Horses (Legacy Edition/Remastered)

NME - 9 (out of 10) - "...Here is rock from the point of view of a gifted writer who has reinvented herself as an alien creature, reared on Jean Genet and Rimbaud..." NME - Ranked #31 in NME's list of The Greatest Albums Of All Time. Melody Maker - Bloody Essential Vibe - Included in Vibe's 100 Essential Albums of the 20th Century Q - Included in Q's "100 Best Punk Albums". Rolling Stone - Ranked #44 in Rolling Stone's "500 Greatest Albums Of All Time" - "...A statement of faith in the transfigurative powers of rock & roll..." NME - Ranked #8 among The Greatest Albums Of The '70s - "...the words were monumental--an exceptional tribute to creativity unhinged..." Rolling Stone - Ranked #5 in Rolling Stone's "Women In Rock: The 50 Essential Albums" - "...Rock & roll poetry was a bore until this Jersey girl showed up..." Q - 5 Stars (out of 5) - "...the brittle rock and wide-eyed transcendental journeying of 1975's accepted classic HORSES has lost none of its thrill..." Mojo - 5 stars out of 5 - "[W]hat still stuns is Smith's reverie-like, stream-of-consciousness delivery."

With the exception of Bob Dylan, few rock n' rollers explored poetry within the rock format as thoroughly as Patti Smith. By the mid-70's, Smith had been a regular poetry-reader in New York City clubs for years, and with a deep admiration for The Rolling Stones, it was only natural to set these poems to music. With an exciting rock band to back her up (including renowned music critic Lenny Kaye on guitar), Smith built up a following on the strength of the band's thrilling and trance-inducing live shows. Produced by ex-Velvet Underground bassist John Cale, HORSES was considered 'punk rock' when it was first released, but there was much more to it. Smith had a gift for being able to paint vivid pictures with her prose, as evidenced by a pair of 10-minute long epics, "Birdland" and "Land" (which consisted of 3 sections--"Horses", "Land of A Thousand Dances", and "La Mer"). Other tracks are more conventional, yet just as gripping--a cover of "Gloria", "Free Money", and "Kimberly", plus a ragged live cover of The Who's "My Generation" (included on the '96 remastered CD edition as a bonus track). HORSES is a classic.|

It isn't hard to make the case for Patti Smith as a punk rock progenitor based on her debut album, which anticipated the new wave by a year or so: the simple, crudely played rock & roll, featuring Lenny Kaye's rudimentary guitar work, the anarchic spirit of Smith's vocals, and the emotional and imaginative nature of her lyrics -- all prefigure the coming movement as it evolved on both sides of the Atlantic. Smith is a rock critic's dream, a poet as steeped in '60s garage rock as she is in French Symbolism; "Land" carries on from the Doors' "The End," marking her as a successor to Jim Morrison, while the borrowed choruses of "Gloria" and "Land of a Thousand Dances" are more in tune with the era of sampling than they were in the '70s. Producer John Cale respected Smith's primitivism in a way that later producers did not, and the loose, improvisatory song structures worked with her free verse to create something like a new spoken word/musical art form: Horses was a hybrid, the sound of a post-Beat poet, as she put it, "dancing around to the simple rock & roll song." ~ William Ruhlmann