Free Money

Patti Smith and Lenny Kaye wrote "Free Money", the fourth track of Horses, 3:47 on the album (Wikipedia's page for the song says 3:52 and gives December 13, 1975 as a release date, against the album's November 10). Cale produced it at Electric Lady. Smith told American Songwriter that it came to her walking down St. Mark's at three in the morning, with the light in New York even before dawn, and that she sang it to Kaye as one of their earliest songs; Kaye found the chords and structure. Per Songfacts, citing Uncut in 2022, Kaye built a three-chord framework that Richard Sohl expanded, and early rehearsals were fields of exploration; Kaye calls it the closest thing to the loud, fast punk rock that was happening at their time, a high-energy burst of desire. She has said it was written for her mother, who always dreamed about winning the lottery. But she never bought a lottery ticket. Kaye adds that the lyric reflects her love of Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer novels.

The band played it as an encore at an Arista convention on September 18, 1975. A live version of 5:29 is on the 2005 Horses/Horses disc. Setlist.fm lists it 92 times for the Patti Smith Group, the ninth most played song ("Gloria" 138, "Redondo Beach" 124), according to a search summary we did not open. Reviews of full-album Horses performances put it at the end of side A, at Electric Lady, the Roundhouse in London and the Orpheum in Boston. Sammy Hagar covered it in 1977 on Red; he told Smith at the 2007 Hall of Fame ceremony that his producer brought him the song unaware it was hers, per Songfacts. Penetration recorded it on Moving Targets, and Treble listed it among ten essential proto-punk tracks in 2015. We could not tell whether our upload is the studio take.