“My hero wall”: the inspirational figures who shaped Patti Smith
The trope of teenage girls plastering their walls with the celebrities they idolise is as old as celebrity culture itself. It is almost a right of passage for young culture fans to paper their bedroom walls with images of boy bands and teenage heartthrobs. Even the punk rock poet Patti Smith is not above this practice. Growing up in the 1950s, you might expect that Smith’s bedroom was covered in images of Elvis Presley, Frankie Avalon and other teenage idols of the rock ‘n’ roll generation, but even in childhood, Smith was much more picky in the influences she chose.
Today, Patti Smith is a legendary figure known for her incredible body of music and literary work. Through her work in the underground music scene of the 1970s, Smith had a colossal impact on the development of punk rock and alternative music, stunning crowds with her defiant performance. Before all that, though, Smith was just a young woman in New Jersey with a head bursting with ideas.
In an article from 1993, entitled ‘We Can Be Heroes’, Smith revealed the early influences who first inspired her to greatness. In the article, the musician talks about a large oval-shaped mirror that she had retrieved from an abandoned shed. Over the years, Smith would add photographs and cut-outs of those who inspired her, allowing her to surround her own reflection with these icons.
So, who were the lucky few that made it onto Patti Smith’s mirror? The answer is as varied and disparate as you might expect from the poet. Amid the largely male-dominated society of the 1950s and 1960s, female role models that were not presented merely as sex objects were few and far between. As a result, Smith was forced to look into the past. In the article, she shares, “There were a few bright glimpses, mostly past tense: Jo March, Madame Curie, the brave mistresses of art,” adding, “And there was always Joan of Arc”.
Of course, Smith’s idols were not restricted by gender. After discovering a paperback copy of Illuminations by Arthur Rimbaud, the French poet soon made it to the mirror. Rimbaud proved to be an incredible influence on Smith throughout her career, with the punk progenitor sharing, “It was my salvation. He was my Rimbaud”. Smith also found joy in the modern-day poetry of Bob Dylan after her mother gifted her a copy of Another Side of Bob Dylan. “Dylan was somebody to be with, somebody to be,” she explained, “He gave voice to my yearnings. His urgency, his awkwardness, matched my own.”
Soon enough, the oval mirror had reached its limits; the faces that had been plastered around the edges had started to take centre stage. “The surface was papered over,” she insisted, “Blonde on Blonde, Brian Jones, Maria Callas, John Coltrane,” finally adding: “I could no longer see myself. Even at nineteen I could see the irony of it all”.
Only when the mirror was full did Patti Smith make the decision to move to New York, where she would find her defiant artistic voice. Although the mirror was gone, it lived on in NYC, the images moved to an apartment wall, “My ‘hero wall,’” she called it, “Dylan, John Lennon, Camus, Genet, Hank Williams […]I’d sit and write, grinning up at them, my abstract friends spurring me on”.
