Patti Smith Jams With Flea, Covers Hendrix, Embraces Aging at L.A. ‘Horses’ Show
(Patti Smith, Flea, and Lenny Kaye. Photo: @jewgravy’s Twitter)
Closing out her tour with the first of two Los Angeles shows celebrating the 40th anniversary of her landmark album Horses, on Friday night Patti Smith was joined by local legend and longtime friend/jam partner Flea for a funky version of the Jimi Hendrix classic “If 6 Was 9.” Inspired by the recent 69th birthdays of both Smith and her Patti Smith Group bandmate Lenny Kaye, the loose, freewheeling performance got off to a comical false start, but Smith shrugged it off. “I’m sorry if I botched up ‘If 6 Was 9,’” she said, “but I’ve made a whole career of botching up songs. It’s like part of my charm!”
(Video below contains profanity)
And the audience at L.A. Wiltern was indeed charmed by Smith’s concert, which reprised 1975’s Horses in its entirety, complete with a mid-show lesson during which Smith held up a vinyl record and explained how to flip an LP from Side A to Side B. (“This is how it was done in my generation. We had to take the arm and slowly press it into the grooves…”) The set also included another earlier dedication to Hendrix, “Elegie,” although an extended recitation of the names of other departed rock stars – Amy Winehouse, Kurt Cobain, Lou Reed, all of the Ramones, and Patti’s husband, the MC5’s Fred “Sonic” Smith – received an especially enthusiastic response.
“In the last 40 years, we have all lost people that we love and admire,” Smith told the crowd. “Think of all these people that you keep in your memory. [This song] is also for them.”
Other nods to late, great rock stars came when Smith performed the Horses track “Break It Up,” which was written about the Doors’ Jim Morrison, and an impromptu half-cover of “It’s Now or Never” by Elvis Presley, whose 81st birthday would have been Friday.
(Photo: Scott Dudelson/Getty Images)
Flea remained onstage for the encore of “Because the Night,” “Dancing Barefoot” (which featured Smith’s daughter Jesse on keys; her son Jackson also played for the full show), “People Have the Power,” and Smith’s famously unhinged cover of the Who’s “My Generation.” The latter two songs both delivered particularly strong messages from the always outspoken punk poetess.
Smith introduced “People Have the Power” (the anthem she recently performed in Paris with U2) by saying, “If I don’t see you for a while, it’s an election year. Our choices look pretty f—ing grim, but vote anyway! Use your voice!” And during “My Generation,” she boldly belted, “Hope I live till I get old,” then brandished her electric guitar and proclaimed, “Behold the weapon of my generation! You don’t need no background check!” – before violently ripping off its strings.
“I have better in the grave than you. You can’t mess with a 69-year-old broad,” Smith drawled unapologetically and age-embracingly at one loudmouthed heckler earlier in the evening. And she was right. She performed with the fervor and fire of a woman a third her age, and when she recited, “Charm, sweet angels, you made me no longer afraid of death” (an André Breton quote featured on the back cover of Horses), it was a triumphant celebration of seven decades of a life fearlessly lived. And that was definitely a part of Smith’s charm.
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