97 Gloria

PATTI SMITH 1975

The first line of Smith’s galvanizing act of rock & roll vandalism — “Jesus died for somebody’s sins but not mine” — began as part of a poem called “Oath,” which she performed around the East Village in the early Seventies. When she began practicing with guitarist Lenny Kaye and piano player Richard Sohl, they often jammed on Them’s primal 1964 garage-rock song “Gloria,” and Smith came up with the idea of fusing the two, creating something reverent and revolutionary that opened her landmark 1975 debut, Horses, the first album-length bow shot from the CBGB punk scene.