On Sunday, Patti Smith, one of the world’s greatest living poets and rock icons, treated 800 people to an intimate music and spoken word performance in the hallowed environs of the Union Chapel, Islington.
Patti was in town to promote her new book Just Kids-a beautiful and moving account of her relationship with the artist and photographer Robert Mappelthorpe and their lives in New York City from the late 1960s. Effortlessly cool, she chatted and improvised her way through a set that included Redondo Beach, My Blakean Year and Dancing Barefoot and was joined by Patrick Wolf on violin, Tony Shanahan on piano, Seb Rochford (Polar Bear) on drums and Kevin Shields (My Bloody Valentine) on guitar.
Patti read extracts from her book and was utterly charming and unpretentious as she joked about costume changes, being a style icon and recalled her school teacher giving her advice on how to dress properly- “Patti Lee, you should never, ever wear black with brown”. For an encore, she performed two songs co-written with her late husband Fred ‘Sonic’ Smith of the MC5; one of which, Jackson Song, was especially poignant for its reference to Mapplethorpe, her “little blue star that offers light”. The highlight of the evening however was an intense and frantic version of Birdland which culminated in Patti howling and roaring into the microphone as Patrick Wolf played violin with such intensity, he almost ended up with a broken bow.
35 years after the release of the devastatingly brilliant debut album Horses, Patti Smith has proved again that she is as unique and as relevant an artist as she ever was.
Photo c Flora Neale