HORSES

This year marks the fiftieth anniversary of "Horses", the debut album by punk poetess, Patti Smith. This progressive collection of edgy rock, unexpectedly utilizing pop music standards at its core, wasn't a big seller at its time of release but has since gone on to become a highly influential work and continues to inspire to this day. To celebrate this recording, which has been preserved into the National Recording Registry in 2009 and inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2021, "Horses" has been re-released and features remastered tracks, unreleased songs and demos.

Smith, who came from a middle-class background growing up in Chicago and Philadelphia before the family settled in New Jersey, met photographer, Robert Mapplethorpe in New York. The two began a brief romantic relationship and created art together. She later became involved with the playwright, Sam Shepard and together wrote the one-act play, "Cowboy Mouth". Around this time, Smith began to further explore writing poetry. Music entered Smith's life when she began publicly reading her poetry accompanied by Lenny Kaye on electric guitar in 1971. Interested in expanding their sound, Smith and Kaye added musicians, Richard Sohl on piano, Ivan Král on bass and Jay Dee Daugherty on drums which created a band. A single was recorded and the band began playing sets at CBGB in New York City. Clive Davis, the legendary record executive who had just started his own label, Arista Records, caught them on stage. Highly impressed, Davis enthusiastically signed Smith and band to a recording contract.

With John Cale, a founding member of the rock band, the Velvet Underground on board to produce, "Horses" was briskly recorded over a few weeks in September 1975 and released in November of that year. Inspired by the work of the surrealist French poet, Arthur Rimbaud, Smith wanted to merge the introspection of poetry with the raw energy of rock and roll. Opening with the still provocative line, "Jesus died for somebody's sins but not mine" on a merging of her original song, "In Excelsis Deo" and a cover of Van Morrison's "Gloria", the album (which features a riveting photograph of an androgynous Smith by Mapplethorpe on the cover) succeeded by combining the unbridled, improvised quality of a live performance while bringing on more polished production needed for a professional recording. And while "Horses" didn't receive much radio play, critics raved about the album, praising the collection for its intriguing new direction for rock and roll and the welcome introduction of an exciting new artist.

Smith would go on to record three more albums, even scoring a top-twenty pop hit with "Because The Night" co-written by Bruce Springsteen in 1978, before putting her career on hold to raise her family in Michigan throughout most of the 1980's. In 1988, Smith returned to music with the album, "Dream of Life" and has continued her career ever since. She would go on to create other recordings, tours, written two best-selling books and had her photography displayed in a museum exhibition.