Patti Smith displays all of her many sides
The last time Patti Smith played in Boston, at 2002's free Riverfest on the Esplanade, she was a dynamo of defiance and audience interaction. She bolted off the stage and into the crowd, dedicated a song to John Walker Lindh, snarled at leering photographers in the front row, and told us all to drink plenty of water and remember who we were on Sept. 10, 2001.
Patti Smith
At: Paradise Rock Club,
Friday night
On Friday, in the more intimate confines of the Paradise, Smith plumbed the more subdued depths of her artistry. She was a pinwheel of personas: pensive as she plucked petals from a flower, incendiary when dropping to her knees and urging people to register to vote before launching "People Have the Power," and seemingly nearly disoriented after she emerged upright from a thrashing guitar riff on "25th Floor."
Toward the end of the sold-out show, Smith -- rail-thin in jeans, a T-shirt, and a blazer with a "peace" pin on the lapel, with graying hair that means business -- made it clear why she seemed so contemplative one minute and inflamed the next. "This is the second night of our tour that we'll be on for the next 5 1/2 years," she said jokingly, "and at these first few shows, you have to get our energy up."
Surely, there was a reserve of energy, but Smith channeled it in intriguing and often challenging ways. She set the tone immediately with a quiet rendition of "Trampin'," the title song of her new album, and as spare piano caressed her hushed voice, longtime guitarist Lenny Kaye closed his eyes and nodded along. Her band -- which also included drummer Jay Day Daugherty, guitarist Oliver Ray, and bassist Tony Shanahan -- always seemed right in step with her, no matter how chameleonic her behavior became.
Smith seized "Jubilee" as a moment to exalt the audience in a fist-pumping call to "let freedom ring!" In keeping with the social-justice motif, she punctuated her epic "Radio Baghdad," a sprawling tale of a child whose father is killed on the streets of Baghdad, with a chilling first-person narrative and discordant notes from Smith's clarinet.
Unfortunately, video images that usually complement such songs were rendered ineffective on the tiny Paradise stage; you could barely make out the various words and faces projected on the wall. Only on "Break It Up" did they work, as a camera dizzily panned across black-and-white tombstones in a cemetery.
Smith has taken more risks in her vocals over the years, elongating words in peculiar ways and sounding every inch a mid-'70s Bob Dylan, and on "Summer of Cannibals" she was glorious as she practically spat the words.
At times, Smith came off as the supreme and -- dare I say it? -- down-to-earth icon to her howling fans. She smiled at them, relayed her adventures earlier in the day in Jamaica Plain (where she misplaced her glasses and visited the Art Market Gallery, where she has a photo exhibit displayed), and listened to their incessant song requests. "Gloria!" "Dancing Barefoot!" "Ask the Angels!" She never caved in, though, and stuck mostly to her new material. Besides, doesn't anyone realize there's a set list?
When she played "Because the Night," she acknowledged that it was her biggest commercial hit: "Well, I haven't had to sing this song as much as Gloria Gaynor has had to do hers." Afterward, she said she had meant to dedicate the song to some newlyweds, only she had forgotten their names. "Clayton and Bob, I think," she said with a smile. "Whoever you are and whatever you are, I wish you good luck at [marriage]."
