Dec 14

Horses

Greatly Appreciated

HORSES
 
 
Horses  is the debut studio album by American musician Patti Smith, released on December 13, 1975 on Arista Records.  Smith, a fixture of the then-burgeoning New York punk rock music scene, began recording Horses with her band in 1975 after being signed to Arista Records, with John Cale being enlisted to produce the album.  With its fusion of simplistic rock and roll structures and Smith’s freeform, Beat poetry-infused lyrics, Horses was met with widespread critical acclaim upon its initial release.  Horses has since been viewed by critics as one of the greatest and most influential albums in the history of American punk rock movement, as well as one of the greatest albums of all time.  (More from Wikipedia)
 
 

John Cale has also had an important impact on music following his time with the Velvet Underground, though mostly behind the scenes.  Cale produced the first album by Patti Smith Group, Horses (1975), which had the kind of impact on the rock music scene that The Velvet Underground & Nico should have had.   

 

(December 2013)

 
*       *       *
 

Patti Smith Group was signed by Clive Davis to a major-label contract with Arista Records; and their debut album Horses was one of the first punk rock albums, being released in December 1975 (four months before the Ramones’ first album came out).  Actually, through most of the 1970’s, punk rock was mostly found on 45’s and an occasional EP; except for the biggest punk rockers, LP’s were pretty rare. 

 

(February 2014)

 

*       *       *

 

The Wikipedia article on Slow Train Coming also states (with no footnotes), in apparent violation of their NPOV (neutral point of view) policy:  “In a year when Van Morrison and Patti Smith released their own spiritual works in Into the Music and Wave, respectively, [Bob] Dylan’s album seemed vitriolic and bitter in comparison.”  Neither album is particularly Christian, from what I can tell.  Also, Patti Smith’s previous album Easter, as might be expected from the title, has more Christian imagery; and Smith opened her acclaimed debut album Horses with a spoken-word introduction that could easily be described as “vitriolic and bitter”:  “Jesus died for somebody’s sins, but not mine”. 

 

(August 2014)

 

*       *       *

 

In seemingly no time, the music scene was crowded with top bands and artists whose work has held up well over the decades since, among them Patti Smith Group (whose debut album, Horses came out before Ramones, in December 1975), Television, Richard Hell, the Heartbreakers (the punk band not Tom Petty’s group, though he was a part of the scene as well), Talking Heads, the Dead Boys, Blondie, the Clash, the Cars, Elvis Costello, Pat Benatar, Joy Division, the Specials, the Go-Go’s, the Police, etc., etc., etc. There were so many that rock critics and others began distinguishing bands in the safety-pin set as “punk” and others that were less confrontational as “new wave”.  
* * *
The Stooges’ debut album, The Stooges came out at the same time as MC5’s Kick out the Jams; it features their classic song “I Wanna be Your Dog”. The producer was John Cale of the Velvet Underground, who later produced the classic 1975 album Horses by Patti Smith Group, and also several songs by another proto-punk band, the Modern Lovers.
(December 2016)

Last edited: March 22, 2021