Far Out Magazine revisits Patti Smith's early creative bond with photographer Robert Mapplethorpe, focusing on the folk music they shared while living together before Smith's own career took shape. The piece highlights how deeply Mapplethorpe's musical tastes, particularly for singer-songwriter Tim Hardin, shaped their domestic life and offers a rare glimpse of Smith's formative influences beyond the raw, proto-punk sound she would later become known for on albums such as Horses.

Smith recalled that Mapplethorpe was "obsessed" with Tim Hardin, especially his 1967 song "Black Sheep Boy," and would ask her to sing it to him repeatedly. In her own words, the pair "listened to the same records over and over on a simple record player," alongside other favourites such as Tim Buckley. The article frames this shared listening as part of the pair's bond as outsiders who had settled in New York, contrasting Hardin's gentle folk tradition with the more confrontational artistic voice Smith would go on to forge.