Nickname: Godmother of Punk
Genre: Rock
Most Memorable Recording: "Because The Night"
Followers: Babes in Toyland, Jim Carroll, Concrete Blonde, Talking Heads, Têtes Noires, Felt, Liz Phair, Heather Nova, The Go-Go's, Kim Gordon, R.E.M., Spacemaid, Scout, Lisa Hayes, Life Without Buildings, The Fiery Furnaces, KT Tunstall, The Happy Hollows, Caroline af Ugglas, Swallows, and many more.
Punk rock's poet laureate, Patti Smith ranks among the most influential female rock & rollers of all time. Ambitious, unconventional, and challenging, Smith's music was hailed as the most exciting fusion of rock and poetry since Bob Dylan's heyday. If that hybrid remained distinctly uncommercial for much of her career, it wasn't a statement against accessibility so much as the simple fact that Smith followed her own muse wherever it took her -- from structured rock songs to free-form experimentalism, or even completely out of music at times. Her most avant-garde outings drew a sense of improvisation and interplay from free jazz, though they remained firmly rooted in noisy, primitive three-chord rock & roll. She was a powerful concert presence, singing and chanting her lyrics in an untrained but expressive voice, whirling around the stage like an ecstatic shaman delivering incantations.
