wear torn, cut and drawn-on shirts, often held together with safety pins. Malcolm McLaren, manager of the Sex Pistols, has credited Hell as a source of inspiration for the Sex Pistols' look and attitude, as well as the safety-pin and graphics accessorized clothing that McLaren sold in his London shop, Sex. Hell was in several important, early punk bands, including Neon Boys, Television, and The Heartbreakers, after which he formed Richard Hell & The Voidoids. Their 1977 album, ''Blank Generation'', influenced many other punk bands. Its title song was named "One of the 500 Songs That Shaped Rock" by music writers in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame listing and is ranked as one of the all-time top-ten punk songs by a 2006 poll of original British punk figures, as reported in the ''Rough Guide to Punk''.

Since the late 1980s Hell has devoted himself primarily to writing, publishing two novels and several other books. He was the film critic for ''BlackBook'' magazine from 2004 to 2006.

Biography

Early life and career

Richard Hell grew up in Lexington, Kentucky, in the 1950s. His father was an experimental psychologist, researching animal behavior. He died when Hell was seven years old. Hell was then raised by his mother, who, after her husband's death, returned to school and eventually became a professor.

Hell attended the Sanford School in Delaware for one year, where he became friends with Tom Miller, who later changed his name to Tom Verlaine). They ran away from school together and were arrested in Alabama for arson and vandalism a short time later.

Hell never finished high school, instead moving to New York City to make his way as a poet. In New York he met fellow young poet, David Giannini, and moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico for several months, where Giannini and Meyers co-founded "Genesis:Grasp". They used an IBM Varityper with changeable fonts to publish the magazine. They began publishing books and magazines but decided to go their separate ways in 1971, after which Hell created and published Dot Books. Before he was twenty-one his own poems were published in numerous periodicals, ranging from ''Rolling Stone'' to the New Directions ''Annual''s. Along with Tom Verlaine, in 1971 Hell also published under the pseudonym Theresa Stern, a fictional poet whose photo was actually a combination of both his and Verlaine's faces, in drag, superimposed over one another to create a new identity.

The Neon Boys, Television, and the Heartbreakers

In 1969, Verlaine joined Hell in New York and formed the Neon Boys. In 1974 the band added a second guitarist, Richard Lloyd, and changed their name to Television.

Television's performances at CBGB helped kick-start the first wave of punk bands, inspiring a number of different artists including Patti Smith, who wrote the first press review of Television for the ''Soho Weekly News'' in June 1974. She had an affair with Tom Verlaine, and formed a highly successful band of her own, The Patti Smith Group. Television was one of the early bands to play at CBGB, and persuaded owner Hilly Kristal to book rock bands there on a regular basis. They also built the clubs first stage.

Hell started playing his song "Blank Generation" during his stint in Television. In 1975, Hell parted ways with Television after a dispute over creative control. Hell claimed that he and Verlaine had originally divided the songwriting evenly but that later Verlaine refused to play Hell's songs. Verlaine remains characteristically silent on the subject.

Hell left Television the same week that Jerry Nolan and Johnny Thunders quit the New York Dolls. In May 1975 the three of them formed The Heartbreakers; not to be confused with Tom Petty's band, which adopted the same name the following year, at which time the bands name was changed to "Johnny Thunders and the Heartbreakers", to avoid copyright infringement. After a few shows Walter Lure joined The Heartbreakers as a second guitarist.

Richard Hell and The Voidoids

A year later, in early 1976, Hell quit The Heartbreakers and started Richard Hell & the Voidoids with Robert Quine, Ivan Julian and Marc Bell. The band released two albums, though the second, ''Destiny Street'', retained only Quine from the original group, with Naux (Juan Maciel) on guitar and Fred Maher on drums, and suffered from Hell's distractions, narcotics especially, during recording. Hell's best known songs with the Voidoids were "Blank Generation", "Love Comes in Spurts", "The Kid With the Replaceable Head" and "Time". In 2009, the guitar tracks on ''Destiny Street'' were re-recorded and released as ''Destiny Street Repaired'', with guitarists Marc Ribot, Bill Frisell, and Ivan Julian playing with the original rhythm tracks.

Dim Stars and Hell's books, further life

Hell's only other album set to date was in the band Dim Stars, for which he came out of retirement for a month in the early 1990s. Dim Stars featured guitarist Thurston Moore and drummer Steve Shelley from Sonic Youth, Gumball's guitarist Don Fleming, and Robert Quine. They formed only to record the one album and one EP, both titled ''Dim Stars'', and played one show in public, a WFMU benefit at the The Ritz, in Manhattan. Hell played bass, sang lead vocals and wrote the lyrics for the album.

Hell also co-wrote and sang lead vocals on the song "Never Mind" by The Heads, a 1996 collaborative effort between three former members of Talking Heads.

thumb|220px|left|Hell at home in the [[East Village, Manhattan|East Village, 2008]]In 1996 Hell wrote a novel, ''Go Now'', that was drawn largely from his own experience, and released a collection of short pieces (poems, essays and drawings) called ''Hot and Cold'' in 2001. His second novel, ''Godlike'', was published in 2005 on Dennis Cooper's Little House on the Bowery Series on Akashic Books. All three books have been highly praised. Also published in 2005 was a book of thirteen poems, written in collaboration with David Shapiro, ''Rabbit Duck''. Hell's non-fiction has been widely anthologized as well, including a number of appearances in "best music writing" collections.

Hell's archive of his manuscripts, tapes, correspondence (written and email), journals, and other documents of his life was purchased for $50,000 by New York University's Fales library in 2003.

Hell has appeared in several low budget films, most notably Susan Seidelman's ''Smithereens''. (Other acting appearances include Uli Lommell's ''Blank Generation'', Nick Zedd's ''Geek Maggot Bingo'', Rachel Amadeo's ''What About Me?'', and Rachid Kerdouche's ''Final Reward''. Hell had a non-speaking cameo role as Madonna's murdered boyfriend in Susan Seidelman's 1985 ''Desperately Seeking Susan''.) In 2007 he began making a movie which he wrote and acts in as well as directs.

Hell was married to Scandal's Patty Smyth for two years, 1985–86, and they have a daughter, Ruby. Hell married Sheelagh Bevan in 2002 and lives with her in the East Village, New York City.

Discography

1977: ''Blank Generation''

1982: ''Destiny Street''

1984: ''R.I.P''

1989: ''Funhunt'' [live]

1992: ''Dim Stars''

1992: ''Dim Stars EP''

2002: ''Time'' (expanded version of ''R.I.P.'')

2005: ''Spurts, The Richard Hell Story''

2009: ''Destiny Street Repaired''

Books

1992: ''Artifact: Notebooks from Hell 1974-1980. No. 37'' : Hanuman Books ISBN 093781539X

1993: "The Voidoid : Codex Books, Hove, UK. (first printing of previously unpublished 1973 novella.

1997 : ''Go Now'' : Scribner ISBN 978-0684832777

2001 : ''Hot and Cold'' : powerHouse Books: ISBN 1-57687-082-0

2005 : ''Rabbit Duck'' (w/ David Shapiro) : Repair

2005 : ''Godlike'' : Akashic Books ISBN 1-888451-77-7

2008: ''Psychopts'' (w/ Christopher Wool) : JMc & GHB Editions. 2008 ISBN 9780979507755

2009: ''The Voidoid'' (w/ Kier Cooke Sandvik) : 38th Street Publishers ISBN 978-0-9818369-6-6

References

Further reading

The Richard Hell Papers are located in the Fales Library at New York University. The Fales Library Guide to the Richard Hell Papers

Nathan Brackett. ''The New Rolling Stone Album Guide'', Simon and Schuster (2004) Bernard Gendron. ''Between Montmartre and the Mudd Club: Popular Music and the Avant-Garde'', University of Chicago Press (2002)

Clinton Heylin. ''From the Velvets to the Voidoids'', Penguin Books (1993) ISBN 0-14-017970-4

Legs McNeil and Gillian McCain. ''Please Kill Me, the Uncensored Oral History of Punk'' , Grove Press (1996) ISBN 0-8021-1588-8

Al Spicer. ''The Rough Guide to Punk'', Rough Guides/Penguin (2006) ISBN 1-84353-473-8

External links

NYU's Fales Library Guide to the Richard Hell Papers

Excerpts at YouTube from 2007 movie written, acted, and directed by Hell: ''Age Monologue, Pt. 1'', ''Age Monologue, Pt. 2'', and ''Melinda's Neck''

Steven Beeber ''interview with Richard Hell'' from the "Luck" issue of CONDUIT magazine June 23, 2003 — largely about Hell's writing, in which Hell explains his disbelief in free will. (This version is on a blog site and has not been verified as a true copy of the original).

Richard Cabut and Andrew Gallix. ''Talk to Richard Hell about his latest novel and album'', 3:AM Magazine, 2005

David Dalton. ''Hell interviewed''

Jason Gross. ''Interview with Richard Hell'', Perfect Sound Forever, December 1997 — interview is largely about his writing, but also about music.

Richard Hell "Hell On the Movies" richardhell.com 2006 — Richard Hell's movie column for ''BlackBook'' magazine, which appeared 2004-2006

Richard Meyers & Roy Suggs. Official Press Biography richardhell.com

Bryan Swirsky. ''– Exclusive Interview'' TRAKmarx, 2004 — About his music days in the 1970s

Adam Travis. Interviewing Hell (25 February 2005), bookslut.com, March 2005 — an interview where Hell is intensely adversarial to the interviewer

Category:1949 births Category:American punk rock singers Category:People from Lexington, Kentucky Category:Living people Category:Protopunk musicians Category:American arsonists

ca:Richard Hell de:Richard Hell es:Richard Hell fr:Richard Hell it:Richard Hell he:ריצ'רד הל nl:Richard Hell ja:リチャード・ヘル pl:Richard Hell pt:Richard Hell ru:Ричард Хэлл fi:Richard Hell sv:Richard Hell

Coordinates	33°51′35.9″N151°12′40″N
season name	Frasier Season 3
bgcolor	#FF6600
dvd release date	May 25, 2005
country	United States
network	NBC
first aired	September 19, 1995
last aired	May 21, 1996
num episodes	24
prev season	2
next season	4 }}

The third season of ''Frasier'' originally aired between September 1995 and May 1996, beginning on September 19, 1995.

Reception

The season ranked 12th in the season ratings with an average viewership of 13 million making it the 7th highest ranking show on the network.

List of episodes

№

#

Title

Directed by

Written by

Original air date

References

* Category:1995 television seasons Category:1996 television seasons

it:Episodi di Frasier (terza stagione)

Coordinates	33°51′35.9″N151°12′40″N
name	Patti Smith
background	solo_singer
birth name	Patricia Lee Smith
birth date	December 30, 1946
birth place	Chicago, Illinois, USA
origin	New York City, New York
instrument	Vocals, guitar, clarinet
genre	Protopunk, punk rock,
occupation	Singer-songwriter, poet, artist
years active	1971–present
label	Arista, Columbia
Associated acts	Tom Verlaine
website	}}

Patricia Lee "Patti" Smith (born December 30, 1946) is an American singer-songwriter, poet and visual artist, who became a highly influential component of the New York City punk rock movement with her 1975 debut album ''Horses''.

Called the "Godmother of Punk", her work was a fusion of rock and poetry. Smith's most widely known song is "Because the Night", which was co-written with Bruce Springsteen and reached number 13 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in 1978. In 2005, Patti Smith was named a Commander of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French Minister of Culture, and in 2007, she was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. On November 17, 2010, she won the National Book Award for her memoir ''Just Kids''. She is also a recipient of the 2011 Polar Music Prize.

Life and career

1946–1973: Early life

Patricia Lee Smith was born in Chicago. Her mother, Beverly, was a waitress, and her father, Grant, worked at the Honeywell plant. She spent her entire childhood in Deptford Township, New Jersey, raised Jehovah's Witness. She had a strong religious upbringing and a Bible education, but left organized religion as a teenager because she felt it was too confining; much later, she wrote the line "Jesus died for somebody's sins, but not mine" in her cover version of Them's "Gloria" in response to this experience. She has described having an avid interest in Tibetan Buddhism around the age of eleven or twelve, saying "I fell in love with Tibet because their essential mission was to keep a continual stream of prayer", but that as an adult she sees clear parallels between different forms of religion, and has come to the conclusion that religious dogmas are "...man-made laws that you can either decide to abide by or not." At this early age Smith was exposed to her first records, including ''Shrimp Boats'' by Harry Belafonte, Patience and Prudence doing ''The Money Tree'', and ''Another Side of Bob Dylan'', which her mother gave to her. Smith graduated from Deptford Township High School in 1964 and went to work in a factory. She gave birth to her first child, a daughter, on April 26, 1967, and chose to place her for adoption.

1967–1973: New York

In 1967, she left Glassboro State College (now Rowan University) and moved to New York City. She met photographer Robert Mapplethorpe there while working at a book store with a friend, poet Janet Hamill. She and Mapplethorpe had an intense romantic relationship, which was tumultuous as the pair struggled with times of poverty, and Mapplethorpe with his own sexuality. Smith considers Mapplethorpe to be one of the most important people in her life, and in her book ''Just Kids'' refers to him as "the artist of my life". Mapplethorpe's photographs of her became the covers for the Patti Smith Group LPs, and they remained friends until Mapplethorpe's death in 1989. In 1969 she went to Paris with her sister and started busking and doing performance art. When Smith returned to New York City, she lived in the Hotel Chelsea with Mapplethorpe; they frequented Max's Kansas City and CBGB. Smith provided the spoken word soundtrack for Sandy Daley's art film ''Robert Having His Nipple Pierced'', starring Mapplethorpe. The same year Smith appeared with Wayne County in Jackie Curtis' play ''Femme Fatale''. As a member of the St. Mark's Poetry Project, she spent the early 70's painting, writing, and performing. In 1971 she performed – for one night only – in ''Cowboy Mouth'', a play that she co-wrote with Sam Shepard (The published play's notes call for "a man who looks like a coyote and a woman who looks like a crow".) She wrote several poems, "for sam shepard" and "Sam Shepard: 9 Random Years (7 + 2)" about her relationship with Shepard.

Smith was briefly considered for the lead singer position in Blue Öyster Cult. She contributed lyrics to several of the band's songs, including "Debbie Denise" (inspired by her poem "In Remembrance of Debbie Denise"), "Baby Ice Dog", "Career of Evil", "Fire of Unknown Origin", "The Revenge of Vera Gemini" (on which she performs duet vocals), and "Shooting Shark". She was romantically involved at the time with the band's keyboardist Allen Lanier. During these years, Smith also wrote rock journalism, some of which was published in ''Rolling Stone'' and ''Creem''.

1974–1979: Patti Smith Group

By 1974, Patti Smith was performing rock music herself, initially with guitarist, bassist and rock archivist Lenny Kaye, and later with a full band comprising Kaye, Ivan Kral on guitar and bass, Jay Dee Daugherty on drums and Richard Sohl on piano. Ivan Kral was a refugee from Czechoslovakia, fleeing in 1968 after the fall of Alexander Dubček. Financed by Sam Wagstaff, the band recorded a first single, "Hey Joe / Piss Factory", in 1974. The A-side was a version of the rock standard with the addition of a spoken word piece about fugitive heiress Patty Hearst ("Patty Hearst, you're standing there in front of the Symbionese Liberation Army flag with your legs spread, I was wondering were you gettin' it every night from a black revolutionary man and his women..."). The B-side describes the helpless anger Smith had felt while working on a factory assembly line and the salvation she discovered in the form of a shoplifted book, the 19th century French poet Arthur Rimbaud's ''Illuminations''.

The Patti Smith Group was signed by Clive Davis of Arista Records, and in 1975 recorded their first album, ''Horses'', produced by John Cale amid some tension. The album fused punk rock and spoken poetry and begins with a cover of Van Morrison's "Gloria", and Smith's opening words: "Jesus died for somebody's sins but not mine" (an excerpt from "Oath," one of her early poems). The austere cover photograph by Mapplethorpe has become one of rock's classic images. As the popularity of punk rock grew, Patti Smith Group toured the United States and Europe. The rawer sound of the group's second album, ''Radio Ethiopia'', reflected this. Considerably less accessible than ''Horses'', ''Radio Ethiopia'' initially received poor reviews. However, several of its songs have stood the test of time, and Smith still performs them regularly in concert. She has said that ''Radio Ethiopia'' was influenced by the band MC5.

On January 23, 1977, while touring in support of ''Radio Ethiopia'', Smith accidentally danced off a high stage in Tampa, Florida, and fell 15 feet into a concrete orchestra pit, 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. Patti Smith Group produced two further albums before the end of the 1970s. ''Easter'' (1978) was her most commercially successful record, containing the single "Because the Night" co-written with Bruce Springsteen. ''Wave'' (1979) was less successful, although the songs "Frederick" and "Dancing Barefoot" both received commercial airplay.

1980–1995: Marriage

Before the release of ''Wave'', Smith, now separated from long-time partner Allen Lanier, met Fred "Sonic" Smith, former guitar player for Detroit rock band MC5 and his own Sonic's Rendezvous Band, who adored poetry as much as she did. (''Wave'''s "Dancing Barefoot" and "Frederick" were both dedicated to him.) The running joke at the time was that she married Fred only because she would not have to change her name. They had a son, Jackson (b. 1982) who would go on to marry The White Stripes drummer, Meg White in 2009; and a daughter, Jesse (b. 1987). Through most of the 1980s Patti Smith was in semi-retirement from music, living with her family north of Detroit in St. Clair Shores, Michigan. In June 1988, she released the album ''Dream of Life'', which included the song "People Have the Power". Fred Smith died on November 4, 1994, of a heart attack. Shortly afterward, Patti faced the unexpected death of her brother Todd and original keyboard player Richard Sohl. When her son Jackson turned 14, Smith decided to move back to New York. After the impact of these deaths, her friends Michael Stipe of R.E.M. and Allen Ginsberg (whom she had known since her early years in New York) urged her to go back out on the road. She toured briefly with Bob Dylan in December 1995 (chronicled in a book of photographs by Stipe).

1996–2003: Re-emergence

In 1996, Smith worked with her long-time colleagues to record ''Gone Again,'' featuring "About a Boy", a tribute to Kurt Cobain. Smith was a fan of Cobain, but was more angered than saddened by his suicide. That same year she collaborated with Stipe on "E-Bow the Letter", a song on R.E.M.'s ''New Adventures in Hi-Fi,'' which she has also performed live with the band. After release of ''Gone Again,'' Patti Smith had recorded two new albums: ''Peace and Noise'' in 1997 (with the single "1959", about the invasion of Tibet) and ''Gung Ho'' in 2000 (with songs about Ho Chi Minh and Smith's late father). Songs "1959" and "Glitter in Their Eyes" were nominated for Grammy Award for Best Female Rock Vocal Performance. A box set of her work up to that time, ''The Patti Smith Masters,'' came out in 1996, and 2002 saw the release of ''Land (1975–2002),'' a two-CD compilation that includes a memorable cover of Prince's "When Doves Cry". Smith's solo art exhibition ''Strange Messenger'' was hosted at The Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh on September 28, 2002.

2004–present

On April 27, 2004, Patti Smith released ''Trampin''' which included several songs about motherhood, partly in tribute to Smith's mother, who had died two years before. It was her first album on Columbia Records, soon to become a sister label to her previous home Arista Records. Smith curated the Meltdown festival in London on June 25, 2005, the penultimate event being the first live performance of ''Horses'' in its entirety. Guitarist Tom Verlaine took Oliver Ray's place. This live performance was released later in the year as ''Horses/Horses''.

On July 10, 2005, Smith was named a Commander of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French Ministry of Culture. In addition to Smith's influence on rock music, the Minister also noted her appreciation of Arthur Rimbaud. In August 2005, Smith gave a literary lecture about the poems of Arthur Rimbaud and William Blake. On October 15, 2006, Patti Smith performed at the CBGB nightclub, with a 3½-hour ''tour de force'' to close out Manhattan's music venue. She took the stage at 9:30 p.m. (EDT) and closed for the night (and forever for the venue) at a few minutes after 1:00 a.m., performing her song "Elegie", and finally reading a list of punk rock musicians and advocates who had died in the previous years.

On November 10, 2005, Smith received the Woman of Valor Award from ROCKRGRL Magazine at the ROCKRGRL Music Conference, marking the 30th Anniversary of the release of "Horses."

Smith was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame on March 12, 2007. From November 2006 - January 2007, an exhibition called 'Sur les Traces' at Trolley Gallery, London, featured polaroid prints taken by Patti Smith and donated to Trolley to raise awareness and funds for the publication of Double Blind, a book on the war in Lebanon in 2006, with photographs by Paolo Pellegrin, a member of Magnum Photos. She also participated in the DVD commentary for ''Aqua Teen Hunger Force Colon Movie Film for Theaters''. From March 28 to June 22, 2008, the Fondation Cartier pour l'Art Contemporain in Paris hosted a major exhibition of the visual artwork of Patti Smith, ''Land 250'', drawn from pieces created between 1967 and 2007. At the 2008 Rowan Commencement ceremony, Smith received an honorary doctorate degree for her contributions to popular culture. Smith is the subject of a 2008 documentary film, ''Patti Smith: Dream of Life''. A live album by Patti Smith and Kevin Shields, ''The Coral Sea'' was released in July 2008. On September 10, 2009, after a week of smaller events and exhibitions in the city, Smith played an open-air concert in Florence's Piazza Santa Croce, commemorating her performance in the same city 30 years earlier. In 2010, Patti Smith's book, ''Just Kids'', a memoir of her time in 1970s Manhattan and her relationship with Robert Mapplethorpe, was published; it later won the National Book Award for Nonfiction. On April 30, 2010, Patti Smith headlined a benefit concert headed by band-mate Tony Shanahan, for The Court Tavern of New Brunswick. Smith's set included "Gloria", "Because the Night" and "People Have the Power." She has a brief cameo in Jean-Luc Godard's 2010 ''Film Socialisme'', which was first screened in the Un Certain Regard section at the 2010 Cannes Film Festival.

On May 17, 2010, Patti Smith received an honorary doctorate in fine arts from Pratt Institute, along with architect Daniel Libeskind, MoMA director Glenn Lowry, former NYC Landmarks Commissioner Barbaralee Diamonstein-Spielvogel, novelist Jonathan Lethem, and director Steven Soderbergh. Following the conferral of her degree, Smith delivered the commencement address and sang/played two songs accompanied by long-time band member Lenny Kaye. In her remarks, Smith explained that in 1967 when she moved to New York City (Brooklyn), she would never have been accepted into Pratt, but most of her friends (including Mapplethorpe) were students at Pratt and she spent countless hours on the Pratt campus. She added that it was through her friends and their Pratt professors that she learned much of her own artistic skills, making the honour from the institute particularly poignant for Smith 43 years later.

Smith is currently working on a crime novel set in London. "I've been working on a detective story that starts at the St Giles in the Fields church in London for the last two years," she told NME adding that she "loved detective stories" having been a fan of Sherlock Holmes and US crime author Mickey Spillane as a girl. Part of the book will be set in Gothenburg, Sweden.

On May 3, 2011, it was announced that Patti Smith is one of the winners of the Polar Music Prize: "By devoting her life to art in all its forms, Patti Smith has demonstrated how much rock’n'roll there is in poetry and how much poetry there is in rock’n'roll. Patti Smith is a Rimbaud with Marshall amps. She has transformed the way an entire generation looks, thinks and dreams. With her inimitable soul of an artist, Patti Smith proves over and over again that people have the power."

On June 19, 2011, Patti Smith made her television acting debut on the TV series ''Law & Order: Criminal Intent'', appearing in an episode called "Icarus".

Smith has recorded a cover of Buddy Holly's classic "Words of Love" for the CD ''Rave On Buddy Holly'', a tribute album tied to Holly's seventy-fifth birthday year which was released June 28, 2011.

Smith is also contributing a track to "AHK-toong BAY-bi Covered", a U2 covers album due to be released through Q Magazine on October 25th. Smith recorded a cover of "Until The End Of The World" for the compilation.

In February 2012, she was a guest at the Sanremo Music Festival.

Influence

Smith has been a great source of inspiration for Michael Stipe of R.E.M. Listening to her album ''Horses'' when he was 15 made a huge impact on him; he said later, "I decided then that I was going to start a band." In 1998, Stipe published a collection of photos called ''Two Times Intro: On the Road with Patti Smith.'' Stipe sings backing vocals on Smith's songs "Last Call" and "Glitter in Their Eyes." Patti also sings background vocals on R.E.M.'s songs "E-Bow the Letter" and "Blue".

The Australian alternative rock band, The Go-Betweens dedicated a track off their 1994 album The Friends of Rachel Worth, ''When She Sang About Angels'' in reference to Smith's long time influence on themselves.

In 2004, Shirley Manson of Garbage spoke of Smith's influence on her in ''Rolling Stone'''s issue "The Immortals: 100 Greatest Artists of All Time", in which Patti Smith was counted number 47. The Smiths members Morrissey and Johnny Marr shared an appreciation for Smith's ''Horses,'' and reveal that their song "The Hand That Rocks the Cradle" is a reworking of one of the album's tracks, "Kimberly". In 2004, Sonic Youth released an album called ''Hidros 3 (to Patti Smith)''. U2 also cites Patti Smith as an influence. In 2005 Scottish singer-songwriter KT Tunstall released the single "Suddenly I See" as a tribute of sorts to Patti Smith. Canadian actress Ellen Page frequently mentions Smith as one of her idols and has done various photo shoots replicating famous Smith photos. In 1978 and 1979, Gilda Radner portrayed a character called Candy Slice on ''Saturday Night Live'' based on Smith.

American pop-dance singer Madonna has also named Smith as one of her biggest influences.

Activism

In 1993, Smith contributed "Memorial Tribute (Live)" to the AIDS-Benefit Album No Alternative produced by the Red Hot Organization.

Furthermore, Smith has been a supporter of the Green Party and backed Ralph Nader in the 2000 United States presidential election. She led the crowd singing "Over the Rainbow" and "People Have the Power" at the campaign's rallies, and also performed at several of Nader's subsequent "Democracy Rising" events. Smith was a speaker and singer at the first protests against the Iraq War organized by Lou Posner of Voter March on September 12, 2002, as U.S. President George W. Bush spoke to the United Nations General Assembly. Smith supported Democratic candidate John Kerry in the 2004 election. Bruce Springsteen continued performing her "People Have the Power" at Vote for Change campaign events. In the winter of 2004/2005, Smith toured again with Nader in a series of rallies against the Iraq War and calls for the impeachment of George W. Bush.

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". Song "Qana"^[mp3] was about the Israeli airstrike on the Lebanese village of Qana. "Without Chains"^[mp3] is about Murat Kurnaz, a Turkish citizen who was born and raised in Germany, held at Guantanamo Bay detainment camp for four years. Jury's article quotes Smith as saying:

In an interview, Smith stated that Kurnaz's family has contacted her and that she wrote a short preface for the book that he was writing. Kurnaz's book, "Five Years of My Life," was published in English by Palgrave Macmillan in March 2008, with Patti's introduction.

On March 26, 2003, ten days after Rachel Corrie's death, Smith appeared in Austin, Texas, and performed an anti-war concert. She prefaced her song "Wild Leaves" with the following comments and subsequently wrote a new song "Peaceable Kingdom" which was inspired by and is dedicated to Rachel Corrie.

In 2009, in her Meltdown concert in Festival Hall, she paid homage to the Iranians taking part in post-election protests by saying "Where is My Vote?" in a version of the song "People Have the Power".

Band members

Discography

;Studio albums

''Horses'' (1975)

''Radio Ethiopia'' (1976)

''Easter'' (1978)

''Wave'' (1979)

''Dream of Life'' (1988)

''Gone Again'' (1996)

''Peace and Noise'' (1997)

''Gung Ho'' (2000)

''Trampin''' (2004)

''Twelve'' (2007)

''Banga'' (2012)

Bibliography

''Seventh Heaven'' (1972)

''Early Morning Dream'' (1972)

''Witt'' (1973)

''Ha! Ha! Houdini!'' (1977)

''Babel'' (1978)

''Woolgathering'' (1992)

''Early Work'' (1994)

''The Coral Sea'' (1996)

''Patti Smith Complete'' (1998)

''Strange Messenger'' (2003)

''Auguries of Innocence'' (2005)

''Poems (Vintage Classics)'' by William Blake. Edited by and with introduction by Patti Smith (2007)

''Land 250'' (2008)

''Trois'' (2008)

''Great Lyricists'' foreword Rick Moody (2008)

''Just Kids'' (2010)

References

Further reading

External links

Category:1946 births Category:American female guitarists Category:American human rights activists Category:American poets Category:American punk rock singers Category:American rock music groups Category:American rock singer-songwriters Category:American spoken word artists Category:Columbia Records artists Category:Commandeurs of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres Category:Female punk rock singers Category:Living people Category:Musicians from Chicago, Illinois Category:National Book Award winners Category:Outlaw poets Category:Patti Smith Group members Category:People from Gloucester County, New Jersey Category:Postmodern writers Category:Protopunk musicians Category:Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductees‎ Category:Rowan University alumni Category:The Minus 5 members Category:Punk poets

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