Patti Smith is God(dess)

   For the next five weeks we recorded and mixed my first album, Horses. Jimi Hendrix never came back to create his new musical language [at Electric Ladyland, the New York studio he built and where Smith recorded Horses], but he left behind a studio that resonated all his hopes for the future of our cultural voice. These things were in my mind from the first moment I entered the vocal booth. The gratitude I had for rock and roll as it pulled me through a difficult adolescence. The joy I experienced when I danced. The moral power I gleaned in taking responsibility for one's actions.
   These things were encoded in Horses as well as a salute to those who paved the way before us. 
   --Patti Smith, Just Kids, p. 149