''Twelve'' is the tenth studio album by

Patti Smith Patricia Lee Smith (born December 30, 1946) is an American singer, songwriter, poet, painter and author who became an influential component of the New York City punk rock movement with her 1975 debut album ''Horses''. Called the "punk poet ...

, released April 17, 2007 on

Columbia Records Columbia Records is an American record label owned by Sony Music Entertainment, a subsidiary of Sony Corporation of America, the North American division of Japanese conglomerate Sony. It was founded on January 15, 1889, evolving from the A ...

. The album contains twelve tracks, all of which are covers. It debuted on the ''Billboard'' 200 at number 60, with 11,000 copies sold in its first week. A promotional EP entitled ''Two More'' was also released, featuring two tracks that are not on the album: " Perfect Day" by

Lou Reed Lewis Allan Reed (March 2, 1942October 27, 2013) was an American musician, songwriter, and poet. He was the guitarist, singer, and principal songwriter for the rock band the Velvet Underground and had a solo career that spanned five decades ...

and "Here I Dreamt I Was an Architect" by

The Decemberists The Decemberists are an American indie rock band from Portland, Oregon. The band consists of Colin Meloy (lead vocals, guitar, principal songwriter), Chris Funk (guitar, multi-instrumentalist), Jenny Conlee (piano, keyboards, accordion), Nate ...

Track listing

Personnel

Band * Patti Smith –

vocals Singing is the act of creating musical sounds with the voice. A person who sings is called a singer, artist or vocalist (in jazz and/or popular music). Singers perform music (arias, recitatives, songs, etc.) that can be sung with or withou ...

clarinet The clarinet is a musical instrument in the woodwind family. The instrument has a nearly cylindrical bore and a flared bell, and uses a single reed to produce sound. Clarinets comprise a family of instruments of differing sizes and pitch ...

Lenny Kaye Lenny Kaye (''né'' Kusikoff; born December 27, 1946) is an American guitarist, composer, and writer who is best known as a member of the Patti Smith Group. Early life Kaye was born to Jewish parents in the Washington Heights area of upper M ...

– acoustic and electric

guitar The guitar is a fretted musical instrument that typically has six strings. It is usually held flat against the player's body and played by strumming or plucking the strings with the dominant hand, while simultaneously pressing selected string ...

* Jay Dee Daugherty –

drums A drum kit (also called a drum set, trap set, or simply drums) is a collection of drums, cymbals, and other auxiliary percussion instruments set up to be played by one person. The player (drummer) typically holds a pair of matching drumsticks ...

percussion A percussion instrument is a musical instrument that is sounded by being struck or scraped by a beater including attached or enclosed beaters or rattles struck, scraped or rubbed by hand or struck against another similar instrument. Exc ...

;

accordion Accordions (from 19th-century German ''Akkordeon'', from ''Akkord''—"musical chord, concord of sounds") are a family of box-shaped musical instruments of the bellows-driven free-reed aerophone type (producing sound as air flows past a ree ...

on "Helpless" *

Tony Shanahan Patricia Lee Smith (born December 30, 1946) is an American singer, songwriter, poet, painter and author who became an influential component of the New York City punk rock movement with her 1975 debut album ''Horses''. Called the "punk poet ...

–

bass Bass or Basses may refer to: Fish * Bass (fish), various saltwater and freshwater species Music * Bass (sound), describing low-frequency sound or one of several instruments in the bass range: ** Bass (instrument), including: ** Acoustic bass gui ...

, keyboards, vocals Additional personnel * Andi Ostrowe – live sound mixing * Barre Duryea – bass on "Helpless" * David Bett –

art direction Art director is the title for a variety of similar job functions in theater, advertising, marketing, publishing, fashion, film and television, the Internet, and video games. It is the charge of a sole art director to supervise and unify the vis ...

* Duncan Webster – acoustic guitar on "Smells Like Teen Spirit" *

Emery Dobyns Emery Dobyns is an American record producer and songwriter, formerly based in Manhattan in New York City, but now based in Nashville. In late 2021 Dobyns produced and mixed "The Masked Singer EP" for Jewel (singer). He is currently co-producing the ...

–

engineering Engineering is the use of scientific principles to design and build machines, structures, and other items, including bridges, tunnels, roads, vehicles, and buildings. The discipline of engineering encompasses a broad range of more speciali ...

, mixing *

Flea Flea, the common name for the order Siphonaptera, includes 2,500 species of small flightless insects that live as external parasites of mammals and birds. Fleas live by ingesting the blood of their hosts. Adult fleas grow to about long, ...

– bass on "Gimme Shelter" and "White Rabbit" *

Giovanni Sollima Giovanni Sollima (born 24 October 1962 in Palermo, Sicily, Italy) is an Italian composer and cellist. He was born into a family of musicians and studied cello with Giovanni Perriera and composition with his father, Eliodoro Sollima, at the Conse ...

–

cello The cello ( ; plural ''celli'' or ''cellos'') or violoncello ( ; ) is a bowed (sometimes plucked and occasionally hit) string instrument of the violin family. Its four strings are usually tuned in perfect fifths: from low to high, C2, G2, ...

on "Are You Experienced?" * Greg Calbi – mastering * Jack Petruzelli – acoustic guitar on "Within You Without You" * Jackson Smith – guitar solo on "Everybody Wants to Rule the World" * Jesse Smith –

backing vocals A backing vocalist is a singer who provides vocal harmony with the lead vocalist or other backing vocalists. A backing vocalist may also sing alone as a lead-in to the main vocalist's entry or to sing a counter-melody. Backing vocalists are ...

on "Changing of the Guards" * John Cohen –

banjo The banjo is a stringed instrument with a thin membrane stretched over a frame or cavity to form a resonator. The membrane is typically circular, and usually made of plastic, or occasionally animal skin. Early forms of the instrument were fashi ...

on "Smells Like Teen Spirit" * Luis Resto –

piano The piano is a stringed keyboard instrument in which the strings are struck by wooden hammers that are coated with a softer material (modern hammers are covered with dense wool felt; some early pianos used leather). It is played using a keyboa ...

on "Pastime Paradise" * Mario Resto – drums on "Pastime Paradise" * Paul Nowinski –

double bass The double bass (), also known simply as the bass () (or #Terminology, by other names), is the largest and lowest-pitched Bow (music), bowed (or plucked) string instrument in the modern orchestra, symphony orchestra (excluding unorthodox addit ...

on "Pastime Paradise" * Peter Stampfel –

fiddle A fiddle is a bowed string musical instrument, most often a violin. It is a colloquial term for the violin, used by players in all genres, including classical music. Although in many cases violins and fiddles are essentially synonymous, the ...

on "Smells Like Teen Spirit" * Rich Robinson – dulcimer on "The Boy in the Bubble"; guitar on "Midnight Rider" * Sam Shepard – banjo on "Smells Like Teen Spirit" *

Steven Sebring Steven Sebring (born 1966) is an American photographer, filmmaker and producer. His 2008 documentary '' Patti Smith: Dream of Life'' earned him a Sundance Award for Excellence in Cinematography and a Primetime Emmy nomination. He also directed the ...

–

photography Photography is the art, application, and practice of creating durable images by recording light, either electronically by means of an image sensor, or chemically by means of a light-sensitive material such as photographic film. It is emplo ...

* Tom Verlaine – slide guitar on "Gimme Shelter" * Walker Shepard – banjo on "Smells Like Teen Spirit"

Charts

Sales

Release history

References

External links

*
Twelve
at

Sony BMG Sony BMG Music Entertainment was an American record company owned as a 50–50 joint venture between Sony Corporation of America and Bertelsmann. The venture's successor, the revived Sony Music, is wholly owned by Sony, following their buyou ...

{{Authority control Patti Smith albums 2007 albums albums produced by Lenny Kaye Columbia Records albums Covers albums