The decade leading up to 1975 was an incredibly creative period for popular music, but all good things must come to an end.

For better than ten years, the alchemy of combining energy and creativity led to some fantastic innovations and a lot of timeless music. By 1975, though, things began to stultify. The variety of music forms that simultaneously spawned diversity and creativity started to stagnate and calcify. Across the board, rigor mortis set in.

It seemed as though nobody was making his or her best music in 1975. John Lennon released ‘Rock and Roll,” arguably the worst record of his career, while the Stones threw together “Black and Blue.” The Who’s “Tommy” became a really bad movie, and “The Wiz” opened on Broadway. New album releases were growing predictable if not downright cynical, embracing a stylistic branch that grew too stratified or redundant to qualify as genuinely creative. Just look at what was happening to the various genres; art rock had grown sterile and soulless, while soul music was caving in to disco. Hard rock began its slump toward hair metal, while ‘glitter’ and ‘southern rock’ sank into such utter predictability that they became something of a joke.

It was the age of Wings, the Eagles, Jefferson Starship and Chicago. Somebody needed to shake things up or we were doomed. Enter Patti Smith. She did not embrace any of the shopworn sub-genres that were strangling music. Instead, she combined poetic grace with streetwise smarts and a rough-hewn energy that made music sound young again. “Horses” was like a breath of fresh air that stimulated the senses and suggested that something new could come from old ideas.

She references both “Gloria” and “Land of 1,000 Dances” but puts them into a completely fresh context, planting them in the middle of her poetry as the band, led by guitarist and one-time music journalist (as was Smith) Lenny Kaye, accelerates around her. It is classic rock and roll rendered innocent and beautiful once again. To paraphrase the Rolling Stones, we needed “Horses” to drag us away, and thank goodness it did.

It’s kind of hard and unfair to credit the rebirth of rock and roll to one specific person or record, but in 1975, who else did anything like Patti Smith? What else sounded like “Horses”? Her presence was stunning and unique, while the music was challenging and invigorating. She/it was artful without being bloated or pretentious. She/it rocked without posturing. The music breathed. It seemed to bubble up from the underground, rather than descend from the self-appointed (and self-important) rock star hierarchy of the day. Other NYC bands such as Blondie and the Ramones were covering similar ground, but Patti Smith got signed to Arista, a major label, before the rest. While someone else may have compromised to commerce and toned down their presentation, Smith did the opposite. On “Horses”, the first words out of her mouth are “Jesus died for somebody’s sins but not mine,” thus declaring her independence while simultaneously eschewing the dogma of organized religion.

“Horses” is not an easy album to listen to. Smith’s vocal style can be disturbing, and her subject matter is constantly challenging, but the listening audience was hungry for something as vital as this. Suddenly, it felt that everyone else was just ‘going through the motions’, making music as a matter of habit, rather than inspiration. Here was something genuine, real and different. Not everybody heard “Horses” when it was released, but its impact was so significant that everyone felt the ground shifting beneath their feet. In its wake, the music scene changed irrevocably.

Feature Tracks:

Gloria" (part one: "In Excelsis Deo" / part two: "Gloria")

Redondo Beach

Birdland

Free Money

Kimberly

Break It Up

Land (part one: "Horses" / part two: "Land of a Thousand Dances" / part three: "La Mer(de)")

Elegie

November 1975 - Billboard Charted #47