Smith recalls that they “wept” upon seeing the results, writing that the discovery “put a great strain on my thought process, and for some time I was unable to write.”
Her biological father, Sidney, was a Jewish pilot whose family originated in Russia, fled to Ukraine, and later settled in Philadelphia.
“I would be lying if I said I wasn’t a bit broken-hearted,” Smith admits upon learning that the man who raised her, Grant Smith, was not her biological father. “Grant will always be my father,” she added. “But now I have two fathers.”
She writes that she doesn’t “know a whole lot” about her Jewish father, “but everything I’ve found out about him, I recognise. I recognise myself in his face. I’ve only seen a couple of pictures, but the same attitude. I can just feel it.”
The discovery, she says, helped explain “the things about yourself that the rest of the family doesn’t have.”
Patti Smith performs at Madison Square Garden, November 27, 2012 (Credit: Jason Kempin/Getty Images)Getty Images
Smith also praises her mother for keeping the secret throughout her life: “This is how great my mother was. My mother knew that I favoured my father, so she never said a word to make me feel that he wasn’t. She did her best to protect me.”
On an early autumn day in 2002, she and her mother had their usual “daily call”. They chatted about how Smith’s voice had begun to deepen with age, and how she might need to lower the key of some of her songs.
When her mother joked that soon she’d sound just like her, she added that she had “a story to tell” about “genetics” the next time they met.
But the next time Smith saw her mother, it was in a hospital room. Her mother had fallen, struck her head, and undergone surgery to remove a blood clot. “She was never the same,” Smith recalled. When she tried to ask about the mysterious “story,” her mother only stared back at her blankly.
Patti Smith performs in New York City, February 22, 2025 (Credit: John Nacion/Getty Images)Getty Images
Smith also revealed that her maternal great-grandmother had long harboured doubts about her paternity, suspecting that the man who raised her was not her biological father. The family rumour suggested that Smith had been fathered instead by her great-uncle, her mother’s uncle, but the notion was “waved away” by both of her parents and never spoken of again.
A towering influence in modern music and poetry, Smith was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2007 and ranked 47th on Rolling Stone’s list of the 100 Greatest Artists of All Time. Her landmark 1975 debut, Horses, fused rock and poetry and is widely regarded as the first true punk rock album.
