Patti Smith’s ‘Horses‘ Still kicks Up Dust 48 Years Later, Revealing a Blueprint for Rock Rebellion
New York, NY – Nearly five decades after its release, Patti Smith’s 1975 debut album, Horses, remains a seismic event in rock history, a defiant and deeply personal work that shattered genre boundaries and continues to inspire. More than just a collection of songs, Horses presented a new archetype for women in rock, exploring themes of sexuality, loss, and working-class struggle with a raw, poetic intensity rarely heard before.
The album’s sonic landscape is strikingly diverse. “Redondo Beach,” with its austere reggae rhythm, unfolds like a three-minute film, depicting grieving beachgoers mourning a lover lost to “sweet suicide”: “You’ll never return into my arms cause you were gone, gone,” Smith laments. though tinged with sorrow, the song possesses a curiously playful quality. Smith frequently enough introduced the track live as being about “a beach where women love other women,” hinting at the album’s broader exploration of female desire.While she resisted labeling Horses as autobiographical in terms of its queerness, the songs undeniably forged new roles within rock’s established schema – women seducing women, mourning women, protecting women, and openly celebrating female beauty with lines like “Ohh, she looks so good, oooh she looks so fine” and “20,000 girls/Called their names out to me.”
Co-writen with Lenny Kaye, “Free Money” emerged from Smith’s observations of her parents’ financial struggles. The lyric ”Scoop the pearls from the sea, cash them in and buy you all the things you need” was specifically inspired by her mother. The song’s driving energy and hopeful lyrics – a “blazing dream of winning some fantastical lotto and making something from nothing” - reflect a deeply rooted working-class consciousness. Smith’s early aesthetic influences were similarly resourceful, drawn from discarded Vogue magazines, stolen poetry, and free access to public art museums. The song’s message of aspirational freedom resonated widely, even influencing Blondie, who later echoed its sentiment in their song “Dreaming.”
Though, it is indeed the nine-minute epic “Land” that stands as the album’s crowning achievement. A triptych and semi-apocalyptic hero’s journey, the track is a complex collage of vocal layers, referencing angels, ancient wisdom, and the band Twistelletes. The song begins with three interwoven vocal takes creating an unsettling inner monologue about “Johnny,” a boy subjected to a brutal assault, the violence depicted as a relentless “stampede of horses, horses, horses.” A sudden shift transports the listener to a vibrant dance hall, where Smith exuberantly quotes Chris kenner’s 1962 hit “Land of a Thousand Dances,” leading a call-and-response of classic dance crazes: “Do you know how to Pony like Bony Moronie?” “Then you mashed potato!” “Do the alligator!” “Do the Watusi!”
Ultimately, “Land” is a visceral “action painting” of jaunty keys, stark chords, and raw physicality, confronting the realities of a life “filled with holes” and “full of pain,” yet ultimately affirming its inherent worth. The intensity of Smith’s vision during the album’s creation is legendary. Creem reporter Tony Glover, present during the Horses sessions, recounted witnessing Smith spend seven hours meticulously mixing “Land,” her complete focus leaving him “trouble sleeping for several days.”
Horses wasn’t simply an album; it was a declaration. It remains a vital and enduring testament to the power of artistic vision and a foundational text for anyone seeking to understand the evolution of rock and roll.