Godmother of Punk Patti Smith’s Stories of Love and Loss

“Hey Joe, I heard you shot your woman down.
You shot her down to the ground, you shot her.
Yes, I did, yes, I did, yes, I did, I shot her, I shot her.
I caught her messing around with some other man.
So, I got my truck, I gave her the gun and I shot her.
I shot her, shoot her one more time for me.”

Patti Smith performing / Patti Smith performing with her daughter / Lynn Goldsmith and Patti Smith posing together / Patti Smith playing with a friends child / Bruce Springsteen and Patti Smith posing on stage / Patti Smith being photographed

Photo by Owen Franken, Corbis, Getty Images / Sonia Moskowitz, WireImage, Getty Images / Michael Putland, Getty Images / Suzan Carson, Michael Ochs Archive, Getty Images / Kevin Mazur, WireImage, Getty Images / Charlie Steiner, Highway 67, Getty Images

The 1974 song Hey Joe, as heavy as it is, was Patti Smith’s first studio recording, and it was a single she made in Jimi Hendrix’s famous Electric Lady Studio. Patti had a way of creating a mixture of poetry and rock with a high-energy style that could get either aggressive or blissful – or both. Patti eventually earned her moniker, the Godmother of Punk, but there’s lots to know about the years before that. Let the true story begin…