Some cultural icons reflect cutting-edge trends, and others cause them to be. This is a photo of the legendary Patti Smith, and she falls into the second category.
The list of “firsts” Smith represented is lengthy. As music critic Nick Dohney writes, “She’s called the godmother of punk. _Horses_, her iconic first album, came out in 1975 making it one of the first punk albums. She was known for being the punk rock Dylan (and) made music that blended free form poetic lyrics with the sound of raw rock ‘n roll. Basically she was elevating rock and roll in the same way Dylan did ten years earlier. Besides all that, she’s a female icon. Unlike previous female rock-front women, she didn’t make her sexuality be a selling point for her art. She dressed like a man and was one of the first females to have a androgynous look. She did this long before Diane Keaton made it famous in _Annie Hall_. It would be hard to find a single female rock star after her that wasn’t completely influenced by the trail she blazed. Basically she was a total badass in an art form dominated by men”.
And the poetry of her songs is striking. One of the most famous first lines of rock music is her opening to “Gloria,” itself coming out of her poem “Oath”: “So Christ, you died for somebody’s sins, but not mine”. Written as an expression of rejecting her Jehovah’s Wittness upbringing, these lines typified Smith’s refusal to be defined in any way by social conventions, much like the punk genre she helped develop.
Source(s): Image of Patti Smith in 1976 age 29 by Gijsbert Hanekroot/ Redferns
