Patti Smith reveals how she tracked down true identity of her biological father
Patti Smith has detailed how she discovered the identity of her true biological father in her new book.
The revelation was made in Smith’s new book, Bread of Angels, which is out now. The memoir chronicles her early life, such as her teenage years, and the experiences that helped sculpt her into a generation-defining talent.
In the book, Smith explained that in a 2002 routine phone call her mother said that she had “a story” for her “about genetics”. Smith tried to broach this subject the next time they met, when her mother was in a hospital bed after suffering a fall, but was met with a blank stare.
Then, in 2012, she took a DNA test along with her sister, Linda, to discover that they were actually half sisters and didn’t share Grant Smith as a father. In Bread of Angels, Smith recounted, “The results of our test put a great strain on my thought processes and for some time, I was unable to write.”
Due to comments made by her maternal great-grandmother as a child, Smith believed her father was her mother’s Uncle Joe upon finding out Grant wasn’t her dad. However, the DNA results showed her father’s side was “100% Ashkenazi” with Russian ancestry that eventually moved to Philadelphia.
Thanks to the assistance of her daughter, who Smith initially put up for adoption as a 20-year-old before growing close years later, was able to track down a photo of her father, Sidney. “I knew he was my father before I saw his face,” she wrote in the book. Sadly, he died as a young man, and his widow had also died before Smith discovered the information.
In an interview with People, Smith explained: “I wasn’t sure what to do with this information, because I wanted the book I was writing to be very truthful, and all of a sudden, I had a parallel truth. And I felt if I didn’t write about it, then it felt like truth was compromised.”
Smith also said of her decision to honour Sidney in the book, “As I was expressing gratitude to anyone else, I wanted to acknowledge him. He’s also someone that was barely remembered. He had no children. His surrounding family was small, and he’s not someone that would be remembered pretty much by anyone. So I wanted to rectify that.”
While she acknowledged that she was “sad to not be Grant’s biological daughter” and “sad to only have my sister, Linda, as a half sister”, she concluded “it doesn’t matter”, adding, “Our love for each other, my love for my father, eclipses blood, and my love for my sister eclipses blood.”
Smith also said of her daughter’s role in helping her discover her father: “My daughter is very, very private, and I honored her privacy in the book, but I still wanted to acknowledge that she’s part of our family and loved, and that she was the one who really helped. It was a lot of sleuthing, a lot of detective work, a lot of following different bloodlines. But in the end, we found the exact person. It’s kind of a miracle, really.”
In addition to releasing Bread of Angels, Smith is currently celebrating the 50th anniversary of her seminal album Horses with an ongoing North American tour.
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