Johnny Is in Rome Tonight… And He Wants to Party!

Patti Smith performs in Rome at Circo Massimo on July 27^th, 2026

Words by Chiara Rosati Colarieti

A tingling sensation. My blood is boiling. Not for the Roman heat, although that surely doesn’t help. No. No, no, no. This is all for and because of HER. Patti Smith. Heroine of our times. Fire of our loins. A never-ageing Lolita. An ever-inspiring force of nature in a world so divided. An anchor, shining in a holy splendour made of truth and love. She emerges on a blood-red stage like a triumphant Joan of Arc. That flaming redness is not burning her, but rather infusing her with the sort of divine demeanour you would expect from an Empress, coming to visit us like an evanescent, yet very human apparition, straight from the heights, or depths, of an ineffable heaven. 

Patti opens the concert with a long-awaited, thirst-quenching performance of “Dancing Barefoot”, an ode to what it means to be a human being. My heart jumps inside my chest because my feet are not allowed to. We are all seated, and we have to remain in such an unnatural position, not for long, thankfully. “Oh, God, I fell for you”, she repeats. “Oh, God, I fell for YOU”, I repeat, looking at her. And I did. I really did. The second I heard her voice for the first time. This is the song that converted me to a nameless religion of beauty and love. A love that stretches beyond time, location, age, gender, sex, nationality, and pain. A love that is so totalizing, it has a will of its own. It fills you up whether you want it or not. A medicine. It opens up your heart so wide, so, so wide, you’ll never go back to what you were before. 

Jesse Paris Smith plays the keyboard with grace, shining in her white, pristine outfit like an angel fallen from one of the Cieli of Dante’s Paradiso. Mother and daughter exchange sweet gestures, tokens of pure affection and support. I think of my mother, wishing she could have joined me here at Circo Massimo like she did at the Roman Theatre of Ancient Ostia two years ago. I am alone this time, but I’ll tell her all about it when I get home. Jackson Smith plays his guitar, conquering the instrument like a modern Julius Caesar, victorious after a battle. Seb Rochford dictates the beat, the pauses, the rhythm with a sense of controlled confidence I’ve rarely seen before. Tony Shanahan, sometimes on keyboards, sometimes on bass, stands by Patti’s side, gently but, somehow, also vehemently filling the performance with a certain quality of sound and sentiment that can only come from years of unrelenting passion for his instruments and the Muse of music herself.

“Redondo Beach” brings a swift shifting of time and location. We are now in a Boho-reggae beach dimension. I wish someone would give me an Aperol Spritz. The lyrics aren’t cheerful, a deep contrast with the song’s arrangement. It doesn’t matter. It’s the feeling, the imaginary stretching of the hand, that’s what counts. Even a suicide story tastes like a delicacy when you’re experiencing such a joyful moment. Yes, give me an Aperol Spritz and destroy my soul. You’ll still see a wide smile on my face. Even wider now, because she’s singing “Revenge”. Jesus Christ, what is sweeter than that? I don’t believe in practical revenge, but I sure as hell believe in a spiritual one. That’s what she’s gifting to us. The head of John the Baptist on a platter. My own head. On a silver platter. My own brain, neurons frolicking in an epileptic dance. My fingers flying. I am flying. 

The background is now as blue as the night sky. She’s singing “Ghost Dance” to heal our divided world, calling our guardian angels. “We shall live again”, she says. Yes, we shall. It’s not over yet. We still have an ace up our sleeve. “We shall live again”, we all chant. “Shake out the Ghost”, she screams. The Ghost is now travelling on a crystal ship, the very crystal ship Jim Morrison talked about in his song. Her voice sings his words and evokes his soul. He’s here with us. I just know it. She talks about a dream. A dream in which she found herself in a dark forest, then a clearing. There, on the ground, she saw a marble statue, a Prometheus in chains that might have been sculpted by Michelangelo himself. The statue was glowing with life yet trapping this very life deep within. Butterfly wings, that’s what she heard. And she knew. She just knew he was in there. “Break it up, Jim, break it up!”, she screamed restlessly. Finally, the marble split, and he emerged like a butterfly from its cocoon. Like an Archangel in all his glory. Great white wings. And up he flew, disappearing in the sky. “Break it up!”, she sings in his honour, her hand pounding on her heart. She wrote this song with Tom Verlaine for Jim. But this is not just a song. This is a hymn. 

She is now telling us the story of a Roman boy. It’s a poem about a man and his long-lost motherland, for he left it, never to return. His golden ship went everywhere but back home. As he got older, he would dream of his mother, his land, the great arena where chariots and strong, white horses raced. The beautiful place where he was born. Mamma Roma, she says. She starts singing “Nine”. Nine: the planets that are dancing with us tonight, barefoot, of course. Nine because Mamma Roma is the ninth. 

You’re resting now, dear Patti, and Tony Shanahan performs a cover of “Isn’t It a Pity” by George Harrison. “Isn’t it a pity? Isn’t it a shame? How we break each other’s hearts, and cause each other pain?”, Yes, it is. But she knows the cure. “Who is hungry?” she asks, and starts singing “Summer Cannibals” as she takes off her iconic black blazer and throws it behind her. They eat, they eat, they eat… Long live the new flesh, I imagine them screaming. Like in David Cronenberg’s Videodrome, Patti is talking about a cannibalistic love that feeds on the brains and flesh and souls of artists to promote a media-controlled, money-obsessed, plastic-made future. They want to turn us into a soulless imitation of human beings, like the alien entity in John Carpenter’s The Thing. I hope most of us are as fierce as Kurt Russell’s Mac, and as unrelenting in our fight against all this death as Patti is. “And I laid upon the table, just another piece of meat, and I opened up my veins to them, and said, c’mon… EAT!”, I sing with her.

She asks us to look at the moon. It is almost full. The moon is singing with her, too, as she performs “Fireflies”. The last time I saw fireflies, I was by the Tuscan seaside, and I was very sad, so sad that their very sight was enough to lift my spirit. And I danced among them in my swan-white dress while everyone else was asleep, smoking my cigarettes. I was there then, and I am here now. I smile. She starts singing “Peaceable Kingdom”, a song that she wrote with Tony Shanahan in 2003 for the Palestinian people. She dedicates this song to them, to Pope Leo XIV, and to all the peacemakers of the world. I hope this song reaches the Palestinian people’s souls and fills them up with hope and strength. 

Patti is about to sing a song she wrote for her late husband, Fred Sonic Smith, when they were just boyfriend and girlfriend. A song we all know very, very well. The ultimate love song, “Because the Night”. Because the night belongs to lovers. Because the night belongs to us. And it’s true. It doesn’t belong to violence. It belongs to love, and this night in particular belongs to us. Then, Johnny arrives. “Johnny is in Rome tonight”, she says, “And he wants to party… c’mon motherfuckers, come and get me!” and we’re finally allowed to stand up and come closer to the stage. I’m fast, thankfully, so I manage to position myself in front of her. We’re all laughing hysterically, like Johnny, and clapping, and dancing, and singing. It’s a Bacchanal frenzy. “Land” shifts into “Gloria”. It’s just impossible to stay still, no matter how sweaty and tired we’re all getting. “Do you know how to pony?” she asks at last. We all applaud in ecstasy. 

They all leave the stage… but return quickly, thankfully, for one last song. A song Patti wrote in 1986 with her husband when she was pregnant with Jesse, who couldn’t stop kicking inside her belly whenever she played it. It’s “People Have the Power”. Our spirits rise higher than our fists. One last injection of hope. One last reminder that we do have the power to redeem the work of fools. And change the world. Maybe even for good.