Easter / Horses

About

A few months after the release of its 1976 album <i>Radio Ethiopia</i>, the Patti Smith Group was on tour with Bob Seger & The Silver Bullet Band. As the openers, the PSG was confined to a small space at the front of the stage, at a venue much larger than the ones in which the group normally played. Together, those factors proved to be disorienting for Smith, and when she began to spin around during “Ain’t It Strange,” she lost her balance and fell off the stage to the concrete floor below. Luckily, the fall didn’t kill her—but the injury ended the tour, and vanquished any hopes at promoting the album. So when the time arrived to make Smith’s third album, she headed into the studio seeking more than just a hit—she was looking for redemption. She wanted her songs to sound good on the radio, and had made the acquaintance of a recording engineer she frequently spotted at the studio—a guy who was <i>always</i> there, no matter what time of day or night it was. His name was Jimmy Iovine, and Smith thought this hardworking twentysomething kid would be the perfect producer for her next album. As it turned out, Iovine already had a full-time gig: He was working as the engineer for Bruce Springsteen, who’d been recording the album that would become <i>The River</i>. Springsteen had been writing a lot of songs, not all of which were earmarked for the next album—and many of which weren’t even finished. Iovine had his eye on one of them, a song for which Springsteen had written the melody and chorus, yet hadn’t composed any lyrics. Iovine asked if he could bring the song to Smith, and while waiting one night for her boyfriend to call, she wrote some words for the unfinished track. “Because the Night”—which would become the lead-off single to 1978’s <i>Easter</i>—went to No. 13 on the Billboard charts, and gave Smith her commercial breakthrough. The album was stronger and more consistent than <i>Radio Ethiopia</i>, but it was still a full-on Patti Smith Group record, with songs that were written to rouse an audience, inspire curiosity, explore magic—and to piss a lot of people off.

via Apple Music