Songfacts®:

• Patti Smith and her three siblings were all sickly and her parents struggled to pay their medical bills. Consequently, there was financial strife in the household and she grew up poor.
  
  Smith wrote this song, part of her debut album, Horses, for her mom. The poet-singer explained to UK newspaper The Observer: "She always dreamed about winning the lottery. But she never bought a lottery ticket! She would just imagine if she won, make lists of things she would do with the money - a house by the sea for us kids, then all kinds of charitable things."
• In 1977 Sammy Hagar covered the song with an orchestra on his Red album. At the 2007 Hall of Fame ceremony when both artists were inducted, Patti Smith asked Hagar why he recorded that song and he replied that his producer brought it to him, without him knowing it was hers. Hagar had just liked the song so he laid down his own version.
• Lenny Kaye has been Patti Smith's guitarist from her band's inception in 1974. He told Uncut magazine in 2022 that "Free Money" is one of his favorite songs to play live, saying, "It's still a high-energy burst of desire."
• When Lenny Kaye looks back on the origins of "Free Money," he remembers a song that grew out of pure instinct. In an interview with Uncut magazine, Kaye explained that early rehearsals with Patti Smith were less about structure and more about exploration. The band would start playing and simply see where the music led.
  
  According to Kaye, Smith walked into rehearsal and claimed that while passing through New York's East Village, a husky dog had somehow "beamed" the song into her head. Kaye took the inspiration in stride. He assembled the three-chord framework that became the backbone of "Free Money," and guitarist Richard Sohl expanded on it.
  
  "We called them 'fields of exploration,'" he said. "We'd be in the rehearsal room playing free money for 15 minutes, get in a groove, remember it, and the groove suggests other grooves. Pretty soon you have a song."
  
  "It's the closest thing to the loud, fast punk rock that was happening at their time," Kaye added. "I'm proud that we play it at pretty much the same velocity these days."
• Lyrically, the song reflects Smith's love of hardboiled crime fiction, particularly the work of Mickey Spillane, creator of detective Mike Hammer. Kaye recalls how when Smith hung out in the lobby of New York's Chelsea Hotel, she would slip into what he called her "Mike Hammer mode," channeling the clipped, streetwise diction that flavors the song's imagery.