When Patti Smith walked into Electric Lady Studios in New York in September 1975, she was not trying to chase radio hits or craft a commercial product. She was trying to breathe life back into rock, fuse it with poetry and performance art, and speak directly to outsiders who felt like music had stopped speaking to them. On 10 November 2025, her debut album Horses reaches its 50th anniversary, standing tall as one of the most influential recordings in modern music.
Released through Arista Records, Horses arrived on 10 November 1975 at a pivotal moment. The optimism of the 1960s had collapsed, cultural icons had fallen, and rock, in Smith’s eyes, had grown complacent. Smith, who honed her performance voice at New York’s CBGB alongside Television, the Ramones, and a young underground community soon to spark punk, wanted to reconnect rock to danger, intellect, and spirit. “We had to pull the reins on ourselves and recharge,” she would later say, explaining why she titled the record Horses. “It was time to let the horses loose again.”
Smith had been a poet first, publishing and performing long before she fronted a band. Rock, to her, was not a departure from literature but its electric extension. With guitarist Lenny Kaye, drummer Jay Dee Daugherty, keyboardist Richard Sohl, and bassist Ivan Král, Smith built improvisational intensity that mirrored early punk minimalism while drawing heavily from jazz, Beat writing, French symbolism, and raw garage rock impulses.
To capture that sound, Smith turned to former Velvet Underground member John Cale, who had carved a reputation for uncompromising and experimental production. The sessions at Electric Lady – the studio built by Jimi Hendrix – were famously tense. Cale approached recording with structured vision, Smith and band approached it like a live attack, and both perspectives collided and elevated Horses into a hybrid document: raw and improvised, yet layered in studio dynamics. Guests included Television’s Tom Verlaine and Blue Öyster Cult’s Allen Lanier, anchoring the record in a moment when underground New York art rock was mutating into something new.
When Horses arrived, its cover alone – photographed by Smith’s friend and creative partner Robert Mapplethorpe – signalled a break. Androgynous, confident, unfiltered, Smith stared back at the world without apology. It remains one of music’s most iconic images.
The music inside was equally revolutionary. Gloria merged Van Morrison’s 1964 rock staple with Smith’s own poetry, opening with the immortal rally: “Jesus died for somebody’s sins but not mine.” Redondo Beach hinted at reggae influence, Birdland embraced free-form improvisation, Free Money spoke to childhood dreams of escape, and Land blended Rimbaud, Burroughs, 1960s soul, and rock mythology into nine minutes of ecstatic storytelling. Smith offered vulnerability on Kimberly, grief and tribute on Elegie, and unfiltered catharsis across the record.
It charted modestly at the time – number 47 in the United States, number 80 in Australia – but its cultural weight grew exponentially. Horses opened a gate for alternative rock, punk expression, poetic songwriting, and women standing defiantly at the front of the stage. Its influence rippled through R.E.M, Hole, PJ Harvey, Siouxsie and the Banshees, and every corner of outsider indie rock. In 2009, the Library of Congress inducted it into the National Recording Registry. Today it remains a blueprint for authenticity and artistic courage.
Smith has honoured the album across decades, performing it in full for its 30th and 40th anniversaries. As Horses turns 50, its relevance remains intact. In an era overflowing with music, few albums still feel like manifestos. Horses is one. Half a century later, Patti Smith’s declaration still rings loud: rock can be literature, rebellion, ritual, and liberation. And it can still make those who feel unseen feel like a movement waiting to happen.
Horses (1975) Tracklisting
Side One
Gloria (Part One: In Excelsis Deo / Part Two: Gloria)
Redondo Beach
Birdland
Free Money
Side Two
Kimberly
Break It Up
Land (Part One: Horses / Part Two: Land Of A Thousand Dances / Part Three: La Mer(de))
Elegie
CD Reissue Bonus Track
My Generation (Live At The Agora, Cleveland, Ohio, January 26, 1976)
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