First albums this good are pretty damn few and far between.
It's better than the first Roxy album, better than the first Beatles and Stones albums, better than Dylan's first album, as good as the Doors and Who and Hendrix and Velvet Underground albums.
It's hard to think of any other rock artist of recent years who arrived in the studios to make their first major recordings with their work developed to such a depth and level of maturity.
Listen. Last April I saw Patti Smith play CBGB in New York, and she knocked me flat on
my ass, which was impressive since my preconceptions weren't helping her any.
I mean, whenever an act is hyped to me
What I mean is, like our American cousins say, I'm from Missouri. You gotta show me.
Believe me, Jim, she showed me.
OK, she's a lady poetess, which is generally not the stuff of which rock heroism is made.
She also ain't too good-
Plus she's from New York, which means that she isn't available to be checked out at the
grass roots by British audiences, which in turn means that you're going to have to get hip to
her through media instead of discovering her for yourself
Three strikes down. Foreign, female but not stereotypically attractive, and f 'Chrissakes, a
poetess.
Just the stuff to appeal to, let's say, a Mott fan from Bradford. Thing is, it really doesn't
work like that. If you add up what Patti Smith appears to be when viewed from a distance,
and then go see her or (to get nearer to the point) listen to Horses, the result of a
few weeks of madness and desperation in Electric Lady studios with famous Welsh person
John Cale riding herd on the operation, the disparities become apparent.
Horses is some kind of definitive essay on the American night as a state of mind, an
emergence from the dark undercurrent of American rock that spewed up Jim Morrison, Lou
Reed and Dylan's best work.
Like Patti Smith herself, it's strange, askew and flat-
It's night-
Horses is what happens when the fuses blow and the light goes out
'Jesus died for somebody's sins, but not mine ...' Smith's singing voice draws on her
received black influences as well as the teenaged school of girl-
The playing of her band (Lenny Kaye on guitar, Richard Sohl known as 'DNV', an
abbreviation of 'Death in Venice'
In this and so many other ways, Patti Smith's album hips you to just what's wrong with a lot
of other stuff you've been listening to, tips you off as to who's really doing it and who's just
going through the motions.
The first dive into the maelstrom comes with 'Gloria', the old Van Morrison/
It's done with grinding stickshift guitar played off against teethgrinding methedrine piano,
vaguely like the stuff Mike Garson was doing way down in the mix on Aladdin Sane and
strategic areas of Pin Ups.
It's a stunning opener, achieving almost the same psychotic/
In general, there's a Doors feel to the keyboards (particularly the organ) and a Velvets edge
on the guitars, though this is purely coincidental, as no resemblance is intended to anybody
living, dead or intermediate.
'Gloria' is followed up by the album's least impressive track, 'Redondo Beach', which is a
New York impression of reggae (I detect the dread hand of Mr Cale in this track, though he
doesn't actually perform on any instruments) and features Ms Smith doing a strange kind of
JA Dylan vocal. Not the most immediate piece on the album, but kinda charming.
'Birdland', however, is the goods.
Building relentlessly over a slow, obsessive piano with a sawtoothed guitar whining
someway in the distance, Smith wails like the proverbial lost soul
It's chilling as hell, so keep yer woollies on for this one, fear fans.
The first side rides out on a fair piece of decompression with 'Free Money' written for
Smith's current old man, Allan Lanier of Blue Oyster Cult. It's got a kind of 'Johnny
Remember Me' production on the voices and metallic Del Shannon-
When you get over to side two, you happen on to 'Kimberly', a song about Patti's sister of
the same name and very Velvets about the bass and organ, though the latter instrument also
has a fifties/
'Break It Up', co-written with Tom Verlaine of Television, follows.
Verlaine was Patti's last old man (anyway, he was when I saw the two bands together in
April), and he plays guitar on the track, a kind of liquidly malevolent electronic burble.
It starts out as slow, almost blues, before the piano switches into that distant nursery echo
type of riff that'd go down a treat as the soundtrack to a remake of "The Turn of the Screw."
Next up is the album's unquestioned piece de resistance, 'Land', the piece that completely
skulled me out when I saw her do it at CBGB. It's the melange of a mutated 'Land of a
Thousand Dances' (Chris Kenner and Fats Domino would probably haveta undergo intensive
care if they knew what she's done to their song, ma) and a scorching recitation about a kid
getting beat up in a locker-
Except that Jimbo was pretty much preoccupied with his own snake, and Smith's sexuality is
far more outgoing as she rides the horse and the sea comes in and the sexual spiral of
letting go
Kaye balances vicious guitar razor-
The dissociation is dramatized by the over-
It's a falling, possessed performance, fuelled by the kind of energy you run on when there's
no energy left, a death-
Horses is an album in a thousand.
I'm not gonna jive you about how influential it's going to be (in terms of it stimulating
dozens of toy Patti Smiths to come crawling out of the woodwork I hope it has no influence
at all), but, God knows, it's an important album in terms of what rock can encompass without
losing its identity as a musical form, in that it introduces an artist of greater vision than has
been seen in rock for far too long.
It may not sell, it may never infiltrate the lives of more than a handful of people, but its
existence means that there is some record of the most arrestingly bizarre set of perceptions
of the American underlife to be set to music since the decline of Lou Reed and the death of
Jim Morrison.
The fact that Patti Smith is a woman may well alienate listeners who are prepared to be
receptive to a basically passive female intelligence (like Joni Mitchell), but may find an
album of extrovert, ferocious female intelligence (like this one) somewhat unnerving.
Not to mention the fact that people always get weird in the presence of a powerful sexuality
expressed by someone who they may not happen to find attractive.
And Patti Smith sure ain't Maria Muldaur (thank you, Lord). However, I'll say it again ... first
albums this good are pretty damn few and far between.
Listen.
Copyright © Charles Shaar Murray 1975
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