PATTI SMITH: HORSES

Performer: P. Smith
Composer: Patti Smith
Number of discs: 1
Barcode: 4260019712721
Label: Speakers Corner
Format: LP
Genre: Pop/Rock
Year: 2006

Patti Smith, “the first poet to translate her verses into rock ’n’ roll and to open the doors of her hallucinatory imagination to avant-garde rock fans” (New York Times), began her musical career in a completely unconventional way, with a poetry reading accompanied by guitarist Lenny Kaye. Later, VIP photographer Robert Mapplethorpe financed Hey Joe, her first single, which would become a true punk-rock cult classic.

Encouraged by the success of this record, in 1975 Patti Smith released Horses, an album that combined rock structures with spoken rhythms, inaugurating the punk-trash era. Rock fans were literally electrified by this album, calling it “the best garage sound of the seventies” (Cream Magazine) and stating that Smith had “taken the poetry of Rimbaud, Burroughs, Thomas, and the Velvet Underground to create a masterpiece that penetrates directly into the listener’s blood” (Sound Magazine).

Her subsequent albums were dismissed as sentimental and self-celebratory, due to the absence of the metallic edge and the direct, immediate language of Horses. All of this makes Horses the most important and significant album by one of the most visionary rock singers.

Recorded in January 1975 at Electric Ladyland Studios by Bernie Kirsh.