Five stars
Patti Smith, 'punk's poet laureate', showcased her 40-year-old landmark album, Horses, at the Glasgow Royal Concert Hall, and as diverting and memorable as it was, the sight that will live with me is the encore, My Generation, when Smith, wading late into the fierce, exhilarating squall of noise provided by her band, plugged in a guitar and, channelling her inner Pete Townshend, gleefully divested it of all its strings. To cap it all, she had introduced it as a 'little English folk tune'.
It's hard to believe that Horses came out as long ago as 1975. Smith and the band, which included Lenny Kaye and Jay Dee Daugherty from the original line-up, aiming for what she had described as a 'true, proud celebration', performed it in sequence, beginning of course with Gloria and its eternally cool opening line, 'Jesus died for somebody's sins but not mine'. The song got one of the biggest cheers of the night: it reminded you just how affectionately the album is remembered by many fans.
Smith needed a lyric sheet at times during Birdland but was able to dispense with it before the end. After the fourth track, Free Money, she quipped: "So that's side A of Horses ... if you take the album and turn it over it may have a few scratches on it." The intense, 12-minute-long version of Land was a vivid highlight, and the audience, doing Smith's bidding, finally got to its feet, where it stayed until the end. Break It Up was, she reminded us, written in memory of Jim Morrison, and Elegie in memory of Jimi Hendrix; she name-checked friends and colleagues she had lost over the years, from Fred 'Sonic' Smith to Lou Reed.
Post-Horses, as it were, there were a Velvets medley, a strong Because the Night, People Have the Power, and Dancing Barefoot. Then came that quaint little English folk song, and fans willing Smith to go the full Townshend and trash her guitar. A remarkable night, by any standards.
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