Patti Smith

And yet it was clear from the welling eyes of both snot-nosed punk veterans and those far too young to have got within a sniff of a safety pin that the evening – the culmination of Smith’s outstanding curation of Meltdown – was the sort of life-defining triumph that only a few artists (Brian Wilson springs to mind) ever achieve.

'Smile', though a radically different album, is a useful analogy for 'Horses'. While the latter hasn’t laid undiscovered for decades, it is still rarely mentioned as anything other than ‘critically acclaimed’. It’s safe to say the hundreds milling the South Bank in search of tickets (eBay asking price: £150 by Friday) weren’t all critics.

Ironically, had Smith enjoyed such adulation in 1975, she’d probably be a flabby-arsed Dad-rocker jamming with Ringo Starr by now. Instead, she is a sprightly 58, daring to revisit her Horses-era uniform of black suit and tie as she leaped to original guitarist Lenny Kaye’s arch rhythms. She snarled, too – interrupted in her spoken intro to 'Land' by an indecipherable heckle, she told the offender: “There are people who’ve been waiting with baited breath all night for me to say that, but no, you fucking speak instead.” Told later she was “good” while searching for an adjective for her performance, she was scathing. “Good? I’m more than good. They ain’t invented the word yet._” The seating system was forgotten by the end of Redondo Beach, as security struggled to halt the forming of a 300-strong moshpit at her feet. A priestess? A shaman? It seems a ridiculous claim to make of any rock act, but her effect on an audience – a kind of open-mouthed astonishment, followed by utter adulation, furious pogoing and finally tears – makes her the something approaching it. Certainly nobody else could prompt whooping by reading a poem.