17.
Horses – Patti Smith (Arista, 1975):
Just as tempting to include album number two,
Radio Ethiopia, a more lung-heavy stream of human spit, but this is the one that first sent shock waves through the short-hairs of the international authorities with great relish. Coming straight out of rock criticism, Patti had street-credibility to spare and since, when Horses was released, we were still about six months prior to PUNK actually happening (unless you count the first Dictators album) she was able to masquerade as an incredibly urban “singer/songwriter” and the LP actually ascended to #47 on the charts in the winter of 1975/1976, just about the same time another Jersey singer, Bruce Springsteen, was getting his mug plastered on the cover of both
Time and
Newsweek. Patti dug Bruce, Bruce dug Patti (as evidenced a couple years later by the duet, ‘Because the Night’). At that time they both came under the category of “new urban realists,” but anyone who heard Horses knew that a more subterranean element was at work here. Cale’s production was the first tip-off…this was the spawn of the Velvet Underground coming home to roost, and ‘Land,’ on the second side, was the best long song since ‘Sister Ray.’ The skittling guitar of lanky rock critic Lenny Kaye, the sombre piano of Sohl (already used to expert effect on the groundbreaking ‘**** Factory’ single) as well as Patti’s own phantasmagoric free-flight was proof of two things:
- They were not mere “rockers”
- They were not just “punk” dummies (à la the Ramones).
Because of this, she got branded as “art rock” in the first edition of the
Rolling Stone History of Rock but she was art rock like the Velvets, openly embracing the more rough-hewn aspects of rock & roll (and of course it’s been that way ever since and yeah, SHE helped make it happen). Faddishness was in evidence on the reggae knock-off, ‘Redondo Beach,’ and her wrangling of ‘Gloria’ was perhaps the ALL-TIME re-invention of an already-done-to-death motif, as epic a transformation of a sixties war-horse as Hendrix’s ‘Hey Joe’ (or, for that matter, her ‘Hey Joe’…in her eyes nothing was sacred obviously). Her crusading efforts re the Rock itself shone like the sun, which is why, in the Mapplethorpe cover shot where Patti was snapping her suspenders before Siouxsee Sioux was out of her flares, she looks like a warrior getting ready to ride into town on a rented horse to do gun battle with the flabby hide of sheriff-elect Gilbert Doughty. Ride Sally, ride.