Fifty years ago, Patti Smith harnessed the wild spirit of rock ‘n’ roll for her debut album Horses. I’ve listened to the record many times over the years, and it hasn’t lost anything. It’s outsider art: deep and transgressive in regard to subjects like religion and gender, with quiet moments as well as moments of intensity. And it has tons of attitude.
In 1975, punk was not yet a recognizable genre to most music fans, although a rock revitalization was gathering steam underground. Television, The Ramones, and the Patti Smith Group were performing regularly at the New York dive bar CBGB. Detroit bands like the MC5 and the Stooges — forefathers of punk rock — were active, as were New York bands like the New York Dolls and the Velvet Underground.
Patti Smith has the soul of a poet, and her early performances were mainly spoken recitations of her poems, with the backing of guitarist Lenny Kaye, and later with pianist Richard Sohl added to the group. She released an independent single along those lines in 1974. Record executive Clive Davis caught the Patti Smith Group performing at CBGB and signed the band to his new label, Arista Records. Smith chose Velvet Underground member John Cale to produce her debut album. Cale had years of experience in the recording studio, and brought some structure to the sessions, counterbalancing the freewheeling spirit of the band.
Horses begins with “Gloria,” where Smith quickly expresses her dislike for “rules and regulations.” A shorter version of the song was released as a single.
The nonalbum B-side was an angry profanity-laced live version of The Who’s “My Generation.” That B-side was absolutely punk rock, but the Horses album strikes me as being more like edgy art-rock than anything else — a totally unique work combining musical elements in a new way. A variety of Smith’s formative influences are in the mix as well.
Smith grew up loving foundational rock figures like Bob Dylan, Keith Richards and Jim Morrison, but you can also hear girl groups like the Angels (they did 1963’s “My Boyfriend’s Back”) in songs like “Redondo Beach,” “Kimberly” and (probably) “Free Money” before it turns into something else entirely. “Gloria” is a glorious expansion on a 1964 song by Them, Van Morrison’s band. She makes wonderful use of Chris Kenner’s 1962 single “Land of 1000 Dances” within her own “Land.” What makes all this punk isn’t the music so much as Smith’s powerful voice, expressing her poetic vision with a kind of controlled abandon.
There were powerful women vocalists before her (Janis Joplin, for example) but Smith brought a unique vision in 1975. On her first album, that vision is beyond gender. The epic three-section song “Land” is a fierce mystical narrative where she or you (the listener) or someone else could be “the boy.” Near the end, “Land” briefly points back to “Gloria," “where anything’s allowed.”
Fifty years on, the song, and the Horses album, is still an exhilarating ride.
