Author: Aleš Podbrežnik
Photos: Aleš Podbrežnik
Location: Codroipo (Udine) / Cortile d'Onore Villa Manin / Italy
Concert date: 08/01/2015
Attendance: 3,500
Ticket price: €51.75 (front seats) / €46.00 (middle seats) / €36.80 (back seats)
Patti Smith doesn't need a big introduction. The poetry and the voice that shaped generations are now closing in on seventy. A fearless artist with a heart that never rusted, she was on the European leg of a world tour celebrating the (first) 40 years since her cult debut studio album »Horses« (1975).
Passariano is a tiny Friulian village near the bigger town of Codroipo. The venue, just a dozen kilometers from Udine and home to the famous doge's palace known as Villa Manin, turned out to be a much handier choice for RockLine than Ljubljana's Križanke, where Patti played the following day, and for more than one reason. As soon as you arrived, a downpour »welcomed« you. Packed parking lot! Plenty of people just stayed in their cars, waiting and hoping the rain would let up. Never mind that kind of opportunism, I scurried straight under the roof of Villa Manin, where the crowd was already packed in, while the seats in the open-air arena sat completely abandoned. Only the stage kept them company, its gear carefully covered in plastic sheeting. A good 3,000 heads were squeezed under the roof of the sprawling Villa Manin building, waiting for the weather to take pity on them. And it did. Fifteen minutes before nine p.m., the rain miraculously stopped. The concert, announced for half past nine, then kicked off a full ten minutes early because of the rotten weather, as the legendary artist strode onto the stage with her backing band. The lineup: original members Lenny Kaye (guitar, bass, vocals) and Jay Dee Daugherty (drums), plus Andy York (guitar) and Tony Shanahan (bass, piano, vocals). But Patti Smith's show at Villa Manin wasn't dedicated only to celebrating the 40th anniversary of the album »Horses«. It also marked 40 years since the death of Italian director, poet and writer Pier Paolo Pasolini. One of the most prominent figures of modern Italian art, he spent most of his life in the Friulian village of Casarsa, a stone's throw from Villa Manin, so combining the two anniversaries for this concert felt perfectly natural.
Patti Smith remains the first lady of a sharp, freedom-loving, endlessly flexible cosmopolitan intellect, which she uses to fertilize her poetry. The evening opened with that infamous first line, or rather address, »Jesus died for somebody’s sins but not mine«, and from there the band gradually moved into a performance of the entire »Horses« album, starting with the cover of Van Morrison's single »brainchild« Gloria, which originally belongs to Them. The grateful Italian crowd literally ate out of Patti's hand, and the poet kept urging the audience on with passionate addresses and gestures. Twenty minutes into the show, it started pouring mercilessly again. This time, though, people stayed in their seats. Well prepared. In windbreakers and rain ponchos, even with umbrellas. »I can't believe you're all still here sticking with us«, was just one of the encouraging shout-outs Patti gave the soaked audience.
Patti stunned with her sensuality and the passionate way she relived her poetry. Her distinctive voice ages like good old wine, while her confession and interpretation only gain in power and meaning, so much truthfulness do they carry. The ideas in her poetry remain more relevant than ever, and every word instantly comes alive when the charismatic artist takes on her own verses.
Backing Patti was a superbly tuned band. Refined and intricate in every move and act of the evening, which, given Patti Smith's overall »punk« pedigree, is yet another proof of her gradual artistic maturing. Patti backed up a concert full of intense feelings and emotions with introductory comments to every single song, and a moment of truly punk fury came, somewhat surprisingly, with the cover of The Who's My Generation. From Break It Up, dedicated to Jim Morrison, to the peak of the album »Horses« in Land, to the closing Elegie, dedicated to Jimi Hendrix, Patti confirmed once again what a powerful artistic document the forever evergreen »Horses« is. When side A of the album »Horses« was over, she introduced Kimberly with these words: »That was a side A of an album »Horses«. And now we turn the record over and we put the needle in the groove and we play side B.« During Elegie, Patti listed the names of lost musical friends and artists, starting with all four departed Ramones, and she didn't forget Lou Reed, her former partner Allen Lanier (Blue Öyster Cult), her husband Fred Sonic Smith, the photographer Robert Mapplethorpe or Nirvana's Kurt Cobain. And of course she didn't skip Pier Paolo Pasolini. Birdland delivered an exceptional recital that instantly gave you goosebumps, and the intensity of the feeling peaked in the following punk-rock-charged Free Money. When Patti left the stage, the band tackled a The Velvet Underground medley, which stirred up more waves of euphoria among the nostalgic Italian crowd. For Beneath the Southern Cross Patti Smith and Lenny Kaye picked up acoustic guitars, and the spotlight once again belonged to the delivery of the verses by the »thundering« Patti Smith.
The crowd kept getting properly drenched in the downpour, but held on heroically to the end. Just like Patti and the band, who, as expected, dedicated People Have the Power to the audience and, with that rousing, fighting anthem, once again sent the crowd into a roaring delirium. At that point the show hit its final crescendo. Still, the most emotion was stirred up by (probably the best-known song of her career) Because the Night, which Patti said she wrote for her late husband Fred Sonic Smith. The song's co-writer went unnamed, but it's no secret anymore that it's Bruce Springsteen.
For the encore, the band took on The Who's My Generation. While the band handled most of the vocals, Patti shook hands with the audience in the front rows, then grabbed a guitar from her tech, strapped it on and, Pete Townshend style, »scrubbed« out a sound full of crackling distortion. All that was missing was the final destruction of the instrument, and the cup would have runneth over. Nothing more to add. A gripping experience, brimming with seething passion and emotion. The hour and three quarters the concert lasted flew by in the blink of an eye. An excellent show. Even though the years have caught up with Patti quite nicely, her stage presence and her interpretation of poetry, and above all her unique vision and unabashedly bitter-sharp intellect, remain forever young, evergreen and free companions of our everyday lives! With a performance this strong and convincing, it's not hard to think that even at her not-so-modest 68, Patti still truly and fervently believes in a better tomorrow for the little guy.
Setlist
1. Gloria (In Excelsis Deo)
2. Redondo Beach
3. Birdland
4. Free Money
5. Kimberly
6. Break It Up
7. Land: Horses/Land Of A Thousand Dances/La Mer(de)/Gloria
8. Elegie
9. Privilege (Set Me Free)
10. Summer Cannibals
11. Rock and Roll / I’m Waiting for the Man / White Light White Heat
12. Beneath the Southern Cross
13. Because the Night
14. People Have the Power
—encore—
15. My Generation
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