After the first two albums, Horses from 1975 and 1976 Radio Ethiopia, Patti Smith is literally in pieces. On January 26, 1977, Patti Smith Group is playing in Tampa, Florida. The latest album did not collect the unexpected success of the first and the public, not exactly Punkettari, colds the anarchist and free-form style of the New York group coldly. Perhaps for that the boys give us even more. During the version of Ain’t It Strange to the Fulmicotone, an epileptic dance suddenly pacts, asking God to give her a message. Suddenly the singer, in taking the microphone in hand, falls between the crowd and crashes on the cement four meters below the stage. In the hospital, the diagnosis is broken mandibola and a fracture with two cervical vertebrae. The result, months of convalescence and rehabilitation. Some said: Patti is over. But no. Patti rises. And the resurrection is called Easter.

Until victory

The album, engraved in 1978, is the third birth of the rock priestess, but it seems the first. The sound of the disc is more mature and elaborate, the punk urgency of the first works has eased but the voice of the singer is very abrasive and evocative, imbued with beat and symbolist poetry and, needless to say, of a enthralling spirituality. In Easter, there is still its original band. Lenny Kaye on guitar, Ivan Král on bass. But something has changed. The sound is smoother, less dirty than the past. Some punk fans turn their noses into: “Too commercial!”. Yet Easter is a raw record in his spirituality, violent in his delicacy. It is a message engraved with blood, not with marketing.

The choice of the title is not accidental: Easter. Easter. The resurrection festival. Patti plays us, but not for blasphemy. It is an exploration of faith, death and Rinascia. She, grown up in a Christian family, has the Bible in her blood. But he does not take it on his knees: he disassembles it, he rewrites it, interprets it. Like a seer, like a poet.

The songs

“Till Victory” is a martial hymn that opens the disc with a militant exhortation. Patti is a pensionary that arringes the crowds, but the enemy is not only outside: he is inside. Apathy, conformism. And music becomes the verb of redemption, of rebellion. “Please, Lord, don’t take me, until victory” is prayer.

The voodoo deliro of “Space Monkey” follows, a mystical vision in which the “monkey of space” arrives on the ninth road to free humanity from hypocrisy.

The disco hit was born from a stroke of luck – or destiny. Bruce Springsteen was working on one piece, but he couldn’t finish it. The producer Jimmy Iovine, who worked with both, passed him under the bench. Patti completed him in one night, while waiting for a phone call from Fred Smith, the love of his life. The result? “Because the night”. A visceral love song. An erotic prayer. It is a great commercial success. Easter night, in the world of Patti, is not expected of the Messiah: it is possession, abandonment, meat that vibrates. And here too, God hides under the sheets. “25th Floor” is also dedicated to Fred. A punk rock imbued with the spirit of the Velvet Underground that tells the first meeting with his beloved with the ink of the cursed poets, on the 25th floor of the Detroit hotel where he was housed.

Ghost Dance is the song that Jim Morrison wanted to write. Another song of death and resurrection. A shamanic and tribal ballad that is inspired by the rite of Native Americans that opens the transition to the world of the dead to invoke and remember the deceased. The extinct dear ones, even those of art and literature. Also Rimbaud.

And to the poet from the winds is finally also the final call. Frederick, Vitalie and Isabelle, mentioned in the song that closes the album, are the brothers of Rimbaud. “Easter” is a sweet, almost childish truce. A walk on a spring Sunday. But even here death is around the corner, in the references to the cross, to the Resurrection. Patti sings as if he brought a flower on the tomb of his own life.

Final amen

While the bells outside announce the return of the Savior, with Easter Patti proposes us a different resurrection: that of identity, body, thought. There is no need to kneel. Just raise the volume. And let yourself be investing by this black mass, this alternative gospel where the only commandment is to be alive, truly alive.

Happy Easter. And good resurrection.

Author: Patti Smith Group
Title: Easter
Type: Rock
Year: 1978 (Arista)
Editorial mark: 8/10