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Patti Smith

PATTI SMITH

YEAR

2007

INDUCTED BY

Zach de la Rocha

CATEGORY

Performers

The high priestess of punk-poetry.

Rock was getting too slick for its own good when Patti Smith burst on the scene and tore it apart. She shrieked and howled literate yet street-savvy lyrics, unflinchingly confronting topics from religion to the Beat movement.

Patti Smith

Patti Smith

HALL OF FAME
ESSAY

By Jaan Uhelszki

Patti Smith isn’t like the rest of us. Blame it on the childhood bout with scarlet fever that left her with recurring hallucinations a few years after her birth, in 1946.

Or perhaps on her view of faith. “They were open-minded people,” she once said. “They had interests that ranged from horse racing to religion to UFOs,” causing Smith to pursue religion for most of her childhood – but never catch it.

“I started out as a missionary, but I couldn’t find a religion that didn’t promise things to some people to the exclusion of others. The personal voyage into some kind of light shouldn’t be denied to anybody.”

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