Patti Smith

In May 1967, Scott McKenzie sang: “If you're going to San Francisco, be sure to wear some flowers in your hair.” Thus began the Summer of Love. In the Haight-Ashbury district, thousands of young Americans joined together in a new, revolutionary social experience. The Bay Area filled with the English echoes of “Sergente Pepe,” which turned into orgasmic screams at the Monterey Pop Festival.

There are, however, those who don't stop to pick flowers because, perhaps, they can't even see them through their sunglasses. In New York, that same year, the Velvet Underground released the banana album, capturing a very different, urban reality. While in San Francisco psychedelic drugs were a means of passing through the doors of perception, Lou Reed sang with atonal despair: “I don't know just where I'm going.”

It's 1967 when young single mother Patricia Lee (“Patti”) Smith moves to the Big Apple and meets Robert Mapplethorpe at the bookstore where she starts working. A rock journalist, Patti is in love with the musical icons of the counterculture, from Jimi Hendrix to muse Grace Slick. Yet the decadent, ambiguous air of Max's Kansas City leads her, by the middle of the following decade, to explore rawer, sharper paths. The rising “priestess of rock” becomes the godmother of punk and of the “new wave” that follows.

Today, July 2007, Patti Smith, having completed her tragic journey through poetic, urban rock, can afford herself a party, a celebration, a rite.

“Today is the anniversary of the death of a great musician and poet, Jim Morrison.” When Tony Shanahan's keyboards weave the intro to “Soul Kitchen,” it becomes clear that the ultimate purpose of this concert is to relive a past now long gone.

In the Cavea of the Auditorium there's no boundless lawn, nor a colorful sun shining in the sky, but Patti is as determined as ever, deeply talkative. “We have to get used to the sound in here, and carry on with tonight's musical adventure to see where it takes us.”

Forty years after that summer of free love, in her worn voice lies the mission of bringing everyone back to the beaches of Venice, or rather to her own “Redondo,” which opens the show with the reggae-tinged flexes of faithful guitarist Lenny Kaye.

But tonight, the poetess from Chicago is nothing more than a conduit, an elderly, wise disseminator of the gospel of rock. “This is a song by Bob Dylan,” she says, as if explaining a chapter of history, and launches into a brilliant acoustic version of “Changing Of The Guards.”

After all, this is a tour in support of her latest album of rock-folk covers, “Twelve,” which, three years on from “Trampin,” revisits old classics with great elegance.

Wonderful, for instance, is the clarinet—sweet at first, then unhinged—that builds “Are You Experienced?” The small tribute to the inevitable (given the context) Jimi Hendrix is one of the high points of the whole band's performance.

Patti Smith can still radiate a magnetic aura, capable, with a simple movement of her hands, of completely overshadowing Jay Dee Daugherty in his striped, office-clerk shirt, or the wiry Lenny Kaye standing in his spot working through the chord changes.

The high priestess recalls the motto of “power to the people” and thus moves closer to the stands, raises her gaze to the stars, and walks around even at the risk of tripping over the microphone cables.

And, above all, she sings, in her usual ungainly way, George Harrison's “Within You Without You” by The Beatles. A genuine sense of intimate community wraps around the audience as the Indian-tinged chant of “Ghost Dance” begins, welcoming the desolate body cello of Giovanni Sollima. And it's perhaps with the Italian musician that “the musical adventure” truly finds its way. In this way, the acid hymn of “White Rabbit” (introduced by a bizarre speech about Raphael in which Smith asks for a slice of pizza) and the violet-hued atmosphere of “Beneath The Southern Cross” take on a genuine dimension of intimate ritual.

An intimacy, however, that immediately turns into a communal celebration when the first piano chords of “Because The Night” are heard. Many people stand up and rush toward the edge of the stage while Patti smiles and offers handshakes. During the mournful “Pissing In A River” and “We Three,” some are even lying on the stage with their arms crossed.

It's the atmosphere of love that the poetess wants, inviting the crew to dim the lights so she can reinterpret, with tremendous elegance, “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” which sends Sollima into a trance-like state.

Patti bids everyone farewell, but everyone knows she'll be back soon.

There's no celebration of 1967 without a heartfelt plea against war. “We must stop all the small wars to prevent a great war.” The outburst thus opens the encore, and the band starts lighting the fuse with a more or less faithful version of “Gimme Shelter.”

And, at the same time, there's no covers show without that classic by Them that opens with the line “Jesus died for somebody's sins but not mine.” “Gloria” roars, stretching out over the frantic drumming before giving way to a bland cover of “Perfect Day.” It's only a pause, though, because the party can only end with the unleashed drive of “Rock and Roll Nigger.”

The lights on the stage go down. For a few moments the cavea is left in darkness. Someone looks up at the sky. Tonight's moon, this third of July, seems to wear flowers in its hair.

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