ON THIS DAY IN 1975 - A FIGHT WITH HER SISTER BECAME A SONG ABOUT A WOMAN FOUND DEAD ON A BEACH

ON THIS DAY IN 1975 — A FIGHT WITH HER SISTER BECAME A SONG ABOUT A WOMAN FOUND DEAD ON A BEACH ⚡

Four years before Patti Smith released *Horses*, a rare argument with her sister Linda sent her imagination somewhere terrifying.

In 1971, Smith was sharing a space near New York’s Chelsea Hotel with Linda and Robert Mapplethorpe. One afternoon, the sisters quarreled and Linda left. When she still had not returned by nightfall, Smith became frightened that something might have happened to her. 🌙

Needing time to think, Smith took the F train to Coney Island. She sat on the beach until sunrise, surrounded by the dark ocean and the remains of the day. 🚇🌊

After returning, she wrote the draft that would become “Redondo Beach.” Her real anxiety was transformed into fiction: a narrator searches for a missing woman, only to discover that a woman has been found dead near the ocean. The fear of losing a sister had become a stark story of absence, grief and irreversible loss. ✍️

When Smith awoke, Linda had returned safely. Smith showed her what she had written and later recalled that the two sisters never fought again.

The text eventually became one of the defining songs on *Horses*, set against a reggae-influenced arrangement created with Lenny Kaye and Richard Sohl. 🎸 Its gently swaying music makes the narrative feel even more unsettling—the sound moves lightly while the story grows increasingly bleak.

That contrast gives “Redondo Beach” its lasting power. It began with an ordinary family argument, passed through one frightened night, and emerged as something haunting enough to live far beyond it. 🖤

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