With an elegant, lascivious movement in slow motion, Patti Smith takes off her obligatory black men's jacket.

Slowly let it slide down your shoulders.

Without even turning around, she throws the noble cloth behind her in front of the drum podium with a skilful swing.

The 75-year-old poet, author and composer just finished her third song, a tremendously powerful version of Bob Dylan's "The Wicked Messenger".

Patti snarled, roared, howled, yelled and snorted Dylan's surrealistic lyrics unusually dynamically, even fervently.

Sometimes she sounded like one of the Afro-American blues pioneers Howlin' Wolf, John Lee Hooker or Muddy Waters.

Meanwhile, longtime collaborators Lenny Kaye (electric guitar, bass), Tony Shanahan (electric piano, organ, electric guitar),

Anyone who has experienced the Patti Smith Group on their almost annual flying visits to Frankfurt over the past few decades will remember a always jolly, but often quite chaotic group.

Not so with the guest performance in the Frankfurt Centennial Hall, which was postponed several times due to the corona pandemic.

Discipline and concentration reign supreme from the start, underpinned by a dreamlike tonal balance.

With Mrs. Smith as their powerhouse, who occasionally also picks up the acoustic guitar, the five musicians really exude magic.

The crowd of visitors quickly forgives the more than half-hour delay.

Wink to Captain Jack Sparrow

The Patti Smith Group cleverly steered the in-house roots-reggae pastiche "Redondo Beach" to kick off - in the run-up to the concert, an incredible number of Jamaican roots-reggae originals ran over the house system.

The band streams through their own catalog of songs with gusto: "Gloria", "Free Money", "Dancing Barefoot" and "Pissing In A River" in excellent versions all come from Smith's heyday in the 1970s.

With a wink, she dedicates the psychedelic "Nine" to Captain Jack Sparrow - a subtle nod to the fact that actor Johnny Depp, born June 9, 1963, won the trial of his ex-wife Amber Heard.

On the 25th anniversary of the death of Beat Generation poet icon Allen Ginsberg, with whom Patti was a close friend, she serves the excerpt "Footnote To Howl" from his literary milestone "Howl" (1956) as a declamation.

The ballad-like lyrical "My Blakean Year" is also aimed at Ginsberg.

For two covers, The Jimi Hendrix Experience's "Stone Free" and The Stooges' "I Wanna Be Your Dog," Patti Smith relinquished the spotlight to her four boys.

Dances ecstatically on the right edge of the stage like a go-go girl in a swinging sixties beat club.

The catchy tune "Because The Night", co-composed with Bruce Springsteen and dedicated to her late husband Frederick Smith, should not be missing.

With "People Have The Power" the grande dame of the counterculture bids farewell.

Once again she emphasizes the importance of freedom and democracy,