Punk poet icon Patti Smith wows Icelandic crowds

"We don't need weapons, rock and roll is our weapon," shouted Patti Smith at the grand finale of her Horses concert in Reykjavik last night. With the Iceland performance, Smith and her band concleded a 40th anniversary tour of the phenomenal album, Horses. 

The first three-quarters of the concert were as promised, a full live rendition of the Horses album, an album selected by Time as one of the top 100 records of all time. The band remains remarkably unchanged, wearing white shirts and black waistcoasts and Smith herself, at age 69, an impressive figure in jeans, biker boots and long, now white, hair.  She's accompanied by guitarists Jack Petruzzelli, Lenny Kaye, bass player Tony Shanahan and drummer Jay Dee Daugherty. 

Smith's Horses tour has received excellent reviews, including from The Guardian and The Independent. 

"Now an unfeasibly lithe, bovver-booted 67-year-old, Smith’s masterful singing combined her youthful fury with rich sensuality, authority and wisdom. Some songs sounded just like the album. Others were remodelled, by design or accident. “I’m a person, not a record,” she spat," writes The Guardian. 

From launching into Gloria to the haunting final Elegy of the Horses album, she captivated the audience, which was compromised of die-hard fans who probably first listened to her in the sixties and seventies and a younger, newer audience. 

The show concluded with a surprising, wonderful medley of Velvet Undeground songs, and a couple of Smith's later hits such as Because the Night and People have the Power, accompanied by her daugher Jesse on keyboards. Smith, who has been to Iceland on several occasions was generous in her praise for the country during the performance, speaking of the incredible landscapes and light and the wonderful Icelandic dogs. She also urged the Icelandic people to be careful of their natural resources. "Once you put a dam in a river or a lake, it's gone, and our children won't enjoy them."

mbl.is/Árni Sæberg