Three other members of the Patti Smith Group have died - her husband Smith, keyboardist Richard Sohl and bassist Ivan Král - and all of them got mentioned at times during the night. Her band, in addition to her grown kids with the late rock guitarist Fred Sonic Smith, included keyboard player and bassist Tony Shanahan, and two of her longest-running collaborators, drummer Jay Dee Daugherty and guitarist Lenny Kaye, both of whom have been with her since the Patti Smith Group formed in mid-’70s. In fact, as Smith recounted, it was inspired while sitting vigil with her friend Allen Ginsberg as he lay dying, watching the rats amid the debris of a New York City garbage strike on the streets below, and struggling to find her voice in a world that was crumbling. in the ’70s.Īnd sometimes all of those things in the words and music of the same song, as in “Don’t Say Nothing,” which with its message of finding the resolve to speak out could have been written specifically for the festival. Others offered tributes, celebrations, elegies to friends and loved ones: “About a Boy” is a song for Kurt Cobain, she noted “Maria,” one for the late actress Maria Schneider, her pal in L.A.

(Smith’s son Jackson Smith is one of her guitarists, and daughter Jesse Paris Smith played piano on the latter half of the show.)

Some touched specific issues of concern to the 73 year old, such as climate change - highlighted early in the song “Fuji-san,” and later in her cover of Neil Young’s “After the Gold Rush - and its impact on the world we leave our children and their children. From there, the next hour and 45 minutes unfolded like a dream in which all is possible, a mix of songs personal and political that moved heart and head.

Patti smith power to the people