PATTI SMITH’S EASTER, 1978
Few touring projects during Entec’s 10th anniversary year of 1978 were as widely influential as the Patti Smith Group’s two visits to the UK and Europe, both fully supported by the company with sound, lighting and crew.
Bolstered by critical and commercial success of Smith’s third album, Easter, and ‘Because The Night’, the top five single co-written with Bruce Springsteen, the Chicago-born ‘punk poet’ was reaping deserved mainstream accolades after several years spent on the New York underground scene and finally coming to the fore with her iconic début release, Horses.
Following brief stops in Germany and France, Smith’s much heralded arrival on British soil came a year after a devastating fall from a stage in Tampa, Florida which left her in traction with broken vertebrae, threatening to end her performing career.
Months of physiotherapy later, however, Smith’s return to live shows was regarded as an astonishing resurrection.
SUPPORT
Sandwiched in between TV appearances on ‘The South Bank Show’ and ‘The Old Grey Whistle Test’ (which also benefitted from Entec’s support), Smith and her band – Lenny Kaye, Ivan Kral, Jay Dee Daugherty and Bruce Brody – played two sold-out shows at the Rainbow Theatre in north London on April 1st and 2nd, with opening acts Tapper Zukie & The Intimidators and Subway Sect.
The gigs had the music press clamouring for superlatives. In his Melody Maker review of the first Rainbow performance, Chris Brazier stated that Smith “…left a packed audience demanding, and getting, a second encore after a show that had lasted over two hours. She makes mistakes, but part of her charm is her courageous readiness to go out on a limb. I’m still right under her spell, and it looks like she’s at last becoming the star she’s always deserved to be.”
“I always found Patti to be really fun, comedic and down to earth as opposed to her punk image,” says John ‘Bruno’ Wayte, whose Entec crew colleagues included Tony Self, Pat Fisher, Tam Fairgrieve, Roy Davidson and Ian Black.
Smith’s second visit to the UK in 1978 was organised around her Sunday headline slot at Reading Rock on August 27th. Her stunning performance was followed by a month-long itinerary that took the band around Britain and over to the European continent.
