Patti Smith

Patricia Lee Smith was born in Chicago. Her mother, Beverly, was a waitress, and her father, Grant, worked at the Honeywell plant. She spent her early childhood in Germantown, before her family moved to Woodbury Gardens, Deptford Township, New Jersey, raised Jehovah's Witness. She had a strong religious upbringing and a Bible education, but left organized religion as a teenager because she felt it was too confining; much later, she wrote the line "Jesus died for somebody's sins, but not mine" in her cover version of Them's "Gloria" in response to this experience. She has described having an avid interest in Tibetan Buddhism around the age of eleven or twelve, saying "I fell in love with Tibet because their essential mission was to keep a continual stream of prayer", but that as an adult she sees clear parallels between different forms of religion, and has come to the conclusion that religious dogmas are "...man-made laws that you can either decide to abide by or not." At this early age Smith was exposed to her first records, including Shrimp Boats by Harry Belafonte, Patience and Prudence doing The Money Tree, and Another Side of Bob Dylan, which her mother gave to her. Smith graduated from Deptford Township High School in 1964 and went to work in a factory. She gave birth to her first child, a daughter, on April 26, 1967, and chose to place her for adoption.