Carroll met Patti Smith in 1970 and they ended up living together for a while; Carroll moved in with Smith and Robert Mapplethorpe; Patti and Robert had been a couple until Mapplethorpe determined he was gay.
Smith appears as “Jenny Ann” in “Jenny Ann, Like a Cat,” “A Day at the Races,” and “The Cancer Hall of Fame” in Forced Entries (pp.2-10). She is also mentioned in “Rock ‘n’ Roll” (FE 164-65).
Carroll dedicated “Rimbaud Running Guns” to Patti Smith when he first published it in Little Caesar in 1977 (it was later collected in The Book of Nods).
In 1978, Carroll gave his first performance as a rock star opening for Patti Smith in San Diego. Smith’s opening band split, so she talked Carroll into reading some of his poems backed by her band. He did (here’s a recording of it):
There is also a review of the concert available here on the Jim Carroll Website.
Soon after that performance he formed The Jim Carroll Band.
On The Jim Carroll Band’s first album, Catholic Boy, Carroll honors Patti Smith with the song “Crow,”
Meanwhile, another connection is Patti Smith Group guitarist Lenny Kaye, who worked with Carroll through his last performances.
Smith and Kaye both appear on You’re a Hook: The 15 Year Anniversary of Dial-a-Poem along with Carroll and others.
Nostalgia!
Here is Fiona’s Patti Smith Babelogue page; here is Fiona’s section on Carroll’s relationship with Patti. I want to keep these for as long as they last because the Babelogue site is one of a few that taught me how to make CatholicBoy.com!