Skip to main content

Patti Smith


Mitchell Library, Glasgow, Glasgow International Festival of Visual Art
The idea of Patti Smith performing in a library is perfect. At this intimate solo show to launch an exhibition of drawings, paintings and photographs originally seen as part of Strange Messenger, her 2002 Andy Warhol Museum retrospective, here appended with new work, this most bookish of artists (rock star, poet, whatever) is herself a walking fan-girl encyclopaedia of absorbed literacy. The glasses Smith sports while reading from her poetry collection, Auguries Of Innocence, add to the overall air of bohemian cool. Tonight, having forgotten to bring her own copy of her book and with a seriously out of tune guitar, Smith comes on like a dotty but hip favourite aunt to Glasgow’s art crowd sitting cross-legged on the floor.
Yet, for all her good-natured humility, death pervades Smith’s set. From the bird flu and “hoof and mouth” disease she dedicates poems to, to her own coming to terms with grief on My Blakeian Year, her performance becomes an extended elegy that’s both deeply personal and humanely universal. It’s as if the 59 year old is creatively coming to terms with not just her own mortality, but her friends and lovers, too. Out of this comes a powerful and irresistible affirmation of life as a positive force.
You can see this too in several self-portraits. One from 1969, a scattershot wild child of bright colours, hangs next to a greyer, more resigned version from 2001. Two photographs show off similar dualities. Where in one Smith looks tired and drawn, the other sees her lean, angular and defiant. Both, remarkably, date from 2003. Elsewhere, her silkscreen and digital images of 11 September 2001, bathed in hues of copper, silver and gold, look not so much like falling skyscrapers as classical columns that recall the title of her 1978 collection, Babel.
But it’s onstage where Smith’s fire burns most, on songs like her Jerry Garcia tribute, Grateful, which shows off her hilarious inability to cope with her own chord changes. She may be a lousy guitarist, but when she sings, the familiar catch in her voice that swoops upwards on each line’s rising arc still sounds thrilling. So at ease is she with her own vulnerability, Smith even leaves herself open to a brief Q&A session. Only here does she lose the rag slightly, swatting away a goonish inquiry concerning her status as a ‘punk poet’.
Order restored, Smith doesn’t so much recite the lyrics to People Have the Power as beat them out in a primal verbal stomp. The evening ends with a gorgeous, lilting version of Hank Williams’s I’m So Lonesome (I Could Cry), Given everything that’s gone before, here it sounds like a song of hope as much as heartbreak.
The Wire, Issue 268, June 2006

ends

Labels

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Losing Touch With My Mind - Psychedelia in Britain 1986-1990

DISC 1 1. THE STONE ROSES   -  Don’t Stop 2. SPACEMEN 3   -  Losing Touch With My Mind (Demo) 3. THE MODERN ART   -  Mind Train 4. 14 ICED BEARS   -  Mother Sleep 5. RED CHAIR FADEAWAY  -  Myra 6. BIFF BANG POW!   -  Five Minutes In The Life Of Greenwood Goulding 7. THE STAIRS  -  I Remember A Day 8. THE PRISONERS  -  In From The Cold 9. THE TELESCOPES   -  Everso 10. THE SEERS   -  Psych Out 11. MAGIC MUSHROOM BAND  -  You Can Be My L-S-D 12. THE HONEY SMUGGLERS  - Smokey Ice-Cream 13. THE MOONFLOWERS  -  We Dig Your Earth 14. THE SUGAR BATTLE   -  Colliding Minds 15. GOL GAPPAS   -  Albert Parker 16. PAUL ROLAND  -  In The Opium Den 17. THE THANES  -  Days Go Slowly By 18. THEE HYPNOTICS   -  Justice In Freedom (12" Version) ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Myra Mcfadyen - An Obituary

Myra McFadyen – Actress   Born January 12th 1956; died October 18th 2024   Myra McFadyen, who has died aged 68, was an actress who brought a mercurial mix of lightness and depth to her work on stage and screen. Playwright and artistic director of the Royal Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh, David Greig, called McFadyen “an utterly transformative, shamanic actor who could change a room and command an audience with a blink”. Citizens’ Theatre artistic director Dominic Hill described McFadyen’s portrayal of Puck in his 2019 production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre in London as “funny, mischievous and ultimately heartbreaking.”   For many, McFadyen will be most recognisable from Mamma Mia!, the smash hit musical based around ABBA songs. McFadyen spent two years on the West End in Phyllida Lloyd’s original 1999 stage production, and was in both film offshoots. Other big screen turns included Rob Roy (1995) and Our Ladies (2019), both directed by Mi...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Passage – Hip Rebel Degenerates: Black, White and Red All Over

Prelude – The Power of Three   Fear. Power. Love. This life-and-death (un)holy trinity was the driving force and raisons d’être of The Passage, the still largely unsung Manchester band sired in what we now call the post-punk era, and who between 1978 and 1983 released four albums and a handful of singles.    Led primarily by composer Dick Witts, The Passage bridged the divide between contemporary classical composition and electronic pop as much as between the personal and the political. In the oppositional hotbed of Margaret Thatcher’s first landslide, The Passage fused agit-prop and angst, and released a song called Troops Out as a single. The song offered unequivocal support for withdrawing British troops from Northern Ireland.    They wrote Anderton’s Hall, about Greater Manchester’s born again right wing police chief, James Anderton, and, on Dark Times, rubbed Brechtian polemic up against dancefloor hedonism. On XOYO, their most commercial and potentially mo...
Post a Comment
Read more