PATTI SMITH - SMITH: 'MOTHER SAVED ME FROM DRUGS'

SMITH: 'MOTHER SAVED ME FROM DRUGS'

Legendary rocker PATTI SMITH credits the "responsibility" she felt towards her mother with saving her from drug addiction. Many of the singer's inspirations, including JANIS JOPLIN and JIMI HENDRIX, were destroyed by the lure of alcohol and narcotics. But the 59-year-old felt she owed her family too much to be tempted into taking serious drugs. Smith says, "I wanted to write like (CHARLES) BAUDELAIRE or sound like Jimi Hendrix, but I didn't want to destroy myself, which a lot of people had fantasies about. "Maybe it was because I was a really sickly child, my mother had sleepless nights for months on end, and I felt I had a kind of responsibility to her. "I smoked a bit of pot, but that was all."