Horses (album)

Horses
Studio album by Patti Smith
Released December 13, 1975
Recorded 1975
Studio Electric Lady Studios in New York City, New York
Genre Punk rock, art punk, garage rock
Length 43:10
Label Arista
Producer John Cale
Patti Smith chronology
Horses
(1975)		 Radio Ethiopia
(1976)
Singles from Horses
  1. "Gloria"
    Released: January 26, 1976

Horses is the debut studio album by American musician Patti Smith, released on December 13, 1975 on Arista Records. Smith, a fixture of the then-burgeoning New York punk rock music scene, began recording Horses with her band in 1975 after being signed to Arista Records, with John Cale being enlisted to produce the album. With its fusion of simplistic rock and roll structures and Smith's freeform, Beat poetry-infused lyrics, Horses was met with widespread critical acclaim upon its initial release. Despite a lack of airplay or a popular single to support the album, it nonetheless experienced modest commercial success, managing a top 50 placing on the US Billboard 200.

Horses has since been viewed by critics as one of the greatest and most influential albums in the history of the American punk rock movement, as well as one of the greatest albums of all time. Horses has also been cited as a key influence on a number of succeeding punk, post-punk, and alternative rock acts, including Siouxsie and the Banshees, Courtney Love, The Smiths, and Garbage.

Background and recording

John Cale (pictured in 1977) was enlisted by Smith to produce Horses.

By 1975, Patti Smith and her band had established themselves as favorites in the New York underground club scene along with acts such as Blondie and the Ramones, and the band eventually caught the attention of industry executive Clive Davis, who was scouting for new talent to sign to his new label Arista Records and eventually offered Smith a record deal.[1][2] Recording sessions for Smith's debut album Horses began later that year, with Smith retaining her longtime backing band from a lengthy residency at the New York club CBGB—Jay Dee Daugherty on drums, Lenny Kaye on guitar, Ivan Kral on bass, and Richard Sohl on keyboards.[1][3] Smith enlisted Welsh musician John Cale of The Velvet Underground fame to serve as the album's producer, as she was impressed by the raw sound of his own albums, such as Fear.[1]

According to Smith, Horses was a conscious attempt "to make a record that would make a certain type of person not feel alone. People who were like me, different… I wasn't targeting the whole world. I wasn't trying to make a hit record."[4] Recording sessions for the album were marked by frequent arguments between Smith and Cale, owing in part to their different work ethics.[1] By the end of recording, and for some years immediately following the album's release, Smith was quick to downplay Cale's contributions and suggested that she and her band ignored his suggestions entirely.[1] In a 1976 interview with Rolling Stone, Smith described the experience:

My picking John was about as arbitrary as picking Rimbaud. I saw the cover of Illuminations with Rimbaud's face, y'know, he looked so cool, just like Bob Dylan. So Rimbaud became my favorite poet. I looked at the cover of Fear and I said, 'Now there's a set of cheekbones.' In my mind I picked him because his records sounded good. But I hired the wrong guy. All I was really looking for was a technical person. Instead, I got a total maniac artist. I went to pick out an expensive watercolor painting and instead I got a mirror. It was really like A Season in Hell, for both of us. But inspiration doesn't always have to be someone sending me half a dozen American Beauty roses. There's a lotta inspiration going on between the murderer and the victim. And he had me so nuts I wound up doing this nine-minute cut that transcended anything I ever did before.[5]

Cale would later recall that Smith initially struck him as "someone with an incredibly volatile mouth who could handle any situation", and that as producer on Horses he wanted to capture the energy of her live performances, noting that there "was a lot of power in Patti's use of language, in the way images collided with one another."[6] He described their working relationship during recording as "confrontational and a lot like an immutable force meeting an immovable object".[6] Smith herself would later attribute much of the tension between herself and Cale to her inexperience with formal studio recording, recalling that she was "very, very suspicious, very guarded and hard to work with" and "made it difficult for him to do some of the things he had to do".[6] She expressed gratitude for Cale's persistence in recording and producing the band, noting that he would always leave much of the band's "adolescent and honest flaws" in and ultimately "helped us in the birth of ourselves", calling him "like a brother to me, a brother who gave me a helping hand."[6]

Music and lyrics
"Gloria: In Excelsis Deo / Gloria"
Smith's reworking of Them's song "Gloria" is representative of the album's garage rock and poetry influences.
Problems playing this file? See media help.

In Smith's own words, Horses was conceived as "three-chord rock merged with the power of the word".[7] Steve Huey of AllMusic calls Horses "essentially the first art punk album."[2] Smith and her band's sound, spearheaded by the rudimentary guitar work of Lenny Kaye, drew on the simple aesthetics of garage rock,[8] and the group's use of simplistic chord structures was emblematic of the punk rock scene associated with the band.[9] Smith, however, used such structures as a basis for lyrical and musical improvisation in the album's songs, diverging from other contemporary punk acts who generally shied away from solos.[9] Horses drew on genres such as rock and roll, reggae, and jazz.[10] "Redondo Beach" features a reggae backing track,[11] while "Birdland", which was improvised by the band in Electric Lady Studios, owed more to jazz, which Smith's mother enjoyed, than to the influence of punk.

Reflecting Smith's background as a poet, the album's lyrics channel the French Symbolism movement, incorporating influences from the works of Charles Baudelaire, William Blake, and Smith's long-time idol Arthur Rimbaud,[12] and recall the "revolutionary spirit" of Rimbaud and resonate with the energy of Beat poetry, according to CMJ's Steve Klinge.[13] Several of the album's songs—"Redondo Beach", "Free Money", "Kimberly"—were inspired by moments with members of Smith's family, while others—"Break It Up", "Elegie"—were written about her idols. Smith's sisters provide the lyrical inspirations for "Redondo Beach" and "Kimberly"; the former song, about despairing over a missing lover, was inspired by an incident in which Smith's sister Linda disappeared for the day following an argument with her, and the latter song was named after and dedicated to Smith's sister Kimberly.[14] "Free Money" is a recollection of Smith's childhood in New Jersey.[14]

"Break It Up" was written by Smith about Jim Morrison, deceased lead singer of The Doors, and based on her recollection of her visit of Morrison's grave in Père Lachaise Cemetery, Paris,[15] as well as a dream in which she witnessed Morrison stuck to a marble slab, trying and eventually succeeding in breaking free from the stone.[16] "Elegie" was written about deceased rock musician Jimi Hendrix.[14] "Birdland" features lyrics based upon A Book of Dreams, a 1973 memoir of Austrian psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich by his son Peter,[17] and Smith has said that she imagined the spirit of Jimi Hendrix watching her while she and her band recorded the song. Horses also features two adaptations of songs by other artists: "Gloria", a radical retake on the Them song incorporating verses from Smith's own poem "Oath",[10] and "Land", already a live favorite, which features the first verse of Chris Kenner's "Land of a Thousand Dances" and contains a tribute to Arthur Rimbaud.[18]

Artwork

The cover photograph for Horses was taken using natural light by American photographer Robert Mapplethorpe, a close friend of Smith's, at the Greenwich Village penthouse apartment of his partner Sam Wagstaff.[19][16] Smith is depicted wearing a plain white shirt which she had purchased at the Salvation Army on the Bowery and slinging a black jacket over her shoulder and her favorite black ribbon around her collar.[16] Embedded on the jacket is a horse pin that Smith's friend Allen Lanier had given her.[16] Smith has described her pose on the cover as "a mix of Baudelaire and Sinatra."[20] The record company wanted to make various changes to the photo, but Smith overruled such attempts.[19] The black and white treatment and unisex pose were a departure from the typical promotional images of "girl singers" of the time,[21] but Smith maintains that she "wasn't making a big statement. That's just the way I dressed."[20]

Writer Camille Paglia described the album's cover as "one of the greatest pictures ever taken of a woman."[22]

Critical reception

Upon initial release, Horses was met with near-universal acclaim from music critics and publications.[23] In a contemporary review for Rolling Stone, John Rockwell wrote that Horses is "wonderful in large measure because it recognizes the over-whelming importance of words" in Smith's work, covering a range of concerns "far beyond what most rock records even dream of", and highlighted Smith's adaptions of rock standards as the most striking songs on the record.[24] In Creem, Lester Bangs wrote that Smith's music "in its ultimate moments touches deep wellsprings of emotion that extremely few artists in rock or anywhere else are capable of reaching", and declared that with "her wealth of promise and the most incandescent flights and stillnesses of this album she joins the ranks of people like Miles Davis, Charles Mingus, or the Dylan of 'Sad Eyed Lady' and Royal Albert Hall."[25] Robert Christgau gave Horses an A– grade in The Village Voice and remarked that while the album does not capture Smith's humor, it "gets the minimalist fury of her band and the revolutionary dimension of her singing just fine."[26]

Horses' mix of philosophical elements in Smith's songwriting and rock and roll elements in its music did, however, attract some polarizing reactions, particularly from the British music press.[23] A review of Horses from Melody Maker dismissed the album as "precisely what's wrong with rock and roll right now."[23] On the other hand, Jonh Ingham of Sounds published a five-star review of Horses, naming it "the record of the year" and "one of the most stunning, commanding, engrossing platters to come down the turnpike since John Lennon's Plastic Ono Band".[27] Charles Shaar Murray of NME called it "an album in a thousand" and "an important album in terms of what rock can encompass without losing its identity as a musical form, in that it introduces an artist of greater vision than has been seen in rock for far too long."[28]

Commercially, Horses performed modestly well, managing to peak at number 47 on the Billboard 200 albums chart despite receiving virtually no airplay.[29] At the end of 1975, Horses was voted the second best album of the year, behind Bob Dylan and The Band's The Basement Tapes, in the Pazz & Jop, an annual poll of American critics nationwide, published in The Village Voice.[30] NME placed it at number thirteen on their year-end list of 1975's best albums.[31] In 1979, Robert Christgau ranked it at number 38 on his list of the best albums of the 1970s.[32]

Legacy and influence

Professional ratings
Review scores
SourceRating
AllMusic[33]
Chicago Tribune[34]
Christgau's Record GuideA[35]
Encyclopedia of Popular Music[36]
Mojo[37]
NME9/10[38]
Q[39]
Rolling Stone[40]
The Rolling Stone Album Guide[41]
Spin[42]

Horses established Smith as one of the biggest names of the New York punk rock scene, alongside contemporary acts such as the Ramones, Blondie and Talking Heads,[43] and it has since been cited as the first significant punk rock album.[44] Chris Jones of BBC Music wrote that the album was a "shock to the system" at the time of its release and still "retains its power to this day."[45] Horses is considered one of the key recordings of the early punk rock movement[46] and a landmark for punk and new wave music in general, inspiring a "raw, almost amateurish energy for the former and critical, engaging reflexivity for the latter," according to writer Chris Smith in his book 101 Albums That Changed Popular Music.[29] The Observer critic Simon Reynolds wrote, "Pipping the Ramones' first album to the post by five months, Horses is generally considered not just one of the most startling debuts in rock history but the spark that ignited the punk explosion."[1] In Variety, David Sprague wrote that "Horses — which became the first major-label punk-rock album when Arista unleashed it in 1975 — not only helped spread the gospel of Bowery art-punk around the world, it set the tone for smart, unbending female rockers of generations to come."[47]

Various recording artists have specifically named Horses as an influence on their music.[43] English post-punk band Siouxsie and the Banshees said that the song "Carcass" from their album The Scream, was inspired by Horses.[48] Michael Stipe of R.E.M. bought the album as a high school student and says that it "tore [his] limbs off and put them back on in a whole different order," citing Smith as his primary inspiration for becoming a musician.[23] Morrissey and Johnny Marr shared an appreciation for the record, and one of their early compositions for The Smiths, "The Hand That Rocks the Cradle", is a reworking of "Kimberly".[49] Courtney Love of Hole stated that Horses helped inspire her to become a rock musician,[50] while Viv Albertine of The Slits stated that Horses "absolutely and completely changed my life", adding: "Us girls never stood in front of a mirror posing as if we had a guitar because we had no role models. So, when Patti Smith came along, it was huge. She was groundbreakingly different."[3]

In 1992, NME placed Horses at first place in its list of "20 Near-as-Damn-It Perfect Initial Efforts", and it has also ranked on various lists of the greatest albums of the 1970s.[51] Q magazine included it in its 2002 list of the 100 greatest punk albums.[52] In addition to these accolades, Horses has also been considered one of the finest albums in recorded music history.[53] In 2003, the album was ranked number 44 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time.[54] In 2006, Time named it as one of the All-TIME 100 Albums,[55] and three years later, it was preserved by the Library of Congress into the National Recording Registry for being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant."[56]

30th anniversary edition

For the 30th anniversary of the original album, a live version was recorded on June 25, 2005 in the Royal Festival Hall at the Meltdown festival, which Smith curated. It followed the same running order as the original release of Horses, and featured Tom Verlaine on guitar and Flea on bass guitar. The live set was released November 8, 2005 as the second disc of a double CD titled Horses/Horses, with the digitally remastered version of the original 1975 album, along with the bonus track "My Generation", on the first disc. The album was recorded and mixed by Emery Dobyns.

Track listing

Side one

No. TitleWriter(s) Length
1. "Gloria" (Part I: "In Excelsis Deo"; Part II: "Gloria (Version)")Patti Smith (Part I), Van Morrison (Part II) 5:57
2. "Redondo Beach"  Smith, Richard Sohl, Lenny Kaye 3:26
3. "Birdland"  Smith, Sohl, Kaye, Ivan Kral 9:15
4. "Free Money"  Smith, Kaye 3:52

Side two

No. TitleWriter(s) Length
1. "Kimberly"  Smith, Allen Lanier, Kral 4:27
2. "Break It Up"  Smith, Tom Verlaine 4:04
3. "Land" (Part I: "Horses"; Part II: "Land, of a Thousand Dances"; Part III: "La Mer(de)")Smith (Parts I and III), Chris Kenner (Part II), Fats Domino (Part II) 9:25
4. "Elegie"  Smith, Lanier 2:57

Personnel

Band
Additional personnel

Charts

Chart (1976) Peak
position
Dutch Albums (MegaCharts)[57] 18
US Billboard 200[58] 47
Chart (2007) Peak
position
UK Albums (OCC)[59] 157

Release history

Date Label Format Catalog no.
December 13, 1975 Arista LP 4066
June 18, 1996 CD 18827
November 8, 2005 Sony BMG 671445
June 30, 2007 CD, LP 37927
October 8, 2007 Arista LP 15972

Bibliography

References

  1. 1 2 3 4 5 6 Reynolds, Simon (May 22, 2005). "'Even as a child, I felt like an alien'". The Observer. Retrieved September 11, 2016.
  2. 1 2 Huey, Steve. "Patti Smith". AllMusic. Retrieved October 6, 2015.
  3. 1 2 Williams, Holly (May 30, 2015). "Patti Smith's Horses: Lenny Kaye, Viv Albertine and more pay homage to the iconic album". The Independent. Retrieved September 11, 2016.
  4. ↑ "Intersections: Patti Smith, Poet Laureate of Punk". NPR. April 12, 2004. Retrieved October 8, 2015.
  5. ↑ Marsh, Dave (January 1, 1976). "Patti Smith: Her Horses Got Wings, They Can Fly". Rolling Stone. Retrieved September 11, 2016.
  6. 1 2 3 4 O'Brien, Lucy (August 25, 1996). "How We Met". The Independent. Retrieved September 11, 2016.
  7. ↑ Shaw 2008, p. 93.
  8. ↑ Tarr 2008, p. 98.
  9. 1 2 Perone, James E. (2012). "Adding Punk Attitude to the Mix, 1974–1988". The Album: A Guide to Pop Music's Most Provocative, Influential, and Important Creations. ABC-CLIO. p. 42. ISBN 0-313-37906-8.
  10. 1 2 Barton, Laura (April 17, 2015). "Patti Smith: punk's poet laureate heads back on the road for her sins". The Guardian. Retrieved October 8, 2015.
  11. ↑ "'Even as a child, I felt like an alien'". The Observer. May 22, 2005. Retrieved October 8, 2015.
  12. ↑ Shaw 2008, p. 4.
  13. ↑ Klinge, Steve (April 1999). "Patti Smith Complete: Lyrics, Reflections, & Notes For The Future". CMJ New Music Monthly (68): 59. Retrieved October 8, 2015.
  14. 1 2 3 Reynolds, Simon (December 2005). "Patti Smith: Horses". Uncut (103).
  15. ↑ Johnstone, Nick (2012). Patti Smith: A Biography. Music Sales Group. p. 74. ISBN 9780857127785.
  16. 1 2 3 4 Smith, Patti (2012). Just Kids. A & C Black. pp. 249–53. ISBN 0-060-93622-3.
  17. ↑ Arp, Louis (November 26, 2005). "Patti Smith – Horses". Sputnikmusic. Retrieved October 7, 2015.
  18. ↑ Paytress, Mark (2006). Break It Up: Patti Smith's Horses and the Remaking of Rock 'n' Roll. Piatkus Books. p. 260. ISBN 0-749-95107-9.
  19. 1 2 Thorgerson, Storm; Powell, Aubrey (1999). 100 Best Album Covers: The Stories Behind the Sleeves (1st American ed.). Dorling Kindersley. p. 74. ISBN 0-7894-4951-X.
  20. 1 2 Kot, Greg (24 October 2014). "Patti Smith on literary heroes, role models and Sinatra". Carroll County Times. Retrieved 20 March 2015.
  21. ↑ "The Image: Patti Smith by Robert Mapplethorpe". A First Class Riot. Retrieved 20 March 2015.
  22. ↑ Paglia, Camille (1992). Sex, Art and American Culture: New Essays, ISBN 978-0-679-74101-5. p. 45
  23. 1 2 3 4 Wendell, Eric (2014). Patti Smith: America's Punk Rock Rhapsodist. Rowman & Littlefield. pp. 37–38. ISBN 0-810-88690-1.
  24. ↑ Rockwell, John (February 12, 1976). "Patti Smith: Horses". Rolling Stone. Archived from the original on March 25, 2008. Retrieved October 6, 2015.
  25. ↑ Bangs, Lester (February 1976). "Stagger Lee Was a Woman". Creem.
  26. ↑ Christgau, Robert (December 1, 1975). "Consumer Guide". The Village Voice. Retrieved October 6, 2015.
  27. ↑ Ingham, Jonh (November 20, 1975). "Patti Smith: Horses (Arista Import)". Sounds. Retrieved October 6, 2015.
  28. ↑ Murray, Charles Shaar (November 1975). "Weird Scenes Inside Gasoline Alley". NME. Retrieved January 2, 2010.
  29. 1 2 Smith, Chris (2009). 101 Albums That Changed Popular Music. Oxford University Press. p. 120. ISBN 0-195-37371-5.
  30. ↑ "The 1975 Pazz & Jop Critics Poll". The Village Voice. December 29, 1975. Retrieved October 6, 2015.
  31. ↑ "Albums & Tracks Of The Year – 1975". NME. Retrieved October 7, 2015.
  32. ↑ Christgau, Robert (December 17, 1979). "Decade Personal Best: '70s". The Village Voice. Retrieved October 6, 2015.
  33. ↑ Ruhlmann, William. "Horses – Patti Smith". AllMusic. Retrieved January 2, 2010.
  34. ↑ Kot, Greg (June 17, 1996). "Back For More". Chicago Tribune. Retrieved September 12, 2016.
  35. ↑ Christgau, Robert. "Patti Smith: Horses". RobertChristgau.com. Retrieved January 2, 2010.
  36. ↑ Larkin, Colin (2007). The Encyclopedia of Popular Music (5th ed.). Omnibus Press. ISBN 0-195-31373-9.
  37. ↑ "Patti Smith: Horses". Mojo (159): 124. February 2007.
  38. ↑ "Patti Smith: Horses". NME: 45. July 20, 1996.
  39. ↑ "Patti Smith: Horses". Q (122): 154. November 1996.
  40. ↑ "Patti Smith". Rolling Stone. Archived from the original on 18 September 2007. Retrieved 6 July 2016.
  41. ↑ Brackett, Nathan; Hoard, Christian, eds. (2004). The New Rolling Stone Album Guide (4th ed.). Simon & Schuster. pp. 751–52. ISBN 0-743-20169-8.
  42. ↑ Marchese, David (September 2008). "Discography: Patti Smith". Spin. 24 (9): 108. Retrieved October 8, 2015.
  43. 1 2 Dowling, Stephen (June 17, 2015). "Behind rock's finest album cover: A timeless friendship". BBC Music. Retrieved October 7, 2015.
  44. ↑ Schindler, Scott (1996). Rolling Stone's Alt Rock-a-rama. Delta. ISBN 0-385-31360-8.
  45. ↑ Jones, Chris (February 23, 2007). "Patti Smith Horses Review". BBC Music. Retrieved January 2, 2010.
  46. ↑ Jeffrey, Don (May 13, 2000). "Patti and Melissa". Billboard. 112 (20): 52. Retrieved October 7, 2015.
  47. ↑ Sprague, David (December 6, 2005). "Review: 'Patti Smith: Horses'". Variety. Retrieved September 11, 2016.
  48. ↑ Birch, Ian (October 21, 1978). "Scream and scream again". Melody Maker. Retrieved April 17, 2010.
  49. ↑ Goddard, Simon (2006). The Smiths: Songs That Saved Your Life (3rd ed.). Reynolds & Hearn. ISBN 1-905287-14-3.
  50. ↑ "Courtney Love". Behind the Music. June 22, 2010. VH1.
  51. ↑ "Horses". Acclaimed Music. Retrieved February 28, 2008.
  52. ↑ "100 Best Punk Albums". Q (190): 141. May 2002.
  53. ↑ Brandle, Lars (August 20, 2015). "Patti Smith Sings 'Aqua Teen Hunger Force' Elegy: Listen". Billboard. Retrieved October 7, 2015.
  54. ↑ "The RS 500 Greatest Albums of All Time". Rolling Stone. November 18, 2003. Retrieved February 28, 2008.
  55. ↑ Tyrangiel, Josh (November 2, 2006). "Horses". Time. Retrieved October 6, 2015.
  56. ↑ "The Sounds of Fighting Men, Howlin' Wolf and Comedy Icon Among 25 Named to the National Recording Registry". Library of Congress. June 23, 2010. Retrieved October 6, 2015.
  57. ↑ "Dutchcharts.nl – Patti Smith – Horses" (in Dutch). Hung Medien. Retrieved April 25, 2012.
  58. ↑ "Patti Smith – Chart history" Billboard 200 for Patti Smith. Retrieved February 28, 2008.
  59. ↑ "Chart Log UK: DJ S – The System Of Life". Zobbel.de. Retrieved April 25, 2012.
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