“Boundless energy”: Patti Smith’s first memory of rock and roll
Before she was the godmother of punk, Patti Smith was just an ordinary kid from New Jersey. The daughter of a waitress and a machinist, her family were classic blue-collar workers living a humble home life. When she ran away as a young adult to New York City to forge a creative life, she was the family’s black sheep. But her earliest musical memories and first interaction with rock and roll happened right there, where her passion and work ethic were born.
Even though Smith’s career was truly made in New York City, her passion and drive were homegrown. As the child of a family that went out day after day to work, the poet carries that same dedication into her career today. Despite existing in an industry and creative world that is often talked about in flouncy, loose terms where inspiration falls from the sky and art is formed easily, Smith had always refused that. Instead, she talks about her work with the same kind of day-in, day-out loyal devotion that she saw in her parents.
So, while her parents weren’t creatives, so much of who Smith is grew from their home in New Jersey. “My parents were not highly educated, but they were both very intelligent and well-read, and both of them were extremely open-minded,” she said of her family life, which helped her open her up to a world of music and art and life outside of her small town.
From their radio or record player, she recalled her first interaction with music that moved her. Beyond learning hymns or nursery rhymes, there was one music memory that stuck with her. “The first real profound one was hearing Little Richard singing ‘Tutti Frutti’ when I was very young, maybe 5 or 6,” she told Interview magazine. “The energy of it just, like, got me. I didn’t know what it was. I was just a little girl, but the energy in it was akin to a child’s boundless energy,” she said.
To her, Little Richard’s brand of high-octane, upbeat rock and roll was like the joy and vibrancy of youth. It was electrifying, rejuvenating, and limitless, both to the young child back then and to Smith now as a grown woman decades into her career.
For anyone who sees Smith perform live today, there are glimpses of that energy in her performance. When she gets into a song, like one of her biggest hits ‘Because The Night’ or a cover of Nirvana’s ‘Smells Like Teen Spirit’, the 77-year-old musician is suddenly young again, jumping up and down on stage pumping her fist or kicking over a mic stand. It’s clear that to her, music and its energy are utterly ageless, and no matter when it’s heard or by whom it’s performed, the true spirit of rock and roll is rooted in the electric feeling of youth and its excitement. Even in her older age now, when she’s performing, that spirit is right there within her.
It’s beautiful to think of that as the guiding light throughout her life. From being a young kid in a small town to her years in the early punk scene in New York City, where she made a name for herself as a wild and captivating on-stage presence, to today, where people still clamber to see her perform, that energy she first encountered as her first experience with rock and roll has forever powered her.
