Legendary punk poet and musician Patti Smith triumphed at the Brighton Festival this week, giving two epic performances with her brilliant quartet.
After being too late to get a seat for the Patti Smith Quartet at the Dome on Tuesday 12 May (most of the audience were standing), I was lucky enough to get one of the very last tickets for Patti Smith: An evening of words and music at the Brighton Corn Exchange on Wednesday evening 13 May. Being of a similar age, I thought it might be my last chance to see her perform.
Every seat was taken in the recently restored Corn Exchange. Although I was in the back row of the gallery, I had a perfect view of the stage.
‘Grateful’ to be back in Brighton
Unlike many ‘big names’, Patti Smith’s unassuming manner was refreshing, as she came on in her trademark jeans, t-shirt and black jacket to welcome the audience. She loves Brighton and told us that she invited herself to the Festival – “I didn’t wait to be asked.” She would gladly have played a third night if she hadn’t been going on to Europe.
Patti captured the audience from the start, with her first song Grateful and its wonderful lyrics: “Ours is just another skin/Simply slips away…It will all come out fine/I’ve learned it line by line.”
Ghost Dance, dedicated to Native Americans, followed: “Our President doesn’t care about them at all… I’m ashamed.” She encouraged us to “Stretch out your arms” and wave our hands during the powerful refrain: “We shall live again.”
Patti’s low-pitched drawl and the band’s Indie sound reminded me of Lou Reed and The Velvet Underground, who I heard in San Francisco in the late 1960s. Two Dylan covers – One Too Many Mornings and Man in the Long Black Coat – warmed us up further.
Describing how she woke up that morning and looked out to sea, Patti dedicated the next song, Wing, to the three young women who had drowned off Brighton beach in the early hours. The beautiful refrain “You’d be a wing in heaven blue” brought me and others around me to tears.
But Patti’s account of the day’s weather in Brighton (“schizophrenic”) had the audience laughing again, as she described the unexpected change from sun to heavy rain and hail: “And as I ran from the rain I was running into sunshine again!” Her enjoyment of the experience seemed to epitomise her attitude to life’s unexpected changes.
Dreaming of Jim Morrison
The first bars of The Doors cover, The Crystal Ship, had me reminiscing about my year in the USA in the ‘60s again. This led into a lengthy, evocative description of a dream Patti had about Doors singer Jim Morrison in the 1970s, in which he was imprisoned in a bound statue of Prometheus until she encouraged him to break free and fly away.
Patti turned the dream into a powerful song Break It Up. With the band upping the volume and intensity, and Patti’s son Jackson Smith excelling on lead guitar, the audience joined in the swelling chorus – a high point in the first half of the concert.
While Patti took a short break, the band played George Harrison’s Isn’t It a Pity in his memory. As well as Jackson (with whom Patti often joshed on stage), Tony Shanahan on bass and keyboards and Seb Rochford on drums form a virtuoso team, showing their many years of musical collaboration.
Coming back with a skip (“I feel sprightly”), Patti and the band launched into Fireflies, a song which started slowly and gathered force with the repeat of “I been a’walking”, as Patti trod the countdown of steps to Seb’s repeated drum beat. Though composed in 1996, the previous night had seen its first live performance. Rather sinister in tone, the song had shades of The Doors and The Grateful Dead.
Another slower song was Patti’s soulful cover of Charlotte Day Wilson’s Work. Patti explained that she wanted to write a song with that title, but found this one and “borrowed it” instead. She certainly made it her own.
Building the ‘peaceable kingdom’?
As the evening moved towards the end, Patti introduced a song for Palestine that she and Tony Shanahan had written 20 years ago. In a rare, directly political statement, she said: “This is for the children of Palestine… and for the children of Lebanon and Iran.” The moving, poetic song Peaceable Kingdom got a huge response from the audience: “Maybe one day we’ll be strong enough/To build it back again/Build the peaceable kingdom/Back again.”
The official set ended with another dedication, this time to the music producer Jack Douglas, who had died just two days before. While recording the band’s second album, Radio Ethiopia in 1976, a huge tornado was (unusually) due to hit New York. Everyone was warned to stay indoors, but Patti felt “in my bones” that the wild weather would be the ideal time to record. She persuaded Jack Douglas to drive through the storm to the studio and they finished the album.
The brilliant song Beneath the Southern Cross was for Jack and the audience went wild afterwards, stomping, clapping and cheering for several minutes, the sound echoing up to the Corn Exchange rafters just above my head.
‘People have the power’
This wasn’t the end though. The band returned for two amazing encores which had the audience on their feet again. Firstly, the iconic Because the Night, “written for Jackson’s father, Fred ‘Sonic’ Smith” and the band’s biggest hit. This is a real foot-stomper and everyone sang along with the well-known words: “Because the night belongs to lovers/ Because the night belongs to us.”
For the final number, Patti and Fred Smith’s uplifting People Have the Power, daughter Jesse Paris Smith, also a professional musician, took to the keyboards. By now the audience was in fine form, accompanying the song with elaborate clapping rhythms as we all belted out “People have the power!” Patti reminded us all to “Use your voice!” before the band took their bows.
It was an amazing evening and will certainly take its place among my most memorable gigs.
See the full setlist on: https://www.setlist.fm/setlist/patti-smith/2026/corn-exchange-brighton-england-1374d181.html
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