When REM's Michael Stipe first heard Patti Smith's seminal debut Horses, he was 15 and described the experience as life-changing.

"It pretty much tore my limbs off and put them back on in a different way", he says. "I decided then and there that I was going to be in a band."

Now 30 years after its release, punk rock's poet laureate comes to Brighton to perform many of the album's songs with her band and long-term friend and collaborator, Television's Tom Verlaine.

"The tour is a retrospective," says Patti. "I have been trying to mix a lot of the old songs with some that are more political, so that we can talk about the terrible things that are happening.

"But we need some respite too. We want to have fun. I hope people will sing along to songs they know."

Something of an outcast growing up, Patti found salvation in the poetry of Arthur Rimbaud and William Blake, the Beat poets and the music of artists like James Brown, Jimi Hendrix, the Doors and Bob Dylan. She remembers creating Horses with that spirit in mind, for "disenfranchised persons, whether they were nerds or the one gay kid in the school.

"As a teenager I was the worst wallflower weirdo, so I knew what it felt like to be an outsider, and like Walt Whitman saying 'young poet standing there, I am reaching out to you through time', I wanted Horses to say 'if you feel like you don't belong anywhere, hopefully this will inspire you'."

Horses was produced by ex-Velvet Underground member John Cale and was rapturously received by the critics for its mix of original songs, unconventional covers, lengthy spoken-word pieces and raw, arty musicianship.

Patti has always followed her own muse wherever it took her. Intellectual, androgynous and creatively uncompromising, she obliterated expectations of what was possible for women in rock and became an icon to subsequent generations of female rockers.

"When I was younger, I wasn't a typical girl, I was more of a tomboy, very skinny, a little awkward. I was never a slave to worrying about my appearance," she says.

"Now it seems like everything is dictated by music television. It's way harder to be a young person now. But I have faith in the new generation to create new work and to build their own scene. They shouldn't have to feel it was cooler back then.

"The present is where it's at, reach out and create a new energy."

Starts 8pm, tickets £18.50. Call 01273 709709.