Poetry in motion as the anthems unfold
Patti Smith
Kelvingrove Bandstand, Glasgow
There is a special energy at a Kelvingrove Bandstand show when a legend graces its small stage and easily reaches the back of this intimate amphitheatre, and this spiritual set by punk poet laureate Patti Smith was no exception, with the huddled masses metaphorically cross-legged at her feet awaiting enlightenment.
Though billed consciously as Patti Smith and her Band, the show began with just Smith, her son Jackson on guitar and the ghosts of birthday boys Herman Melville, Jim Carroll and Grateful Dead frontman Jerry Garcia, to whom Smith paid tribute with a rather haphazard performance of Grateful.
So it wasn’t a slick start but there was charm in abundance and the song itself was a mournful gem which encapsulated the Smith sound and influence in a simple acoustic tune.
Mother and son were duly joined by her longtime bassist Tony Shanahan and the brilliant Aberdonian drummer Seb Rochford for a mellow, burnished blues take on Jimi Hendrix’s Are You Experienced? which set the brooding musical dynamic for much of the set.
Along the way, we were treated to Smith’s musings on the unique qualities of Glaswegian gulls, odes to artists under-appreciated in their time and sympathetic incantations for indigenous peoples in her own Ghost Dance and a glistening, gradually accelerating cover of Midnight Oil’s Beds Are Burning, which evolved into an incongruous communal celebration at her behest.
Dancing Barefoot was another classic slice of rock mysticism. With the audience now on their feet, Smith indulged in her own little communion with the front rows.
A poem inspired by the Tarkovsky film Ivan’s Childhood was recited over gently rolling bassline and light touch bluesy guitar with Smith Jr and support act Patrick Wolf supplying stormy embellishment on guitar and violin in an ebband-flow arrangement which pushed to expansive crescendos, then pulled back to a brooding whisper.
Beneath the Southern Cross was a similarly freewheeling maelstrom (once Smith had mastered its one chord), which folded in a hint of The Beatles’ Within You Without You. The classic references flowed, with The Rolling Stones’ I’m Free,
sung by Shanahan, seguing into Lou Reed’s New York standard Walk On the Wild Side and Neil Young’s eco anthem After the Gold Rush, delivered as a moving, stripped back Extinction Rebellion.
But Smith has anthems of her own to spare and she rounded off the revels with the invincible Because the Night, her inexorable take on Gloria and the galvanising, evergreen People Have the Power.