Patti Smith Honored on Night of Music, Poetry and Power
Carnegie Hall comes alive in tribute to a New York City legend
The diversity of the artists who paid tribute to Patti Smith at Carnegie Hall this week is a testimony to the diversity of the woman herself.
On March 26th, more than 20 artists took part in People Have the Power: A Celebration of Patti Smith, a three-hour benefit at the venue’s Stern Auditorium. The concert was notable for several reasons. First off, it marked the 20th anniversary of Michael Dorf’s “The Music Of…” series. 2025 also marks the 50th anniversary of the release of Horses, Smith’s legendary and influential debut. Beyond that, as Dorf mentioned just before the show kicked off, these tributes have now raised more than two million dollars for children’s music education programs. Wednesday night alone raised 130 thousand dollars. All the net proceeds from these concerts go to Music Will, Young Audiences NY, The Church Street School for Music and Art and other programs that provide underserved youth with the tools to create music.
But perhaps the most unique aspect of the Patti Smith tribute was the fact that it wasn’t limited to music. There was plenty of that, of course. But a solid quarter of the show consisted of people (including some of our foremost actors) reading Smith’s poetry. After all, Smith is not just a musician; she is also a poet, a painter and an author. Her 2010 book Just Kids — an account of her relationship with the late artist Robert Mapplethorpe and their time spent as “kids” in the Manhattan of the late 60s and early 70s — won the National Book Award for Nonfiction.
So in a sense, the diversity of the artists who performed on Wednesday night — young and old, male and female, black and white, straight and gay and spanning many musical genres — mirrored the diversity of Smith’s work.
Tony Shanahan, who has been Smith’s bassist since the 1990s, served as musical director for the evening. Charlie Sexton — a veteran of Bob Dylan’s band and successful solo artist in his own right — handled lead guitar. Benmont Tench — he of Tom Petty’s Heartbreakers — played keyboards. And the rhythm section? You had Flea on bass and Steve Jordan (native New Yorker, honorary Rolling Stones drummer, member of the SNL band) behind the kit.
Could you ask for a better house band? Probably not. Each member brought his A game and each brought a different vibe to the proceedings. Tench wore a hat and was an unobtrusive presence at stage right. Flea, by contrast, was a nonstop whirlwind of activity, careening about the stage wildly and occasionally doubling on trumpet. Sexton and Jordan were somewhere in between: both veterans, both adding to the festivities and both just looking so fucking cool.
As for the show’s highlights, there were many. The second performer of the night was Jesse Malin, the NYC-based singer-songwriter and former D Generation leader who suffered a rare spinal stroke in 2023. When Malin took the stage and was able to stand up from his wheelchair, he was greeted by the cheers of an audience who stood up with him. He performed a rousing, punk-influenced take of “Free Money” from the Horses album.
Also early in the show, we got back to back performances from two talented female artists who have emerged in the last 10 to 15 years. Australian singer-songwriter Courtney Barnett played an enthusiastic version of the reggae-influenced “Redondo Beach.” She was followed by Sharon Van Etten, who conjured a totally different mood with “Pissing in a River,” from the Radio Ethiopia disc. If you had your eyes closed, you could almost believe you were hearing Smith herself.
A bit later on, Ben Harper was in fine voice for a spiritually uplifting version of “Ghost Dance” (from the Easter album). “[I’m] at the greatest venue in the world, in tribute to the best artist in the world,” said Harper. “And I’m sitting in front of the best band in the world!” Amen.
Alison Mosshart — known for her work with both The Kills and The Dead Weather — came to rock, as she swaggered her way through the underrated “Ask the Angels.” She was followed by Susanna Hoffs, who literally has not aged a day in the last three decades and who sang “Kimberly” (yet another song from Horses).
After Hoffs came a very diverse series of performers! There were poetry readings from both Scarlett Johansson and Sean Penn (yes, you read that correctly); a dissonant performance by the noise-rock duo Body/Head (AKA Kim Gordon and Bill Nace); and a crowd-pleasing cover of “Paths That Cross” from the Music Will students.
That set the stage for two of the best performances of the evening. Veteran Irish troubadour Glen Hansard was another crowdpleaser with his impassioned take on “Beneath the Southern Cross.” But he was immediately topped by Maggie Rogers — a young artist that this writer admits never having heard before. It didn’t hurt that Rogers performed “Frederick,” one of my favorites by Smith and a love song to her late husband Fred “Sonic” Smith. But even aside from that, Rogers was spectacular in both spirit and voice.
Whoever came after Rogers was bound to disappoint by comparison. And while I may be in the minority, I found Johnny Depp’s take on “Dancing Barefoot” (with assistance from Alison Mosshart) disappointing.
That was a blip on the screen, though. After Depp and Mosshart left the stage, Karen O left us all breathless with her rendition of “Gloria,” the opening track from Horses and a song that Smith famously made her own. She was followed by last-minute addition Bruce Springsteen. Pretty much the entire audience stood up when The Boss took the stage to perform “Because the Night,” the rocker he and Smith collaborated on that gave her a Top 40 hit in 1978. After admitting that the song would not have been successful if he had sang it, Springsteen said, “Thank you, Patti, for our one big hit together.”
That led to the woman of the evening taking the stage. If Patti Smith looked older than I remember, it’s worth mentioning that A) she will be turning 79 this year and B) she still has an inner youth that some people half her age don’t have. Smith performed “Peaceable Kingdom” — from her Trampin’ effort — backed by her band: Shanahan on bass, JD Daugherty on drums and her son Jackson and Lenny Kaye on guitar. Daugherty has played with her since Horses (as she once told me, he’s the only drummer she’s ever worked with) and Kaye’s relationship with her goes even further back — to 1971! Fittingly, the final number was a joyful version of “People Have the Power” sung by all the evening’s performers.
It has been interesting to see Patti Smith’s evolution over the decades: from the young spitfire who fused punk rock with poetry in the mid 1970s… to the woman who spent most of the 80s being a housewife in Detroit and rarely making music… to the artist who returned to New York in the mid 90s after weathering an unfathomable series of losses (including her husband and brother) and who began making music again… to the award winning writer of the aforementioned Just Kids… to, now, one of rock and roll’s elderstateswomen. She has been all of these things and more. I hope she makes another album (her last one was the excellent Banga from 2013) but even if she doesn’t, she’s contributed more than her share. And that contribution goes beyond music.
As Michael Stipe wrote in the program that accompanied Wednesday night’s show: “[Patti] is in every way… a beacon of hope, of action, of refuge. She is refuge. Her work is, absolutely — but she is too. Her ability to take the worst of situations and find something teachable, something hopeful — with humor and levity — is superhuman…. We are very lucky to share our time on this earth with her.”
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