A Quote by Patti Smith

People called me the godmother of punk, but I never name myself anything. — © Patti Smith
People called me the godmother of punk, but I never name myself anything.
I've called myself the Pied Piper, I've called myself the Weatherman, I've called myself Kellz, I've called myself a lot of things, changing the name, switching it up, just flipping, remixing. But never to harm anybody. Never to make a deep statement for people to dig into and figure it out.
People ask me: ‘What is punk? How do you define punk?' Here's how I define punk: It's a free space. It could be called jazz. It could be called hip-hop. It could be called blues, or rock, or beat. It could be called techno. It's just a new idea. For me, it was punk rock. That was my entrance to this idea of the new ideas being able to be presented in an environment that wasn't being dictated by a profit motive.
I hate it when people say I'm not a true punk. I don't go around calling myself punk; I never have. That's what people need to know -- it's not me saying that, it's the media. I'm a rocker.
It was never a conscious decision - I was introducing myself as Duffy and my friends were calling me Duffy, so I just knocked off the first half of my name. For me it's no big deal, but a lot of people want to unearth why I've called myself this. It's just what I'm known as, you know.
The first time I was in his office was when they called me in to tell me they had changed my name. I had a feeling that if I'd gone along with the name they'd chosen, I'd never be seen again. I'd be swallowed up by that name, because it was a false name: Kit Marlowe.
I'm a godmother, that's a great thing to be, a godmother. She calls me god for short, that's cute, I taught her that.
I don't condone anyone causing damage in my name, or doing anything malicious in support of my plight. There are more productive ways to help me. As a hacker myself, I never intentionally damaged anything.
By the '80s, anything to do with punk was perceived as rancid. Me being known as the 'punk poet' meant my work and I plummeted.
As I began to love myself I freed myself of anything that is no good for my health - food, people, things, situations, and everything that drew me down and away from myself. At first I called this attitude a healthy egoism. Today I know it is Love of Oneself.
It's nice to have a few names. I use a few names myself. I use a few different surnames. I call myself James sometimes. I actually use my mother's name as a professional name. But if someone calls me Mr. Murphy or Mr. Gillen, I don't like that. I don't like being called 'mister,' and I don't like being called 'sir.'
I'm actually called Bang, a quite common name in Denmark where I'm from, so it's not like me trying to come up with a very stupid name for people to remember me or something.
My father’s family name being Pirrip, and my Christian name Philip, my infant tongue could make of both names nothing longer or more explicit than Pip. So, I called myself Pip, and came to be called Pip.
DEVO was like the punk band that non Punk America saw as Punk and so when people who were really into Punk rock would be walking around on the streets the jocks who learned about Punk through Devo would roll down their windows and yell at the Punks: 'HEY, DEVO!!'
I remember being really young - being 13 or 14 - when I first was really excited about punk rock as an idea, and I was like, 'Don't ever not be punk. Don't ever not be punk.' Telling that to myself, I guess it was like self-defense against the scary world around me.
I never called myself an urban artist, but that's what I was classed as, and I almost tried to live up to the name instead of who I really was.
I started training wrestling in the pre-social media era and I was very cautious - I thought, 'I can't have people know my real last name.' So I changed my last name to End because I always called myself 'The End.' I thought that was cool. I thought I'd take my real first name and my 'fake' last name, and that's how I came up with Tommy End.
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