“Mohammed went through seven heavens; big deal! I wanna see the eighth heaven, tenth heaven, thousandth heaven… One door isn’t enough. A million doors aren’t enough.”
Long before seeing Patti Smith perform live, I had already heard her voice.
Not through one of her records, but sampled at the end of Rosalía’s 2025 song La Yugular, where the Spanish artist uses a fragment from a 1976 radio interview Smith gave in Stockholm.
The words arrive after a song filled with surreal images, closing it with an invitation to keep searching; to push beyond certainty, beyond the next door.
Perhaps that restless curiosity is what has kept Patti Smith relevant for more than five decades.
Inside the Heineken Big Top on 15 July, audiences at the Galway International Arts Festival gathered to watch one of rock’s most influential voices. Some had travelled across continents to be there.
Carrie and George drove from Tennessee and Arkansas after a previous opportunity to see Smith was cancelled.
“I love her books, I love her music. This is my time,” they said before the concert. Others had been following her since their teenage years.
“I started listening to Patti when I was 16, with Horses. I’ve been hoping she’ll play Dancing Barefoot,” said Valeria, who has lived in Galway for four years while proudly showing the Patti Smith Radio playlist on her Spotify.
One of the first times I heard Patti Smith’s name was through Tino el Pingüino, an alternative rapper from my hometown México City. His lyrics sent me searching for books, films and writers I hadn’t encountered before; Patti Smith was one of them.
Years later, standing in Galway waiting for her to take the stage, that unlikely cultural bridge felt strangely complete.
Then came her interviews watching (including one with Dua Lipa) and what is said about her memoir Just Kids, which is described like both a love letter to photographer Robert Mapplethorpe and to New York itself.
Born in Chicago in 1946 and raised in New Jersey, Smith moved to New York in her early twenties, where she became one of the defining figures of the city’s artistic underground. Her debut album Horses (1975) transformed rock music and was a pioneer in the emerging punkmovement, while Just Kids earned the National Book Award in 2010. She was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2007.
That legacy walked onto the Galway stage dressed exactly as generations have come to recognise her: jeans, white T-shirt and black blazer. At 79, Smith remains unmistakably herself.
She was joined by drummer Seb Rochford, bassist and keyboardist Tony Shanahan, and guitarist Jackson Smith, her son with the late guitarist Fred “Sonic” Smith.
The quartet moved effortlessly through classics including Ghost Dance, Dancing Barefoot, Pissing in a River, People Have the Power and Because the Night.
The audience also received covers of The Doors and Lou Reed, while Galway’s well-worn anthem Galway Girl briefly became fresh again when Tony Shanahan dedicated it to his Irish mother.
The audience reflected Smith’s own career: people who had grown old with her music stood alongside younger listeners. Like her writing, the performance constantly shifted between poetry and music.
Before Break It Up, Smith recounted the dream that inspired the song after Jim Morrison’s death. Through her narration, Morrison appeared trapped beneath marble before stretching his wings and breaking free, an image that echoed one of the themes running through much of her work: liberation.
That idea extended beyond the music.
As chants of “Free Palestine” rose from different parts of the tent, Smith visibly fought back tears. Throughout her career she has consistently used both music and poetry as vehicles for political expression. During the concert she dedicated Peaceable Kingdom to Palestine and to the late Sinéad O’Connor, whose outspoken support for Palestinian rights made her one of Ireland’s most prominent activist musicians.
Irish poetry also found its place during the evening when a fan handed Smith a book of W. B. Yeats. She responded by reading To a Child Dancing in the Wind, reminding the audience that literature and music have always shared the same stage in her work.
James, another audience member, believes that combination is precisely what makes Smith unique.
“I’ve been a fan of Patti Smith on and off for maybe 30 years. Her poetry is both personal and political. She’s very honest,” he said before the concert.
Perhaps honesty is what has always defined Patti Smith more than any musical label. She has never seemed interested in fitting neatly inside rock music, poetry or activism. Instead, she inhabits all of them at once.As the audience slowly filtered out of the Big Top into the warm Galway summer night, what lingered wasn’t simply the memory of familiar songs. It was the feeling of bass vibrating
through the chest while words continued echoing somewhere deeper.
Before the concert began, George had summed up the anticipation better than anyone.
“I just want to hear whatever she wants to do. I think the beauty of this is hearing whatever’s moving her heart today.”
Judging by the applause that followed the final song, Patti Smith Quartet gave many people exactly that.
Patti Smith reminds Galway why words and rock will always matter
Patti Smith reminds Galway why words and rock will always matter
By Marcela Villagómez
“Mohammed went through seven heavens; big deal! I wanna see the eighth heaven, tenth heaven, thousandth heaven… One door isn’t enough. A million doors aren’t enough.”
Long before seeing Patti Smith perform live, I had already heard her voice.
Not through one of her records, but sampled at the end of Rosalía’s 2025 song La Yugular, where the Spanish artist uses a fragment from a 1976 radio interview Smith gave in Stockholm.
The words arrive after a song filled with surreal images, closing it with an invitation to keep searching; to push beyond certainty, beyond the next door.
Perhaps that restless curiosity is what has kept Patti Smith relevant for more than five decades.
Inside the Heineken Big Top on 15 July, audiences at the Galway International Arts Festival gathered to watch one of rock’s most influential voices. Some had travelled across continents to be there.
Carrie and George drove from Tennessee and Arkansas after a previous opportunity to see Smith was cancelled.
“I love her books, I love her music. This is my time,” they said before the concert. Others had been following her since their teenage years.
“I started listening to Patti when I was 16, with Horses. I’ve been hoping she’ll play Dancing Barefoot,” said Valeria, who has lived in Galway for four years while proudly showing the Patti Smith Radio playlist on her Spotify.
One of the first times I heard Patti Smith’s name was through Tino el Pingüino, an alternative rapper from my hometown México City. His lyrics sent me searching for books, films and writers I hadn’t encountered before; Patti Smith was one of them.
Years later, standing in Galway waiting for her to take the stage, that unlikely cultural bridge felt strangely complete.
Then came her interviews watching (including one with Dua Lipa) and what is said about her memoir Just Kids, which is described like both a love letter to photographer Robert Mapplethorpe and to New York itself.
Born in Chicago in 1946 and raised in New Jersey, Smith moved to New York in her early twenties, where she became one of the defining figures of the city’s artistic underground. Her debut album Horses (1975) transformed rock music and was a pioneer in the emerging punkmovement, while Just Kids earned the National Book Award in 2010. She was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2007.
That legacy walked onto the Galway stage dressed exactly as generations have come to recognise her: jeans, white T-shirt and black blazer. At 79, Smith remains unmistakably herself.
She was joined by drummer Seb Rochford, bassist and keyboardist Tony Shanahan, and guitarist Jackson Smith, her son with the late guitarist Fred “Sonic” Smith.
The quartet moved effortlessly through classics including Ghost Dance, Dancing Barefoot, Pissing in a River, People Have the Power and Because the Night.
The audience also received covers of The Doors and Lou Reed, while Galway’s well-worn anthem Galway Girl briefly became fresh again when Tony Shanahan dedicated it to his Irish mother.
The audience reflected Smith’s own career: people who had grown old with her music stood alongside younger listeners. Like her writing, the performance constantly shifted between poetry and music.
Before Break It Up, Smith recounted the dream that inspired the song after Jim Morrison’s death. Through her narration, Morrison appeared trapped beneath marble before stretching his wings and breaking free, an image that echoed one of the themes running through much of her work: liberation.
That idea extended beyond the music.
As chants of “Free Palestine” rose from different parts of the tent, Smith visibly fought back tears. Throughout her career she has consistently used both music and poetry as vehicles for political expression. During the concert she dedicated Peaceable Kingdom to Palestine and to the late Sinéad O’Connor, whose outspoken support for Palestinian rights made her one of Ireland’s most prominent activist musicians.
Irish poetry also found its place during the evening when a fan handed Smith a book of W. B. Yeats. She responded by reading To a Child Dancing in the Wind, reminding the audience that literature and music have always shared the same stage in her work.
James, another audience member, believes that combination is precisely what makes Smith unique.
“I’ve been a fan of Patti Smith on and off for maybe 30 years. Her poetry is both personal and political. She’s very honest,” he said before the concert.
Perhaps honesty is what has always defined Patti Smith more than any musical label. She has never seemed interested in fitting neatly inside rock music, poetry or activism. Instead, she inhabits all of them at once.As the audience slowly filtered out of the Big Top into the warm Galway summer night, what lingered wasn’t simply the memory of familiar songs. It was the feeling of bass vibrating
through the chest while words continued echoing somewhere deeper.
Before the concert began, George had summed up the anticipation better than anyone.
“I just want to hear whatever she wants to do. I think the beauty of this is hearing whatever’s moving her heart today.”
Judging by the applause that followed the final song, Patti Smith Quartet gave many people exactly that.
