In Damnation of....Horses by Patti Smith

This actually doesn't come from ILM, but rather it's a chapter I contributed to German rock scribe, Sky Nonhoff's book, "Don't Believe the Hype: Die miestüberschätzten Platten der Popgeschichte". Very similar to Jim DeRogatis' "Kill Your Idols" (I'm not sure which beat which to the bookstore, but Nonhoff's is -- sadly -- a Germany-only publication so far), "Don't Believe the Hype" culled together several essays devoted to toppling many of rock's sacred cows. I'd met Sky back in the Autumn of 2002 while visiting Munich, and he gamely asked me to be a part of it. So, I volunteered my services for skewering this album, and Sky also had me tackle Appetite for Destruction by Guns'n'Roses (look for that soon). I submitted the review below. Sky translated it (he's multilingual) and it's now out in finer bookstores everywhere....er...everywhere in Germany, that is. Being that I don't speak a lick of German beyond what I've picked up in war films, I cannot say whether or not the text below at all mirrors the text that appears in the book when translated. In any case, here it is. Thanks, Sky. Sorry, Patti.

PATTI SMITH
HORSES
(ARISTA) 1975
Initially released in 1975 (when the pop charts were clogged with the Carpenters and the Average White Band), this debut album by Patti Smith is roundly hailed as a cornerstone of Punk Rock. Drenched in self-indulgent melodrama, however, Horses sounds more at home rubbing shoulders with the hoary likes of Meat Loaf than with comparatively spartan albums recorded by Smith's fellow CBGB's alumni like the Ramones and the Dead Boys. Its arguable merits strenuously extolled by U2's Bono and REM's Michael Stipe, Horses has attained canonical status, but closer scrutiny begs the question, does it really measure up?

An accomplished wanna-be made good, Patti Smith came to New York City as a desperate scenester with a fixation with Mick Jagger and Arthur Rimbaud. Through a strategy of opportunism that set the template for unhealthily ambitious scenemakers like Courtney Love to follow years later, Smith managed to befriend and manipulate enough people to put together an ensemble featuring rock critic and Nuggets-archivist Lenny Kaye on guitar, Richard Sohl on piano, Ivan Kral on bass and Jay Dee Daugherty on drums (seen inexplicably brandishing a switchblade on the inner sleeve of Horses). Having assembled her gaggle of feathered-haired henchman, made a name for herself from hanging around with all the "right people" and her aggressive, unsolicitedly confessional poetry, Patti ditched her dalliances as a full-time poet and/or painter in favor of becoming a rock'n'roll star (and started to behave accordingly). Landing a contract with Clive Davis' Arista Records and roping in ex-Velvet Underground bassist John Cale as producer, Patti checked into Jimi Hendrix's fabled Electric Ladyland Studio to record her first long player.

"Jesus died for somebody's sins, but not mine," intones Patti as the album begins. It may be an auspicious opening statement, especially for its era, but the thrills come few and far between after that. While her affinity for Jagger, Keith Richards, Bob Dylan and other yawnsome rock dinosaurs cannot be overstressed, it's Smith penchant for the pompous faux-Shamanism of the Doors' Jim Morrison that really mars this vinyl. Her limited, amateurish "vocals" pushed way up in the mix (dwarfing the contributions of her bandmates), Smith coughs up couplets of supposedly deep nonsense before hijacking "Gloria" by Them (a song also covered by the Doors) newly rife with references about dry-humping parking meters.

That cover version deflowered and out of the way, it's strictly downhill from there. "Redondo Beach" is such a shoddy, ham-fisted attempt at reggae that it makes Sting at his worst sound positively like Peter Tosh. "Birdland," meanwhile, is a babbling rant that makes for an excruciating nine minutes and fourteen seconds of z-grade, masturbatory poetry and shameless self-indulgence that sounds like some extra-chromosoned offspring of Jim Morrison and Van Morrison after a rude round of drunken buggery. Following that bloated mess, "Free Money" wheezes out of the speakers in a damp fart of treacly pianos and anemic guitars and Patti's overwrought mewling with little or no regard for tempo.

Apologists continually cite the band's "crude" playing, whereas "meatless" might be a more appropriate term. There's still plenty of needless filigree, though, well to the fore on "Break It Up," which finds Television guitarist Tom Verlaine succumbing to classic rock excesses by strangling his fretboard for his former girlfriend (Verlaine was yet another stepping stone on Smith's path to stardom). The album's centerpiece, "Land", comes mumbling out next, finding the singer's grating pronunciation of the world "locker" as a convincing argument for poetry to be left on the silent page and kept away from the microphone at all costs. Nine more aimless minutes of incomprehensible exhortation and a lifeless pilfering of "Land of a Thousand Dances" later, this flimsy vessel hits the rocks with the drunken thud of "Elegie" a funereal dirge suffocated in mawkish lament by the flaccid guitars of Blue Oyster Cult's Alan Lanier, begging the question: "who invited him?"

Arista's 1996 re-release of Horses on compact disc appended a live cover of the Who's "My Generation" that displays a more feral performance from Patti's gang. That exciting aesthetic seems entirely missing from the album, however, which comes largely unencumbered by memorable tunes (apart from the appropriated ones). An epiphany for some, and a sacred cow in dire need of toppling for others, Horses is the quintessential example of an album that is more "important" than good. A few short years after this album's release, No Wave enfant terrible Lydia Lunch made a scathing indictment in the Soho Weekly News that Patti Smith was nothing more than a barefoot hippy, and the chore for the listener steeped in tuneless bellowing and hollow histrionics that is Horses only confirms that.

CRUCIAL ADDENDUM: PLEASE READ.

Comments

[Adam]

"some extra-chromosoned offspring of Jim Morrison and Van Morrison after a rude round of drunken buggery" Ha! Classic! Preach it Alex in NYC!

p.s. long live Killing Joke.

[Bimble]

You know, there were just two words in there that seemed awkward that I found myself wanting to correct or change. But the first one I couldn't figure out how you could have said it any differently, and the other, well...it'll be in German anyway, so who cares? ;) I'm rather amused to realize I haven't actually heard this particular record. The only time I dabbled in Patti Smith was when I heard "Dancing Barefoot" which was on another album I can't remember the title of now but she's holding a bird on the sleeve. It wasn't a very good album either, though.

[Anonymous]

This is such unbelivably pompous crap - let's hope it never finds its way out of Germany.

[Paul Wady]

""THIS IS A SONG ABOUT ME...AFTER A POEM ABOUT ME...HAVING SEX OUTSIDE OF MARRIAGE IN THE 70'S AND GOING ON AND ON ABOUT THAT BECAUSE I WAS THE ONLY WOMAN WHO WOULD ADMIT TO IT SO BLATANTLY, AND TALK ABOUT HERSELF...ME ME ME!!! MEMEMEMEEEEEEEEE"".

Thank you, Patty. I thought there was something wrong with her stuff. Her iconography through Mappelthorpe was more significant to me than the noises she made. She remains the only female to have the image she had, in those days, as far as I know.

Clarity at last!

[Sefronia]

Hey, kids, first off, I am a Patti fan and a KJ fan, so it can happen. One, I love how male reviewers have to give every woman who makes a significant impression in music the "Nancy Spungeon cum dumpster" treatment, e.g. she only got there because of her sexual past. Never brought up in reviews for male "rockers", ever, even the blantantly notorious ones. Strike One. Strike Two: Pay attention to the lyrics, dude. "Birdland" is about the death of a famous psychoanalyst, and the hypothetical (and understandable) trauma that his young son experiences. "Redondo Beach" is about a woman dying, and is based on Patti's relationship with her sister. LISTEN TO THE WORDS. Strike Three: Read an interview. Patti Smith has said on numerous occasions that she is not a great vocalist. She is not trying to be Billie Holiday. Her voice is a ragged instrument...kind of like Kurt Cobain's was...
And man, if all you got out of her subversive (we are looking at gender dynamics here, take a step back and look at it objectively) take on "Gloria" was dry humping parking meters, you need to re evaluate many things. Peace out.

[Alex in NYC]

Right back'atcha: (A) I never got into Patti's sexual past, nor implied that it accomodated her success. One can be manipulative without bringing sex into it. (B) I don't give a damn what a song is about if it sounds like a dog dying. (C) I shouldn't have to read an interview to appreciate someone's music. The music should speak for itself, and in Patti's case, it speaks poorly. (D) Kurt Cobain was crap. (E) Her take on "Gloria" is garbage -- gender has nothing to do with it.

[Sef]

Alex, you are being disingenuous by saying you weren't implying she slept her way to prominence with a phrase like this, my man:

"Through a strategy of opportunism that set the template for unhealthily ambitious scenemakers like Courtney Love to follow years later."

What is the common theory about the Court and how she "made it"....she "made" every guy she could find. I think we all got your point about Patti's manipulation involving sex. However, if you meant nothing like that, I am glad you clarified it, because it sure as hell reads that way.
B) Well, that is subjective, so her mournful "he saw his daddy at the controls", might sound like a canine getting a proctological exam to you, but it sounds to me like she is trying to emphasize the chaos the song addresses. William Burroughs said she would always be known for her performances, which are so emotional. He appreciated it, so do I.
C) Nah, you shouldn't have to read an interview to appreciate someone's music, but it seems that you found the record just a masturbatory nightmare, where the woman only referenced herself. "Birdland" proves that is wrong, since the entire song has no reference to Patti Smith or her world. Madonna, deemed a "pop icon" is only capable of writing about herself due to her excruciating narcissism. Ms Smith actually did tackle topics that were novel and, in my opinion, powerful.
D)Ok, ya don't like KC....ah, Iggy, Johnny Rotten, Jaz (don't burn me at the stake for heresy by speaking of him in a discussion about Ms Smith...haaaa), any male singer who does not have a typically melodic voice is using it as a ragged instrument. That was my point.
E) Gender had everything to do with her version of "Gloria"....that was the whole point to a hell of a lot of people, including your shiny happy buddy Michael Stipe..haaa (I am envisioning you have a dartboard with his picture ;0). She dressed androgynously, and usurped the role of the male rocker by performing a well known erotic ode to a woman. That is how she turned it into a gender bending confrontation. Dude, she liberated alot of minds with that song.
The rest of her career is, granted, extremely hit and miss. But that particular album, with her defiant look on the cover, made me want to hear it. And it opened up a new view of the world for me.
I just was happy a fierce woman like that existed in a world at a time when many considered Karen Carpenter a huge talent. It probably was a different experience being that I am female as well. Who knows. Agree to disagree. Peace out.

[Michael]

A load of crap, dear sir. Not that it doesn't make for decent reading!

[sian]

Your all talking complete rubbish.
EVERY SINGLE PERSON should respect every single musician. I appreciate and love kurt and smiths music. They both did their thing like everyone else did theirs.
Except Patti smith was unique, to some extent so was kurt, but she was especially, so don't slate her. If she sounded like 'a dog dying' why do so many people love her music. Why is she down on so many websites as a purely inspirational influential artist. WHY THEN, DO SO MANY SINGER SONGWRITERS PRAISE HER?

Learn some respect before stating your point with some fact behind it, not a wishy washy opinion.

[sian]

may I add also:
if you don't like her, why don't you just not listen to her?

she actually helped break the mould of music with unique words, unique thoughts and her unique style.

[Alex in NYC]

:::yawn::::

`Cos it's my weblog, that's why. She's overrated tripe. Citing the fact that "lots of people/website/musicans" liked her means nothing. Lots of people like lots of things, and lots of people can be WRONG. Lot's a people like the Black Eyed Peas too -- does that make the geniuses? I think not.

Get used to the notion of dissenting opinion. I'm not saying YOU can't like Patti Smith (although you shouldn't).