Patti Smith Taking ‘Horses’ On ‘Final Ride’

Patti Smith will take her beloved 1975 album Horses on tour for what appears to be the last time this fall via a series of concerts abroad and in North America. “Please join us to help celebrate the final ride of our irreverent thoroughbred,” the artist said by way of announcing the tour, which begins Oct. 6 in Dublin and concludes Nov. 29 in Philadelphia.

Smith, 78, will be backed for the full album performances by guitarist Lenny Kaye and drummer Jay Dee Daugherty, both of whom played on the John Cale-produced Horses, as well as longtime bassist/keyboardist Tony Shanahan and her son Jackson on guitar.

More from Spin:

• Tom Morello Taps Into ‘Rage’ Energy
• ‘Buckcherry Has Always Been the Black Sheep of Rock Music’
• Left of the Dial: ‘The Current is the Heart and Soul of Minnesota Music’

“I came into music because I thought the presentation of poetry wasn’t vibrant enough,” the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductee told SPIN in 2008 about the genesis of Horses. “So I merged improvised poetry with basic rock chords. That was my original mission. But I had a secondary mission, which became the larger mission: I wanted to pump blood back into the heart of rock’n’roll.”

“There was a countermovement of people like me who were dissatisfied with the way rock had been glamorized,” she continued. “People like Tom Verlaine and Richard Hell and Debbie Harry and myself wanted to continue the efforts of bands like the MC5 and Jefferson Airplane. We were merging jazz and politics and poetry and different kinds of performance. It was a cultural revolution.”

Smith will be the subject of a separate celebration on March 26 at New York’s Carnegie Hall, when R.E.M.’s Michael Stipe, The National’s Matt Berninger, Kim Gordon, Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ Karen O, Sharon Van Etten, Angel Olsen and the Kronos Quartet gather for a tribute concert dubbed Smith’s 50th anniversary concerts are in addition to the previously-announced Patti Smith tribute concert at New York’s Carnegie Hall on March 26. Dubbed “People Have the Power: Celebrating the Music of Patti Smith.”

Before the fall Horses tour, Smith will tour Europe from July 1-25 with her Quartet, which includes Jackson Smith, Shanahan and drummer Seb Rochford. Yesterday, she told subscribers to her Substack feed that she’s spent the recent weeks successfully recovering from food poisoning, bronchitis and dizziness that caused her to fall. She added that she’s completed work on her next book, although further details weren’t provided.

Here are Patti Smith’s tour dates:

Oct. 6 – Dublin, 3Arena
Oct. 8 – Madrid, Teatro Real
Oct. 10 – Bergamo, Chorus Life Arena
Oct. 12-13 – London, Palladium
Oct. 15-16 – Brussels, Cirque Royale
Oct. 18 – Oslo, Sentrum Scene
Oct. 20-21 – Paris, Olympia
Nov. 10 – Seattle, Paramount Theatre
Nov. 12 – Oakland, Fox Theatre
Nov. 13 – San Francisco, Masonic
Nov. 15 – Los Angeles, Walt Disney Concert Hall
Nov. 17 – Chicago, Chicago Theatre
Nov. 21-22 – New York City, Beacon Theatre
Nov. 24 – Boston, Orpheum Theatre
Nov. 28 – Washington D.C., The Anthem
Nov. 29 – Philadelphia, The Met

To see our running list of the top 100 greatest rock stars of all time, click here.