Patti Smith - Horses
Written by: Moti Kupfer
Release date - 10.11.1975
"The whole world is a very narrow bridge," preached Rabbi Nachman of Breslov, adding, "and the main thing is not to fear at all."
A bridge is an engineering structure whose purpose is to allow pedestrians and vehicles to cross physical obstacles safely.
A bridge between people will be the point where two different people find their common ground despite their differences, and how much we need such a bridge in our country.
In addition, a bridge can connect past, present and future, just as Patti Smith envisioned "Horses", her debut album, released on November 10, 1975.
Smith imagined "Horses" as an album bridging the "great artists we had just lost" and the next generation of rockers, whom she hoped would be "less materialistic, more connected to people, and not so glamorous". From a more humanistic point of view, she also aimed "to reach out to people who are disadvantaged", like her.
Smith said: "I consciously tried to make an album that would make a certain kind of human being not feel alone. People who were different, like me. I wasn't aiming at the whole world, and I wasn't trying to make a hit-oriented album."
Arista Records, with which Smith had signed some time earlier, arranged for her to begin recording her debut album in August 1975. They planned to book her studio time with producer Tom Dowd at Criteria Studios in Miami, but Dowd's close association with rival label Atlantic Records delayed those plans.
Smith changed her mind and instead decided to enlist the Welsh musician John Cale, formerly of the New York rock band "Velvet Underground", to produce "Horses", after being impressed by the raw sound of his solo albums, especially "Fear" from 1974. Cale agreed, already familiar with Smith's band and especially with its bassist, Ivan Kral.
The album was recorded at Electric Lady Studios in New York, with Smith keeping the same backing band with which she was performing live at the time: Jay Dee Daugherty on drums, Lenny Kaye on guitar, Ivan Kral on bass guitar and Richard Sohl on keyboards. For the album, Smith and her band recorded several songs that were already fixtures of their sets at CBGB, including "Gloria", "Redondo Beach", "Birdland" and "Land".
Allen Lanier of "Blue Öyster Cult" and Tom Verlaine of "Television" took part in the recordings as guest musicians, performing the songs "Elegie" and "Break It Up", respectively. The first studio session was held on September 2.
John Cale later recalled that the band sounded terrible at first and played out of tune because of defective instruments, which forced him to buy the band new instruments before recording began.
The gaps between Cale's working process, as an experienced recording artist, and Smith's, who at that point was mainly a live performer, emerged in the early stages of recording as a source of tension between the two artists, who often clashed in the studio.
Lenny Kaye also stressed the unbridgeable differences between their musical visions for the album: Cale imagined "a more orderly album, shaped with sounds and melodic lines", while Smith and her band preferred a more spontaneous approach to playing their material, similar to their live shows.
The final album was ultimately shaped by both perspectives, using multitracking and heavy overdubbing in its more structured songs, while emphasizing the musical improvisation that characterized the band's live performances.
Cale wanted to combine the band's approach on certain songs with strings, but Smith strongly objected to the idea. Lanier, who was Smith's partner at the time, did not get along with Cale, and especially not with Verlaine, who had previously dated Smith. The tension peaked when Lanier and Verlaine got into a physical altercation during the final session, on September 18.
In a 1976 interview with Rolling Stone, Smith described her experience: "My choice of John was about as arbitrary as choosing Rimbaud. I saw the cover of the book 'Illuminations' with Rimbaud's face, you know, he looked so cool, just like Bob Dylan. So Rimbaud (Arthur) became my favorite poet."
"I looked at the cover of the album 'Fear', and I chose 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 completely crazy artist. I went to pick out an expensive watercolor painting, and instead I bought a mirror. It was really like 'A Season in Hell', for both of us."
Cale, who came with seniority, failed to ease Smith's suspicion and even failed at mediating the collaboration between them. As a young and extremely opinionated artist, Smith sought her independence at all costs, even at the expense of her producer.
Smith drew on various lyrical sources of inspiration for "Horses": some of the songs were autobiographical, while others were rooted in dreams and fantastical scenarios. She left the genders of the songs' protagonists ambiguous, a stylistic choice that, in her words, was "learned from Joan Baez, who often sang songs from a male point of view".
Smith's experiences with her family inspired specific songs, such as "Redondo Beach", whose lyrics deal with a woman who takes her own life after a quarrel with the song's narrator. Smith wrote it after an incident involving her and her sister Linda: the two got into a heated argument, which caused Linda to leave their shared apartment and not return until the next day.
The song "Kimberly" is a dedication to Smith's younger sister, who bears its name, in which the singer recounts a childhood memory of holding Kimberly in her arms during a thunderstorm.
In "Free Money", Smith describes her childhood in abject poverty in New Jersey, recalling her mother fantasizing about winning the lottery.
The song "Birdland" was inspired by the book "A Book of Dreams" by Peter Reich, the son of the Austrian psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich. The song revolves around a narrative in which Peter, during his father's funeral, imagines himself leaving the place in a UFO powered by his father's spirit. Another song inspired by the book is "Cloudbusting" by Kate Bush.
Inspired by "The Doors" frontman Jim Morrison, she wrote "Break It Up". Its lyrics are based on Smith's memories of her visit to Morrison's grave at Père Lachaise cemetery, and on a dream in which she saw Morrison with wings, stuck to a marble slab, trying and eventually succeeding in freeing himself from the stone.
Smith, who greatly admired Jimi Hendrix, recorded the requiem "Elegie" as a tribute to him, including a quotation of a line from his song "1983 (A Merman I Should Turn to Be)". The song was recorded, at Smith's request, on the fifth anniversary of Hendrix's death, which fell on September 18, the last day of the recordings. Smith said that the song was also meant to pay tribute to other rock artists who had passed away, such as Jim Morrison, Brian Jones and Janis Joplin.
Two songs on "Horses" are partial adaptations of classic rock. "Gloria" is a reworking of the 1964 song by Van Morrison's band, "Them", combined with verses from Smith's poem "Oath".
The other, "Land", includes the first verse of Chris Kenner's 1962 song "Land of a Thousand Dances". In "Land", Smith weaves the imagery of Kenner's song into a complex narrative about a character named Johnny, and includes an allusion to the homoerotic hero of a similar name in William S. Burroughs's 1971 novel "The Wild Boys", with further references to Arthur Rimbaud and, indirectly, to Jimi Hendrix, whom Smith imagines as the song's hero: dreaming of a simple rock 'n' roll song, which takes him to all those other worlds.
The characterization of Johnny in "Land" was also inspired by photographer Robert Mapplethorpe, a close friend of Smith's, who took the photograph of her that was used for the album cover.
Mapplethorpe took the photo in the penthouse apartment of his partner, Sam Wagstaff, in Greenwich Village. Smith, bathed in natural light, wears a plain white shirt that she bought at a Salvation Army store, with a black jacket slung over her shoulder and her favorite black ribbon around her collar. A horse pin that Allen Lanier gave her is attached to the jacket. Smith described her appearance as reminiscent of the French poet Charles Baudelaire, and the way she carried the jacket as reminiscent of the American singer and actor Frank Sinatra.
She said that Mapplethorpe "took about twelve pictures, and around the eighth he announced, 'I got it.'"
The feminist writer Camille Paglia later referred to the cover photograph of "Horses" as "one of the greatest pictures ever taken, centered on a woman".
Generations of rock musicians grew up influenced by the album, and Smith became a guru to many female musicians who aspired to bring forth their voices and create kicking rock music no less in quality than that of the men.
Among the musicians she influenced: "The Smiths", "R.E.M." and "PJ Harvey", and of course the punk genre, which was already taking shape, and "Horses" gave it and other CBGB bands a push forward on their way to finding their own niche and corner.
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