Patti Smith may not be underrated by critics, but she is still underheard by the wider public.
She was central to the emergence of New York punk, although calling her merely a punk singer is too limiting. She brought poetry into rock without sanding down either one. She didn’t pioneer women in rock—many remarkable women came before her—but she expanded what a woman at the front of a rock band could sound and look like.
She belongs on my Mount Rushmore of 1970s rock.
“Gloria: In Excelsis Deo” opens Smith’s 1975 debut album, Horses, with perhaps the greatest opening line in rock history. It isn’t an invitation or a warm-up. It is an immediate declaration against inherited guilt and imposed authority.
Smith then takes Van Morrison’s garage-rock standard “Gloria” and rebuilds it around her own poem “Oath.” The performance begins almost like a poetry reading. Then the piano, guitars and drums gather behind her until the whole thing erupts.
By the end, it no longer feels like a cover. Smith has claimed the song, changed its point of view and made it part of her own mythology.
Imagine making your first album, putting this track first and beginning it with that line.
What nerve. What confidence. What balls.
Gotta respect her.