9th place: Patti Smith with “Horses” (1975)
There’s no record of Patti Smith’s nights banging out the order of the songs for her debut album. John Cale deliberately bungled the production of “Horses” in order to get a sound that preserved the raw energy of this young, impetuous artist and her fantastic band.
But what a stroke of luck that Gloria: In Excelsis Deo introduces us to the cosmos of this humble poet, brought to music by magical chance encounters in a New York whose monstrosity she conjured up just as it was slowly began to crumble. “Jesus died for somebody’s sins but not mine,” Smith chants, and how could a record start with a stronger motto?
It’s all there in this easy-going Van Morrison revival: the wild, the life-affirming, the lyrical dedication, the nod to the literary and musical heroes. Smith prepared the world for what would eventually come to be known as punk. She fearlessly competes with Bob Dylan, she hypnotizes herself (“Free Money”), she hisses like Lou Reed and crows like William S. Burroughs, she has the soaring, epic compositions (“Birdland”, “Land”), she kneels deep in her own troubled feelings (“Kimberly”), and where her strength is no longer sufficient, Lenny Kaye grinds himself up for her with his boisterous guitar (“Break It Up”).
Patti Smith didn’t have to mention the name of her literary hero, Rimbaud, to sell her ambitions, “Horses” didn’t have to advertise that it was a work of art in its own right. Smith’s man Robert Mapplethorpe clothed this gift to a troubled generation whose gods would soon be withered with a cover photo that, in its androgyny, is arguably one of the most powerful and personal in rock music history.
Marc Cousin
8th place: Bob Dylan with “Blonde On Blonde” (1966)
The covers of some records look so legendary that you want to buy them immediately without having heard a song. The photo of Bob Dylan’s mop of hair on Blonde On Blonde is iconic because photographer Jerry Schatzberg blurred it. Of course, Dylan saw that it was spot on for an album that featured the Hawks, later known as The Band and Dylan’s backing band, Al Kooper on organ, Joe South and Charlie McCoy on guitars, and Hargus “Pig” Robbins on piano .
Recording began in New York in the fall of 1965 and continued in Nashville in the spring of 1966. Some records make you want to buy them immediately because of the album title and song titles, and such a record is Blonde On Blonde: Rainy Day Women #12 & 35, Stuck Inside Of Mobile With The Memphis Blues Again, Temporary Like Achilles”, “Absolutely Sweet Marie”, “Leopard-Skin Pill-Box Hat”.
Then you hear the album and it blows you away. The world had never heard anything like it. As if Thomas Pynchon had written songs with Hoagy Carmichael and John Coltrane, such surrealistic, completely unsettling and irrefutable creations. But also very strict, beautiful songs like “Visions Of Johanna” and “Just Like A Woman” that sound as if they had always been there.
Dylan had a term for the sound of the record: “that thin, wild mercury sound”. It is also the first double album ever. And on the fourth side is just one song, “Sad Eyed Lady Of The Lowlands”. The world marveled and the prophets marveled
Arne Willander