HORSES Patti Smith Arista, 1975 Designer: Bob Heimall Photographer: Robert Mapplethorpe

I’ve always taken great pictures of Patti Smith,” said Robert Mapplethorpe in 1987. He described the collaboration as “like taking drugs; you’re in an abstract place and it’s perfect.” The cover of Smith’s cataclysmic debut LP, Horses, is the most celebrated document in the relationship between the photographer and the poet-songwriter, which spanned two decades. Mapplethorpe shot the cover to Smith’s album Dream of Life not long before his death in 1989.

The two met when Mapplethorpe was an art student and Smith wandered into his Brooklyn apartment looking for someone else. In 1970 they moved to Manhattan’s legendary Chelsea Hotel, where they shared the smallest room because it was all they could afford. “We used to stay up all night,” Mapplethorpe said, “and she would do her thing and I would do my thing, and then we’d take a break and smoke a cigarette and look at each other’s work.” That intimacy informs the Horses portrait: The directness of Smith’s gaze plays against the tense shyness of her stance; the androgyny of her dress counters the elegance of her fingers. The cover mirrors the intensity and sparse clarity of Smith’s music.

>In 1988 the catalog to a controversial Mapplethorpe retrospective included a poem by Smith that captures perfectly the exploratory essence of both Horses and Mapplethorpe’s photo. “The Artist machetes a clearance,” she writes. “Here one can be spared/the pain and extravagance of the entire body and/be transported by snaking thru a glittering fraction.”

Near legendary New York poetess and songstress comes up with an almost free-form rock set that is much much better than one might have expected. Produced by John Cale, the set comes closest to catching the urgency and sheer energy of the early Velvet Underground since the emergence of that group. Smith’s interesting and totally unique talk/sing song makes this set the most accessible LP of its type yet for those who do not feel at home with this type of material, and there are guest stints from Tom Verlaine and Allen Lanier. Frantic and frenetic instrumentation behind Smith’s vocals also work well. A truly powerful effort that offers the listener something new for a change. Best cuts: “Gloria (the old Them hit),” “Free Money,” “Kimberly,” “Land,” “Elegie. – Billboard,1975.

(20 votes, average: 4.20 out of 5)

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