Location: Codroipo (Udine) / Cortile d’Onore Villa Manin / Italy
Date: Saturday, 01.08.2015
Patti Smith doesn’t need any grand introduction. The poetry and the voice that have marked generations are now closing in on seventy. This fearless artist with a heart that never withered was here on the European leg of a world tour celebrating the (first) 40 years since the release of her cult debut studio album “Horses” (1975).
Passariano is a small Friulian village near the larger town of Codroipo. The venue, just a dozen kilometers from Udine, home to the famous doge’s palace known as Villa Manin, turned out for RockLine to be far more convenient for catching the show than the following day, when Patti played Ljubljana’s Križanke. On arrival, visitors were “greeted” by a downpour. Packed parking lot! Plenty of people simply stayed in their cars, waiting and hoping the rain would let up. Paying no mind to that sort of opportunism, I dashed under the roof of Villa Manin, where the crowd was already packed in, while the seats out in the open-air venue sat completely empty. The only company they had was the stage with its gear, carefully covered in plastic sheeting. A good 3,000 heads were crammed under the roof of Villa Manin’s sprawling building, waiting for the weather to take pity on them. And it did. Fifteen minutes before nine in the evening, the rain miraculously stopped. The concert, announced for half past nine, actually kicked off ten minutes early because of the lousy weather, when the legendary artist marched onto the stage with her backing band. The lineup was made up of original members Lenny Kaye (guitar, bass, vocals) and Jay Dee Daugherty (drums), plus Andy York (guitar) and Tony Shanahan (bass, piano, vocals). Patti Smith’s show at Villa Manin wasn’t devoted solely to celebrating 40 years of the album “Horses,” but also to the 40th anniversary of the death of Italian director, poet and writer Pier Paolo Pasolini. One of the most prominent figures of contemporary Italian art, he spent most of his life in the Friulian village of Casarsa, just 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, supple cosmopolitan intellect, which she uses to fertilize her poetry. The evening opened with the famous opening line, or address, “Jesus died for somebody’s sins but not mine,” and the band slowly eased into playing the entire “Horses” album, starting with a cover of Van Morrison’s single “brainchild” Gloria, which originally belongs to the band Them. The grateful Italian crowd was literally eating out of Patti’s hand, while the poet kept urging the audience on with passionate addresses and gesticulating. Twenty minutes into the show, it started pouring mercilessly again. But this time people stayed in their seats. Well prepared. In windbreakers and rain ponchos, even with umbrellas. “I can’t believe you’re all still here and sticking with us,” was just one of the encouraging things Patti said to the drenched audience.
Patti stunned with her sensuality and the passionately relived delivery of her poetry. Her distinctive voice ripens with the years like good old wine, and her confession and interpretation only gain in power and meaning, they hold so much truthfulness. The ideas in her poetry remain more relevant than ever, and every word springs to life the moment the charismatic artist grapples with her poetry.
Patti was backed by a superbly tuned band. Subtle and intricate in every figure and act of the evening, which, given Patti Smith’s general “punk” pedigree, is yet another proof of gradual artistic maturing. Patti backed up this concert full of intense feelings and emotions with introductory comments for every single song, and the moment of truly razor-sharp punk 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 the track Land, to the closing Elegie dedicated to Jimi Hendrix, Patti once again confirmed what a powerful document of art the forever-evergreen album “Horses” is. When side A of the album “Horses” came to an end, 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 to mention Lou Reed, her former partner Allen Lanier (Blue Öyster Cult), her husband Fred Sonic Smith, the photographer Robert Mapplethorpe or Nirvana’s Kurt Cobain. She certainly didn’t skip the name Pier Paolo Pasolini. Birdland delivered an extraordinary recital that instantly gave you goosebumps, and the intensity of feeling peaked in what followed with the punk-rock-charged Free Money. When Patti left the stage, the band tore into a The Velvet Underground medley, which set off fresh waves of euphoria in the nostalgic Italian crowd. For Beneath the Southern Cross Patti Smith and Lenny Kaye picked up acoustic guitars, and the spotlight shifted once again to the delivery of the “thundering” Patti Smith’s verses.
The crowd kept getting properly soaked by the downpour, but hung in there heartily to the end. Just like Patti and her crew, who, as expected, dedicated People Have the Power to the audience and, with that rousing, fighting anthem, sent the crowd into a roaring delirium yet again. The show was hitting its final crescendo at this point. Still, the most emotion came with (probably the best-known song of her career) Because the Night, which Patti said she wrote for her late husband Fred Sonic Smith. The co-writer of the song stayed unnamed, but it’s no secret anymore that it’s Bruce Springsteen.
For the encore, the crew tackled The Who’s My Generation. While the band took on most of the vocal duties, Patti shook hands with the audience in the front rows, then took a guitar from the tech’s hands, strapped it on and, Pete Townshend style, “wrecked” the sound with raspy distortion. All that was missing was the closing destruction of the instrument, and the cup would have been full. Nothing more to add. A heart-stopping experience, full of bubbling passion and emotion. The hour and three quarters the show lasted flew by in the blink of an eye. An excellent concert. Even though the years have been fairly kind to Patti, her stage presence, her interpretation of poetry, and above all her singular vision and unapologetically sharp intellect remain forever young, evergreen and free companions of our everyday lives! With a performance this powerful and convincing, it’s not hard to even think that Patti, at a not-so-modest 68, still truly, fervently believes in a better tomorrow for the little guy.
author: Aleš Podbrežnik
photos: Aleš Podbrežnik
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
