Punk Icon Patti Smith

I know people say this a lot about rock stars, but Patti Smith really did change my life. In the late 1970s, I was a reasonably well behaved kid grooving to Captain and Tenille and disco songs until I discovered my brother’s copy of Patti Smith’s Easter. I was hooked.

It was the song "Because the Night," her only top 10 hit. The hairy armpits on the cover. The Rimbaud poems. The N-word. It opened the door to a world so mindblowingly foreign to my reality at Rundlett Junior High School that I wanted to dive in.

Patti Smith was also a suburban kid who made her way to New York City in the late 1960s, befriending Robert Mapplethorpe, Sam Shepard, and setting her unladylike poems to three-chord guitar riffs, a sound that helped launch her as “the godmother of punk” - a status that doesn’t sit well with her.

Patti Smith: Dream of Life is a film by renowned fashion photographer and first-time director Steven Sebring. It's mostly shot in grainy 16mm film and mostly in black and white. There’s no timeline and sometimes little action. Sebring joins Word of Mouth with more on filming Patti Smith for twelve years.

Watch the trailer for Patti Smith: Dream of Life: