“No-one had brought an electric guitar in the church before… it caused a bit of a stir”: Patti Smith on her controversial first gig – and why rock belongs to the people

Multidisciplinary artist and punk-rock pioneer Patti Smith is receiving renewed interest after being name-dropped on Taylor Swift's new album, The Tortured Poets Department.

In a 2023 interview with Harvard Business Review, Smith talked about how she used instruments – including the electric guitar – to convey her unique brand of punk poetry, which continues to inspire generations of artists. 

“I started performing in 1971, and I had too much energy to just stand and read poems,” she said. “So I recruited Lenny Kaye to play a little guitar behind me. And it organically evolved into expressing myself in more-exciting ways: piano, electric guitar, rapping, improvising.”

Smith and her close collaborator Kaye certainly made a splash at one of her first shows when she brought an electric guitar to a church in Manhattan in 1971.

“I was quite young, in my early 20s, with extreme amounts of agitated energy,” she told NME. “I wasn't content just to stand there and read poetry. I wanted to perform my poetry in the way I was learning from Jim Morrison or Jimi Hendrix or the great Beat poets.

“So I injected a little song in my poems. I asked Lenny if he would do some interpretive electric guitar in a poem about a car crash, which he did, with a small amp, a humble little setup.

“But no-one had ever done that in this church, certainly not a girl. Well, no-one had brought an electric guitar in the church before, and it caused a bit of a stir which we didn't really anticipate.”

Smith's humble approach to her art – and her nuanced views on rock 'n' roll – weren't dampened by her popularity.

Patti Smith performs «Beneath the Southern Cross» | SVT/NRK/Skavlan - YouTube

Watch On

In a 2011 interview with The Talks, Smith mentioned how she doesn't believe “playing rock 'n' roll should have crowns. We’re not kings and queens. Anybody can play it” and that “rock 'n' roll belongs to the people.”

“I didn’t know shit, but I did know rock 'n' roll and I did believe that it was mine and I was one of the people and it was my art and I felt it was my right to get up and embrace it and to express my feelings through it by adding poetry or political energy or whatever.”

She continued: “I don’t have an image of myself, when I’m walking down the street, like I’m a rock star or something. I do play electric guitar and all of that but in the end I’m just a person. I really don't live like a rock star, economically or socially.”