Patti Smith
3Arena, Dublin
★★★★☆
Patti Smith rides into town as the harvest supermoon announces itself over Dublin. It’s unseasonably warm. The weekend storm has cleared. Manchán Magan’s funeral has preoccupied a large community of artists in the city. There’s a sense of openness, rawness and yearning for connection in the air. It’s a day to celebrate prophets and legends.
Into this context drops a recital of a classic album by an artist who, above all else, is herself. In September 1975 Smith walked into Electric Lady Studios, in Greenwich Village in New York, and recorded Horses, 43 minutes and 10 seconds of hugely influential music. Half a century later the photograph of Smith that Robert Mapplethorpe took in Sam Wagstaff’s apartment, and became the cover art, bookends the stage on 3Arena’s screens.
The cheers rise as Smith and her band take the floor. The stage design, thankfully, is as stark as her sound, devoid of corniness or superfluous flourishes. It is the timeless cool of monochrome: a band dressed in black and white, against a black backdrop, lit in white and some blues, filmed in black and white.
Gloria beings. “She’s like a cailleach,” someone in the crowd remarks. Smith’s voice, a switchblade prising open a tin of molasses, remains peerless. As a performer, her snarl weighted with charm, she is solid, energetic, gentle.
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Sipping from a white mug after Redondo Beach, she says that tonight is the band’s first gig on this tour, “and I couldn’t think of a better place than Dublin to start”. It’s understandable that there’s a sense of the band feeling their way into the vibe. A couple of technical issues, including a temperamental amp, threaten to suck the energy a little, but Smith manages to keep the tightrope taught.
Decades in, she has a rare quality that means, no matter when or where she’s playing, she appears always at the peak of her powers.
Performing Horses all the way through, its songs contextualised with Smith’s stories of their origins and inspiration, beautifully exposes its awesomeness. She shouts out Sinéad O’Connor and Shane MacGowan, and reserves a special moment for the late promoter John Reynolds, whom she recalls gave her a signed Samuel Beckett book.
[ The Music Quiz: What is Patti Smith’s middle name?Opens in new window ]
Break It Up is brilliant. Land is rip-roaring. Allen Ginsberg’s Footnote to Howl finds its place. Fists are raised. When Horses concludes, the audience rise to their feet for the first of multiple standing ovations.
Then Smith runs offstage briefly, to return with off-Horses hits. There’s also Peaceable Kingdom, a song written for the American activist Rachel Corrie, who was killed by an Israeli bulldozer in Gaza in 2003. In the crowd, a Palestine flag is held aloft.
Finally, Glen Hansard appears as part of the closing number, People Have the Power. “Use your voice,” Smith roars, forever using her own.
