Who is Patti Smith?
Patti Smith is an American singer, songwriter, poet, painter, and author. Also, Patti Smith audiobooks are worldwide known. She was born in 1946 in Chicago and was married to Fred “Sonic” Smith until his death in 1994. Called the “punk poet laureate”, Patti became highly influential in the New York City punk rock movement with her 1975 debut album Horses, one of the most well-known rock and roll albums of all time. In addition, The Rolling Stones, The Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, Bob Dylan, and Janice Joplin artistically influenced her.
Patti had worked in a factory before she began performing spoken word and later formed the Patti Smith Group. Outside of her career as a singer and performer, where she recorded twelve albums, Pattie has exhibited her drawings and published multiple books, including M Train, Year of the Monkey, Coral Sea, and National Book Award-winning Just Kids. Patti Smith narrates her own audiobooks as well as Jo Nesbos Blood on Snow.
Genre of Writing
Patti Smith’s books are primarily memoirs and biographies/autobiographies.
Her Awards
Patti received nominations for the Best Female Rock Vocal Performance Grammy Award in 1998 and 2001, as well as the Best Spoken Word Album Grammy Award in 2016 and 2017. She won the ASCAP Pop Music Award for Most Performed Son in 1995 for the song Because the Night, and won the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2021 for her album Horses and is in the Rock and roll hall of Fame.
Top Patti Smith Audiobooks
Patti Smith audiobooks that she has narrated herself include:
- Just Kids
- M Train
- Year of The Monkey
- Patti Smith at the Minetta Lane
Also, other popular books by Smith include:
- A Book of Days
- Devotion
- The One Island (with Sam Shepard)
- The Coral Sea
What are Patti Smith’s Best Books?
1. Just Kids
Ecco published Just Kids on January 19, 2010. Patti Smith narrates the audio version on Amazon, and HarperAudio published it. Additionally, Patti Smith’s, Just Kids, is a best-selling memoir love story that documents her relationship with photographer Robert Mapplethorpe. Also, she writes about their complicated relationship from their beginnings in poverty and supporting each other’s dreams, and being each other’s inspiration. She writes about her journey of being an artist, poet, and musician coming of age in the late 60s and their journey of becoming part of the music scene in New York at the height of the sixties.
Beginning their journey on Coney Island to Forty-Second Street, to the round table of Max’s Kansas, where the Andy Warhol contingent held court. They moved into the Chelsea Hotel as they both grow and work towards their goals of making a living through their art forms.
2. M Train
Alfred A. published M Train on October 6, 2015. Knopf, Random House Audio. The memoir, M Train, was written and then recorded as an audiobook by Patti herself on Audible through Amazon and was nominated for Best Spoken Word Album Grammy Award. It is also considered a New York Times Bestseller. Based on the later years of her life, the 40 years between when the debut studio album, Horses, was released to when M Train was written, it’s about singular memories of Patti’s life in Detroit Michigan and the losses she suffered. Like the loss of her husband, Fred Smith, the loss of her brother just a month after, then losing her friend Robert Mapplethorpe.
3. Year of the Monkey
PenguinRandomHouse published Year of the Monkey on September 24, 2019. Year of the Monkey is Patti Smith’s latest biography/autobiography. Patti writes about a year of her life of solitary wandering after a run of New Year’s concerts in San Francisco. Also, the surreal lunar year begins in February, bringing unexpected turns, heightened mischief, and sorrow. Writing about this year in her life in a creative process, she goes into depth on life’s changes including loss, aging, and the dramatic shift in the political landscape of America.
Patti writes about her wanderings and experiences from Southern California to the Arizona desert, to a farm in Kentucky to help a friend in a crisis, and to the hospital room of a valued mentor. Also, Patti offers her wisdom, wit, and hope for a better world as she enters a new decade of her own life. Year of the Monkey is illustrated with Patti’s own polaroids.
