Next year marks the 50th anniversary of Patti Smith’s debut album Horses. To commemorate that moment , an array of indie and alternative rockers will gather at New York’s Carnegie Hall on March 26 for a Smith tribute concert.
The lineup for “People Have the Power: Celebrating the Music of Patti Smith” will, so far, include Michael Stipe, Kim Gordon, Matt Berninger of the National, Karen O, Sharon Van Etten, Ben Harper, Courtney Barnett, the Kronos Quartet, Angel Olsen, and the Kills’ Alison Mosshart. Additional artists are expected to be announced in the months ahead.
The house band, which will be backing all the guests, will include at least two members of Smith’s band (bassist/keyboardist Tony Shanahan and guitarist Lenny Kaye), along with Red Hot Chili Peppers bassist Flea and Rolling Stones drummer Steve Jordan.
The set list for the show, according to City Winery founder Michael Dorf (whose Michael Dorf Presents is producing the concert), will not simply be a recreation of Horses but will also delve into Smith’s full catalog. Some of Smith’s spoken-word pieces will also be read by yet-to-be-announced musicians or actors.
In addition to the Horses anniversary, the concert also marks the 20th edition of Dorf’s “The Music of …” series. Over the last two decades, the shows — whose proceeds benefit music education programs around the country — have gathered various artists to cover the songs of Bruce Springsteen, Paul McCartney, the Rolling Stones, Van Morrison, Led Zeppelin, the Who, Joni Mitchell, R.E.M., David Bowie, Prince, David Byrne and Talking Heads, Paul Simon, and, this past spring, Crosby, Stills & Nash. (Given that some of those honorees, including Springsteen, R.E.M., Byrne, and Graham Nash, wound up onstage as well, the odds that Smith herself will participate is a good bet.)
Smith herself is no stranger to such benefits; she’s performed at the shows honoring Springsteen, the Who, and R.E.M. “She’s very familiar with them, and I asked her years ago if she would be interested, and she said, ‘I’m not ready,’” recalls Dorf. “Then I talked to her about six months ago, and she humbly said yes.” Dorf says Smith was “more active than some others” in the planning of her tribute. She suggested playing most of Horses, recommended Shanahan (her musical director) to lead the band, and offered up some of her photography for the stage set.
Throughout the show, Dorf will hand each of the performers a yellow rose as they walk offstage. Dorf say the tradition began with the very first “Music of …” show in 2006, which brought together artists like Laurie Anderson, Jesse Malin, the Eels, Bettye LaVette, Neil Sedaka, and Amy Grant to sing the songs of Joni Mitchell.
Mitchell herself was set to participate, but the day before the show, Dorf was told that “a real issue” had developed and that Mitchell couldn’t fly from California to appear. Then, to his shock, Mitchell herself called Dorf during soundcheck for the concert. “She was talking about how her cat got sick, and that when she was young with polio, her doctor almost wrote her off,” he recalls. “So she wasn’t going to write off her cat and had to stay there and nurse her back. She talked about her cat for 20 minutes while I was having the most surreal out-of-body experience.”
Right before the concert, Mitchell had 50 yellow roses sent to the venue, each with a note that read, “Thank you, love, Joni,” and passed around to the acts. “No one understands why I give away the roses,” Dorf says, “but now you do.”
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