Few artists have wielded more influence than Patti Smith, whose Horses album
from 1975 retains iconic status as one of the most important and most articulate
records of the punk era. The daughter of a waitress and a plant worker, Smith
had a strong religious upbringing in Deptford Township, New Jersey and developed
an early interest in Tibetan Buddhism, while absorbing the music of Harry
Belafonte, Bob Dylan and The Beatles. On leaving school she worked in a factory,
but a move to New York changed her life after meeting photographer Robert
Mapplethorpe while working in a book sto...