Each week, SPIN digs into the catalogs of great artists and highlights songs you might not know for our Deep Cut Friday series.
Music critics have a habit of tearing down idols as soon as they’ve built them up, and some great sophomore albums have become collateral damage in that process. Patti Smith was anointed a major new voice by the rock press upon the release of her 1975 debut Horses, the first major label release from a punk rock artist who’d started out at the legendary New York club CBGB. When Smith returned with a harder rocking follow-up album produced by Jack Douglas (Aerosmith, New York Dolls), however, there were some withering, disappointed reviews of Radio Ethiopia in major music magazines.
Radio Ethiopia was closer to Horses, both in sound and quality, than it got credit for at the time. In fact, some of the new album’s songs were holdovers from the Patti Smith Group’s live repertoire before the release of Horses, including the entrancing six-minute “Ain’t It Strange,” co-written by Smith and bassist Ivan Kral.
Before Bruce Springsteen co-wrote Patti Smith’s biggest hit, “Because the Night,” they performed together for the first time at the Bottom Line in 1976, the day after Thanksgiving. Springsteen sat in with Smith’s band, playing guitar or piano on several songs, including a cover of the Velvet Underground’s “We’re Gonna Have a Real Good Time Together,” and a scorching 11-minute rendition of “Ain’t It Strange.”
Two months later in January 1977, Smith was touring in support of Radio Ethiopia in Tampa, Florida, when she danced off the stage. Smith fell 15 feet onto a concrete floor, breaking several vertebrae and requiring a year of rest and recovery. “I fell during ‘Ain’t It Strange,’ Now all this sounds like mythical bull but it is a truth,” Smith said in a 1978 Melody Maker interview. “I fell just as I was saying, ‘hand of God, I feel the finger.’ And I did feel the finger push me right over.”
Three more essential Patti Smith deep cuts:
“Elegie”
Patti Smith played the last concert at CBGB before the club permanently closed on October 15, 2006. Fittingly, the final song performed at CBGBs was “Elegie,” the closing track from Horses.
“Space Monkey”
Smith wrote a few great songs with Television frontman Tom Verlaine, including “Space Monkey” from 1978’s Easter.
“Beneath the Southern Cross”
After several years of semi-retirement from the music industry, Smith returned with the 1996 album Gone Again. Jeff Buckley guested on two songs, including backing vocals on “Beneath the Southern Cross,” and it would be his last on-record appearance before his death in 1997.
