Oh alright, I'll do this one. Patti Smith started out somewhere at some time in a city, she had a buddy who took pictures, there's a book about them that she wrote. I haven't read it, although I probably will at some point. Patti has my respect. As a writer, as a musician, as a person. I know there's critics out there screaming "Fraud!" and "Sell out!" and all those things that angry people do from time to time, but Patti's alright. Anybody with the conviction to take what they do and make it into something of the calibre of The Patti Smith Groups "Horses" long player gets carte blanche in my book.
Lou Reed & Metallica made a record together? People hate it? Thats fine. Lou not only had the balls to release Metal Machine Music during a decade he can't remember - he also released Coney Island Baby (one of the finest albums of the 1970's) and, in spite of the animosity between them now, formed The Velvet Underground with some other guys. But back to Patti Smith.
Horses takes Smiths poetry, her knack for theatrical showmanship and throws them in the dryer with the bare bones elements of Rock & Roll, a packet of cigarettes and enough spare change to buy a small drink at the bar before show time.
The album opens with the now-legendary line "Jesus died for somebody's sins, but not mine" which sets you up, right there and then. Patti's pissed, she's got a guitar and some guys in the band that play guitar. They rip in "Gloria" which has long since become a bit of a rock standard, hell, even before, it was a standard garage tune. Turning it into a six minute epic took some doing but, by this time you'd better be hooked, or else there's no hope of you getting the rest of it. Their secret is that little seed of rock and roll planted somewhere along the way. The songs start out almost like the music for some kind of a procession, a funeral march for the dear deaf departed, for rock music as it was in 1975..
After Gloria with its crazy wind up, and after Redondo Beach (yeah, it wasn't the Clash who found reggae and stuck it on a punk album..) come the glorious mess of Birdland. A true Smith poem of images and emotions. A dreamy trip to the stars. Its laying on your back and staring up into the night sky in summer. It's a memory and a dream. Just listen to it, gives me goose pimples every time. Free Money closes side one, and, listening to this after hearing other peoples versions you get the feeling that they somehow missed the point. Ahhh, but isn't that the joy of poetry?
You know, my first experience of Patti Smith was on a Sounds of the Seventies show on tv many years ago. I'm not old enough to remember this stuff from the first time around, but I'm old enough that it still means something to me, that first vibrant clash of guitars that signalled the end of the old order and the birth of something new. But I digress. I picked up a copy of Horses a while back, its pretty beat up, there's a fair bit of crackle on the vinyl and no doubt, a fair bit of dirt in the grooves but what really struck me about the record was that somebody loved this record enough that they wrote their name on the cover, reminding me of the time when vinyl wasn't such a desirable commodity it was, as CD's are now, just another format that you stick in a machine to get music out of.
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