Patti Smith – Horses (50th Anniversary Edition) (Sony/Legacy)
“Jesus died for somebody’s sins, but not mine”. Fifty years ago a defiant Patti Smith released her debut album, Horses. Now, here is a look at this new 50th Anniversary Edition of a true classic.
Patti Smith’s Horses arrived like a vision out of smoke, part punk, part poet, part prophet, calling rock ’n’ roll back to its roots in ritual and rebellion. In 1975 she stood at the microphone like someone invoking rather than performing, her words cracking open the language of the street and of prayer. The song carried by Lenny Kaye’s wiry guitar, Richard Sohl’s spectral keyboard, and Ivan Kral’s sinuous bass, the trio who would become her constant foil and foundation. The 50th anniversary edition reminds us that this revelation was earned through labour and faith.
The 40th anniversary edition had already shown how Horses could still summon the same electricity three decades later, by including 2005 live performances that felt raw yet precise, the band entranced, and Smith pacing the stage like a conductor of her younger self. The new release goes deeper, tracing how that vision was forged note by note until the poetry learned to gallop.
The story moves through five quickening phases in 1975: the word-bound experiments at RCA in February, the ragged rhythm trials at A-1 Sound, the arrival of Jay Dee Daugherty’s drums, the shaping hand of John Cale at Electric Lady, and the moment in November when poetry and propulsion were released in perfect balance. Each stage adds muscle and definition to the sounds, words and performance she had been developing through the early 1970s. What began as musical skeletons would soon find a living pulse.
At RCA, Gloria starts in dim light, the organ circling as Smith’s voice glides in, almost prayerful, before urgency gathers and the chant “G-L-O-R-I-A” erupts like graffiti across a clean wall. Kaye‘s guitar scratches rather than struts, the tempo drifting, and the ending collapses quietly, the power implied rather than declared. On the final album version, drums crash after the opening confession, the beat locks tight, the guitars bite with treble authority, and Smith’s doubled vocal turns the earlier plea into confrontation. The song no longer discovers itself; it knows exactly what it is from the start. Redondo Beach follows the same trajectory, shifting from loose reggae improvisation to wistful pop, while Birdland expands from an improvised vision to a nine-minute architecture of grief and transcendence. The lyrical framework remains, but Cale’s production brings order and contrast, turning what was a gathering mood into a storm that builds, unsettles, and finally resolves.
The newly unearthed Snowball sits between phases. Guitar, bass and organ tumble together while Smith chants, playful and rhythmic, the words half nonsense and half prophecy. It captures a rare moment of humour before form took hold. When Daugherty’s drums arrived that summer the songs found their heartbeat. His playing grounded the improvisation without taming it, letting Smith’s voice ride against rhythm. What had been incantation became propulsion, and at Electric Lady the transformation was completed by Cale’s taut production, giving the songs their tougher frame. In the alternate Kimberly the tempo swings softly, Kral’s bass warm, Smith’s voice tender, a lullaby glowing for her sister. On the finished record it quickens and hardens; “the sky is blazing” turns from a whisper to a flare, family love rewritten as myth. Break It Up moves the same way, from submerged tension to cathartic climax as Tom Verlaine’s guitar and Daugherty’s rolling drums merge poetry and pulse.
Three other pieces point toward what came next. Distant Fingers, The Hunter Gets Captured by the Game and We Three appear here in early form, recorded in 1975 but realised later on Radio Ethiopia (1976), Wave (1979) and Easter (1978) respectively. They trace the gentler, melodic thread that lay beneath Horses’ ferocity, songs of tenderness, devotion and pop clarity. In these early versions we hear the same sensibility that would surface again in her later work, the poet stepping out of the dark to write in the light left behind.
By the time Horses closes with Land and Elegie the transformation is total; the music physical, the poetry muscular, and the noise devotional. The demos and alternates remind us how hard-won that clarity was. Horses endures because it captures the moment intellect and instinct align, when art takes shape and reflection becomes revelation. These bonus tracks let us see the animal before the bridle, poetry and faith finding rhythm and form, deepening the wonder of the finished album.
John Bradbury
Horses (50th Anniversary Edition) is out now on Sony/Legacy
