“You are all Johnny,” she shouts, after she has passionately delivered a plea for freedom, against corporations, for peace, against this corruption that is tainting this world. “Use your voice”, she yells out, as the guitar is strumming this up-tempo riff that doesn’t really get the audience dancing since most people are in their fifties, sixties, possibly seventies. Which makes sense, since it is the 40th anniversary of Patti Smith’s iconic album Horses. And by the looks of it, the audience not only bought it on release, but they remember it, too. They remember the heartfelt plea for freedom, and the honest, pure ode to those who have died. And despite it being forty years later, Smith being forty years older, and despite that this celebration of the forty year anniversary has been going on for a good couple of months, Smith still manages to eloquently and wholeheartedly stand by her message.
“Jesus died for somebody’s sins, but not mine,” it’s one of those opening lines that is timeless. Just as the evocative imagery of Johnny banging his head against the lockers, the trampling of the white horses, and the boy asking his dad to take him with him. As the pretty young girl is humping on the parking meter, Jimmy Morrison is ascending with Prometheus wings to the next chapter of maybe not even life, but existence. As Johnny is starting to feel the energy, the band dives into Gloria again, a moment that manages to elicit the cheers of all whose bedtime would have past on any other day of the week. No bedtime, no rules and regulations, they are just words tonight. And tonight, it’s one of those nights that belongs to us, which she and her band play in the encore. Would she know that, in this country, a dance version of that anthemic song charted back in the Nineties?
Patti Smith still exudes vibrancy, and she reminds us that we, too, should feel Life. Alive. We need to Live. Feel. Love. And fight, too, but not with bombs, or guns, but with the one thing we have more of. Human kindness. She kisses her guitar after saying that this is the only weapon we need, that we bring peace with poetry, art, and songs. “And it never runs out of ammunition”, she says, breaking every string on it when they are at the tail end of a cover of ‘My Generation’ which, along with The Velvet Underground, gets a shout-out. The latter which is done by her band as she takes a momentary break from the action. After disappearing briefly, she arrives back, waiting in the wings, just in time to watch appreciatively, proudly as her son goes off on a guitar solo.
Someone else’s son, buttoned-up in a neat, white shirt, leans on his dad’s shoulders on the staircase near the side, which is full of people trying to get a bit of a height advantage in the sold-out Tivoli Vredenburg venue. As Patti Smith comes back the fresh faced lad cheers, singing that the night belongs to lovers, and when Patti leaves he gives her a wave. Sure, the 44 euro price point might have been slightly too steep for those still learning about life, love, and lost instead of having already experienced it (and having, you know, a paying job), but the message that both the album forty years ago, as well as Patti Smith tonight, throws out there is still just as relevant.
And as the teenage boy leaves the venue tugging on dad’s sleeve, having witnessed such a strong, charismatic, and honest spokesperson, who knows, maybe the future might heed the warning after all. Being an individual, free from corruption, war, and manipulation, when brought so convincingly and artistically, sounds like a pretty good deal for any generation, let alone the one yet to define itself. It’s something that Patti Smith would surely be happy about, people continuing the fight and at the end she reminds us that we, the people, have the power. Tonight she made a hell of a case that we should never forget that.
