Patti Smith made an unexpected discovery about her family while writing her memoir, Bread of Angels. In her book, the legendary singer-songwriter-poet revealed that she found out that the man who raised her wasn’t her biological father. Smith learned the truth about her family history when she got the results of a DNA test on her 70th birthday, she told CBS Mornings in a new interview.
Smith and her siblings, Linda, Kimberly, and Todd, were raised by Grant Smith, the soldier pictured on the cover of her 2000 album Gung Ho. But decades later, the punk rock pioneer found out her biological father was named Sidney, a Jewish pilot who had died in 1965.
“It was like when people say, ‘I never saw that coming.’ I never saw it coming,” Smith, 78, shared, before noting that she put her book writing on hold for more than two years as she processed the shocking news.
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Smith told People magazine she first got a hint about her family history in 2002, when her mother, Beverly, teased during a phone call that she had a story to tell her "about genetics" the next time she saw her in person. Her mother suffered an accident and never told her the story, but the "Dancing Barefoot" singer recalled that her great-grandmother had previously questioned her paternity.
Smith and her sister Linda eventually took genetic tests and discovered they were half-sisters. Smith’s daughter, whom she'd given up for adoption decades earlier, then helped her find information about her biological father, including a photo of him.
“I was sad to not be Grant’s biological daughter,” Smith admitted to People. “I was sad to only have my sister, Linda, as a half-sister, but in the end, it doesn’t matter. Our love for each other, my love for my father, eclipses blood, and my love for my sister eclipses blood.”
Smith was born at Grant Hospital in Chicago in 1946. In a 2020 interview with Interview magazine, she talked about her birthplace and her sweet relationship with the father who raised her.
“What was funny about it was my father’s name was Grant,” she said. “And when I was a little girl, he used to tell me that, because there was a picture of Grant Hospital on my birth certificate, ‘Yeah, that’s my hospital! See, it has my name on it.’”
“We always had money problems,” she added. “My parents struggled. My father worked in a factory, my mother was a waitress. And then they’d say something like a rally or some thing in Grant Park. And he said, ‘Yeah, that’s my park, Grant Park.’ And I would think, ‘How come Daddy has this big park and this big hospital and they’re having so much problems, financially?’"
"But the beautiful thing is I got to, in my father’s lifetime, play with my band in Grant Park," Smoth added. "I was very proud to play in Grant Park. And I called my dad and I said, 'Daddy, I’m playing in your park!'”
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