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Mon 31 August 2026 22:00, UK
The relationship between Patti Smith and Robert Mapplethorpe has been written about endlessly: the fated meeting of two young artists, bound by a passion for their work and a zest for living that led them into an unknown New York City, cosmically intertwined as soulmates who always knew the way to be there for each other.
Robert and I loved to dance to Motown songs,” Smith remembered, in conversation with Service95, “It was his favourite genre of music. He has a box set of Motown songs of the ’60s… We listened to the same records over and over on a simple record player.” She also recalled Mapplethorpe’s love of the folk singer Tim Buckley, and one song that he asked her to sing for him: ‘Black Sheep Boy’ by Tim Hardin.
Hardin, a folk and blues singer-songwriter and guitarist, left his native Oregon to enlist in the Marines at 18 years old, dropping out of high school. He was stationed in Southeast Asia before being discharged in 1961, when, instead of returning home, he moved to New York City. Attending the American Academy of Dramatic Arts for a brief moment, his lack of attendance cost him his place, but that was no major loss for the young artist, who focused all of his time and energy on his music.
Greenwich Village became his epicentre, playing folk and blues songs while befriending musicians like Cass Elliot and The Lovin’ Spoonful’s John Sebastian. In 1963, he went to Boston, and after being discovered by producer Erik Jacobsen, his recording career began, and he eventually found a home with Verve Records. His career, however, would be marred by his drug addictions and often unpredictable presence onstage, and after years of living on either side of the pond, performing and recording throughout, he died in 1980 from an accidental heroin overdose.
‘Black Sheep Boy’ was an early recording from 1966, a song that details his drug use and separation from his family. At just under two minutes, it summarises the dual nature that Hardin carries within him: a man full of promise, but burdened by addiction and disillusionment. “I’m the family’s unowned boy,” he sings with a tremor in his voice, “Golden curls of envied hair.” Later, his voice cracks as he begs, “Please understand / That the black sheep can wear the golden fleece / And hold a winnin’ hand.”
It is easy to see where someone like Mapplethorpe would find solace in Hardin’s words, a sort of “black sheep” himself, in his own family. Raised in a Catholic household, discovering his sexuality and wanting to live his life as an artist, he stood apart from the conventions that were expected of him, and found common ground in Hardin’s struggles of wanting to be loved and understood.
In Just Kids, Smith wrote that Mapplethorpe rarely spoke of his upbringing, and when he did, it was while repressing what he truly felt. She remembered his fondness for making jewellery and tied it into his upbringing, noting, “They were precursors of the necklaces he would later adorn himself with, having broken from his father, leaving his Catholic, commercial and military options behind in the wake of LSD and a commitment to live for art alone.”
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She mused, “It was not easy for Robert to make this break. Something within him could not be denied, yet he also wanted to please his parents”.
A similar tension is heard in ‘Black Sheep Boy’, as Hardin sings of returning home after a spell away, travelling somewhere west: “Here I am back home again,” the song begins, “And I’m here to rest”.
One can imagine Mapplethorpe listening to Smith singing the same words, finding a bittersweet sense of recognition while contemplating his place within his family, at odds with who he really was.
