A Day With Patty Smith

“Have you seen Patti Smith here?” the reporter asked a keeper of a local record store.

“Did she not play a concert in Helsinki recently? Smith did not visit here!”

“Oh, I see … I suppose her records on vinyl are not that easy to find either?” I grinned.

“You are right about that!”

On Monday afternoon in Helsinki Central Library Oodi, a man called Sami Hantula, 47, from Helsinki, was indeed carrying a vinyl of Smith’s debut album, Horses (1976).

“I am not a hardcore music hobbyist. But, overall, I have always liked her discography,” Hantula said.

Hantula was one of the hundreds in line to get something related to Smith signed. Most were at the library to get an autograph on Smith’s most recent publication, A Book of Days. The book is a New York Times bestseller, which just got translated into Finnish. It features more than 365 images of Smith’s life and delightful anecdotes about what is happening in the picture.

You, dear reader, hardly need a refresher on who Patti Smith is, but in a nutshell, Smith can be described as an American punk rock progenitor, a poet, an anarchist—a lover of art and rock and roll.

The arrival of Patti Smith, 76, to Oodi was under the radar: she was walking daintily but resolutely, as if coming to return books.

She was wearing black clothes, glasses, and braids of her gray hair were hanging on her shoulders. She sat behind a long table and grabbed a ballpoint pen.

“Anyone with a dog, children, or who is injured can come to the front,” Smith announced loud and clear and caused some restless movements in the crowd.

As one of the first to stand in line, Hantula got the cover of the vinyl signed.

Smith pointed toward the queue.

“We had no success standing in the line with the baby,” said Annika to her friend Antsa-Kasper while passing about 30 people to meet Smith.

Annika was carrying Inka, who was nine months old. They got their book signed. Afterward, Inka puked up a little.

Milka Santa, 27, spent some time talking to Smith.

Santa said later that she got tips on writing poetry for children, which she shared is her passion.

“Smith said to me that I will surely write beautiful poems,” Santa said, beaming.

A young man with a long, dark coat bent over the table where Smith was sitting.

Smith said that she liked his style. “Would you like to get tickets to the concert tonight?” she asked him.

“Oh! Would I!” said the man, who later introduced himself as Aatos Pirkola, 20, from Helsinki. “I was at the gig yesterday,” he said to the reporter. “Patti Smith just gave me tickets for the concert tonight as well. She put me on the guest list! It came as a shock!”

That sounds great! But … why?

“She complimented my jacket,” Pirkola said.

“I told her that I think Smith is a fashion icon to me.”

Hannele Markkula, who had arrived from near Turku, southwestern Finland, had a special gift for Smith.

Smith accepted the present. Soon, she was wearing a mitten on her right hand that had black notes emblazoned on top of a white background. She waved to the crowd.

“I am so happy that Patti accepted the mittens with musical notes on them. My friend knit them, and I love to give them to artists whom I idolize,” Markkula said with eyes dripping from tears of joy.

The Helsinki House of Culture in Alppila district, a few kilometers away from the city center, was crowded.

It was Monday evening, and the second leg of Patti Smith’s concert in the Finnish capital was about to begin. The gig was sold out.

“The age group of today is different from yesterday. On Sunday, the crowd consisted mostly of young people,” said one of the security guys.

“Interesting. The place is filled to the brim, and the book signing event I attended earlier had a line of several hundred meters. Smith didn’t have time to sign all those books. An hour was not enough,” the reporter said.

“She is a legend,” said the man of security.

“You know what?” he continued, “at the last gig, Smith suddenly pointed at the guitarist and said, ‘This is my son, Jackson.’”

“His … son … is playing in the group?”

“Yes! In fact, based on yesterday’s experience, I would advise you to move to the right, where the guitarist will be standing. You’ll get a better angle from there.”

At the corner of the stage, while taking a glimpse at the audience, I swear to have seen Aatos Pirkola smiling like the Hanko Cookie in front of the crowd.

This would be my second time seeing a Patti Smith concert, and the first time witnessing his son, who is now 41, play.

It was a hot Sunday in July 2016 at the Ruisrock festival in Turku when Smith took the stage at the sandy beach-like area.

I heard her performing her debut album, Horses, live.

The concert was a humdinger, and according to my notes, she advised the audience in attendance:

“Don’t sell your water to the big corporations to make soda,” she said. “You have a beautiful country and nature. Hold on to them!”

Right on! At this writing, this political titbit took me back to the government negotiations I’ve been following for the past seven weeks. Last evening, they had reached a consensus on the new government program that’s leaning heavily on the right, and, among other things, I think I remember them swearing to guard nature against corporate greed, so Smith, and the good folks of Finland, can rest assured.

Ok … back to the concert.

At the culture house, Smith opened the show by reciting a poem about a majestic world of unprecedented calm. There was more to the poem “The New World,” of course, but it was hard to focus while waiting for the band to start playing.

The first song, “Waiting Underground” was from later in Smith’s career, one from 1997, the seventh album of Smith, Peace and Noise.

The tune grabbed your attention from the start. Smith’s vocals were raspy, Jackson’s distorted guitar bluesy and bassist Tony Shanahan’s work on the keyboards haunting, which proved that Shanahan’s comfortable playing the keys as he is while fingering the bass.

Smith and her group continued with songs like “My Blakean Year” that was influenced by the late poet William Blake, who Smith described earlier as being underappreciated in his lifetime. He “died poverty-stricken” but also “full of joy.” “I try to remember now, when I feel sorry for myself to give a little thought to William Blake.”

The song carried a timeless quality, and then the sound and the feel of the concert snagged me by the collar, and I was lost in a blissful haze, until awakened again by “Break It Up,” a song I previously heard at Ruisrock, and which I remember Smith explaining that she came up with it in a dream of the late Jim Morrison of The Doors, who was figured as an angel with wings merging in marble; Smith stood over him, chanting, “break it up, break it up, break it up,” and the stone dissolved and he moved away,—and according to my notes from that night in Turku—Jim Morrison was flying again.

“Pissing In a River” from the 1976 album Radio Ethiopia was, as Smith said at the culture house, dedicated to Tina Turner, who passed away recently.

Shanahan started the song with powerful piano chords. Then came the heartwarming vocals of Patti Smith:

… Come, come, come, come back come back …