Horses is the debut studio album by American musician Patti Smith, released on November 10, 1975 by Arista Records. Smith, supported by her regular backing band, recorded the album at Electric Lady Studios in September 1975, choosing former Velvet Underground member John Cale as the album's producer.
The music on Horses was informed by the minimalist aesthetic of the punk rock genre, then in its formative years. Smith and her band composed the album's songs using simple chord progressions, while also breaking from punk tradition in their propensity for improvisation and embrace of ideas from avant-garde and other musical styles. With Horses, Smith drew upon her backgrounds in rock music and poetry, aiming to create an album combining both forms. Her lyrics were alternately rooted in her own personal experiences, particularly with her family, and in more fantastical imagery. Horses was additionally inspired by Smith's reflections on the previous era of rock music—with two of its songs being adapted in part from 1960s rock standards, and others containing lyrical allusions and tributes to past rock performers—and her hopes for the music's future.
At the time of its release, Horses experienced modest commercial success and reached the top 50 of the Billboard 200 album chart, while being widely acclaimed by music critics. Recognized as a seminal recording in the history of punk and later rock movements, Horses has appeared in numerous lists of the greatest albums of all time. In 2009, it was selected by the Library of Congress for preservation into the National Recording Registry as a "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" work.
Background Patti Smith and her backing band gave frequent live performances throughout 1974, and by the following year they had established themselves as a popular act within the New York City underground rock music scene, especially elevated in early 1975 by their highly attended two-month residency at the New York City club CBGB with the band Television. The hype surrounding the residency brought Smith to the attention of music industry executive Clive Davis, who was scouting for artists to sign to his recently launched label Arista Records. After being impressed by one of her live performances at CBGB, Davis offered Smith a seven-album recording deal with Arista, and she signed to the label in April 1975.
Smith had written poetry for several years before becoming a musician, and entered the music industry because she thought "the presentation of poetry wasn't vibrant enough". For her debut album, her primary aim was to merge poetry and rock music, which then developed into a "larger mission" to "pump blood back into the heart of rock'n'roll". The title Horses reflected Smith's desire for a rejuvenation of rock music, which she found had grown "calm" in reaction to the social turmoil of the 1960s and the deaths of numerous prominent rock musicians of that era. "Psychologically, somewhere in our hearts," she stated shortly after the album's release, "we were all screwed up because those people died... We all had to pull ourselves together. To me, that's why our record's called Horses. We had to pull the reins on ourselves to recharge ourselves... We've gotten ourselves back together. It's time to let the horses loose again. We're ready to start moving again."
Smith later reflected that she had envisioned Horses as a record bridging the "great artists that we had just lost" and the next generation of rockers, who she hoped would "be less materialistic, more bonded with the people and not so glamorous", and that from a more humanistic perspective, she had also aimed "to reach out to other disenfranchised people" like herself. Smith said, "I was consciously trying to make a record that would make a certain type of person not feel alone. People who were like me, different... I wasn't targeting the whole world. I wasn't trying to make a hit record."
Recording
Arista arranged for Smith to begin recording her debut album in August 1975. At Smith's suggestion, the label planned to book studio time for Smith with producer Tom Dowd at Criteria in Miami, but Dowd's close association with rival label Atlantic Records stalled these plans. Smith had a change of heart and instead set out to enlist Welsh musician John Cale, formerly of the New York City rock band the Velvet Underground, to produce Horses after she was impressed by the raw sound of his solo albums, such as 1974's Fear. Cale accepted, already familiar with Smith's band and being acquainted with the band's bassist Ivan Král.
Horses was recorded at Electric Lady Studios in New York City, with Smith retaining the same backing band with whom she performed live at the time—Jay Dee Daugherty on drums, Lenny Kaye on guitar, Ivan Král 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 participated in the recording sessions as guest musicians, performing on the songs "Elegie" and "Break It Up", respectively.
The first studio session was held on September 2. Cale later recalled that the band initially "sounded awful" and played out of tune due to their use of damaged instruments, compelling him to procure the band new instruments before commencing recording. The differences between the work process of Cale, who was an experienced recording artist, and the process of Smith, who at that point was primarily a live performer, became apparent in the early stages of recording and were a source of tension between the two artists, who frequently clashed in the studio. Lenny Kaye also highlighted the irreconcilable differences between their musical visions for the album, with Cale picturing "a more arranged record, one fleshed out with intriguing sound palettes and melodic lines", and Smith and her band preferring a more spontaneous approach to playing their material, akin to their live performances. The final album was ultimately informed by both perspectives, making use of multitracking and overdubbing on its more structured songs, while still capturing the musical improvisation that typified the band's live act. Cale wished to augment the band's approach on certain songs with string instruments, but Smith vehemently opposed this idea. Lanier, who was Smith's boyfriend at the time, did not get along with Cale, nor—particularly so—with Verlaine, who had previously dated Smith. This tension culminated with Lanier and Verlaine getting into a physical altercation during the final session, held on September 18.
For several years after the album's release, Smith often downplayed Cale's contributions to Horses and suggested that she and her band had ignored his suggestions entirely. In a 1976 interview with Rolling Stone, Smith described her experience:
Cale said in 1996 that Smith initially struck him as "someone with an incredibly volatile mouth who could handle any situation", and that as producer on Horses he wanted to capture the energy of her live performances, noting that there "was a lot of power in Patti's use of language, in the way images collided with one another." He likened their working relationship during recording to "an immutable force meeting an immovable object." Smith would later attribute much of the tension between herself and Cale to her inexperience with formal studio recording, recalling that she was "very, very suspicious, very guarded and hard to work with" and "made it difficult for him to do some of the things he had to do." She expressed gratitude for Cale's persistence in working with her and her band, and found that his production made the most out of their "adolescent and honest flaws".
Musical style
Smith characterized Horses as "three-chord rock merged with the power of the word". Consequences Lior Phillips noted that the minimalist quality of the album's music "matched the tone of" the nascent punk rock genre, which had emerged in New York City in the mid-1970s, and counted Smith, Television, and fellow CBGB regulars such as the Ramones as practitioners. Author Joe Tarr identified a punk sensibility in the music's reliance on simple chord progressions, and William Ruhlmann of AllMusic also cited Lenny Kaye's rudimentary guitar playing and the "anarchic spirit" of Smith's vocals as being representative of punk. Tarr wrote that the band "proudly flaunted a garage rock aesthetic" on Horses, while Smith "sang with the delirious release of an inspired amateur", emphasizing "honest passion" over technical proficiency. Smith's vocals on the album alternate between being sung and spoken, an approach that, according to Peter Murphy of Hot Press, "challenged the very notion of a demarcation" between the two forms.
AllMusic critic Steve Huey observed that Horses borrowed ideas from the avant-garde, with the music showcasing the band's free jazz-inspired interplay and improvisation, while still remaining "firmly rooted in primal three-chord rock & roll." He called Horses "essentially the first art punk album." Smith and her band's musical improvisation differentiated them from most of their punk contemporaries, whose songs rarely diverged from straightforward three-chord structures. Throughout Horses, they also tempered their punk sound with elements of other musical styles, balancing more conventional rock songs with excursions into reggae ("Redondo Beach") and jazz ("Birdland").
Lyrics Fiona Sturges of The Guardian described Smith's lyrics on Horses as being steeped in "intricate phrasing and imagery" that "deliberately blurred the lines between punk and poetry", while CMJ writer Steve Klinge found that they recalled the energy of Beat poetry and the "revolutionary spirit" of French poet Arthur Rimbaud, one of Smith's primary influences. Smith drew on different sources of lyrical inspiration for Horses, with some songs being autobiographical and others being rooted in dreams and fantastical scenarios. She left the genders of the songs' protagonists ambiguous, a stylistic choice she said was "learnt from Joan Baez, who often sang songs that had a male point of view", while also serving as a declaration "that as an artist, I can take any position, any voice, that I want."
Smith's experiences with her family inspired specific songs on Horses. "Redondo Beach", whose lyrics concern a woman who commits suicide following a quarrel with the song's narrator, was written by Smith after an incident involving her and her sister Linda. The two had gotten into a heated argument, prompting Linda to leave their shared apartment and not return until the next day. "Kimberly" is a dedication to its namesake, Smith's younger sister, and finds the singer recounting a childhood memory of holding Kimberly in her arms during a lightning storm. In "Free Money", Smith describes growing up in poverty in New Jersey and recalls her mother fantasizing about winning the lottery.