Smith was born in Chicago, Illinois, USA. Her mother, Beverly, was a jazz singer, and father, Grant, worked at the Honeywell plant. She spent her entire childhood in Deptford, New Jersey. Raised the daughter of a Jehovah's Witness mother, she claims she had a strong religious, Bible-based education but left organized religion as a teenager because she felt it was too confining. (She later wrote the opening line of her cover version of Them's Gloria in response to this experience.) After graduating from Deptford Township High School in 1964, Smith went to work in a factory.
In 1967 she left Glassboro State Teachers College (now Rowan University) and moved to New York City. She met photographer Robert Mapplethorpe there while working at a book store with friend, poet Janet Hamill. Mapplethorpe's photographs of her became the covers for the Patti Smith Group LPs, and they remained friends until Mapplethorpe's death in 1989. In 1969 she went to Paris with her sister and started busking and doing performance art. When Smith returned to New York City, she lived in the Hotel Chelsea with Mapplethorpe. The two frequented the fashionable Max's Kansas City and CBGB nightclubs. The same year Smith appeared with Wayne County in Jackie Curtis's play "Femme Fatale". As a member of the St. Mark's Poetry Project, she spent the early '70s painting, writing, and performing. In 1971 she performed – for one night only – in Sam Shepard's "Cowboy Mouth". (The published play's notes call for "a man who looks like a coyote and a woman who looks like a crow".) She collaborated with Allen Lanier of Blue Öyster Cult, who recorded several of the songs to which Smith had contributed, including Debbie Denise (after her poem "In Remembrance of Debbie Denise"), Career of Evil, Fire of Unknown Origin, The Revenge of Vera Gemini, and Shooting Shark. During these years, Smith also wrote rock journalism, some of which was published in Creem magazine.
By 1974 Patti Smith was performing rock music herself, initially with guitarist and rock archivist Lenny Kaye, and later with a full band comprising Kaye, Ivan Kral on bass, Jay Dee Daugherty on drums and Richard Sohl, on piano. Financed by Robert Mapplethorpe, the band recorded a first single, "Hey Joe/Piss Factory", in 1974. The A-side was a version of the rock standard with the addition of a spoken word piece about fugitive heiress Patty Hearst ("Patty Hearst, you're standing there in front of the Symbionese Liberation Army flag with your legs spread, I was wondering were you gettin' it every night from a black revolutionary man and his women..."). The B-side describes the helpless anger Smith had felt while working on a factory assembly line and the salvation she discovered in the form of a shoplifted book, the 19th century French poet Arthur Rimbaud's Illuminations.
Patti Smith Group was signed by Clive Davis of Arista Records, and 1975 saw the release of Smith's first album, Horses, produced by John Cale amidst some tension. The album fused punk rock and spoken poetry and begins with a cover of Van Morrison's Gloria, and Smith's opening words: "Jesus died for somebody's sins but not mine."
As Patti Smith Group toured the United States and Europe, punk's popularity grew. The rawer sound of the group's second album, Radio Ethiopia, reflected this development. Considerably less accessible than Horses, Radio Ethiopia received poor reviews. However, several of its songs have stood the test of time, and Smith still performs them regularly in concert. On January 23, 1977, while touring in support of the record, Smith accidentally danced off a high stage in Tampa, Florida and fell 15 feet into a concrete orchestra pit, breaking several neck vertebrae. The injury required a period of rest and an intensive round of physical therapy, during which time she was able to reassess, re-energize and reorganize her life. Patti Smith Group produced two further albums before the end of the 1970s. Easter (1978) was her most commercially successful record, containing single Because the Night co-written with Bruce Springsteen. Wave (1979) was less successful, although songs Frederick and Dancing Barefoot both received commercial airplay.
Before the release of Wave, Smith, now separated from long-time partner Allen Lanier, met Fred Sonic Smith, former guitar player for Detroit rock band MC5 and his own Sonic's Rendezvous Band, who adored poetry as much as she did. ("Wave"'s "Dancing Barefoot" and "Frederick" were both dedicated to him.) The running joke at the time was that she only married Fred because she would not have to change her name. Patti and Fred had a son, Jackson, and later a daughter, Jesse. Through most of the 1980s Patti was in semi-retirement from music, living with her family north of Detroit in St. Clair Shores, Michigan. On June 1988 she released Dream Of Life, which included song People Have the Power. Fred Smith died on November 4, 1994. Shortly afterward, Patti faced the unexpected death of her brother, Todd, and original keyboard player, Richard Sohl. When her son Jackson turned 21, Smith decided to move back to New York. After the impact of these deaths, her friends Michael Stipe of R.E.M. and Allen Ginsberg (whom she had known since her early years in New York) urged her to go back out on the road. She toured briefly with Bob Dylan in December 1995 (chronicled in a book of photographs by Stipe).
In 1996, Smith worked with her long-time colleagues to record the haunting Gone Again, featuring About a Boy, a tribute to Kurt Cobain. Smith was a fan of Cobain, but was more angered than saddened by his suicide. That same year she collaborated with Stipe on E-Bow the Letter, a song on R.E.M.'s New Adventures in Hi-Fi, which she has also performed live with the band. After release of "Gone Again", Patti Smith has recorded two new albums: Peace and Noise in 1997 (with the single 1959, about the invasion of Tibet) and Gung Ho in 2000 (with songs about Ho Chi Minh and Smith's late father). A box set of her work up to that time, "The Patti Smith Masters", came out in 1996, and 2002 saw the release of "Land (1975–2002)", a two-CD compilation that includes a memorable cover of Prince's When Doves Cry. Smith's solo art exhibition, "Strange Messenger" was hosted at The Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh on September 28, 2002.
On April 27, 2004 Patti Smith released Trampin' which included several songs about motherhood, partly in tribute to Smith's mother who died two years before. Smith curated the Meltdown festival in London on June 25, 2005, the penultimate event being the first live performance of "Horses" in its entirety. Guitarist Tom Verlaine took Oliver Ray's place. This live performance was released later in the year as "Horses/Horses". In August 2005 Smith gave a literary lecture about the poems of Arthur Rimbaud and William Blake. On July 10, 2005, Smith was named a Commander of the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French Ministry of Culture. In addition to her influence on rock music, Minister also noted Smith's appreciation of Arthur Rimbaud. On October 15, 2006, Patti Smith performed at CBGB nightclub, with a 3½-hour tour de force to close out Manhattan's music venue. She took the stage at 9:30 p.m. (EDT) and closed for the night (and forever for the venue) at a few minutes after 1:00 a.m., performing her song Elegie, and finally reading a list of punk rock musicians and advocates who had died in the previous years.
Smith was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame March 12, 2007. She dedicated her award to the memory of her late husband, Fred, and gave a performance of The Rolling Stones classic, Gimme Shelter. As the closing number of Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Induction Ceremony, Smith's "People Have the Power" was used for the big celebrity jam that always ends the program.
From March 28 to June 22, 2008 the Fondation Cartier pour l'Art Contemporain in Paris hosted a major exhibition of the visual work of Patti Smith, "Land 250", drawn from pieces created between 1967 and 2007. At the 2008 Rowan Commencement ceremony, Smith received an honorary doctorate degree for her contributions to popular culture. Smith is the subject of a 2008 documentary film, "Patti Smith: Dream of Life". http://www.dreamoflifethemovie.com/
In June 2012, Smith released her 11th studio album, "Banga." In an interview on CBS News Sunday Morning on April 1, 2012, Smith explained the album's title: "for those who are curious, you can find what Banga is if you read The Master and Margarita by Bulgakov." In The Master and Margarita, Banga is Pontius Pilate's dog who Pilate could freely complain about the hemicrania that tortured him. Other songs on the album were also inspired by literature, particularly "April Fool," inspired by Nikolai Gogol.
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Hey Joe
Patti Smith Lyrics
Jump to: Overall Meaning ↴ Line by Line Meaning ↴
Makes me feel so masochistic
The way you go down low deep into the neck
And I would do anything, and I would do anything and Patty Hearst
You're standing there in front of the Symbionese
Liberation army flag with your legs spread
I was wondering will you get it every night
And now that you're on the run what goes on in your mind
Your sisters they sit by the window
You know your mama doesn't sit and cry and your daddy
Well you know what your daddy said
Patty, you know what your daddy said
Patty, he said, he said, he said
Well, sixty days ago she was such a lovely child
Now here she is with a gun in her hand
Hey Joe, hey Joe, where're you going with that gun in your hand?
Hey Joe, I said where're you goin' with that gun in your hand?
I'm gonna go shoot my ol' lady
You know I found her messin' around town with another man
And you know that ain't cool, watch me
Hey Joe, I heard you shot your woman down
You shot her down to the ground, you shot her
Yes I did, yes I did, yes I did, I shot her, I shot her
I caught her messin' round with some other man
So I got on my truck, I gave her the gun and I shot her
I shot her, shoot her one more time for me
Hey Joe, where you gonna, where you gonna run to?
Where you gonna run to, Joe, where you gonna run to ?
Go get a cover, I'm gonna go down south
I'm gonna go down south to Mexico
I'm going down, down, down to Mexico where a man can be free
No one's gonna put a noose around my neck
No one is gonna give me life, no
I'm goin' down to Mexico, I'm going down
You're not going to hear 'em stand there
And look at the stars as big as holes in the arms
And the stars like a back truck electric flag
And I'm standing there under that flag with your carbine
Between my legs, you know, I felt so free of death beyond me
I felt so free, the F.B.I. is looking for me baby
But they'll never find me, no, they can hold me down like a
And I'm still on the run and they can speculate what I'm free
But daddy, daddy, you'll never know just what I was feelin'
But I'm sorry, I am no little pretty little rich girl
I am nobody's million dollar baby, I am nobody's patsy anymore
I'm nobody's million dollar baby, I'm nobody's patsy anymore
And I feel so free
The lyrics to Patti Smith's "Hey Joe" appear to be a combination of two different songs: "Hey Joe" by Jimi Hendrix, and "The Ballad of Patty Hearst" by Phil Ochs. The first half of the song appears to be about the singer's infatuation with a guitar player, who they describe as "masochistic." They go on to mention Patty Hearst, who was a young heiress that was kidnapped by the Symbionese Liberation Army in 1974 and later joined their cause, leading to a highly-publicized manhunt.
The second half of the song switches to the story of Joe, who is on the run after shooting his wife for cheating on him. The lyrics are taken directly from the Jimi Hendrix song, and Joe has become a folk hero of sorts, running off to Mexico and finding freedom there. The final verse seemingly ties these two stories together, as the singer stands under a flag with a carbine between their legs, feeling "so free."
Line by Line Meaning
Honey, the way you play guitar makes me feel so
The way you play guitar is intoxicating to me
Makes me feel so masochistic
It is like self-inflicted pain, but I can't resist
The way you go down low deep into the neck
The way you play the guitar with such intensity is mesmerizing
And I would do anything, and I would do anything and Patty Hearst
I am so captivated by your guitar playing, I would even do something crazy like Patty Hearst
You're standing there in front of the Symbionese
You are protesting with the Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA)
Liberation army flag with your legs spread
You are showing off your power and strength in front of the SLA flag
I was wondering will you get it every night
I am curious if you are sleeping with a black revolutionary man and his women every night
From a black revolutionary man and his women or whether you really did
I am not sure if it is true or not
And now that you're on the run what goes on in your mind
I wonder what thoughts are on your mind now that you are wanted by the authorities
Your sisters they sit by the window
Your sisters are worried about you and waiting for your return
You know your mama doesn't sit and cry and your daddy
Your mother is strong and does not cry even though you are on the run
Well you know what your daddy said
Your father has strong opinions about what you have done
Patty, you know what your daddy said
Your father has something to say to you specifically, Patty
He said, he said, he said
His words were important enough to repeat three times
Well, sixty days ago she was such a lovely child
Before all of this happened, you were innocent and sweet
Now here she is with a gun in her hand
Now you are armed and potentially dangerous
Hey Joe, hey Joe, where're you going with that gun in your hand?
I am curious where you are headed with that gun
I'm gonna go shoot my ol' lady
I am going to kill my girlfriend because she cheated on me
You know I found her messin' around town with another man
I caught her cheating on me
And you know that ain't cool, watch me
I am about to take action because cheating is not acceptable
Hey Joe, I heard you shot your woman down
I heard that you killed your girlfriend
You shot her down to the ground, you shot her
You killed her and shot her multiple times
Yes I did, yes I did, yes I did, I shot her, I shot her
I am taking responsibility for my actions and admitting that I killed her
I caught her messin' round with some other man
She cheated on me and that is why I killed her
So I got on my truck, I gave her the gun and I shot her
I used my truck and the gun to kill her
Shoot her one more time for me
I am asking you to shoot her one last time in my memory
Hey Joe, where you gonna, where you gonna run to?
I want to know where you plan to escape to
Where you gonna run to, Joe, where you gonna run to ?
Where are you going to find safety, Joe?
Go get a cover, I'm gonna go down south
I need a place to hide, so I am going to Mexico
I'm gonna go down south to Mexico
I am heading to Mexico because it is a place of freedom for me
Where a man can be free
In Mexico, I can escape from the authorities and be free
No one's gonna put a noose around my neck
I will not be punished or executed like someone being hanged
No one is gonna give me life, no
I will not be imprisoned or given a life sentence
I'm goin' down to Mexico, I'm going down
I am determined to go to Mexico
You're not going to hear 'em stand there
No one can stop me or will hear me
And look at the stars as big as holes in the arms
I can look at the stars which are as big as bullet holes
And the stars like a back truck electric flag
The stars look like the American flag on a truck
And I'm standing there under that flag with your carbine
I am standing under the flag with your gun
Between my legs, you know, I felt so free of death beyond me
I feel free with the gun between my legs and death does not scare me
I felt so free, the F.B.I. is looking for me baby
I am so free, but the FBI is actively searching for me
But they'll never find me, no, they can hold me down like a
I am confident that the FBI will never find me, I cannot be controlled
And I'm still on the run and they can speculate what I'm free
I am still on the run and the FBI can only guess what I am up to
But daddy, daddy, you'll never know just what I was feelin'
My dad will never know how I was really feeling
But I'm sorry, I am no little pretty little rich girl
I am not a naive or spoiled girl
I am nobody's million dollar baby, I am nobody's patsy anymore
I am not a puppet or a toy for anyone to use and abuse anymore
I'm nobody's million dollar baby, I'm nobody's patsy anymore
I am emphasizing that I am not anyone's possession anymore
And I feel so free
I am still feeling very free despite everything that has happened
Lyrics © DistroKid
Written by: Billy Roberts
Lyrics Licensed & Provided by LyricFind