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Rock star Patti Smith was moved to tears after a fan returned a bag of stolen goods to the singer, 36 years after they went missing.

Smith was giving a reading from her new memoir M Train at Illinois' Dominican University when the items were returned to her by fan Noreen Bender.

They included a shirt worn for a 1978 Rolling Stone cover shot and a bandana given to her by her late brother.

Bender said reuniting Smith with her stuff was "the highlight of my life".

"The feeling of making your hero happy, it was a moment," Bender told the Chicago Tribune.

It is believed the items went missing in June 1979 when a Ryder rental truck, which was carrying $40,000 in amplifiers, guitars and other musical equipment, was stolen from outside a hotel after Smith and her band played a show at the Aragon Ballroom in Chicago.

'Sweat'

They are understood to have come in to Bender's possession many years ago, via the friend of a then roommate.

"I just thought, 'Oh my god, these are her clothes and they still have her sweat on them,'" Bender recalled, on first receiving the singer's belongings.

She added that she had long hoped to return the items to Smith but had not been able to find an appropriate occasion.

A member of the university audience, who witnessed Bender returning the bag of stuff to Smith on Thursday, recorded the singer's response :

"Patti looked inside and just froze... [she] pulls out these items of clothing and talks about them (the shirt she wore on the Rolling Stone cover, the Keith Richards T-Shirt you've seen her wear in a hundred photos) and then gets to the bottom of the bag.

"Here was a bandana that her beloved late brother had worn and then given to her, and she starts to weep. Before long, half the audience was crying with her."

Smith's brother, and manager, Todd Smith died in 1994. Punk icon Smith, who is marking the 40th anniversary of her seminal album Horses this year, writes about his death in her new memoir.