Patti Smith Upcoming Tour for 50th Anniversary of Horses

By Harvey Kubernik

 

“Horses was like the first cannon blast in a war – frightening and disorienting. I mean, she was so unlike the FM radio terrain in every way. She was literate, aggressive, intense. From that point forward you couldn’t comfort yourself with the old, safe sixties myths. The revolution was on.” – author and novelist Daniel Weizmann.

2025 marks the 50th anniversary of Patti Smith’s groundbreaking debut album, Horses. Widely regarded as a seminal work in punk rock and recorded at Electric Lady Studios, Horses has left an enduring legacy, inspiring generations of artists and fans.

Smith’s upcoming Horses 50th anniversary tour is expansive, with the European leg kicking off on July 1^st. The United States leg starts November 10th in Seattle and concluding November 29th in Philadelphia. She will be joined by Horses musicians Lenny Kaye and Jay Dee Daugherty, on guitar and drums, respectively. Lenny Kaye and Jay Dee Daugherty, both of whom recorded with Smith on the 1975 LP. Smith’s live band will also feature bassist and keyboardist Tony Shanahan, and guitarist Jackson Smith, Patti’s son. Each 2025 show will include all eight tracks from the 1975 album.

I first encountered Patti Smith in 1975 at a Blue Oyster Cult concert after-party Epic Records had in 1975 at the Forum in Inglewood, California. Patti introduced me to her boyfriend at the time, Alan Lanier who was in BOC. Smith co-wrote tunes with BOC members on Tyranny and Mutation in 1973, and their 1974 Secret Treaties. Lanier helped write and played guitar on “Elegie” from Smith’s Horses. It’s Lanier’s horse pin gift to her on the cover of the LP.

I liked the album cover of Horses. In 2015 at the Roxy Theater in West Hollywood, I sat with Nancy Sinatra at a Patti Smith Group concert. Nancy, like Patti, has roots in New Jersey. Patti told us the Horses cover was inspired by Frank Sinatra and the way he held his jacket.

In 1976 and 1995, I watched two Smith bookings with photographer and journalist Heather Harris.

 

 

“It was must-see, must-photograph music performance: the Patti Smith Group at the Roxy, 1976,” reminisced Harris in 2025. “Her incredible band (she had surrounded herself with pretty damn good songwriters to match her unique lyrics sense) also included her debut album Horses producer John Cale sitting in on bass, as in my shot. A total vindication of punk rock as timeless art as well as timely rebellion. Plus, literary to boot.

“My next shot documented her appearance at When Words Collide festival of spoken word and music in Long Beach, California, 1995. It was a major coup booking one of her first returns to the music world after the tragedy of her youngish husband’s (Sonic Smith of the MC5) death at age 46. She was joined. to cross the stage threshold and then reviewed its personal trek, and secondly her band and she actually played 16 or so bars of Deep Purple’s metal anthem ‘Smoke on The Water’ at the request of her son Jackson.

“Flash forward to her memoir Just Kids, her most successful book for truly blending her feelings, her lyrical language and fascinating documentation of her own youth among the soon to be famous in New York City’s 1970s zeitgeist.”

“Just Kids is authentic belated beat literature in the same sense as Dylan’s Chronicles” or Ginsberg’s Death and Fame,” suggested poet, writer, painter and deejay, Dr. James Cushing.

“Belated in the sense that these books do not document the beginning of a sensibility as On the Road or Howl did, but authentic in the sense that the values these later works assume are Beat values, articulated in ways most associated with Beats: resistance to middle-class conformity, trust of the spontaneous, pursuit of altered states of consciousness, preference for termite-art over elephant-art, and above all the spirit of Whitman and his urban embodiment of Transcendentalism.

“Unlike Diane DiPrima’s Memoirs of a Beatnik, which is high-quality feminist porn, Smith’s memoir celebrates collaboration and the secular religion of art. Kerouac hits the road and finds glimpses of nirvana; Smith stays in NYC and finds her own public voice and private integrity,” summarized Cushing.

I’ve followed Patti Smith’s “career” for over half a century.

In 2004 and 2008 I telephoned Patti in New York and conducted interviews with Smith when her albums Trampin’ and Gung Ho were released. We discussed the recordings and other topics, including rock radio, writing, Clive Davis, the internet, Detroit Pistons basketball, and the Behind The Music documentary series.

During 2008, Smith, one of the Arista Records founding singer/songwriters, had just released her eighth album for the label, Gung Ho, produced by Gil Norton (The Pixies). Gung Ho was recorded at Sear Sound in New York City. Subjects chronicled in this audio classroom include Viet Nam, Mother Teresa, Jerry Garcia, General Custer’s widow, The WTO, and other tunes about the economy and consumerism.

 

Hey Patti…

 

Harvey. Thanks for the Bob Dylan tape you sent me.

 

This December 2004 marks the 25th anniversary of your debut Arista Records album Horses. Can you talk a bit about your quarter of a century friendship and relationship with label head Clive Davis, who signed you to the label?

 

The thing about Clive is that he believed in me when I was a total fledgling, you know, really knew very little about music, knew nothing about the music business, didn’t care, I just wanted to do work. And in the last 25 years he has allowed me to do my work. I’ve done eight albums. It’s taken me 25 years. I don’t have much of a sales record. Yet he never dropped me.

Although we’ve had words and not always agreed on things, he never tampered with my work, never insisted that I change anything and I can look at this time in my life and a body of work that I’m proud of you know, and I didn’t compromise and I’m grateful for that. I had forgotten that one of the titles I was going to call this record early on was Grateful. Just because I felt, well it’s my last record on Arista, you know, I’ve fulfilled my contract and sort of wanted to say that. That I was grateful. We have very little in common in some ways. We don’t always see eye to eye. But he’s really been sort of a patron which is unique in the music business.

 

Tell me about your cover version of Marian Anderson’s “Trampin’,” which is also the title of your 2008 album.

 

I listened to Marian Anderson a lot in my own little studio when I have my own little studio and I do a little painting and writing there. On my Marian Anderson record was “Trampin’.” That was in her repertoire and it always makes me happy when it comes on. I just love the little piano introduction.

When I got the idea and it became my own personal soundtrack. My own personal little song going through certain things, the death of my mother (Beverly), working on my record because it was the last thing we recorded. It was just a little song I held in my heart. And I asked my daughter if she would like to play it with me. So, Jessie and I did a benefit for the Philadelphia Freedom Library, because Marian Anderson is from Philadelphia, and they have a lot of her archives. So, they let Jessie get a copy of the original sheet music and she learned the exact piano arrangement that the accompanist played originally for Marian Anderson. Then Jessie and I went in, after the album was finished, and we went into Phillip Glass’ studio where we mixed the record and we just did it a couple of times.

 

There is connection with another song on Trampin’, “Mother Rose.”

 

Yes. While also “Mother Rose” is about Jessie too. The chorus says “Now is the time to turn the view now that I have you.” It’s me as a mother talking about my daughter. So, Jessie is within ‘Mother Rose.’ So, you are exactly right. They do connect. (laughs).

 

Tell me about Gung Ho? The song and as an album title?

 

Well, I knew that the song “Gung Ho” was gonna be a long one. The title was between One Voice and Gung Ho. And I usually traditionally, or I will often take the last song on the record to be the title song, or the long improvisation like “Horses” or “Radio Ethiopia.” So, when “Gung Ho” shaped up to be such a monumental song on the record, that’s the one I decided to use.

 

Listening to Gung Ho, Ho Chi Minh and Viet Nam are examined.

 

Oh yeah… I’ve really struggled for years trying to understand the whole Viet Nam experience. You know, I was a teenager and a lot of my classmates in high school were from low economic situations. They all got drafted, and a lot of them got killed in Viet Nam and I didn’t understand Viet Nam. My artist friends, my friends in New York City were protesting Viet Nam and it took me all this time to comprehend. I always knew the war was wrong, but I didn’t know a lot of the facts or really comprehend, you know, what kind of person he was. And really, what he just wanted was freedom for his people.

I mean, Oliver Ray and I just went to Viet Nam in November after the record was done, and we went there to really see Viet Nam ourselves. When you are in Viet Nam and you meet these people and you see their country and listen to their language and it’s absurd to think why would the French, or why would we even be in Viet Nam? It’s a real country. I mean it’s a people with their own heritage, their own history, and philosophies, their own body language. You know, the absurdity of it is beyond comprehension. And they’re all such a proud, sturdy, friendly people.

Gung Ho was the result of like a year and a half study. I’ve got a whole notebook filled with notes about Ho Chi Minh, about his life, from his writings to his biography, my own observations. I would have pages of clusters, and when we went in the studio to do the piece, it was a field. An obviously long field that was gonna tell this story. So, I had various sheets of paper taped to the music stand, the walls, whatever that I could look at as the music was goin’ by and just grab at whatever. But I had no end of the song even when we went in to do it. I didn’t know how I was going to end it.

So, as the band played, I kept grabbing and emotionally was carried into the end of the song. I wrote all the words, but in terms of the music, it was really a perfect organic situation. And it’s perfectly named because I found out afterwards that the word gung-ho means in its purest form, a Chinese phrase, “working together.” Which I didn’t know. I thought it meant like my mom always said about my dad, you know, “Your dad was really gung-ho in the war. “You’re gung-ho if you’re full of heart or enthusiasm.”

But the actual, real meaning is “working together.” We were supposed to have practice. I walked in and they were jamming. Oliver started this guitar phrase, and then Lenny introduced another guitar phrase and then Tony and Jay fell in, and I was mesmerized by this music.

There was no plan. They were jamming and I sat there listening to it and couldn’t take it anymore. I just went up to my microphone, because they set me up a mike, and started rapping some of the stuff that was in my notebooks and in my head about Ho Chi Minh. And I just stopped this after a while and said “this is gonna be the ‘Ho Chi Minh’ song” and let’s not work on it anymore. Let’s remember it and when we go in the studio we’ll improvise it.” ‘Cause I didn’t want us to keep going. I wanted it to be really fresh. So, I wanted it to be really birthed in the studio and it was. We’ve done it three times live and each time it’s totally different. A little scary ‘cause it’s long.

 

There’s a song on Gung Ho called “Grateful,” which I’m sure has some link to the Grateful Dead or Jerry Garcia.

 

I can tell you exactly where “Grateful” came from. I wrote it all by myself. I was in Michigan. It’s the oldest song on the record. Jerry had died and I was in Michigan. I was feeling a bit blue and somebody was teasing me about my gray hair. My hair is graying. It’s not totally gray but getting grayer. I don’t care if my hair is getting gray. But for that particular day I was feeling sensitive or something and I was feeling blue generally. And I went off by myself and like, burst into tears. And I was just standing there trying to compose myself and just shut my eyes and I saw a vision of Jerry Garcia smiling at me.

It really happened. I saw him, he smiled at me and he tugged at his hair. His hair of course was long, silvery and wiry. And I don’t know Jerry. I met him. I just stood there and felt better and all of a sudden, this little song came in my head, and I don’t write many songs by myself. I don’t write much music or don’t hear much music. But I heard the whole thing and went and got my acoustic guitar and wrote the little song down. That was one of the easier songs I ever wrote. I didn’t struggle or edit. I wrote it and called it “Grateful,” as a salute to Jerry.

 

“Libby’s Song” is inspired by General Custer’s widow.

 

I wanted to write a song about the Ballad of Wounded Knee to the music that became “Strange Messengers.” Lenny brought this music in and I loved it. And I said “I’m gonna write this song about Wounded Knee.” But when we improvised, these other words kept coming and it became a song that addresses slavery in America and the Abolitionist movement and modern slavery. That’s not what I was gonna write at all, but the music sort of dictated.

So meanwhile, I had done all this research on Wounded Knee and in my research, I read a lot about General Custer. And although I found him slightly, well, fairly despicable, he had this lovely wife Libby who was 27 when he died. And she stayed a widow for the next 50 years and spent a lot of her life trying to better his name. And I just found her devotion touching. I read some of her little diaries and found her touching. So, I wrote the little song.

 

What about your work in different mediums. Writing and then recording.

 

Well, I think they inform each other. Sometimes I find it really hard to write when I’m performing, or working on records. I just put myself in whatever form I’m using. When I’m working on a record, every record reflects a lot of study. This record reflects Viet Nam, Ho Chi Minh, Mother Teresa, all kinds of things.

 

I know you write by longhand. Do you utilize a typewriter?

 

I’m a longhand…I don’t really type lyrics. The only time, for instance, “One Voice,” I wrote longhand as a poem and I might have typed working on it ‘cause I wanted the lyrics for “One Voice” to be very economic but yet dense in a certain language. I struggle a lot writing lyrics.

 

What are your feelings about the internet? It is text driven and a chance for cross pollination.

 

I think there’s obviously a lot of possibilities of cross pollination as you say and global communication. I’m seeing the websites basically taking you on a ride for some marketing things. Arista gave me and my band a web site, gungho2000.com. All it is unpublished poetry, manifestos, photographs, suggestions, helpful and environmental alerts. Fun stuff, but the idea is that it’s a world that extends from the work from the albums. It doesn’t like lead people into the world of T-shirt sales. It’s going to be a place to get information or to give ideas, like learning about Ho Chi Minh, giving you places you can go. Or checking out the Declaration of Independence. Or giving people some cool stuff to see.

 

You’ve had a long relationship with radio. As a kid listening to it and over the last 25 years being interviewed or involved in the broadcasting of your songs. Do you remember the first impact radio had on you? If you had a shift today, what would you be doing on the airwaves?

 

What I remember with radio was that radio used to be a cultural base. It was a base where people would like… A deejay would talk about how fucked up Viet Nam was and then play Jimi Hendrix, the Rolling Stones, but then maybe play some Billie Holliday. I mean there’s so much great stuff within music and I would have like radio all day long, stuff you’d love to hear. You’d hear a (John) Coltrane song, and then maybe a Rolling Stones song, then you’d hear Nirvana, My Bloody Valentine, you might hear Robert Johnson. All of our music. Rap songs. Not just one thing. And even the best pop. Songs that make you feel good.

You could hear “Good Vibrations,” “Manic Depression,” and whatever. I think there’s so much good work out there but a constant source of replenishment. I used to listen to the radio and it made me feel better about myself. It made me feel ready for the revolution. Or it made me feel that someone was speaking for me. And I’m not being nostalgic. Because I feel there’s always stuff and things being done.

 

For HITS magazine last year, I asked in the year-end issue for you to list some of the records you were listening to. You mentioned Neil Young’s Decade, Bob Dylan Live 1966, Royal Albert Hall, and Jimi Hendrix’s Electric Ladyland were some of the recordings. Are you still listening to these artists, and what do some of the albums trigger upon repeat listening?

 

The Bob Dylan Live 1966 record. I can tell you this. I saw Bob Dylan in that period. I saw him right before he went to England (in 1966). I was really lucky. I saw him in 1963 when Joan Baez introduced him. I saw him through various changes. Then when he started wearing a jumpsuit, this lion-like hair and had a band, the Hawks, behind him. I saw him booed by the people even though he was really great. When I hear that record, I see him in my head because I can remember when he sang “Visions of Johanna” acoustically for the first time. He said, “This song is called ‘Seems Like a Freeze-Out.’” He didn’t have that title, you know. So, when I listen to that record it’s almost like a visual experience for me.

One thing that drew me to Neil Young was that we opened him up a few times when he was with Crazy Horse again. I thought they were great. Seeing Neil Young do a song like “Natural Beauty.” I thought they were great and revisited him on Decade.

I listened to Electric Ladyland the other day. When people ask me about current records, they might shift, like what might be my favorite records now would be different from the ones I told you, but Electric Ladyland would always be on it. There’s always going to be Coltrane on it. There’s always going to be Electric Lady Land on it. Without a doubt.

 

Does Electric Ladyland sound different to you these days and do you hear different things you hadn’t heard before?

 

Well yeah. Because Oliver has a really good stereo system. I used to listen to it on a hi-fi player on vinyl. But it’s always great. I sometimes have to get used to the levels of things I hear, but it’s always great.

 

Most people, especially in the music media, assume that you were in retirement for over a decade and did no work. I know and realize things you were checking out and studying 10, 12, 16 years ago have coalesced in some of the very subjects on Gung Ho. Research from years ago is involved in this new album.

 

Also, I have like filing cabinets of work no one has ever seen. I have like five books worth of work. I did all kinds of study in the eighties. Of course, I raised two children. I was really hard at work in the eighties doing all kinds of things. For instance, learning about sports. I never even knew how a baseball game went.

 

I had heard you were a big Detroit Pistons basketball fan.

 

I knew nothing about sports and I learned all about how the sport was done because I wanted to understand why sports are important to the American people. The Pistons championship teams were great. They were gung-ho. They were working together.

 

Could you see the relationship between sports, a great team, and a band who works together?

 

Yeah! Yeah! The only thing that made me sad was that I didn’t understand that they traded players and stuff. I was so shocked to see… Like, I would get into a player like Buddha (James Edwards) and they traded him. “What is this?” They’re like human baseball cards. You can’t trade people. What if the Rolling Stones… “Here, I’ll give you one Keith Richards for one…” I couldn’t believe it. That like actually so demoralized me that I had to exit the sports world.

 

Do you follow sports or basketball now?

 

Truthfully, I don’t for two reasons. One because the fact that they kept trading people was too rough and all the expansion teams. I couldn’t keep up with it. But also, my brother (Todd) and Fred were so deeply into sports, and that was where I had to learn the language of the sports to communicate with those two about what the hell they were talking about. Michael Jordan was like a genius. I’ve never been to a basketball game in person. TV was the only way I knew. Sports makes me too sad now.

 

Music documentaries are more available these days. I just interviewed Ian Hunter the bandleader of Mott the Hoople. I asked him about documentaries on MTV and VH-1. He replied, “Legends is all right, and Behind The Music, sometimes if there is someone who interests me. Too many fuckin’ people, ‘I dunno, I was coked out of me fuckin’ brain.’ This is really clever. This is telling all these kids, ‘well, I can look as good as him and do coke all my life.’ Conveniently forgetting this bloke has had three facelifts. It’s pathetic. Shut it.”

Patti, I agree with him. I’m sure you’ve been asked to be on Behind The Music.

 

The worst. Man, you and I are on the same page! I tell them I got no story. I tell them I have no story for them because you know, I didn’t have a dependency problem, I didn’t make a whole lot of money and I didn’t blow it, you know. I’m happy, you know. I’ve done good work and proud of who I am and what I’m doing. I got no sob story for them. I got nothin’ for them.

 

Is there something that informs the improvisational impulse when a poem or song arrives?

 

I really don’t know. For me it is very mysterious and different. Sometimes it’s a matter of what is already within us. I mean, I’m a mother. I studied Baghdad, I’ve studied the Bible, I’ve studied the Koran, so I know how I feel about it. So, one can say well the lyrics there though improvised are synthesis of what I know. But I’ve also had experiences where I really felt and was accessing or channeling someone else. So, it’s always different. And I don’t really know where it all comes from. But it is a very exhausting experience and not something you can do over and over again.

 

What is the difference in making a record, and then doing those songs in person? Are they two different endeavors?

 

They are different responsibilities. Doing a record, one is doing something that hopefully will endure. And one is doing it in a very intimate situation. Just with one’s band members and a few technicians, and so it is very intimate, but one is mentally projecting toward the future and the people who’ll listen to it. Playing live you are right there with the people. I don’t think of live performance as enduring. It’s for the moment, somebody might bootleg it or tape it for themselves, but basically, I think of performance for the moment and it’s often more raucous, flawed, and you know, totally done for the people that are there.

 

© 2025 Harvey Kubernik

 

 

Harvey Kubernik is the author of 20 books, including 2009’s Canyon Of Dreams: The Magic And The Music Of Laurel Canyon, 2014’s Turn Up The Radio! Rock, Pop and Roll In Los Angeles 1956-1972, 2015′s Every Body Knows: Leonard Cohen, 2016′s Heart of Gold Neil Young and 2017′s 1967: A Complete Rock Music History of the Summer of Love. Sterling/Barnes and Noble in 2018 published Harvey and Kenneth Kubernik’s The Story Of The Band: From Big Pink To The Last Waltz. In 2021 the duo wrote Jimi Hendrix: Voodoo Child for Sterling/Barnes and Noble.

Otherworld Cottage Industries in 2020 published Harvey’s Docs That Rock, Music That Matters. His Screen Gems: (Pop Music Documentaries and Rock ‘n’ Roll Television Moments) is scheduled for 2025 publication.

Harvey wrote the liner notes to CD re-releases of Carole King’s Tapestry, The Essential Carole King, Allen Ginsberg’s Kaddish, Elvis Presley The ’68 Comeback Special, The Ramones’ End of the Century and Big Brother & the Holding Company Captured Live at The Monterey International Pop Festival.

During 2006 Kubernik spoke at the special hearings by The Library of Congress in Hollywood, California, discussing archiving practices and audiotape preservation. In 2017 he appeared at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland, Ohio, in their Distinguished Speakers Series. Amidst 2023, Harvey spoke at The Grammy Museum in Los Angeles discussing The Last Waltz music documentary.

 

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