#Patti Smith #art punk #proto-punk #art rock #hard rock #new wave #alternative rock #singer-songwriter #1970s
Punk rock's poet laureate Patti Smith ranks among the most ambitious, unconventional, and challenging rock & rollers of all time. When she emerged in the '70s, Smith's music was hailed as the most exciting fusion of rock and poetry since Bob Dylan's heyday. With her androgynous, visual presentation echoing her unabashedly intellectual and uncompromising songwriting, Smith followed her muse wherever it took her, from structured rock songs to free-form experimentalism. Her most avant-garde outings, such as 1975's Horses and the following year's Radio Ethiopia, borrowed improvisation and interplay from free jazz, but remained firmly rooted in primal three-chord rock & roll. A regular at CBGB's during New York punk's early days, the artiness and the raw musicianship of her work had a major impact on the movement among contemporaries and followers alike. As boundary-pushing as her music could be, Smith nevertheless scored a hit in the Bruce Springsteen collaboration "Because the Night" from 1978's Easter, which, like 1979's Wave, offered a slightly more polished version of her sound. When she returned to music following a lengthy hiatus and the death of her husband, Fred "Sonic" Smith, her work was sometimes subtler and more meditative, as on 1996's Gone Again, but rock was still a fiery, vital part of albums like 2000's Gung Ho and 2012's Banga. From: https://www.allmusic.com/artist/patti-smith-mn0000747445/biography
By 1979, Patti Smith was in a relationship with Fred “Sonic” Smith of Detroit garage rock legends The MC5, and “Frederick” is one of the most beautifully pure love songs of its era; a sense of euphoric joy leaping from the speakers set to a classic rock melody that clings to the memory magnetically. It’s so vivid, the fact that Smith turned her back on music for a decade afterwards, choosing blissful domesticity and motherhood over life on the road, should have come as no surprise. From: https://www.loudersound.com/features/patti-smith-every-album-ranked-from-worst-to-best
