Discovering Patti

Isn’t it amazing how a weekend can change your life? Beforehand, the only thing I knew about Patti Smith was that she was a punk-rock singer that wrote some poetry.
My folk/traditional background didn’t extend to knowing Patti’s work, so imagine my surprise when Hot Press asked me to review her performance and exhibition in Sligo? They wanted an unbiased opinion from fresh ears, one performer’s assessment of another. OK, I thought, I can do that.
I arrived at the venue on Saturday at 8.30pm for a 9pm show and already the queues had started: the intimate theatre in the Model and Niland has a capacity of just 165, with unreserved seating, so no wonder. The atmosphere was one of high excitement and anticipation: Patti Smith was about to play a rare intimate and acoustic show, and only the lucky ones had tickets. The night could have sold out ten times over, so long-term fans were clutching their tickets in relief.
Joining her onstage was fellow band member and multi-instrumentalist Tony Shanahan. They emerged to rapturous applause. The room was ecstatic. I must have been the only one there who didn’t regard her as an icon – but I was curious to find out why everybody else did.
She started by saying how delighted she was to be in Sligo, the home of her hero W B Yeats, who she had been a fan of since she was a kid, had studied and wrote papers on as a teenager, and had revered all her life. She talked about how honored she was to bring her exhibition to what she deemed to be “one of the most beautiful galleries in the world”. If she had needed to get the crowd on side, that speech alone would have done it.
It was hard to believe her voice was that of a 60 year old: the years haven’t affected her vocal cords in any way, in fact, her control was amazing, one minute soft and intimate, the next aggressive and menacing. I was struck by the incredible balance she struck between polar opposites like male/female, child/adult, meek/powerful, gentle/fierce. She brought the audience on a journey through her life, singing songs written for her son, her daughter and her mother. The songs were inspired by subjects as varied as a newspaper article about a murdered tramp, to one inspired by her hero, William Blake. She punctuated her songs with poems and stories, her muse for one being Picasso’s Guernica painting in Madrid.
The gig wasn’t without mishaps. Tony Shanahan’s guitar was completely out of tune for the first song, Patti forgot the words of the old Hank Williams classic ‘I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry’ and an enthusiastic photographer’s camera going off during one of her readings obviously distracted her. Did any of these mishaps mar our enjoyment of the night? Not one little bit, in fact they endeared her to us even more.
She ended the show with the song everybody was waiting for, ‘Because The Night’. Everybody sang along and the crowd were on their feet begging for more – so that when the show was over everybody seemed to have the same feeling of exhilaration, knowing that we had all experienced something really special, almost spiritual.
Next day Patti gave a free artist’s talk to a capacity crowd at the Radisson Hotel, hosted by Peter Crawley of the Irish Times. We were all delighted to see that microphones were set up, guitars at the ready and Tony Shanahan was waiting in the wings to be called on when needed.
She spoke of her heroes – William Burroughs, Gregory Corso, William Blake and of course our own WB. Again she told us about her delight being in Sligo saying that when the invitation came, she accepted without hesitation. As a kid she loved the Yeats poem ‘Cloths Of Heaven’ and gave it a five-star rating in her wee poetry book, vowing some day to come to Ireland.
Inspired by the flow of conversation, after each subject she would sing. She sang ‘In My Blakeian Year’, ‘Peaceable Kingdom’; and ‘Ghost Dance’ after speaking of the importance of unity, and how we can’t let “fools” run our world.
Patti Smith’s politics are optimistic and full of hope. She sees everything as “cyclical” but insists that we need to take control of our destiny. She urges parents to counsel their children on subjects like history and heritage and not swamp them in material things. This, she hammered home with the song ‘The People Have The Power’. I came away wanting to banish the shackles of apathy and complacency, and get out there and make a difference.
Her exhibition of drawings and photographs has travelled to the Model and Niland from the Andy Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh, and it includes over 90 works, from her earliest art student work of the late ‘60s to a series of new photographs, taken in 2006.
The most powerful were her drawings in response to 9/11, one in particular which depicted the ruins of the South Tower. Using the text from the Gospel of Peace and the Koran, she reconstructs the tower’s skeleton, reminding us of the importance of “unity”. Another, more controversial perhaps, is a drawing of the plane that crashed into the south tower, made up of the names of all those who died, including the terrorists.
Drawing, photography, poetry, music, Patti Smith seems to move effortlessly between them, uniting them and making them one. I found the whole experience moving and memorable.