PATTI SMITH @ LONDON PALLADIUM

To mark 50 years of her critically acclaimed debut studio album ‘Horses’, Patti Smith, the singer-songwriter and ‘godmother of punk’ hosted two nights in London as part of her anniversary tour a few days after she released a special expanded edition of the record. The show was formed of two separate sets beginning on ‘Horses’ played in track order, opening with ‘Gloria’. But the show suddenly took off during the third track ‘Free Money’, with Smith pushing her mic stand to the ground while rocking out with Lenny Kaye (guitar, bass) to the chorus. She moved onto the transcendental, poetic liquid jazz of ‘Birdland’, all nine minutes of it, with Kaye using plenty of wah-wah.

During the set, Smith related stories of other artists who inspired songs on the album such as The Doors’ Jim Morrison’s surreal influence on ‘Break It Up’ and Jimi Hendrix, who she bumped into at a party, and to whom she dedicated ‘Elegie’. She ended her first set on an explosive 12-minute chain of the Patti Smith Group’s ‘Land: Horses/Land of a Thousand Dances’, customised for a London audience and sung a reprise of ‘Gloria’ against ticking country twang. Far from this being a nostalgia tour, she updated her lyrics, alternating between abusive anger and meditative hope, to reflect the current times by placing her protagonist in 2025: “Johnny looks at his world so corrupt, so fucked up…but Johnny also feels the joy of being alive” before chanting “Freedom!” to the roar of the audience.

For the second set, the band – alongside Kaye being formed of Tony Shanahan (keyboard, bass), Jackson Smith (guitar) and Seb Rochford (drums) – performed without Smith for a trilogy of Television classics from the band’s 1977 debut studio album, ‘Marquee Moon’, loaded with bass and glam rock guitar with Kaye singing vocals for ‘Friction’, although it seemed a little strange as it could not possibly live up to the original band’s bite.

Smith returned to the stage for a cover of The Byrds’ ‘So You Want to be a Rock ‘n’ Roll Star’, afterwards joking she had forgotten the lyrics to it. She performed more from the Patti Smith Group, with ‘Dancing Barefoot’, and nobly attributed her 2004 song ‘Peaceable Kingdom’ to the Palestinian people who inspired the writing of the song, closing the night on her 1988 single, ‘People Have the Power’, with Jesse Smith, her daughter, and guest guitarist Johnny Depp, a longtime friend of the artist, coming on stage to play alongside the band. Albeit sparking controversy over his domestic abuse allegations which shaded the proceedings of this feminist icon, he hovered insignificantly in the background for it to have much effect on what was surely one of the best shows of the year.

13/10/25: Patti Smith @ London Palladium.