Patti Smith

A preamble: for over thirty years now I've had an all-consuming passion for the artist in question. The hotel where I've booked a room is the Hotel Tre Vecchi, right across from Arena del Sole, the theatre where tonight Patti Smith and her band will play the second show of the "Patti Smith Festival – Dream of Life". I discover it's also the hotel where the band is staying, a fact that will turn out to be pleasantly interesting on Sunday morning. She's staying at the Baglioni…

A good fifteen minutes behind schedule - Italian style, and well tolerated by the audience - at 9:50 pm Patti Smith walks onto the stage with the small band of musicians who have accompanied her for pretty much her whole career. In her hands she holds the Tibetan flag, which she sets down, in full view beside Jay Dee Daugherty's drum kit, to general applause.

The concert opens with the notes of "Kimberly", followed by the evening's first cover, the Hendrix-esque "Are You Experienced?", into which fragments of "Voodoo Child" and "The Wind Cries Mary" are also woven. The track is marked by the magic touch of a thoroughly inspired Giovanni Sollima, who turns the austere sound of his cello into that of a psychedelic sitar.

Next up is the ever-touching "Ghost Dance". The psychedelic atmosphere continues to pervade the air through the Beatles-esque "Within You Without You", in a highly engaging version, Sollima rules!

Tony Shanahan and Jackson Smith are perfectly in sync, Dougherty's drumming doesn't miss a beat, and Lenny Kaye's touch is unmistakable. The American artist's voice and stage presence are as ever, her gaze still magnetically feverish. The performance runs smoothly along the tracks of professional routine, but also of a palpable torpor: the usual feeling that binds Patti Smith to her audience seems to be missing.

A first positive jolt, however, comes with the arrival on stage of Tom Verlaine - hysterical and listless a few hours earlier during the afternoon show with Jimmy Rip, now relaxed and smiling: on "Wing" he unleashes a solo so complex, yet so effortlessly played, that it leaves jaws on the floor.

The following song also benefits from the crucial presence of the Television frontman, who lends power to "Beneath The Southern Cross" with an intricate, furious closing solo.

With Verlaine off stage, the concert continues with "Frederick" and "Paths That Cross", followed by the best version of "Dancing Barefoot" I've heard her play in all the many shows of hers I've attended. In the middle of Lenny Kaye's solo, Patti decides to leave the stage for a walk through the crowd, waving and shaking hands - the concert has taken off, the feeling has clicked into place. With most of the band's attention elsewhere, they keep playing with ever greater intensity, and Jackson Smith, Patti's eldest son, delivers a long, remarkable solo under the admiring gaze of his mentor Lenny Kaye.

Part of the audience, myself included, floods down toward the stage, and by now the rest of the crowd is on its feet too. Patti Smith keeps working the stage, singing and shaking hands with those nearby.

The anguished "Smell Like Teen Spirit", the war-horses "Because The Night", "People Have The Power" and the Rolling Stones-esque "Gimme Shelter", with Jimmy Rip's searing guitar well to the fore, follow one another in a climate of ever-growing excitement and euphoria, culminating in an incendiary version of "Rock 'n' Roll Nigger". Even though it has just turned thirty, the song remains a strikingly topical manifesto, with a few lyric variations that send the Bologna crowd into an absolute frenzy. "Obama is a nigger, we are all fuckin' niggers too", shrieks the by-now-transfigured singer from Chicago, as, gripping a Stratocaster, she helps stoke the sonic inferno that has by now engulfed the theatre and is driving the audience wild.

At the end of the performance, a Patti Smith visibly worn out by the intensity of the show tears the strings off her guitar one by one, the last - the low E - with some effort but with a broad, radiant smile.

Well past sixty, "The Old Lady" still knows how to thrill.

Patti Smith and her band:

Jimmy Rip: Electric guitar (***)

Ride the wave of great music

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