“Horses is the debut studio album by American musician Patti Smith, released on November 10, 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. … Reflecting Smith’s background as a poet, the album’s lyrics channel the French Symbolism movement, incorporating influences from the works of Charles Baudelaire, William Blake, and Smith’s lifelong idol Arthur Rimbaud, and recall the ‘revolutionary spirit’ of Rimbaud and resonate with the energy of Beat poetry, according to CMJ‘s Steve Klinge. … Upon initial release, Horses was met with near-universal acclaim from music critics and publications. In a contemporary review for Rolling Stone, John Rockwell wrote that Horses is ‘wonderful in large measure because it recognizes the over-whelming importance of words’ in Smith’s work, covering a range of themes ‘far beyond what most rock records even dream of’, and highlighted Smith’s adaptations of rock standards as the most striking songs on the record. In Creem, Lester Bangs wrote that Smith’s music ‘in its ultimate moments touches deep wellsprings of emotion that extremely few artists in rock or anywhere else are capable of reaching’, and declared that with ‘her wealth of promise and the most incandescent flights and stillnesses of this album she joins the ranks of people like Miles Davis, Charles Mingus, or the Dylan of ‘Sad Eyed Lady‘ and Royal Albert Hall.”‘ …”
Wikipedia
Genius (Audio)
Interview: Patti Smith and Robert Mapplethorpe
Salon – “A season in Hell”: The making of Patti Smith’s “Horses”
The Story of Patti Smith ‘Horses’
YouTube: Redondo Beach – Stockholm, Free Money – Stockholm, Horses Land – Stockholm, Gloria LIVE 1976 (Reelin’ In The Years Archive), Horses & Hey Joe, Kimberly – Vienna
YouTube: Horses (full album)