Why Easter is the most rock and roll religious holiday 

Easter is by far the most rock and roll religious holiday. Christmas might be the time when the pop vultures circle, plucking from the bones of garish sentiment, but the wham-bam narrative mic-drops of Holy Week are of a different order. Easter has provided a dramatic template for every rock opera, concept album, heroic comeback and combustible band dynamic this side of the Chatterley trial and the first Beatles LP.

‘Jesus died for somebody’s sins, but not mine,’ runs the opening line on Patti Smith’s debut album, Horses. Maybe so, but she understood the innate power of this stuff. Smith’s second LP is called Easter, and it is replete with overtly Christian imagery. The liner notes quote from Timothy 4:7 – ‘I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course’ – and the title track is doused in the blood of Christ and the language of resurrection: ‘I rend, I end, I return…’ 

It all begins with Palm Sunday, which finds our smalltown hero prepping for a big symbolic city gig; think of the exiled Bob Marley returning to Kingston in 1978 to perform at the triumphant One Love concert.