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- Date Released: November 1, 1975
- Genre: Rock/Pop
- Style: Rock
- Label: Arista
- Copyright: (P) 1975, 1996 RCA/JIVE Label Group, a unit of Sony Music Entertainment
An evocative postcard from the urban art underground
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We Say...
Artists as unconventional as Patti Smith rarely got to release a major-label record in 1975, and "record" is exactly what producer John Cale made: Horses is less a typical rock album than a snapshot documenting the artist's performance poetry set to music. What Smith and her cohorts — guitarist Lenny Kaye (also a music journalist, but a lifer, not a short-timer), pianist Richard Sohl, guitarist/bassist Ivan Kral and drummer Jay Dee Daugherty — created was a feminist life force, a world of vehement independence barely linked to established form. Yelping "G-L-O-R-I-A" in a track that begins and ends "Jesus died for somebody's sins…but not mine" means nothing in the realms of garage punk or Top 40; Smith simply hotwired the Van Morrison song as a vehicle to joyride. Compared to the commercial preening of then-labelmates Eric Carmen and the Bay City Rollers, the spare and airy Horses — in which everything is held in check except for Smith's overflowing energy — is closer to folk music, a postcard from the urban art underground. If Smith sometimes gets carried away with the melodrama of her jabbing declamation, her words are reliably affecting, a roiling sea of imagery and emotion. Few albums are so verbal: "Gloria," "Birdland," "Redondo Beach" and "Land" (which interpolates "Land of 1000 Dances," the 1965 hit for Cannibal and the Headhunters) are short stories with accompaniment, delivered with much more passion than fiction usually gets. As the lack of a developed narrative in "Break It Up" (with guitar by Tom Verlaine of Television) does nothing to blur the evocation of loss, the lack of polished production does nothing to blur the strength of this unique debut.
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They Say...
It isn't hard to make the case for Patti Smith as a punk rock progenitor based on her debut album, which anticipated the new wave by a year or so: the simple, crudely played rock & roll, featuring Lenny Kaye's rudimentary guitar work, the anarchic spirit of Smith's vocals, and the emotional and imaginative nature of her lyrics -- all prefigure the coming movement as it evolved on both sides of the Atlantic. Smith is a rock critic's dream, a poet as steeped in '60s garage rock as she is in French Symbolism; "Land" carries on from the Doors' "The End," marking her as a successor to Jim Morrison, while the borrowed choruses of "Gloria" and "Land of a Thousand Dances" are more in tune with the era of sampling than they were in the '70s. Producer John Cale respected Smith's primitivism in a way that later producers did not, and the loose, improvisatory song structures worked with her free verse to create something like a new spoken word/musical art form: Horses was a hybrid, the sound of a post-Beat poet, as she put it, "dancing around to the simple rock & roll song."
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| 01. |  |
Gloria |
5:53 |
|
| 02. | |
Redondo Beach |
3:24 |
|
| 03. | |
Birdland |
9:14 |
|
| 04. | |
Free Money |
3:50 |
|
| 05. | |
Kimberly |
4:25 |
|
| 06. | |
Break It Up |
4:00 |
|
| 07. | |
Land |
9:26 |
|
| 08. | |
Elegie |
2:41 |
|
| 09. | |
My Generation |
3:16 |
|
09 Total Tracks, 46:09 Total Length
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Credits
- John Cale - Bass // John Cale - Producer // Tom Verlaine - Guitar // Richard Aaron - Photography // Frank d'Augusta - Assistant Engineer // Jay Dee Daugherty - Drums // Jay Dee Daugherty - Musical Consultant // Lenny Kaye - Bass // Lenny Kaye - Guitar // Lenny Kaye - Vocals // Bernie Kirsh - Engineer // Bernie Kirsh - Mastering // Ivan Kral - Bass // Ivan Kral - Guitar // Ivan Kral - Keyboards // Ivan Kral - Vocals // Allen Lanier - Guitar // Allen Lanier - Keyboards // Allen Lanier - Producer // Bob Ludwig - Mastering // Patti Smith - Guitar // Patti Smith - Guitar // Patti Smith - Vocals // Patti Smith - Vocals // Patti Smith - Main Performer // Patti Smith - Main Performer // Patti Smith - Liner Notes // Patti Smith - Liner Notes // Richard Sohl - Piano // Bob Irwin - Mastering // Bob Irwin - Reissue Mastering // Huey "Piano" Smith & the Clowns - Inspiration // Vic Anesini - Mastering // Bob Heimall - Design // Edie Baskin - Photography // Sherri Whitmarsh - Design // Sherri Whitmarsh - Reissue Design // Robert Mapplethorpe - Photography // Bob Gruen - Photography // Chuck Krall - Photography // Danny Fields - Photography
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