On this stage, the actual power of poetry in sound is revealed. In the voice, in the body, under the hands of Patti Smith. Bob Dylan’s “Wicked Messenger,” the third song on this final night of Tollwood Festival, has the soul of the apocalypse, from which Patti pushes herself out with a brutal scream, hurling lightning. Finally live, finally Tollwood. After two Corona postponements. Patti Smith vibrates with happiness. And has ended up in the year of the war, in which a Ukraine flag on the pedestal of a guitar amplifier shows its composure.
The musician’s fingers give mass and form to the words as she sings. She is the glowing inwardness of “Grateful”, with the gravitas of her 75 years under long gray braids, she is punk anarchy with a microphone as a weapon in “Free Money”. Sweating, she will end the concert: “You fuckin’ wore me out.” The wife is also delighted to finally experience the anti-Instagram program here. “Redondo Beach” is entry. Due to the taste of the time, it was provided with a rudimentary reggae feeling.
But nothing has been able to harm the songs since the first album in 1975. Patti Smith and her amazing band have the power to live it in the moment. “Nine”, the song she wrote for Johnny Depp, sends her into the night like a little poetic blessing. With reading glasses on her nose, she recites Allen Ginsberg’s “Footnote to Howl”, blowing it into the crowd that it’s dusty. Everything is sacred, the nose, the hand, the asshole.
Wonderful old friend Lenny Kaye works alongside her, engrossed in his Stratocaster. He sings “I Wanna Be Your Dog,” the Stooges cracker. Beat him across the stage. That he dedicates the song to the Munich master of suppressed lust, Thomas Mann, is pretty awesome. Transition to Lou Reed’s “Walk On The Wild Side” sung by bassist and keyboardist Tony Shanahan. As if the CSD would throw a light on this evening.
The second guitarist on stage is Jackson Smith, Patti’s son. Jackson is a great musician, with lovingly crafted guitar parts that give Mama’s songs their own touch with country picking techniques and a noble, shimmering hall. “Life – it’s the best fuckin’ thing we have,” says Patti Smith, stepping into “Beneath The Southern Cross” with its two chords. The band rocks them up to the thunderstorm. And Jackson and bassist Tony quote George Harrison’s song “Within You Without You” in their long solo, which transcends the world.
Times and generations intertwine here. Fred “Sonic” Smith, Jackson’s father and Patti’s great love, is still present after all these years in “Because” she sang for him as a young woman. In “People Have The Power,” the encore they wrote together. “We will live again,” sings Patti Smith. They all get in. The living and the dead. There is a glow in the tent.