Explore Patti Smith’s Horses (in 5 Minutes)

♪ He's being surrounded by ♪

♪ Horses horses horses horses ♪

♪ Coming in in all directions ♪

[Narrator] The first album to emerge

from the groundbreaking scene at New York's CBGBs,

Patti Smith's 1975 debut Horses was a monumental combination

of symbolist poetry and snarling guitars.

As well as a towering opening statement for someone

who just a few years earlier

wasn't even considered a musician.

Beginning in the early 70s as a poet, actress and critic,

Smith worked her way into rock through spoken word.

Opening for the New York Dolls and developing

a musical poetry act with guitarist and writer, Lenny Kaye.

Evolving into a quintet, and signing to Arista Records

on Lou Reid's personal recommendation,

Smith came away with a seven album contract, $750,000

and perhaps most importantly, full creative control.

Horses opens with its most infamous line.

Smith singing, Jesus died for somebody's sins but not mine.

To start a re-imagined version of 1964's Gloria,

by Van Morrison's group Them,

repurposed from her early poem Oath,

it teemed with the thrill of rebellion.

Retitled Gloria, In Excelsis Deo,

it sets the tone for an album that fuses Smith's

literary ambitions with her rock and roll passions.

♪ Gloria ♪

♪ Gloria ♪

Showing off the adventurous musicians she found to match

her torrence of images, Smith conceived the song Birdland

after reading A Book of Dreams.

An omage to controversial psycho analysis Wilhelm Reich,

by his son Peter.

As she fantasizes about Reigh returning from the dead

to pick up his son in a UFO,

her band reels out nine minutes of escalating improvisation

in keeping with the song's title.

A reference to the story of New York jazz club,

where John Coltrane recorded

one of his most famous live albums.

♪ Dreaming in animation ♪

♪ It's all gonna split his skull ♪

♪ It's gonna come out like a black bouquet shining ♪

♪ Like a fist that's gonna shoot them up ♪

♪ Like light, like Mohammed Boxer ♪

♪ Take them up, up, up, up, up ♪

The longest track on Horses,

at nearly nine and a half minutes,

Land is actually three sings in one.

Starting with his spoken intro and a chant

of the album's title, the band moves into a swinging cover

of Chris Kenner's early 60s soul tune

and garage rock staple, Land of 1000 Dances, and ends

with nine vocal tracks mixed together by Smith herself.

A spirited collage, he later admitted frightened her.

Based on a dream about the death of Jimi Hendrix,

whose Electric Lady Studios sat just blocks

from Smith's own home, and where the band

was then recording Horses, Land goes in so many

different directions, it's like a mini album of its own.

♪ Do you know how to pony like bony maroney ♪

♪ Do you know how to twist, well it goes like this ♪

The tension that runs through Horses, came in part

from Smith's choice for producer.

Former Velvet Underground member, John Cale.

Cale drove the group to both tighten and expand their songs,

creating a contentious but productive dynamic

with the strong willed Smith.

I went to pick out an expensive watercolor painting,

she said of recruiting Cale,

and instead I got a mirror.

Horses closer Elegie, was recorded on September 18, 1975,

the fifth anniversary of Hendrix's passing.

Smith said the song was about those we'd had lost,

were losing, and would ultimately lose.

♪ There must be something I can dream tonight ♪

♪ The air is filled with the moves of you ♪

Her obsession with death on Horses

apparently took a toll.

By the end of the sessions,

she had shrunk to a mere 93 pounds.

But Horses is even more about triumph

and the glory of words and music

capturing pure emotions and unfiltered reality.

The album's immediate success selling 200,000 copies

within a year, and cracking the top 50,

was surpassed by its lasting influence.

Beloved by a generation of Indie artists

like Michael Stipe, Sonic Youth,

Cat Power, and PJ Harvey.

Among many others as well as newer stars like Lorde,

who declared, there's no better music idol

for young women.

Horses was released on December 13, 1975.

With a defiantly unglamorous cover portrait

by Smith's longtime companion, Robert Mapplethorpe.

A photo which enraged Arista Records head, Clive Davis.

But Smith refused to let his label retouch it.

Claiming it would be akin to having plastic surgery.

It is that love of raw reality that courses

through the stripped down music of Horses.

A bracing expression of what Smith described

as three chords merged with the power of the word,

Horses remains a tense and mystically powerful mix

of mythical poetry, rock history, and pre-punk simplicity.