Patti Smith turns a rainy Allas Pool night into a jubilant communal celebration, with radiant presence, big anthems and a crowd buzzing with joy.
HELSINKI
Rain clouds hover over the outdoor venue at Allas Pool on Saturday evening, but Patti Smith opens by singing about “dancing barefoot,” pulling us straight back to 1979 and Wave—one of her most beloved songs, sui generis, and somehow even better live.
Smith isn’t dressed for the beach. She’s in black leather boots with a golden buckle, loose jeans and a dark coat; long gray hair under a gray beanie.
Still, the strand motif endures. “Redondo Beach,” from Horses (1976), rides a tropical groove while carrying its sad story: longing for a woman who died by her own hand.
The crowd stays rooted, caught in the rhythm, with a gigantic skywheel turning to the left of the stage and a luxury cruiser looming above on the right.
Then even Smith forgets the words.
“I started looking at the water, daydreaming. I forgot to sing, sorry,” she says.
Smith, a writer, a poet and a musical vagabond, is nearly through an anecdote about the song “Break It Up”—a dream of The Doors frontman Jim Morrison, risen from the dead on a slab of marble with wings as she repeatedly screamed, “Break it up!”—when hysterical laughter breaks open around me.
The cackle continues as Smith says that when she woke up, she brushed the feathers from her hair and went back to sleep.
I’ve heard the song live before, but at 79, Smith still cranks the shamanic garage-rock up a notch—vigorous energy, presence, voice, all intact.
About an hour in, the quartet turns to “Fireflies,” from Gone Again (1996), written around the loss of her husband, Fred. The hypnotic countdown of grief lands with raw force and becomes a highlight.
Smith dedicates “Peaceable Kingdom” from Trampin’ (2004) to the Palestinian struggle. The crowd is visibly moved. It starts to rain as she sings: “Looking out the window at the rain / And I wanted to tell you / That your tears were not in vain . . . Build the peaceable kingdom / Back again / Build it back again.”
Then, if by magic, the rain stops.
Next comes “Because the Night.” Bruce Springsteen penned it but couldn’t finish it. He handed it to Smith. She wrote the verses while waiting for a long-distance call from her husband, and it became the lead single for Easter (1978). The Boss still uses it to light up stadiums, and it fits Allas, too: cheers with enough force to lift a roof, if there were one.
Smith and her band—Tony Shanahan (keys, bass), Jackson Smith (guitar) and Seb Rochford (drums)—leave the stage.
Silence, then loud party roars from the cruiser above. “I heard there’s a party going on up there. But we’re having our own fucking party!” she says, summoning them back.
“People Have the Power” (Dream of Life, 1988) hits at the loudest volume yet, shaking raincoats dry as the crowd sways and dances. “Don’t forget to use your voice,” Smith says, and the lights go out.
Patti Smith did, for sure.
