“You know, if there’s anything I’ve learned in life it’s that you gotta be strong and eat a bunch of french fries.” The crowd was confused — Patti Smith had just preached about dreams, building kingdoms, and “feeling the fever” via emphatic spoken word, and all she had learned was to “be strong and eat French fries?”
She felt our confusion and asked us, “Oh, have I not told you that story yet?” as though she was talking to a long-lost friend over some coffee. “My father was on strike and our family was living off of my mother’s tip money and as a kid, you know, you don’t think of these things.” She bent over and picked up her ceramic mug for some tea. “Anyways, I came back home one day and my mother was crying beside a large sack of potatoes.” I wondered, have I ever seen my mother crying next to a sack of potatoes? “My mother looked at me, and said ‘you know how you hate liver and Brussel sprouts,’ well you don’t have to eat that tonight.’” Patti paused as though her long-lost friend (the crowd) would interrupt. “Instead, my mother and I made a mountain of French fries, sat on the ground, and watched Frankenstein.”
“It was the best meal I’ve ever had.” This was just one of many lessons Patti intimately taught us at the Fillmore. Transcending your typical concert, Patti Smith transformed the stage into an entryway into her unbelievably vast recollection of stories and vignettes. In between songs, she would pay homage to Jerry Garcia, theorize about Kennedy being killed by the FBI, or serenade the crowd with a passage from her book, Just Kids. This was more than a concert, more than the 30 feet that extended between me and the stage. I trusted Patti. I trusted what she said, how she moved, her expressions. We were long-lost friends.
Just this last Winter break, me and two friends decided to go to San Francisco to see the magical woman who is Patti Smith in a magical place that is the Fillmore, a shrine dedicated to the rich history of music and culture. Recalling the hippies and vagabonds who forged the path to the North, we hopped in my friends Mini Cooper and embarked on a drive through the vast farmlands of California in what some may say was a search for identity or in search for America. Along the journey, we not only listened to “Horses” in preparation for the show, but we traversed through the sounds of the Beatles: we discussed love, danced with our own curiosity, and learned more about each other and ourselves.
As we neared the end of our drive, I read aloud some of my favorite passages from Patti’s book — a poetic guide to relationships, religion, and the art surrounding New York in the 60s and 70s — which was my first intrigue into Patti that would later lead me to her music.
I read, “In the war of magic and religion, is magic ultimately the victor? Perhaps priest and magician were once one, but the priest, learning humility in the face of God, discarded the spell for prayer.” Amongst many passages devoted to this abstract entity, whether it be simply the click of a camera or the grander entwining of art and the power of god, magic — not the waving of a wand, but rather the subtle synchronized acts of randomness our lives hold — is something Patti relies on to tell her story. And, it’s something that I have naturally and spiritually gravitated towards despite not actually knowing what it means. Just after reading the passage aloud, my friend jerked the car to the side of the road. Stopped in the middle of blankness, surrounded by cow-populated, golden hills and a small, commuter town, a rainbow appeared just above our car. It seemed to me that magic had a say in that.
We got to Berkeley, where we had planned to stay at my apartment. I forgot my keys. So, we found a home on my friend’s couch. Preliminary moves were in action, meaning we compiled all the skittles we owned and all the weed we had and then left for the concert.
In line at the show, it was no surprise that we were the youngest fans there; we had seriously accomplished our romantic mission of summoning the past. Upon entering the Fillmore, it’s hard not to be enchanted by the pictures of people who have played there before. It’s as though Bill Graham is really there in spirit, and as though the stage is built by the foot marks of all of its past patrons, making the simply lit and vastly purple ballroom a musical temple. Before Patti took to the stage, her daughter Jesse, like Patti’s intermittent memoirs, spoke intimately about her passion to save the Earth. The caress and love for the Earth was heightened by her mother’s deep pride for her daughter, as Smith stood behind her cheering her on. An inevitable “Fuck Trump” echoed amongst the fans.
Patti herself was dressed to represent the Earth. She seemed more grounded than anyone, wearing a flowing white jacket, her silver hair meshed with her outfit and the lights — she was the passage between the ground and the lights, Earth and Heaven. Her first song was “Ghost Dance,” where at one point, she literally had everyone shake out not only the ghosts in them but the pre concert jitters everyone had (we were all comfortable, now ready to enter more transcendent topics). “Ghost Dance” is about shaking off the ghosts of our past, the colonialism that irks this country. She went on to profess her love for the Romantic William Blake with her next song “My Blakean Year,” in which she confides in Blake’s religious theory that Jesus was neither a philosopher nor a messianic figure, but rather humanity’s connection to divinity. Patti also held this connection to divinity; she truly believes in her words. The natural flailing of her arms and her strutting around stage was not for her fans, not for her, but for what she believed in. At first glance her words may come off poetically pretentious, but this notion was defeated by the honesty she displayed.
Like us, she also had a romantic vision of the past. Her book prides itself on incredible recollection. She understood what memories meant — she calls them “impressions on a glass plate.” Before her next song, she paused and paid homage to the late Jerry Garcia. Leaving William Blake’s world, she entered the political realm with her ballad to the world, “Peaceable Kingdom.” At this point in the show the crowd had entered a trance, mimicking the movement of Patti, enamored by her glory. Daunting green lights illuminated the stage as she spoke of an earth where lambs and lions live in peace. She bent over and took another sip out of her mug, as again, she wasn’t at a concert hall — we were at a coffee shop discussing some mythical illusions.
Green became red, and all Hell broke loose as Patti’s subconscious took the stage. Her dreams were manifested over a tribal drum only to be followed by the vibrant and vicious “Power to the People,” a poignant message to the political landscape of our country. After the song, she thanked the government workers who were victims of the government shutdown. “I’ll never forget what it means to live from paycheck to paycheck,” she said.
She beautifully transitioned these thoughts into a performance of Bob Dylan’s “A Hard Rain’s Gonna Fall,” during which the crowd helped her sing the chorus. It was fitting to recall upon the symbolic imagery of suffering and injustice that came out of Dylan’s lyrics — lyrics that were written directly after the Cuban Missile Crisis. As she read from the lyric sheet, there came a point where she crumpled the paper, took off her jacket, and became one of Dylan’s missionaries.
To Patti, it seemed as though we were her “Blue-Eyed Children” who had the means to change the world, or at least change ourselves. She then told the story of meeting “Bobby” in 1964. Joan Baez introduced her to him. She urged that this introduction tells the whole arc of her life; it was her “first entrance into some awareness of a political life.” We were long past temporality along the road paved in gold at this point. I realized that Patti was a witch. I was sure of it.
“This section is where I can prove that I can read.” Patti read us a poem titled “The Boy, The Beast, and The Butterfly.” It was totally ethereal and totally spooky. She echoed the words of her daughter, passionately chanting “the planet is dying, the rape of nature!” I found myself, despite how insane she sounded, saying “of course” after every line.
The mood changed when she read an excerpt describing the feelings she had after the death of her late partner, Robert Mapplethorpe. It was the 30th anniversary of his death. At the hearing of his death, she realized she was shivering, overwhelmed by excitement that not only was Robert entering the next stage but that she was too. This was the second lesson: mortality is quite exciting. Mortality is love.
The final stage of the show consisted of “Pissing in a River,” “Because the Night,” and “Southern Cross,” all songs that beckon this subconscious notion of progress and love. Her journey as an artist about muscling down the wrong path was exacerbated by her ability to discover “equatorial bliss,” a nihilistic realization that we are no one and nothing without the Earth and the spirits. The tribal drums came back for this one, even more mesmerizing than before. “We are alive. We have the power.”
The show ended. The crowd was persistent. Patti granted the crowd’s wish and came back on stage despite already placing a lozenge upon her tongue. Again, she sang “Power of the People,” only to realize that the lozenge was ruining the mic’s sound. The song was paused three times, but Patti wasn’t gonna cut the performance short. “Don’t worry we still have the power,” she said. No one was going to leave Jupiter anyways. Dreamily, she slipped away as did we — all of us entrenched in the inner glow and aura that was dealt to us at the Fillmore that night.
We walked the streets of San Francisco after the show, grounding ourselves back into reality. We ate some ramen and returned to the road the next day. Instead of the rainbow this time, the sun pierced through the clouds on my friend’s mini cooper. On the way home, our conversation shifted from love to free will, from secularism to determinism. Our Patti Smith-inspired philosophical discussion dwindled as our brains began to melt — the sun went down and we stopped in SLO for some Thai food only to return to our Earthly lives again. If there’s anything to be taken from this, it’s that Patti made me love and appreciate the vices and the voices of our past, dead or alive, more than ever. It was easily the best cup of coffee I’ve had in a while.
Article by Julius Miller