PATTI SMITH GROUP Punk Rock USA

 

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PATTI SMITH GROUP Band Description:

New York in the early ’70s didn’t feel like “a scene.” It felt like a drafty room with bad lighting and great intentions. Then Patti Smith and her band show up and suddenly the air changes. Not polite. Not finished. Alive.

People love to stamp her with titles later (“Godmother of Punk” and all that). Fine. But back then it’s simpler: a poet with a microphone, a band that refuses to behave, and songs that lurch between prayer and punch-up.

Early Days and the CBGB Orbit

Patti lands in New York City in 1967 and gets pulled into the downtown art grind—cheap days, long nights, and a real partnership with photographer Robert Mapplethorpe that’s equal parts survival and creation. By the early ’70s she’s reading poetry with music under it, and Lenny Kaye is already there, plugging in, turning her words into something that can bite.

CBGB (315 Bowery) becomes one of the places where it all hardens into shape—especially once the band starts doing the club in 1975. The room isn’t glamorous; the point is the pressure. Patti doesn’t “command the stage,” she prowls it, and the band follows her turns without smoothing the edges. That’s the thrill: it can wobble, it can snap, it can suddenly lock into a groove that feels like a door slamming.

"Horses": The Debut That Didn’t Ask Permission

"Horses" drops in 1975, produced by John Cale, and it still sounds like a challenge more than a product. It opens by tearing into Them’s "Gloria" (yes, Van Morrison is part of that DNA) and Patti rewrites the mood with one of those lines you don’t forget once it’s in your bloodstream. The band plays lean, then stretches—minimalist punk bones with the nerve to improvise.

Even on the “song” songs—"Redondo Beach", "Free Money"—there’s this sense that the band is pushing the walls outward. "Birdland" goes the other way: it floats, it spirals, it dares you to stay with it. Some people call that “art.” I call it refusing to dumb it down.

Influence and the Aftershock

The Patti Smith Group didn’t invent punk like a patent office. They helped make it plausible in real time—poetry in the same room as rock & roll, intellect sharing a cigarette with feedback. By 1979, after the run that ends with "Wave", the band breaks up, and Patti steps away for a while. The records stay. They don’t “age gracefully.” They just keep staring back at you.

The legacy isn’t a plaque. It’s the moment you put one of these tracks on and realize you’re sitting up straighter. Not because it’s “important.” Because it still sounds like it might do something reckless.

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PATTI SMITH GROUP Band Members Description:

People talk about Patti like she did it all alone. Cute story. The truth is messier (and better): the Patti Smith Group was a handful of musicians turning poetry into something you could feel in your ribs. Think mid-’70s New York—rooms too small, amps too loud, nobody pretending to be polite.

Patti Smith (Vocals, Poetry): she doesn’t “sing” so much as she throws words like matches. Some nights it’s a sermon, other nights it’s a dare. The stare, the posture, the nerve—she made a whole generation realize rock didn’t need permission.

I still picture that first needle-drop of "Gloria" from "Horses" on a rainy afternoon: the room gets taller, the air gets sharper, and suddenly you’re paying attention again.

Lenny Kaye (Guitar): the guy who can snap a riff into place and then let it fray on purpose. He’s not there to “show versatility.” He’s there to shove the song forward, step back, then lunge again. Since the early days with Patti (they were already building the thing by 1973), his guitar has been the nervous system—fast, wired, stubbornly alive.

Ivan Kral (Bass, Guitar): Czech-born, dropped into the 1975-era lineup and immediately made the band sound wider. His bass doesn’t just keep time; it walks around the song, testing the floorboards. And when he slides over to guitar, it’s not a costume change—it’s the same restless brain using a different tool.

Richard Sohl (Keyboards): by 1974 he’s in there, quietly changing the weather. Piano, organ, synth—he doesn’t “add texture,” he fogs the windows and opens a side door. On the records and onstage, he’s the secret leverage: one chord and the whole band tilts into something more haunted.

Jay Dee Daugherty (Drums): he starts playing with Patti in 1975 and the bottom suddenly holds. Not flashy. Not fussy. Just a drummer who hits like he means it, then lets the space breathe. When the band surges, he’s the one steering the surge so it doesn’t turn into mush.

The Alchemy of Collaboration

What made them dangerous wasn’t “chemistry” (that word is too clean). It was taste. They knew when to push Patti’s lines into the lights and when to let them hang there, uncomfortable. They could go from a blunt punk shove to a long, drifting spell without sounding like they were switching genres for applause.

Strip away the mythology and you still get the same result: a band that sounds like a room being rearranged while you’re standing in it. Which is the whole point, really. Neat little summaries are for other people.

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