Patti Smith on Her Memoir “Bread of Angels,” Fifty Years After Her Début Album, “Horses”

The New Yorker Radio Hour

WNYC Studios and The New Yorker

News, David, Books, Arts, Storytelling, Wnyc, New, Remnick, News Commentary, Yorker, Politics

4.2 • 5.5K Ratings

🗓️ 11 November 2025

⏱️ 40 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

In the musician’s most revealing account, she discusses her retreat from public life, the early loss of her husband, and the challenge of learning and writing about her biological father.

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is The New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and The New Yorker.
0:14.9	This is The New Yorker Radio Hour. I'm David Remnick.
0:21.3	Jesus died for somebody's sins, but not mine.
0:29.4	That line, the opening to Patty Smith's album, Horses, has got to be one of the best
0:34.6	openers to an album ever.
0:36.7	Amazing to think that horses, which
0:39.1	still feels fresh and raw and transgressive, came out almost 50 years ago this week. Horses
0:45.8	launched Patty Smith to musical and avant-garde stardom almost overnight.
0:58.1	And yet being a star wasn't Patty Smith's intention at all.
0:59.6	She was a poet.
1:03.3	She was publishing poems years before the record came out.
1:05.4	She'd written a play with Sam Shepard.
1:10.2	Music was a kind of afterthought, as she tells it, an accompaniment to the words.
1:15.5	Becoming one of the founding figures of punk was something that happened almost by accident.
1:21.4	But in recent years, many people have come to know Patty Smith as a writer, as well as a performer.
1:26.5	Her memoir, Just Kids, about her friendship with the late photographer Robert Mapleshorpe,
1:28.4	won the National Book Award.
1:32.4	M. Train reflected on her withdrawal from music as she raised a family,
1:36.2	and in Bread of Angels, which was just excerpted in The New Yorker,
1:39.3	Smith writes intimately about her life and music,
1:44.7	and also her personal life, particularly her marriage to Fred Sonic Smith and his early death.
1:48.5	At times, she shares deep revelations about her past,
	...

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