INITIAL ALL-STAR LINEUP FOR 20TH ANNUAL MUSIC EDUCATION BENEFIT CONCERT AT CARNEGIE HALL, NEW YORK CITY MARCH 26, 2025; PATTI SMITH UPCOMING TOUR TO THE 50TH ANNIVERSARY OF HER ALBUM HORSES.
"Horses was like the first cannon blast in a war—frightening and disorienting. I mean, she was so unlike the FM radio terrain in every way. She was literate, aggressive, intense. From that point forward you couldn't comfort yourself with the old, safe sixties myths. The revolution was on." -Author and novelist Daniel Weizmann.
Michael Dorf Presents just unveiled the initial artist lineup for the 20th annual Music Of tribute concert, celebrating the iconic career of Patti Smith. Taking place at the historic Carnegie Hall on March 26, 2025, this evening will bring together some prominent names in music to honor Smith’s indelible influence. The lineup of People Have the Power: A Celebration of Patti Smith includes Michael Stipe, Matt Berninger of The National, Courtney Barnett, Sharon Van Etten, Alison Mosshart of The Kills, Kronos Quartet, Ben Harper, Karen O, Kim Gordon, and Angel Olsen.
The evening will also feature a house band led by Tony Shanahan (a longtime member of Patti Smith’s band), joined by Flea, Steve Jordan, and more surprise guests. As the Music Of series reaches its 20th anniversary, this year’s concert coincides with another milestone: the 50th anniversary of Smith’s
groundbreaking debut album, Horses. Widely regarded as a seminal work in punk rock and recorded at Electric Lady Studios, Horses has left an enduring legacy, inspiring generations of artists and fans.
“Celebrating two decades of the Music Of series at Carnegie Hall with Patti Smith’s extraordinary songbook is a deeply meaningful milestone for me,” said Michael Dorf, founder of Michael Dorf Presents in a media announcement. “This series has been about more than music—it’s been about creating opportunities for kids through the power of music education. To gather this remarkable lineup of artists, all influenced by Patti’s legacy, is a testament to her impact.”
For 20 years, the Music Of series has raised over $2 million for nonprofit organizations focused on music education. Every dollar of net proceeds benefits organizations such as Music Will, Young Audiences NY, Save the Music, D’Addario Foundation, Church Street School of Music, and many more. These efforts provide transformative opportunities for children nationwide to experience the joy of music.
VIP tickets for People Have the Power: A Celebration of Patti Smith are on sale now at musicof.org. Stay tuned for more updates about this event. “Established by Michael Dorf in 2003, founder of the Knitting Factory and City Winery, MDP has been presenting the Music Of series at Carnegie Hall for 20 years. Working alongside Michael for the last 16 years has been Shlomo Lipetz, President of Venues at City Winery.”
Patti Smith’s upcoming 50th Horses anniversary tour is expansive, with the European leg kicking off on July 1st. The United States leg starts November 10th in Seattle and concluding November 29th in Philadelphia. Smith will be joined by Horses musicians Lenny Kaye and Jay Dee Daugherty, on guitar and drums, respectively, both of whom recorded with Smith on the 1975 LP. Smith’s live band will also feature bassist and keyboardist Tony Shanahan, and guitarist Jackson Smith, Patti’s son.
Patti last played Horses in 2005 at London’s Meltdown Festival, which she curated that year. Each 2025 show will include all eight tracks from the 1975 album. Before Horses was released in November ’75 to retail outlets, during 1974, Patti contributed to The Whole Thing Started with Rock and Roll Now It's Out of Control, the second studio album by keyboardist and Doors’ co-founder, Ray Manzarek. Smith is listed as “poetess” on the track “I Wake Up Screaming.” She also recited Jim Morrison’s “Ensenada” from The New Creatures. "Jim was a big influence on Patti,” Manzarek told me in a 1974 interview for the now defunct U.K. music weekly Melody Maker. “Punk rockers, those people loved Morrison. Loved his poetry, loved the fact that his words, and the songs, were dark and ominous.”
I first encountered Patti Smith in 1975 at a Blue Oyster Cult concert after-party Epic Records had in 1975 at the Forum in Inglewood, California. Patti introduced me to her boyfriend at the time, Alan Lanier who was in BOC. Smith co-wrote tunes with BOC members on Tyranny and Mutation in 1973, and their 1974 Secret Treaties. Lanier helped write and played guitar on “Elegie” from Smith’s Horses. It’s Lanier’s horse pin gift to her on the album cover. I liked the cover of Horses.
Last decade at the Roxy Theater in West Hollywood, I sat with Nancy Sinatra at a Patti Smith Group concert. Nancy, like Patti, has roots in New Jersey. Patti told us the Horses LP cover was inspired by Frank Sinatra and the way he held his jacket. In 1976 and 1995, I watched a couple of Smith bookings with photographer and journalist Heather Harris. “It was must-see, must-photograph music performance: the Patti Smith Group at the Roxy, 1976,” reminisced Harris in 2025. “Her incredible band (she had surrounded herself with pretty damn good songwriters to match her unique lyrics sense) also included her debut album Horses producer John Cale sitting in on bass, as in my shot. A total vindication of punk rock as timeless art as well as timely rebellion. Plus, literary to boot. “My next shot documented her appearance at When Words Collide festival of spoken word and music in Long Beach, California, 1995. It was a major coup booking one of her first returns to the music world after the tragedy of her youngish husband's (Sonic Smith of the MC5) death at age 46. She was joined onstage by her then teenage son Jackson Smith and she appeared happy (a new look!) throughout.
My favorite parts: she paused the show to allow a large beetle to cross the stage threshold and then reviewed its personal trek, and secondly her band and she actually played 16 or so bars of Deep Purple's metal anthem "Smoke on The Water" at the request of her son Jackson. “Flash forward to her memoir Just Kids, her most successful book for truly blending her feelings, her lyrical language and fascinating documentation of her own youth among the soon to be famous in New York City's 1970s zeitgeist.” I’ve followed Patti Smith’s “career” for half a century. In 2000 I telephoned Patti in New York and we conducted an interview. We discussed her current album Gung Ho.
Q: This December 2000 marks the 25th anniversary of your debut Arista Records album Horses. Can you talk a bit about your quarter of a century friendship and relationship with label head Clive Davis, who signed you to the label?
A: The thing about Clive is that he believed in me when I was a total fledgling, you know, really knew very little about music, knew nothing about the music business, didn’t care, I just wanted to do work. And in the last 25 years he has allowed me to do my work. I’ve done eight albums. It’s taken me 25 years. I don’t have much of a sales record. Yet he never dropped me. Although we’ve had words and not always agreed on things, he never tampered with my work, never insisted that I change anything and I can look at this time in my life and a body of work that I’m proud of you know, and I didn’t compromise and I’m grateful for that. I had forgotten that one of the titles I was going to call this record early on was Grateful. Just because I felt, well it’s my last record on Arista, you know, I’ve fulfilled my contract and sort of wanted to say that. That I was grateful. We have very little in common in some ways. We don’t always see eye to eye. But he’s really been sort of a patron which is unique in the music business.
Q: Tell me about Gung Ho? The song and as an album title?
A: Well, I knew that the song “Gung Ho” was gonna be a long one. The title was between “One Voice” and “Gung Ho.” And I usually traditionally, or I will often take the last song on the record to be the title song, or the long improvisation like “Horses” or “Radio Ethiopia.” So, when “Gung Ho” shaped up to be such a monumental song on the record, that’s the one I decided to use.
Q: Listening to your album, Ho Chi Minh and Viet Nam are examined.
A: Oh yeah… I’ve really struggled for years trying to understand the whole Viet Nam experience. You know, I was a teenager and a lot of my classmates in high school were from low economic situations. They all got drafted, and a lot of them got killed in Viet Nam and I didn’t understand Viet Nam. My artist friends, my friends in New York City were protesting Viet Nam and it took me all this time to comprehend. I always knew the war was wrong, but I didn’t know a lot of the facts or really comprehend, you know, what kind of person he was. And really, what he just wanted was freedom for his people. I mean, Oliver Ray and I just went to Viet Nam in November after the record was done, and we went there to really see Viet Nam ourselves. When you are in Viet Nam and you meet these people and you see their country and listen to their language and it’s absurd to think why would the French, or why would we even be in Viet Nam? It’s a real country. I mean it’s a people with their own heritage, their own history, and philosophies, their own body language. You know, the absurdity of it is beyond comprehension. And they’re all such a
proud, sturdy, friendly people. Gung Ho was the result of like a year and a half study. I’ve got a whole notebook filled with notes about Ho Chi Minh, about his life, from his writings to his biography, my own observations. I would have pages of clusters, and when we went in the studio to do the piece, it was a field. An obviously long field that was gonna tell this story. So, I had various sheets of paper taped to the music stand, the walls, whatever that I could look at as the music was goin’ by and just grab at whatever. But I had no end of the song even when we went in to do it. I didn’t know how I was going to end it. So, as the band played, I kept grabbing and emotionally was carried into the end of the song. I wrote all the words, but in terms of the music, it was really a perfect organic situation. And it’s perfectly named because I found out afterwards that the word "gung-ho" means, in its purest form, a Chinese phrase, “working together.” Which I didn’t know. I thought it meant like my mom always said about my dad, you know, “Your dad was really gung-ho in the war.” You’re gung-ho if you’re full of heart or enthusiasm. But the actual, real meaning is “working together.” We were supposed to have practice. I walked in and they were jamming. Oliver started this guitar phrase, and then Lenny introduced another guitar phrase and then Tony and Jay fell in, and I was mesmerized by this music. There was no plan. They were jamming and I sat there listening to it and couldn’t take it anymore. I just went up to my microphone, because they set me up a mike, and started rapping some of the stuff that was in my notebooks and in my head about Ho Chi Minh. And I just stopped this after a while and said “this is gonna be the ‘Ho Chi Minh’ song” and let’s not work on it anymore. Let’s remember it and when we go in the studio we’ll improvise it.” ‘Cause I didn’t want us to keep going. I wanted it to be really fresh. So, I wanted it to be really birthed in the studio and it was. We’ve done it three times live and each time it’s totally different. A little scary ‘cause it’s long.
Q: There’s a song on Gung Ho called “Grateful,” which I’m sure has some link to The Grateful Dead or Jerry Garcia.
A: I can tell you exactly where “Grateful” came from. I wrote it all by myself. I was in Michigan. It’s the oldest song on the record. Jerry had died and I was in Michigan. I was feeling a bit blue and somebody was teasing me about my gray hair. My hair is graying. It’s not totally gray but getting grayer. I don’t care if my hair is getting gray. But for that particular day I was feeling sensitive or something and I was feeling blue generally. And I went off by myself and like, burst into tears. And I was just standing there trying to compose myself and just shut my eyes and I saw a vision of Jerry Garcia smiling at me. It really happened. I saw him, he smiled at me and he tugged at his hair. His hair of course was long, silvery and wiry. And I don’t know Jerry. I met him. I just stood there and felt better and all of a sudden, this little song came in my head, and I don’t write many songs by myself. I don’t write much music or don’t hear much music. But I heard the whole thing and went and got my acoustic guitar and wrote the little song down. That was one of the easier songs I ever wrote. I didn’t struggle or edit. I wrote it and called it “Grateful,” as a salute to Jerry.
Q: What about your work in different mediums. Writing and then recording.
A: Well, I think they inform each other. Sometimes I find it really hard to write when I’m performing, or working on records. I just put myself in whatever form I’m using. When I’m working on a record, every record reflects a lot of study. This record reflects Viet Nam, Ho Chi Minh, Mother Teresa, all kinds of things.
Q: I know you write by longhand. Do you utilize a typewriter?
A: I’m a longhand…I don’t really type lyrics. The only time, for instance, “One Voice,” I wrote longhand as a poem and I might have typed working on it ‘cause I wanted the lyrics for “One Voice” to be very economic but yet dense in a certain language. I struggle a lot writing lyrics.
Q: What are your feelings about the internet? It’s text driven and a chance for cross pollination.
A: I think there’s obviously a lot of possibilities of cross pollination as you say and global communication. I’m seeing the web sites basically taking you on a ride for some marketing things. Arista gave me and my band a web site, gungho2000.com. All it is unpublished poetry, manifestos, photographs, suggestions, helpful and environmental alerts. Fun stuff, but the idea is that it’s a world that extends from the work from the albums. It doesn’t like lead people into the world of T-shirt sales. It’s going to be a place to get information or to give ideas, like learning about Ho Chi Minh, giving you places you can go. Or checking out The Declaration of Independence. Or giving people some cool stuff to see.
Q: What is the difference in making a record, and then doing those songs in person? Are they two different endeavors?
A: They are different responsibilities. Doing a record, one is doing something that hopefully will endure. And one is doing it in a very intimate situation. Just with one’s band members and a few technicians And so it is very intimate, but one is mentally projecting toward the future and the people who’ll listen to it. Playing live you are right there with the people. I don’t think of live performance as enduring. It’s for the moment, somebody might bootleg it or tape it for themselves, but basically, I think of performance for the moment and it’s often more raucous, flawed, and you know, totally done for the people that
are there.
(Harvey Kubernik is the author of 20 books, including 2009’s Canyon Of Dreams: The Magic And The Music Of Laurel Canyon, 2014’s Turn Up The Radio! Rock, Pop and Roll In Los Angeles 1956-1972, 2015's Every Body Knows: Leonard Cohen, 2016's Heart of Gold Neil Young and 2017's 1967: A Complete Rock Music History of the Summer of Love. Sterling/Barnes and Noble in 2018 published Harvey and Kenneth Kubernik’s The Story Of The Band: From Big Pink To The Last Waltz. In 2021 the duo wrote Jimi Hendrix: Voodoo Child for Sterling/Barnes and Noble. Otherworld Cottage Industries in 2020 published Harvey’s Docs That Rock, Music That Matters. His Screen Gems: (Pop Music Documentaries and Rock‘n’Roll Television Moments) is scheduled for 2025 publication. Harvey wrote the liner notes to CD re-releases of Carole King’s Tapestry, The Essential Carole King, Allen Ginsberg’s Kaddish, Elvis Presley The ’68 Comeback Special, The Ramones’End of the Century and Big Brother & the Holding Company Captured Live at The Monterey International Pop Festival. During 2006 Kubernik spoke at the special hearings by The Library of Congress in Hollywood, California, discussing archiving practices and
audiotape preservation. In 2017 he appeared at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, Ohio, in their Distinguished Speakers Series. Amidst 2023, Harvey spoke at The Grammy Museum in Los Angeles discussing The Last Waltz music documentary).
