Tonight, a repeat performance won’t fail to impress as Patti Smith, progenitor-empress of punk rock, Rimbauld and Verlaine’s spiritual poet child and 2007 Rock Hall of Fame inductee returns to the Santa Monica Pier for the Twilight Dance Series’ last concert of the summer.
The 62-year-old rocker, sometimes hailed as the “female Bob Dylan,” is widely considered one of the most influential pioneers of the punk genre despite yielding only one top 20 hit (1978’s “Because the Night”) while piggybacking on the songwriting of Bruce Springsteen.
Born in Chicago and raised in New Jersey, Patricia Lee Smith fled the city and the factory where she worked in the late 1960s to settle in the freewheeling art-hobo scene of New York City.
Smith’s musical career took off around 1974, when she began playing regularly at the famed CBGB club with her band featuring Lenny Kaye, guitarist Ivan Kral, Jay Dee Daugherty on drums, and pianist Richard Sohl. Smith’s 1975 debut album, “Horses,” presented a raw, garage band sound featuring her spoken word poetry and was ultimately hailed as one of the greatest all-time rock albums.
In the following decades, Smith’s music career ebbed and flowed, but her queen mother status in punk rock never faded.
Tonight, two years after her last pier performance, Smith returns with her bandmates, including herself on vocals, Kaye on guitar, Daugherty on drums and Tony Shanahan on bass and keyboards.
Admission is free.
