Why?
I saw her the other week, just before Christmas, for the first time in the best part of a decade.
She’d followed me on Instagram, and after a while I’d followed back, still feeling shamed from that last meeting which ended in a late night room at a Travelodge, and a whole lot of guilt.
We met for a drink in a crowded pub in Holborn.
I was on shandy.
She was only having small glasses of wine. We talked about old mutual friends, and getting older.
She kissed me at the tube station, had a prior commitment for the evening I suggested the next week, and other than exchanging Christmas notes (again on Insta, I deleted and blocked her numbers years ago), we haven’t spoken since.
And it makes me feel that I’m in my early 30s feeling lost again. Not knowing if there’s anything really going on, or what to do about it.
Like the time that a friend at the Observer got us tickets for this Meltdown show, and about 15 minutes before the start, there she is walking down to better seats than ours with a drink in each hand and looking like the coolest person you’ve ever seen.
It’s hard to explain to people now that even in the early 00’s an album like Horses was still cult. It might have had reputation, but you couldn’t just dial it up.
If anything, Patti Smith was known just for the hits – and my entry point had been covers by Springsteen and the Mission, and while I owned Horses it was more because I ought to.
Still – an amazing show. John Cale opened up, and again, you couldn’t just dial his music up and outside his Velvets work (and I’d seen him play their strange reunion show in the 90s..) I knew nothing until the encore, where he smashed Pablo Picasso by the Modern Lovers.
And then Patti, totally delivered.
For once a rock act at home on the more formal stage of the Royal Festival Hall.
Free Money slayed.
Flea joining on bass, less so.
We spoke about the show the next time we saw each other.
She’d come back early from a rainy Glastonbury for it. I’m glad that she did.
High:
Free Money.
Drinking:
Moderately. I was barely back in the saddle after the best part of a year off.
Thinking:
I should just be able to go and talk to her, but I can’t.
My Old Gig Tickets 