Four songs into her set, Patti Smith starts to cry: “First tears of the tour!” she sighs, wiping her eyes. They’re occasioned by the sound of the audience singing along to her 1978 track Ghost Dance, a sound you would assume she’s heard before in the years since she wrote it. Perhaps in Brighton they are even more reverential than those Smith usually faces, 60 years on from her debut single. The first but not the last loud scream of “I love you Patti!” rings out before she’s even played a note; people throw roses and leave cards on the stage.
The object of their affection should, by rights, have long ascended into the realm of legendhood, where people buy tickets simply to be in proximity to an icon and the music is a secondary consideration. At 77, however, Smith remains a genuinely compelling performer. Music seems to have a transformative effect on her. Between songs she’s far goofier than her reputation as the epitome of New York punk cool suggests, but once her band kick into the Velvet Underground-ish chug of Nine or a surging version of Pissing in a River, she appears to be genuinely transported. She dances with an enviable insouciance, and as her eulogy for Kurt Cobain, About a Boy, collapses into abstraction, she appears to be close to speaking in tongues.
Smith’s penchant for an unlikely cover version has long been noted – in the 21st century she’s essayed everything from Prince’s When Doves Cry to Tears For Fears’ Everybody Wants to Rule the World to Midnight Oil’s anthem Beds Are Burning, with varying degrees of success. But tonight her surprise take on Lana Del Rey’s Summertime Sadness is both a little chaotic and entirely extraordinary. She introduces it as a song that makes her think of her late husband, MC5’s Fred “Sonic” Smith, who died 30 years ago, and their “wild youth” together. Her version completely recasts the song in sepia tones. Sung by a woman in her late 70s, it turns into an affecting meditation on memories and death, followed swiftly by a version of Because the Night, “written for the same guy”. It’s moving, powerful and unexpected, a perfect reminder that, 12 years after her last album, Patti Smith is still in constant motion.
