Patti Smith Group

Biography

Horses opens with a mission statement: ambition, innocence, and danger braided.

Because the Night bridged Springsteen craft with Smith’s elemental performance.

Lenny Kaye’s guitar psychology steered dynamics between drone and surge.

High-bitrate audio preserves room leakage, Patti’s aspirate consonants, and amp bloom.

Patti Smith was a poet in New York when she formed the group with Lenny Kaye, Ivan Král, Jay Dee Daugherty, and Richard Sohl. Horses (1975), produced by John Cale and with a cover by Robert Mapplethorpe, opened with a reworking of Van Morrison’s Gloria and became a touchstone of punk.

Radio Ethiopia (1976) and Easter (1978) followed, with Because the Night, which she co-wrote with Bruce Springsteen. Her memoir Just Kids (2010) won the National Book Award. She was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 2007.