Do you wanna rock & roll?
It was just one of those inane shout outs to the performer that some audience members feel compelled to interject into quiet moments. But something about it struck Patti Smith wrong.
The voice rang out as she was midway through her State Theater performance last night. Patti had been clutching the hands offered up from below the stage. With wailing clarinet and a six-decades howl, she'd put new depth into her cover of Jimi Hendrix's "Are You Experienced?"
Are you experienced?
Have you ever been experienced?
Well, I have
No longer about a world seen through drugs, she made the song about wisdom and survival. George Harrison's "Within You, Without You" spoke from the same place. So maybe Patti thought the woman wasn't paying attention.
Do I wanna rock & roll? You're watching me like a movie. I'm up here doing the best I can. If you wanna rock & roll, then rock & roll, but don't ask me if I wanna rock & roll.
Then she walked off the stage as the band played.
But soon after, she appeared down in the pit, surrounded by fans and dancing with them until it was time to climb back up on the stage and she did indeed rock & roll, turning the whole thing into a unifying, healing moment. We all stood for the rest of the concert.
She brought on local blues harp icon Tony Glover, then later was joined by Soul Asylum's Dave Pirner (sporting way too much butt crack) and Dan Murphy, plus a banjo player named Dave who Patti said they found playing on the street. Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit," like many of the night's covers, could just as well have been a Patti Smith original.
A punk poet my age doing covers dating back to the '60s and her own hits from a distant heyday may not seem a likely voice of the times. But Patti, wisely keeping any bridge collapse commentary out of her stage patter, wove the themes of unity and love in the face of decay into her anthems "People Have the Power" and "Rock & Roll Nigger," her final encore number.
She was one of my favorite artists in the '70s. I think she's better now.