Patti Smith has worn many titles through the years — rocker, godmother of punk, poet, artist, writer, wife, mother, sister, advocate, friend, mentor, muse. For a brief chapter at the beginning of her story, she was also a Chicagoan.
Returning to the city where she was baptized in 1947, Smith joined Wilco frontman Jeff Tweedy in the Rubloff Auditorium at the Art Institute of Chicago for an evening of conversation and music celebrating her new memoir Bread of Angels.
The event was co-presented by WBEZ, the Poetry Foundation, the University Club of Chicago, and independent bookstore Exile in Bookville. A New York Times bestseller and named a Best Book of the Year by Time, The New Yorker, and NPR, Bread of Angels opens with Smith’s early childhood before tracing the relationships, love, and losses that continue to echo through her writing and music.
Origins
“I was baptized on Easter Sunday, April 6, 1947 … in Logan Square,” Smith replied to Tweedy’s opening question about her Chicago roots, explaining that Bread of Angels draws on her own childhood memories alongside her mother’s careful recordkeeping in a baby book documenting her early childhood and the family’s 12 moves in search of stability after World War II.
Describing Bread of Angels as “the sister” to her earlier memoir Just Kids, which traced her relationship with photographer Robert Mapplethorpe and their life in New York’s artistic epicenter, she said she approached both books with a goal of painstaking accuracy.
“When I do a true memoir … I do everything I can that it’s accurate, truthful, fair to people, even if I don’t like them … and accurate to the time frame,” Smith said. “It’s a lot of responsibility doing a memoir … and I prefer being irresponsible.”
Reflecting on the fragility of personal history, Tweedy referenced an anecdote from Bread of Angels where she discovered that her mother’s box of treasured family photographs had been destroyed by rats. The loss was devastating, Smith said, but it also forced her to rely more deeply on memory.
“It helped actually strengthen my childhood memory, because there weren’t any more pictures.”
Storytelling became its own kind of archive. Growing up, Smith and her siblings constantly retold family adventures to one another — a habit she later repeated with Mapplethorpe and one that eventually helped her write Just Kids.
Little Things
The conversation frequently shifted between reflection and humor. When Tweedy suggested that objects in Smith’s life carry emotional or spiritual meaning — a theme that runs through much of her writing and photography — Smith admitted that the instinct extends even to the smallest things.
“I had to throw away the head of my electric toothbrush … and I had to apologize.”
She then described dropping a strawberry on the floor and feeling unexpectedly guilty.
“This poor strawberry made all that effort to grow and appeal to the sun and everything, and then it burst, and it’s beautiful, and I have to throw it away,” she recalled.
The audience laughed, but Tweedy zeroed in more profoundly on the way even these lighter anecdotes reflect the curiosity that has long defined Smith’s work. Even now, she agreed, curiosity and enthusiasm remain essential.
“I’m 79 years old and … believe me, you start feeling like, geez. I don’t know what happened, but I got old,” she said. “But… what makes a person more youthful isn’t necessarily their outward appearance… it’s nourishing that thing — enthusiasm and curiosity.”
New Fans
Smith’s desire for authentic communication continues to drive her. Writing remains a daily ritual.
“I get up and have my coffee and I write … that’s my daily practice.”
In her Substack newsletter (Tweedy publishes one as well), Smith captures that impulse in a simple phrase: “The reader is my notebook.”
The same impulse to communicate with others, she added, was what inspired her to record her landmark 1975 album Horses.
“I had no aspirations to be a musician, a rock and roll star, making records … I thought that I could do a record that would communicate with other people like myself who felt somewhat disenfranchised,” she said. “I just thought it would be for a small amount of people and it would do its job… but I guess I’m still doing that — I’m still reaching out to somebody.”
Decades later, she said she is still moved by how many young listeners continue to discover her work.
“A lot of young people at this point in my life … anywhere from 16 to 30… talk to me on the street or come to my concerts,” she said. “I don’t know what they see in me … but their energy is … so loving — it’s pure.”
Turning serious, Smith acknowledged how difficult it can feel to create art amid global conflict and suffering.
“We know what’s going on in the world at this moment … people are suffering … people aren’t safe tonight,” she said.
Still, she believes artists and audiences share a responsibility to keep working and supporting one another.
“We have to keep doing our work. We have to reinforce one another. We have to radiate good.”
Tweedy agreed. “The work, to me, is helping keep dreaming of a world that’s worth saving and keep … encouraging that world to exist,” he said.
Power in Song
As the evening turned to music, Smith noted that the date carried deep personal significance.
“March 9 is a very special date for me — March 9, 1976 — I met my husband 50 years ago today.” she said, referring to her late husband, Fred “Sonic” Smith. “It’s also the passing date, March 9, 1989, of Robert Mapplethorpe.”
“Usually when I’m doing a book event, I read a lot … but I’d just rather sing if that’s okay.”
Joined by Tweedy, longtime bandmate Tony Shanahan, and her son Jackson Smith, Smith opened with “Grateful,” a song she wrote in tribute to Jerry Garcia.
Other highlights included “Dancing Barefoot,” written for her husband, and “Because the Night,” the latter developed from an unfinished song Bruce Springsteen had set aside.
The evening closed with “People Have the Power,” which Smith wrote with husband Fred Smith in the late 1980s. She explained that the song was originally conceived by her husband as an anthem for a presidential campaign by Jesse Jackson. But he also hoped it might become something larger — a rallying cry.
“He hoped it would be useful to people all over the world … if they needed a song to articulate their action, their humanity, things that they were protesting,” she said. “And he didn’t live long enough to see that happen, but we have, and I’ve seen and we hear people sing it all over the world.”
Looking directly at the sold-out crowd before the music began, she said: “And so we wrote the song … thinking about Jesse Jackson — but also thinking of you.”
As the song ended, the living legend delivered an impassioned final message: “Chicago — Use. Your. Voice. We the people.”
How to Help
Support the Organizations Behind the Event
The evening with Patti Smith was made possible through partnerships with organizations dedicated to literature, journalism, and the arts. Supporting their work helps ensure that conversations like this continue to reach audiences in Chicago and beyond.
WBEZ / Chicago Public Media
Listener support sustains WBEZ’s public service journalism and cultural programming, helping Chicago Public Media produce in-depth reporting and storytelling that informs and connects communities. Support WBEZ / Chicago Public Media
Poetry Foundation
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Art Institute of Chicago
Memberships and philanthropic gifts help the Art Institute of Chicago, a 2026 Make It Better Foundation Philanthropy Award winner, care for its collections, conduct research, and provide educational programs and cultural experiences for more than a million visitors each year. Support Art Institute of Chicago
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Brooke McDonald is the editor in chief of Better Magazine. She regularly reports on entertainment, theme parks, and travel and her work has appeared in Insider, The Points Guy, Parents, TravelPulse, Scripps News, and more. Her favorite nonprofits to support include SeaLegacy and the Vitalogy Foundation Follow her on Instagram @brookegmcdonald, Threads @brookegmcdonald, Bluesky, and X @BrookeGMcDonald.
