It was 2004 when Patti Smith walked out onto the stage in Los Angeles. It was a real baptism into rock and roll for my father and a feeling of being born again for me. She was wearing a torn pair of blue jeans and a white T-shirt with a peace symbol she’d probably drawn on herself in black marker. There was a Palestinian flag draped over one amp and a peace symbol on the drum kit. She used every opportunity to speak out against the Bush administration and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. She raised her fists and didn’t apologize like the Dixie Chicks and the Democrats. She played a sunburst Stratocaster and an old acoustic guitar. Oliver Ray played a Telecaster, and Lenny Kaye played a green Strat.
Patti beamed and waved. She said, “Hello, everybody! Glad to be back!” Immediately I knew I was in the presence of someone extraordinary. For me, Patti Smith was peace, love, sanity, and the restoration of American civil liberties. She looked like she had in 1975 but with some gray in her long, black, disheveled hair. She looked so much like herself I felt a big joy well up inside me. I squeezed Melissa’s imaginary hand as I pictured her and Nick standing beside me. I had longed to be in Patti Smith’s presence since the seventies, and being with her now was better than any of my highest expectations. Not to get weird, but she shone with an inner light, like she’d swallowed her own halo. In fact she reminded me of seeing Melissa for the first time, and I vowed to try that swallowed-her-own-halo line out on her when I got home.
Patti Smith launched into “Trampin” with a smile in her voice, and I was intensely happy. In Patti’s presence I felt safe. The loud music and her voice banished my OCD thoughts. People wanted to get up and dance, but the security guard sent them back to their seats. I desperately wanted to rush to the stage to be close to Patti but was afraid of being thrown out of the venue. The audience called out to Patti, asking her for permission to dance. Patti Smith said, “Don’t look at me. Get off your fucking ass and dance if you want to. I don’t got nothing to say.” People shouted that the security guard wouldn’t let us dance. Patti said, “One guy won’t let you dance? What is he—? The strength of Gandhi? We better do what he says, or it’s gonna get like Altamont here.” That totally cracked me up.
I turned to my dad and said, “Gotta go!”
“Go, go,” he said, smiling.
I ran to the stage, and Patti Smith knelt down right beside me to talk to the security guard. “Listen,” she said, “these are my people. They won’t cause you any trouble.”
That’s when I said, “Thank you, Patti,” and touched the arm of her jacket. I didn’t mean thank you for talking to the security guard. I meant thank you for everything. And while she was so close, I held onto her arm and added, “God bless you, Patti. I love you, Patti.” I don’t know why I said that, God bless you. I never say that. It just came out of my mouth.
Patti Smith stood up and said, “Security guy is cool. I told him that you were all harmless and they let you out just one night a year.” Before she sang “Gandhi,” she took off her shoes, emptied her pockets and threw yellow rose petals into the audience. They swirled around me like the pink and white blossoms in Exeter had one windy and rainy afternoon. I remembered my shoes grinding wet petals into mud and the sensation of being under God’s confetti-dropping hand.
A minor-chord prologue to “My Blakean Year” put her in the mood for a spontaneous rant.
They called out from the crowd
tell me something
tell me something
I got nothing to say absolutely
nothing McDonald’s is gonna
sponsor be the food of the
Olympics
it’s evil food
it gives our children
high blood pressure
no fucking athlete
worth his salt
would eat that sodium fat-filled food
athletes should stand together
and speak out against this atrocity
it’s another kind of terrorism
McDonald’s and all this fucking fast food
and all the corporations
and business
and a billion dollars worth of fucking advertising negativity on the TV
demographic public and negative ads cost one billion dollars
when people in Africa
can’t afford their medication for AIDS
and their children are dying of starvation
and we’re fucking up the infrastructure of Iraq
we’re trashing Afghanistan
I’ve got nothing to say.
At the applause breaks between songs, I shouted for Patti to sing “Pissing in a River.” But I didn’t think she would. When she walked out for an encore, Patti Smith leaned over to whisper into Oliver Ray’s ear, and he started plucking out the opening to “Pissing in a River” on his black Telecaster. I couldn’t believe it. Lenny Kaye played the solo. She sang gently, “What more can I do here to make this thing grow?” Then as she snarled, “Don’t turn your back now when I’m talking to you,” she bent right over me, her hair in my face. I felt myself melt completely into the music and disappear. It was like the revolution had happened, like bright lights were swirling all around me, like I could see everybody’s halo—everyone who had one, that is. Patti Smith growled, “What about it, I never doubted you,” and I got a chill deep inside me.
Being in Patti Smith’s presence as she performed “Pissing in a River,” with guitar instead of keyboards, being close enough to get her spit on my “Rats Have Rights” PETA T-shirt was a religious experience for me. After the concert I rang up Melissa and practically screamed, “I have Patti Smith’s spit on my T-shirt! I’m never going to wash it! I’m going to put it in a frame and hang it on the wall! Tell Nick!”
And Melissa said, “Love, that’s perfect.”