Patti Smith

The anniversary

Half a century has passed since Patti Smith rewrote the rules of rock's language. Fifty years on from that historic 10th of November 1975, when "Horses" hit record store shelves, that black-and-white LP - its cover branded with Robert Mapplethorpe's iconic shot of Patti in a white shirt and black skinny tie - remains one of the undisputed musical icons of an entire era. Few albums have marked such a clean "before and after" as this debut: a chaotic, croaking voice spewing symbolism and free-form poetry, grinding the mighty rock'n'roll of the backing band down into an unprecedented, abrasive sludge. Music becomes an impetuous translation of poetic language, in a blend of Beat Generation, biblical mysticism, decadence and underground existentialism. From the incantations of Allen Ginsberg to the prose of Jack Kerouac, from the lyrics of William Burroughs to the accursed verses of Arthur Rimbaud, "the first punk poet".

"Horses" isn't just the litmus test for understanding the future punk and new wave revolutions months ahead of time, but also a key reference point for grasping how, by the mid-1970s, rock had broken free of its own formal limits to become a new language - a declaration of independence from every dogma, even in vocal delivery alone. When it was released, Patti Smith was 29, coming from performative poetry, from readings at the St. Mark's Poetry Project, from a New York scene that wove together music, visual art, club culture and experimentation. The album is the result of that convergence, with a very clear sonic manifesto: "Three-chord rock fused with the power of the word". A poet and visual artist, two years earlier Patti had begun improvising her unmistakable mix of songs and visionary imagery, performing in cabarets and small clubs alongside guitarist Lenny Kaye and pianist Richard Sohl. Her live performances allowed her to hone the songs, winning over an ever-growing audience in Manhattan's underground.

When, in the winter of 1975, she began a seven-week residency at Cbgb, her band had expanded to include guitarist Ivan Kral and drummer Jay Dee Daugherty. It was during this period that Patti signed a contract with Clive Davis, president of Arista Records. John Cale, formerly of the Velvet Underground, was chosen to produce the album, which would be released on 10th November - a symbolic date: the anniversary of the death of one of Patti's greatest artistic touchstones, the poet Arthur Rimbaud.

"Horses" was recorded at Electric Lady Studios, built on the initiative of Jimi Hendrix. Cale's production plays a decisive role in shaping the record's dynamics and stripped-back essentiality. Tom Verlaine (Television) contributes guitar parts, and Robert Mapplethorpe shoots the cover photograph, which would go on to become one of rock's defining images of the 20th century. A convergence of talents that could hardly be replicated in the same place at the same time - though Smith doesn't look back on it with nostalgia: "Everyone has their own creativity, their own voice," she has said. "'Horses' is a record born of its time. In the Sixties, artists worked hard to build a powerful cultural message into rock. We wanted to carry that forward, blending poetry and rock, political awareness and sexual energy".

Upon release, "Horses" didn't sell huge numbers, but it soon became a cult object, especially within the emerging New York punk scene. It was the ripe fruit of a generation that had come of age on the stage of Cbgb, at 315 Bowery in Manhattan's Lower East Side - the temple where American rock'n'roll shed its skin, embracing new avant-gardes and the existential anguish of a new generation. Today, its value is also historical: it bears witness to a moment when New York was an open laboratory, before genre languages became standardised, before digital fragmentation, when a scene could still produce real transformations in the collective imagination. "A lot of the tensions of that time," says Smith, who is currently touring to mark 50 years of "Horses", "seem to have changed shape but not substance. There are so many causes worth fighting for: the environment, the wellbeing of the planet. I'm talking about something that touches every living being on Earth: the water we drink, the air we breathe".

"Horses" is the least electric of the rock high priestess's works from the Seventies, but also the most convulsive, original and punk, as well as the most "ahead" in attitude. Among its many merits, it also struck like lightning on the future path of Michael Stipe, future frontman of R.E.M.: "I had these lousy, scratchy headphones of my parents' and a bowl of cherries in front of me. I stayed up all night listening to it. It was like the first time you dive into the ocean and get swept up by a wave. It tore me apart. That's when I realised I wanted to become a singer, and I owe a lot to Patti as a performer too". Indeed, on stage Patti Smith has always managed to hypnotise audiences. "She's capable of generating more intensity with a single movement of her hand than most rock artists manage over an entire show," Charles Shaar Murray wrote in New Musical Express. "Her performances are a cosmic battle between demons and angels," added John Rockwell in the New York Times. Another critic compared them to labour pains and childbirth.

The 1996 CD reissue would add a fierce, unhinged live cover of the Who's "My Generation", with John Cale on bass, recorded live on January 26, 1976, in Cleveland.

Fifty years on, the legacy of "Horses" remains decisive, and not only for the countless rockeuses for whom Patti Smith paved the way, or for her musical influence – enormous in itself, from punk to no wave, right through to every hybrid of spoken word and rock. "Horses" remains one of those moments when rock shed its skin. It doesn't lend itself, then, to celebration or to being framed as a museum piece, precisely because it remains a living, feral, untamed creature. And that's why it never ages. Just like "Gloria", which by now, for everyone, is no longer the girl who made Van Morrison fall head over heels, but the symbol of a profane sainthood: that of the indomitable Patti Smith. (Claudio Fabretti)

The Reissue

To celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of her landmark debut album, Patti Smith has released "Horses (50th Anniversary)" on Legacy Recordings. The new edition is available on double CD and vinyl. The box set contains the original album, remastered from the ¼-inch analog tapes, plus eight previously unreleased tracks including demos, rarities and alternate versions. Among these, alongside "Snowball", are "Birdland (Alternate Take)" and the demos recorded for RCA in 1975. Listen to the previously unreleased "Snowball" below. 

 "The poet can stand alone, but when she merges with a band, she surrenders to the wonder of teamwork. United like that, we brought 'Horses' into the world together", Patti Smith recalls in "Bread Of Angels", her new memoir, in which she recounts her childhood in postwar Philadelphia, an adolescence marked by the sudden onset of art and poetry, her rise within New York's punk scene, and her later retreat from the spotlight to devote herself to family life on the shores of Lake St. Clair, Michigan.

To celebrate the anniversary of her debut LP, the American artist has also embarked on a special tour of eight European cities and nine in the United States, performing "Horses" in its entirety. Joining her on stage, alongside Lenny Kaye and Jay Dee Daugherty, are longtime collaborator Tony Shanahan and her son Jackson Smith.

Below is the full tracklist for "Horses (50th Anniversary)":

Gloria

Redondo Beach

Birdland

Free Money

Kimberly

Break It Up

Land

Horses

Land Of A Thousand Dances

La Mer (De)

Elegie

Bonus track

Gloria

Redondo Beach

Birdland

Snowball

Kimberly

Break It Up

Distant Fingers

The Hunter Gets Captured By The Game

We Three

***

The review

Jesus died for somebody's sins but not mine

Melting in a pot of thieves wild card up my sleeve

Thick heart of sins my own

Thy belong to me. Me

(Patti Smith, “Gloria”)

Patti Smith's childhood idol was Maria Callas. There's no reason not to believe that having had an idol of that stature was the best lesson she could have had before setting out on her golden path. Like Patti Smith, in the whole motley nativity scene of rock, there's never been anyone else quite like her, just as there had never been anyone like her before. The mothers of singer-songwriters are Joan Baez and Joni Mitchell, but she was something else entirely.

Of the three who were “playing with words” in New York in the mid-70s – Tom Verlaine, Richard Hell and Patti Smith – only the last of them wears the poet's laurels without dispute. The first was too reserved, with his awkward passion for the guitar solo, the second too much of a showman. She, on the other hand, claimed the title of “poet” with ease a quarter of a century ago.

Patti Smith's lyrics are among the finest in rock history, but calling her a poet implicitly amounts to admitting that poetry is superior to songwriting. Since these are two different forms, requiring different skills and techniques, that assumption is misguided as well as misleading. Let's say that anyone who isn't satisfied simply calling Patti Smith an excellent lyricist, but feels the need to call her a “poet”, is admitting to an inferiority complex on rock'n'roll's part toward forms with a longer tradition behind them. Smith was a formidable songwriter, performer and punk frontwoman. You could buy all her first three albums without fear of disappointment, and perhaps the fourth too, but Patti had already carved out her place in the annals of rock with just the first single by the Patti Smith Group (Richard Sohl on piano, Lenny Kaye – also the curator of the legendary Nuggets compilation – on guitar, Ivan Kral on bass and Jay Dee Daugherty on drums), “Hey Joe/Piss Factory”, and above all with her debut album “Horses”, produced by John Cale.

This is the album that brought a new musical language into the history of rock: a kind of fusion between "free form" spoken-word performance and music, in which the lyrics become the starting point, but never a limit; indeed, they're often the vehicle that lets the songs constantly expand and stretch out.

On the cover, Smith apes Frank Sinatra. A perfect poster, like many of her images. The album opens with "Gloria", a cover of the Them song written by Van Morrison. An unpublished poem is embedded within the original blues number. Her voice is beautiful and powerful, but at its peak it snarls. Smith proves a irreverent interpreter of Christian faith: "Jesus died for somebody's sins, but not mine" and "my sins are my own, they belong to me".

"Redondo Beach", on the other hand, is a melancholy piece (it tells of a girl's suicide) set to a reggae rhythm, with the Group producing delicate backing vocals. The nine minutes of "Birdland" lay all the cards on the table. The lyrics were improvised in the studio based on a story by Peter Reich: the boy sees his long-dead father aboard a spaceship, and cries at length begging to be taken away with him, but all that's left for him is to lie down on the grass. Only Smith sings, while the lead guitar respectfully stays out of the way. "Free Money", a frenetic boogie about the relationship between love and money, is another exhausting ride, with Kaye grinding out mile after mile of rock'n'roll, while Smith, with her feverish, guttural singing, does nothing but confirm herself as one of the greatest rock vocalists of all time. "Kimberly" is a typically new wave ballad, seasoned with assorted smirks and organ lines, with scattered echoes of Velvet Underground. In "Break It Up" you can hear Tom Verlaine's guitar howling. Worth appreciating, in the background, is Sohl's work.

"Land" is further split into three parts: "Horses", a hysterical crescendo for voice and rhythm section, "Land Of A Thousand Dances", pure dreamy rock, and "La mer(de)", a whispered continuation at times. For another nine minutes, a certain Johnny, borrowed from William Burroughs, is first brutally killed, then goes through strange adventures. In "Elegie", Allen Lanier of Blue Oyster Cult also appears on guitar, bringing in a certain solemn, melodic atmosphere.

What's disconcerting about this record is how current it still feels: it could easily have been recorded a month ago. Which is rather unsettling, given that seemingly no one has managed to broaden or update its themes since. Although it's not clearly credited on the cover, as would happen with later works, this is the work of a band. Atypical and excellent. Without fear of contradiction, it's an album unique in flavor, backdrop and intent, as well as one of the most influential pages in rock history.

Austere melodies cut through hazy atmospheres, and over everything sits a one-of-a-kind voice. Anyone who hears it will always remember that smirk and that girlish timbre, and can't help but associate it with a sense of sadness and courage at once. Even though the lyrics never tackle the subject head-on, it's also a formidable record of struggle: the anger you can feel in every note is unmistakable.

As with bands like Television or the Velvet Underground, when discussing Patti Smith's records people also like to highlight their "arty" attitude. While that's absolutely true of her later, more formally rock-oriented works, it doesn't apply to this debut. Which is "arty", in the good sense, in its form, but rock 'n' roll in attitude. The best rock album with a woman's name on the cover, and one of the best with any name on the cover. (Maria Teresa Rachetta)

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