The poem Patti Smith called “the start of my evolution”
Over the course of her career, Patti Smith has followed a road which differentiates her from any other artist. Smith’s path has contained a series of critical milestones that have pushed her artistry into its unique position today.
Even Smith will attest that her 1975 album Horses captured her at the peak of her powers. The LP was responsible for putting her name on the map and captivating audiences thanks to the Jone Cale-produced record showcasing the full spectrum of her talent.
Despite being her debut album, due to the hard work and reputation built by the Patti Smith Group on the local circuit in New York, Smith was already connected within the industry, hence why Cale produced the project.
From the offset, the aim was never to top the Billboard 200, with Smith admitting to NPR in 2015 that she wanted “to make a record that would make a certain type of person not feel alone. People who were like me, different … I wasn’t targeting the whole world. I wasn’t trying to make a hit record.”
As expected, the record failed to trouble the top 50 of the chart. However, almost half a century after the album’s release, Horses is viewed as a historic moment in the history of alternative culture. Smith was 29, which isn’t young in rock ‘n’ roll terms, when she shared the album, and it took years of honing her craft to find her voice before she could unleash an album of this calibre.
One pivotal moment in her “evolution” was the poem ‘Oath’, which she regularly performed during her early days at literary events. When Smith diversified into punk, she used her old poetry creations for lyrics with words from ‘Oath’, eventually squeezing their way into the ‘In Excelsis Deo’ portion of ‘Gloria’.
The realisation she could blend these two separate worlds and find a home for her poetry within her music was game-changing for Smith. These methods broke the traditional rules of songwriting, but it came naturally to her, and why she’s affectionately known as the ‘punk poet laurette’.
However, most importantly, the bold anti-religion words within ‘Oath’ allowed Smith to stand up on her own two feet and write an album of the magnitude of Horses. While she was only 24 when she created the poem, it was a watershed moment that changed her career trajectory.
Looking back upon that critical poem, Smith told Mojo: “It was my statement of independence from being fettered by any particular religious institution, not any statement against Jesus Christ. That’s the start of my evolution as a young person that got me to Horses.”
Listen to ‘Gloria’ below.
