Patti Smith and her Band will celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Horses album later this year with a live performance at the 3Arena in Dublin.
Patti Smith is now 78 years of age, and will lead her band in a full rendition of her debut album Horses, which was recorded in 1975 in Electric Lady Studios in New York City.
It’s since become known as a powerful document of rock’n’roll and poetic seventies counter culture – “three chord rock merged with the power of the word.”
Where is Patti Smith playing Dublin?
- Artist: Patti Smith
- Venue: 3Arena
- City/town: Dublin
- Date: Monday October 6th 2005.
- Support: TBA
- Tickets: Tickets from €76.25 plus fees on general sale Friday 14th February at 9pm.
- Presale: Promoter Foggy Notions mailing list.
Smith will be accompanied by two members of the original group, Lenny Kaye and Jay Dee Daugherty, along with keyboardist/ bassist Tony Shanahan, a part of her Band for thirty years. Jackson Smith also joins on guitar.
Horses concerts have been set for seven cities in Europe: Dublin, Madrid. Bergamo, London, Brussels, Oslo and Paris. Nine cities in the U.S.: Seattle, Oakland, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Chicago, New York, Boston, Washington D.C. and Philadelphia.
A poet and visual artist, Patti had begun improvising her unique blend of song and hallucinatory imagery two years before, appearing on cabaret stages and small clubs with the support of guitarist Kaye and pianist Richard Sohl. She honed her songs in this live setting, allowing them to develop at will, garnering an ever-growing audience within the Manhattan underground. By the time she launched a seven-week residency at the relatively obscure Bowery club, CBGB, in winter of 1975, her band had grown, adding include guitarist Ivan Kral and drummer Jay Dee Daugherty. It was during this time that she was signed by Arista president Clive Davis. John Cale was chosen by the band to produce the album, and it was released on November 10, the death date of one of Patti’s most important influences, the poet Arthur Rimbaud.
Opening with an anthemic declaration of personal responsibility – “Jesus died for somebody’s sins but not mine” – folded within Van Morrison’s classic “Gloria”, Horses was a return to rock’s primal instincts, seeking to awaken the spirit and promise of the music at a time when it seemed as if this sensibility was at risk of being forgotten. The album’s artistic reach took shape in the free-form flights of “Birdland” and “Land,” where the expansive soundscapes of free jazz and propulsive rhythms and incantatory lyrics intermingled to provide an expansive sonic landscape. “Redondo Beach,” “Free Money,” “Kimberly,” and “Break It Up” presented a worldview both idealistic and romantic. With the album’s final cut, “Elegie,” rock’s past and future were entwined within the “sea of possibilities” that became the present. Infused with poetry, Horses is an uncompromising exploration that helped lay the groundwork for what would become known as the upheaval of “punk,” though Smith and her band always attempted to avoid categorization: “beyond race gender baptism mathematics politricks,” as Patti wrote in the liner notes, adding “…as for me I am truly totally ready to go.”
Robert Mapplethorpe’s iconic front cover photograph of Patti with her jacket slung over her shoulder perfectly captured this moment of becoming, and indeed, Horses was the beginning of a long musical career that resonates even greater today. The album has achieved many notable recognitions over the years, notably The Charles Cros Award and included the Library of Congress in the National Recording Registry. It has been followed by another nine albums the National Book Award winner, Just Kids; world tours and an induction into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
