James Wolcott in Sidecar:
2025 marks the fiftieth anniversary of Patti Smith’s debut album Horses, with Robert Mapplethorpe’s black and white cover portrait of the artist posed with her jacket slung over her shoulder, Frank Sinatra-style – ‘the most electrifying image I had ever seen of a woman of my generation’, exclaimed Camille Paglia, who reckoned it one of the most powerful portraits since the French Revolution. The record inside the cover sleeve hasn’t wilted either, retaining its classic status as a declaration of desperado intent, from the boppy ‘Redondo Beach’ to the trippy ‘Birdland’ to the unfolding vistas of ‘Gloria’ and ‘Land (of a Thousand Dances)’, where Patti could truly stretch out her skinny arms and fan out her fingers to spread the word. (As the choreographer …
James Wolcott in Sidecar:
2025 marks the fiftieth anniversary of Patti Smith’s debut album Horses, with Robert Mapplethorpe’s black and white cover portrait of the artist posed with her jacket slung over her shoulder, Frank Sinatra-style – ‘the most electrifying image I had ever seen of a woman of my generation’, exclaimed Camille Paglia, who reckoned it one of the most powerful portraits since the French Revolution. The record inside the cover sleeve hasn’t wilted either, retaining its classic status as a declaration of desperado intent, from the boppy ‘Redondo Beach’ to the trippy ‘Birdland’ to the unfolding vistas of ‘Gloria’ and ‘Land (of a Thousand Dances)’, where Patti could truly stretch out her skinny arms and fan out her fingers to spread the word. (As the choreographer Paul Taylor once quipped, that’s the definition of lyricism: long arms.) To celebrate the album’s fiftieth, Patti and her band have been touring triumphal live concert versions of Horses across the US and Europe, the rapturous reception at the London Palladium somewhat mottled when Patti brought out Johnny Depp for the encore anthem ‘People Have the Power’, Depp draped and layered in hipster duds in his continuing role as America’s premier hobosexual. Irate fans and commentators on both sides of the Atlantic squawked betrayal, trying to reconcile the populist idealism of Patti’s music and persona with jamming on stage with an alleged spouse abuser and celebrity prima donna who owns a private island in the Exumas.
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