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

Comments

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) ...

Edinburgh Rocks – The Capital's Music Scene in the 1950s and Early 1960s

Edinburgh has always been a vintage city. Yet, for youngsters growing up in the shadow of World War Two as well as a pervading air of tight-lipped Calvinism, they were dreich times indeed. The founding of the Edinburgh International Festival in 1947 and the subsequent Fringe it spawned may have livened up the city for a couple of weeks in August as long as you were fans of theatre, opera and classical music, but the pubs still shut early, and on Sundays weren't open at all. But Edinburgh too has always had a flipside beyond such official channels, and, in a twitch-hipped expression of the sort of cultural duality Robert Louis Stevenson recognised in his novel, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, a vibrant dance-hall scene grew up across the city. Audiences flocked to emporiums such as the Cavendish in Tollcross, the Eldorado in Leith, The Plaza in Morningside and, most glamorous of all due to its revolving stage, the Palais in Fountainbridge. Here the likes of Joe Loss and Ted Heath broug...

Big Gold Dreams – A Story of Scottish Independent Music 1977-1989

Disc 1 1. THE REZILLOS (My Baby Does) Good Sculptures (12/77)  2. THE EXILE Hooked On You (8/77) 3. DRIVE Jerkin’ (8/77) 4. VALVES Robot Love (9/77) 5. P.V.C. 2 Put You In The Picture (10/77) 6. JOHNNY & THE SELF ABUSERS Dead Vandals (11/77) 7. BEE BEE CEE You Gotta Know Girl (11/77) 8. SUBS Gimme Your Heart (2/78) 9. SKIDS Reasons (No Bad NB 1, 4/78) 10. FINGERPRINTZ Dancing With Myself (1/79)  11. THE ZIPS Take Me Down (4/79) 12. ANOTHER PRETTY FACE All The Boys Love Carrie (5/79)  13. VISITORS Electric Heat (5/79) 14. JOLT See Saw (6/79) 15. SIMPLE MINDS Chelsea Girl (6/79) 16. SHAKE Culture Shock (7/79) 17. HEADBOYS The Shape Of Things To Come (7/79) 18. FIRE EXIT Time Wall (8/79) 19. FREEZE Paranoia (9/79) 20. FAKES Sylvia Clarke (9/79) 21. TPI She’s Too Clever For Me (10/79) 22. FUN 4 Singing In The Showers (11/79) 23. FLOWERS Confessions (12/79) 24. TV21 Playing With Fire (4/80) 25. ALEX FERGUSSON Stay With Me Tonight (1980) ...