Patti Smith has announced a 50th anniversary reissue of ‘Horses’ and shared previously unreleased track ‘Snowball’. Listen below.
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‘Horses’, Smith’s debut studio album, has achieved many notable recognitions since its release in 1975 – notably The Charles Cros Award – and was included in the Library of Congress in the National Recording Registry. The classic album was inducted into the Grammy Hall Of Fame in 2021.
NME previously listed ‘Horses’ as the 12th greatest album of all time, writing: “A scrawny girl from New Jersey with a truckers’ accent, Patti Smith was a punk poet like no other.
“‘Horses’ roared with hunger. Never for commercial success, but a hunger for art, for honesty, for beauty. Screeching and visceral, raw with fury and full of desire, it’s chaotic poetry. Rapturous rock n’ roll.”
Now, to celebrate the record’s legacy, Smith has announced a newly remastered edition set to be released on October 10 (pre-order here). The album will come in 2xLP and 2xCD formats via Legacy Recordings.
It includes alternate takes of album tracks, Smith’s original 1975 audition tape for RCA, and four previously unreleased songs: ‘Distant Fingers’, ‘The Hunter Gets Captured by the Game’, ‘We Three’, and ‘Snowball’, which is out now. Listen below.
The ‘Horses’ (50th Anniversary) tracklist is:
1 ‘Gloria: In Excelsis Deo’
2 ‘Redondo Beach’
3 ‘Birdland’
4 ‘Free Money’
5 ‘Kimberly’
6 ‘Break It Up’
7 ‘Land: Horses / Land of a Thousand Dances / La Mer (de)’
8 ‘Elegie’
9 ‘Gloria: In Excelsis Deo’ (RCA Demo)
10 ‘Redondo Beach’ (RCA Demo)
11 ‘Birdland’ (Alternate Take)
12 ‘Snowball’
13 ‘Kimberly’ (Alternate Take)
14 ‘Break It Up’ (Alternate Take)
15 ‘Distant Fingers’
16 ‘The Hunter Gets Captured by the Game’
17 ‘We Three’
Smith will further celebrate the seminal album’s anniversary with a run of special gigs across Europe, the UK, and the US.
The shows have been scheduled for seven European cities: London, Dublin, Madrid, Bergamo, Brussels, Oslo and Paris, with the London gigs due to take place at The Palladium on October 12 and 13. See the full list of dates and get any remaining tickets here.
In 2015, Smith marked the 40th anniversary of ‘Horses’ with a series of gigs. She had performed the LP in its entirety 10 years earlier as part of the Meltdown Festival in London.
In other news, on November 4, Smith will be releasing a new book titled Bread Of Angels, which is set to be some of her most “intimate and visionary” work yet.
According to a new description, the memoir will see Smith shed light on all aspects of her life – covering everything from her working-class upbringing in Philadelphia and South Jersey, all the way through to her withdrawal from the public eye.
