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Patti Smith
Patti Smith's 1975 debut album Horses, opening with her provocative reinterpretation of Van Morrison's "Gloria" declaring "Jesus died for somebody's sins, but not mine," is widely regarded as one of the foundational albums of the American punk movement, blending punk's raw musical energy with Smith's background as a published poet. Smith's combination of literary, poetry-influenced lyricism with punk's stripped-down musical aggression distinguished her from many of her CBGB-scene contemporaries, and her androgynous public image, deliberately avoiding conventional feminine presentation, made her one of the era's most distinctive visual and artistic figures. Her close personal and artistic relationship with photographer Robert Mapplethorpe, later chronicled in her acclaimed 2010 memoir Just Kids, gave Smith a significant connection to New York's broader downtown art scene beyond punk music specifically, reflecting the genre's origins within a wider, interconnected community of visual artists, poets, and musicians. Smith's continued influence on subsequent generations of musicians who cite her combination of literary ambition and punk musical rawness as foundational has made her one of the most critically significant figures to emerge from punk's original New York scene, and she was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2007.
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The Ramones
The Ramones, formed in Queens, New York in 1974, are widely credited alongside a small handful of other early bands with essentially inventing punk rock, stripping rock and roll down to short, fast, stripped-of-solo songs built around simple, aggressive power chords and rapid tempos. The band's residency at New York's CBGB club, alongside contemporaries like Blondie, Talking Heads, and Patti Smith, helped establish that venue as the birthplace of American punk rock, and the Ramones' specific musical formula — songs frequently clocking in under two minutes — became a defining structural template for punk bands that followed. Despite their massive influence on subsequent punk, alternative, and pop-punk bands, the Ramones never achieved significant mainstream commercial success during their own active career, playing more than 2,200 live shows across more than two decades without ever landing a major hit single on American radio charts. The band's uniform stage look — matching leather jackets, ripped jeans, and shared surname stage names despite the members not actually being related — became one of punk's most recognizable visual templates, and their combined musical and visual influence on subsequent punk and alternative rock is considered foundational despite their limited commercial success during their own active years.
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