Patti Smith
0Loading crowd target
0Loading crowd target
7correct to beat the crowd
50 free Patti Smith trivia questions with answers — music quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Patti Smith arrived in New York in 1967 with little money and a head full of poetry, and within a decade she had helped invent punk rock. She set verse to three-chord guitar, made a debut record that still tops best-of lists, and scored a hit single along the way. Then she stepped back to raise a family, and returned as a memoirist whose prose won prizes of its own. This quiz covers the whole story: the albums and the people who produced them, the band members and famous friends, the songs other artists borrowed, the books, the honours, and the detours into film and politics. Every answer comes with a short explanation, so you pick something up even when you miss. The questions run from easy openers for casual listeners to deep cuts for fans who read the liner notes. Play a round on your own, or print the set for a music quiz night.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01On behalf of which absent Nobel literature laureate did Patti Smith sing at the 2016 prize ceremony in Stockholm?
Bob Dylan
Bob Dylan had other commitments, so Smith sang one of his early protest songs for him. Nerves made her stumble over a verse; she apologised, started again and was cheered at the end.
Q 02Which rock star's unfinished 1977 studio outtake became Patti Smith's biggest hit after she wrote the words for it?
Bruce Springsteen
Bruce Springsteen had recorded little more than a title and some mumbling when the tape reached Smith. She wrote the words, and his own version stayed off his studio albums.
Q 03Which 1975 debut album by Patti Smith was added to the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2021?
Horses
Horses fused punk rock with spoken poetry, and in 2009 the Library of Congress chose it for preservation in the National Recording Registry.
Q 04Which photographer, Patti Smith's former partner and lifelong friend, shot the cover portrait for her debut album?
Robert Mapplethorpe
Robert Mapplethorpe took the picture at a Greenwich Village penthouse, and Smith recalled him announcing that he had the shot after about eight frames.
Q 05Which 2010 memoir by Patti Smith tells of her struggling early years in New York with a young photographer?
Just Kids
Just Kids kept a vow: at her friend's deathbed in 1989 she promised to write their story, and she said that finishing it felt like the promise fulfilled.
Q 06In which Midwestern city was Patti Smith born in 1946, four years before her family moved east?
Chicago
Chicago was home only until she was four: the family left for Philadelphia and later settled in the East Coast suburbs where she grew up.
Q 07Which 1964 song by Van Morrison's band Them did Patti Smith radically rework to open her 1975 debut album?
Gloria
Gloria became something new in her hands: she grafted on verses from her own early poem "Oath", so the record opens with her words rather than Van Morrison's.
Q 08Which 1978 Patti Smith Group single, her best-known song, reached number 13 on the Billboard Hot 100?
Because the Night
Because the Night climbed even higher in Britain, to number five, and in 1995 it won an ASCAP award as one of the most performed songs.
Q 09Which institution inducted Patti Smith in March 2007, when she dedicated the honour to her late husband?
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame
The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame ceremony heard her cover the Rolling Stones' "Gimme Shelter", and one of her own anthems was the all-star jam that closed the night.
Q 10Which Bowery punk club did Patti Smith close for good in October 2006 with a three-and-a-half-hour farewell show?
CBGB
CBGB had hosted her band's long residency in 1975. On its last night she ended with "Elegie" and read out the names of punk musicians who had died.
Q 11In which state did Patti Smith grow up, graduating from Deptford Township High School in 1964?
New Jersey
New Jersey later honoured her through Rowan University, the former Glassboro State College she briefly attended before leaving for Manhattan, which gave her an honorary doctorate in 2008.
Q 12Which proto-punk band, known for the live album Kick Out the Jams, featured Patti Smith's future husband on guitar?
MC5
MC5 guitarist Fred "Sonic" Smith married her in 1980, and his nickname later gave the band Sonic Youth its name.
Q 13In which state did Patti Smith spend most of the 1980s raising a family, largely retired from music?
Michigan
Michigan was her husband's home ground: the family lived quietly in the lakeside suburb of St. Clair Shores, and she released just one album in the whole decade.
Q 21Which musician-producer, who dedicated a 1972 song to Patti Smith, produced the Patti Smith Group's final album in 1979?
Todd Rundgren
Todd Rundgren steered Wave toward a more radio-friendly pop sound. Months after its release the band played a last concert and split up.
Q 22Which 1988 Patti Smith anthem, co-written with her husband, did she lead crowds in singing at political rallies in 2000?
People Have the Power
People Have the Power got its first live airing from the couple themselves, at a gala at Radio City Music Hall in March 1990, nearly two years after its release.
Q 23Which rock singer, who died in 1994, is mourned in "About a Boy" on Patti Smith's 1996 album Gone Again?
Kurt Cobain
Q 14Which former member of the Velvet Underground produced Patti Smith's 1975 debut album amid some studio tension?
John Cale
John Cale got the job after a change of heart: Smith was won over by the raw sound of his solo albums, such as 1974's Fear.
Q 15Which future Pulitzer-winning playwright co-wrote and co-starred in the 1971 one-act play Cowboy Mouth with Patti Smith?
Sam Shepard
Sam Shepard and Smith were lovers at the time and took the leads themselves, playing Slim and Cavale, two would-be rock stars holed up together in a motel room.
Q 16Which hard rock band, whose keyboardist was Patti Smith's partner in the 1970s, recorded several songs with her lyrics?
Blue Öyster Cult
Blue Öyster Cult even considered her as lead singer. Her credits with them include "Career of Evil" and "Shooting Shark", and she duets on "The Revenge of Vera Gemini".
Q 17Which guitarist, compiler of the garage-rock anthology Nuggets, backed Patti Smith at her first poetry reading in 1971?
Lenny Kaye
Lenny Kaye played guitar behind her poems that night, and three years later the pair cut her first single together.
Q 18Which 1978 Patti Smith Group album, the first after her serious neck injury, became the band's commercial breakthrough?
Easter
Easter was the only one of her 1970s albums made without pianist Richard Sohl as a band member, because he was ill during the sessions.
Q 19Which major American literary prize did Patti Smith win for nonfiction in November 2010 with a memoir?
National Book Award
The National Book Award capped a second career in print that had begun with small-press poetry collections such as Seventh Heaven in 1972.
Q 20Which drummer, half of a rock duo with her former husband, was married to Patti Smith's son Jackson from 2009 to 2013?
Meg White
Meg White of the White Stripes married Jackson Smith, himself a guitarist, in a small backyard ceremony in Nashville in May 2009.
Kurt Cobain was a musician Smith had sympathised with from afar. The same album mourns her husband and her brother, who died soon after one another.
Q 24Which band's 1996 single "E-Bow the Letter" features guest vocals by Patti Smith, a hero of its frontman?
R.E.M.
R.E.M.'s singer Michael Stipe has said her debut album was one of the records that inspired him to start a punk band, and he later published a book of photos of her on tour.
Q 25As a member of which Christian denomination was Patti Smith raised, before leaving organised religion as a teenager?
Jehovah's Witness
Jehovah's Witness teaching gave her a thorough biblical education, but she found it too confining, and that break fed the defiant opening line of her debut album.
Q 26In which Florida city did Patti Smith fall 15 feet from a stage in January 1977, breaking vertebrae in her neck?
Tampa
Tampa's stage stood above a concrete orchestra pit. She needed a spell of rest and physical therapy, which she later said let her reassess and reorganise her life.
Q 27Which country's culture ministry named Patti Smith a Commander of its Order of Arts and Letters in 2005?
France
France honoured her again in 2022, making her an Officer of the Legion of Honour at a ceremony held in Brooklyn.
Q 28Which Swedish award, founded by ABBA's manager Stig Anderson, did Patti Smith receive in 2011?
Polar Music Prize
The Polar Music Prize has been called the Nobel Prize of music in Sweden, and it was set up in 1989 with a donation to the Royal Swedish Academy of Music.
Q 29Which record executive signed the Patti Smith Group to his new label Arista after spotting them in a New York club?
Clive Davis
Clive Davis had launched Arista only in 1974, and under him its roster came to run from Barry Manilow to Aretha Franklin.
Q 30Which 19th-century French poet did Patti Smith describe as the boyfriend of her girlhood daydreams?
Arthur Rimbaud
Arthur Rimbaud shares the dedication of her second album with the sculptor Constantin Brâncuși, and objects linked to him featured in her photography show Camera Solo.