PATTI SMITH: HORSES

I know I haven't posted in ages, I've been really busy first with exams and college, then I went on holiday and now I'm off to London after only being home three days. I have to pack in a bit, so I'll keep this short. I wanted to write about Patti Smith and poetry, but I don't know where to start. Patti's Horses was my holiday album and I listened to the same few songs continuously because I had no internet so I could only choose a couple of songs to listen to offline, but the thing with Patti Smith is that you can listen to the same songs over and over and each time you'll hear something different in them. (The songs were "Gloria", "Land", "Kimberly" and "Redondo Beach" from Horses and also "Frederick" from Wave because I really liked the live version up on Spotify at the moment).

The iconic cover of Horses, shot by Robert Mapplethorpe.

I guess I wanted to listen to Patti Smith in the first place because I caught the end of her Glastonbury set on TV. The last song was "My Generation" which completely shocked my parents, particularly when she pulled the strings off her guitar at the end. They thought she was disgusting, I thought she was brilliant. The simple fact that she was still doing what she's always done with the same energy and attitude inspired me beyond anything else. Of course I'd heard of Patti Smith before (CBGBs, "Because the Night" etc.) but I hadn't properly listened to her music yet. Shameful, I know.

So I listened to Horses. I always like to listen to an artist's first album before anything else because it reflects them as they were when they first started out, which usually tends to be more authentic (although Patti has remained authentic and true to herself throughout her career). I listened to Horses and I adored it. I can genuinely say that it changed my outlook on life. As I've mentioned here before, I've always loved writing, and also reading and literature. I fell in love with Virginia Woolf and Christina Rossetti in school. By Year 9 I was reading Mrs Dalloway and became obsessed with the English classics. Books were my first love, even before records and rock and roll. If you don't see it already, my point is that before I heard Horses it didn't occur to me that poetry and rock music could exist together, in one form. It sounds stupid now, but I guess I had drifted away from reading to focus on exams when I first got into music, and became obsessed with that instead because it's much easier to listen to music while revising than it is to read books. Recently I've been reading more, I started with Arthur Rimbaud's The Drunken Boat which has now become my favorite poem. Reading Rimbaud is also thanks to Patti; the poet's name is cleverly inserted in the lyrics of "Land" so on a whim I thought I'd check out his work... and now I'm hooked on that too.

I seriously have to go pack now, so my final thought is this, which I noted down yesterday after I woke up at 6:30am, drank three cups of coffee and listened to the song "Maria": One of the reasons I love Patti Smith is because her writing has remained so strong; the lyrics still mean something, evoke something, tell stories - beautiful and passionate.