least and most

Least and Most: We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions

/ Tony / 3 Comments

Left turn? More like a different road entirely. Springsteen, clearly relishing his career’s rebirth, released three studio albums that varied from each other more than at any other phase of his career. A new E Street Band album was surely on the cards after the success of The Rising but Bruce had a few things to tick off the list first and even that came about via a change in plan.

While putting together material for a planned second Tracks collection, Springsteen found a few songs that he’d cut for a Pete Seeger tribute album. Enthused by the quality and feel of these songs Bruce and Landau wanted to put them out as a stand alone album, except that there weren’t enough. So around the tour behind Devils & Dust, Bruce got the group of musicians that he’d used in ’97 back together for a couple of sessions and cut a shit load more tunes for what was not only his first collection of covers (of folk songs popularised by Seeger) but probably the least obsessed-over album of his career. A volley of great folk tunes – that manage to sound neither entirely Seeger or Springsteen in its approach – that’s not only rough and rowdy but actually sounds like a huge amount of fun was had in recording it.

Least: Froggie Went A Courtin’

‘Froggie Went A Courtin’ closes my copy of We Shall Overcome – as I picked mine up on day of release rather than the later ‘American Land’ version or bonus-track heavy one that’s on the streaming services. There’s nothing wrong with it, it’s still imbued with the same loose-but-fun and solid vibe as the rest of the album but at the end of an album imbued with tunes that lean into work songs, protests tunes and narratives that not only fit in with the general Springsteen ouvre but could also be taken to be deliberately selected based on America’s then-current events… it feels out of place. That’s all. At least it’s not ‘The Frog Chorus’.

Most: Mrs McGrath

I can’t really judge any of these songs on anything other than their handling as ‘a Springsteen song’ – though I’ve heard a few versions of this one since – rather than against the originals. For my money ‘Mrs McGrath’ feels so suited to Bruce and his arrangement and handling of it is so total that I wouldn’t have been surprised to find he’d written it. Given that his own writing – both with ‘Devils & Dusht’ and the central theme of Magic was already pushing in the direction covered by this Irish folk song it shouldn’t really be that unexpected. He inhabits it and delivers it with more passion than anything else on here and I’ve often found myself wondering how it would be handled by him outside of the Seeger Sessions Band.

Least and Most: Devils and Dust

/ Tony / 5 Comments

If you look at Springsteen’s discography you’d think that every ten years or so he has an itch to go and write and release a more acoustic leaning, serious album of character-driven narrative. In that respect Devils & Dust – recorded following a short break after touring behind The Rising – fits right in on that schedule.

One important factor to note here, though, is that this isn’t quite the case. While a couple of the songs on Devils & Dust had been heard on his Ghost of Tom Joad tour (often called the ‘Shut the fuck up tour’), the only confirmed new song on here is the title track, the rest had all been recorded by Springsteen between 1995 and 1997, so either during or immediately after Tom Joad but he’d not felt the time was right to drop another acoustic album straight away. Nor, though, did he want these songs to be resigned to the vault either. So Brendan O’Brien was on hand once again to add his enhancements and touches to the core material Springsteen had already recorded, and the new title track.

Whether we’ll ever find out what elements were added or recorded afresh is doubtful. What’s certainly true, though, is that the sonic touches added to the songs on Devils & Dust help it stand apart from Springsteen’s other such albums and lend it a fuller feeling.

So: twelve tracks, all gold? No. There’s a lot of good, solid song craft here as with all Springsteen albums but there are a few tracks that don’t hold up quite as well.

Least: Reno

There was way too much attention given to this song at the time. It’s a bland tune on the musical front and lyrically… well, if we ever wondered how miserable Springsteen thinks getting a hooker in a motel room somewhere would be at least we have the answer here. There’s no need for this song, it’s almost comical how he manages to combine references to the price of anal, blowjobs and a prostitute fingering herself with the oddest with ‘she had your ankles, I felt filled with grace.’ Guy gets a miserable experience with a hooker and distracts himself with reminisces of a former love. Not top of anyone’s wishlist for a Springsteen song.

Best: Devils & Dust

‘Long Time Comin’, ‘All I’m Thinkin’ About’, ‘All The Way Home’ are pretty strong tunes but for my money the newest song on the album is the strongest. The arrangement is probably that which benefits the most from O’Brien’s involvement and it works today as well as it did when the Iraq war was still Springsteen’s focus du jour and the song served as a signpost to wear his songwriting was heading (following a slight detour) on the next full band outing: combining his scathing view of then administration’s decision to lyrics that could be applied out of context and a great tune.

Least and Most: The Rising

/ Tony / 6 Comments

After a relative glut of new music through the ’90s, Springsteen would release five new studio albums before the first decade of the new millennium was out. All but one of these would be produced Brendan O’Brien who, starting with The Rising, would help bring Springsteen and the E Street Band’s sound into a sharper, more urgent focus for the next phase of their career after Bruce himself had realised that he (and his usual recording team) no longer knew how to really capture the band in the studio.

On what was billed as his first album with the E Street Band since Born In The USA (they were used only sporadically on Tunnel of Love) and Springsteen returning to his ‘rock voice’ are fifteen songs of consistent quality and message. Wrapped around the unspoken event of 9/11 from which all songs are pitched from the other side of (though some have their origins in those ’90s albums yet to be released) all deal with how to move forward from that day with the all too clear sense of how vital, yet fragile, our lives are.

It’s by both not naming the event itself and the sheer quality of its songs that The Rising continues to stand up as a strong album in Springsteen’s catalogue nearly a quarter-century on. It was the start of his comeback and rebirth and bristles with a vitality that we’d hoped he and the band could still bring to a studio album.

Fifteen tracks, though, is a chunky album and hints at the old cd-bloat era. Are they all good? Should ‘Harry’s Place’ sneaked in instead of something, should the scissors have been taken out of the drawer for a trimmer album? For the most part I’d say no. The songs are strong and, occasionally, fucking brilliant. But for one, that is….

Least: Let’s Be Friends (Skin to Skin)

There are two outliers on this album for me that feel like echoes of the former E Street Band sound as opposed to the vigour with which most of the new material is delivered. While ‘Waitin’ On A Sunny Day’ gets a pass from me, ‘Let’s Be Friends (Skin to Skin)’ always gets the ‘skip’ button. It lacks the cohesion of over songs, sounds under-realised and very much like a product of studio-writing / shoving ideas together.

Most: Worlds Apart

An absolute peach of a Springsteen tune that couldn’t have come at any other time. The sound, the mix, the vitality of the band, the combination of eastern and western voices, the lyrics swirling the subject between the personal – ‘I seek faith in your kiss and comfort in your heart’ – and the universal, searing guitars and an E Street Band fucking hammering it home. This song, more than any on here – and it’s packed with great tunes including the title track – is proof that while this may be Springsteen’s return to his ‘rock voice’ it’s O’Brien’s production that gives it the oomph it had been missing.

Least and Most: The Ghost of Tom Joad

/ Tony / 3 Comments

Three years, an Academy Award, an awkward E Street Band reunion, a Greatest Hits with a cluster of ‘new’ songs, and at least one scrapped album sit between Springsteen’s first albums of the the ’90s and The Ghost of Tom Joad‘s release in November 1995.

I love this album. It’s only grown on me over the years. It’s easily the most musically subdued in his entire back catalogue – with arrangements even starker than Nebraska – yet its beauty lies in those quiet moments and his willingness to paint striking stories with the slightest of brushes. It’s also worth noting that when that brush flushes with colour in the style of, say, the flush of keys on “Dry Lightning”, it’s down to Danny Federici. While it was clearly another left-turn after the short-lived E Street reunion for Greatest Hits, it’s his most consistent set of songs for some time. Rather than grappling with coming to terms with his wealth and status, Springsteen’s eye is turned outward for a compelling set of stories of those that America had turned its back on – working class, foreign born – by the mid-nineties. As the man himself puts it: “the austere rhythms and arrangements defined who these people were and how they expressed themselves….They were transient and led heard, complicated lives, half of which had been left behind in another world, in another country.”

Least: My Best Was Never Good Enough

Springsteen, in ‘Songs’, describes this as his ‘parting joke’ and a way of satirising the way that complex moral issues can be trivialised. Maybe it’s over my head but I’m not sure the album needed a final ‘gag’ song. It feels a bit like ‘Pony Boy’ slapped at the end of Human Touch as if to lighten the listener. It’s not an inherently bad song – none of these ‘leasts’ are – but it’s far from my favourite on the album and doesn’t really sit shoulder to shoulder with the title track, ‘Youngstown’, the compassion of ‘The Line’ or ‘Sinaloa Cowboys’ or…

Most: Galveston Bay

In a way I feel ‘Galveston Bay’ is one of Springsteen’s bravest songs as a songwriter: the lyrics and the story are of the highest quality but the music is so whisper-thin (delicate picking that’s more intonation than melody and the softest of keys, both courtesy of Springsteen, the only credited performer on the track) yet it demands your attention throughout. There’s no verse / chorus / verse structure here – there are two opening stanzas – as this feels more prose than song – that introduce the two characters without an indication of where we’re heading before tackling a theme straight from a real life event in Seadrift in 1979, tackling – in just five minutes – one hell of a story. A harrowing but redemptive story about how, after getting to a certain point, people can actually make the right choice instead of a deadly choice. It’s more a short story set to music.

I’ve been hooked on ‘Galveston Bay’ since I first heard The Ghost of Tom Joad and that hook has only sunk deeper as time moves on.

Least and Most: Lucky Town

/ Tony / 3 Comments

In theory I should have released this post on the same day as that for Human Touch, right? If only this weren’t a massively busy month for me professionally and personally I may well have done.

However, that does lead me nicely to my thoughts on this album that have changed somewhat in the years since the full album rankings. I think the widest-held belief is that if Bruce were to have taken the best of Human Touch‘s tunes and added them to Lucky Town he’d have had a real victory on his hands and there are plenty of takes out there on what that ‘Lucky Touch’ album would contain.

Thing is, having listened to Lucky Town a lot more over the years, I don’t think that’s necessary. Lucky Town is a really solid set of tunes that feel complete as it is – this is Springsteen in the early ’90s grappling with his concerns (coming to terms with his wealth, his new life as both a married man and a parent) and dealing with them with the same levels of compassion, honesty and humour that underpinned his best work in the previous decades and with some great tunes to boot. What I know wonder, then, isn’t ‘what if Bruce had compiled the best of both?’ but more ‘what if he’d never released Human Touch after all?’ I mean, we’ll never know, but this feels like the start of Bruce second-guessing. He wasn’t sure Human Touch was ready and had sat on it for over a year thinking it needed one more song whereas Lucky Town came together really quickly. Had Lucky Town not had the shadow of Human Touch then I feel Springsteen’s first album of the ’90s would have been received a lot more favourably and probably had a bigger impact.

Anyway, that’s not what we’re here for. It’s a solid album but, sure, it has a few lows of which the standout for me is..

Least: Leap of Faith

Across the two albums, seven songs would be released as singles of which this was the weakest of the bunch if you ask me. I can’t say there’s anything inherently wrong with it, I just can’t enjoy this one, it feels like a by-the-numbers studio session without much true feeling behind it.

Most: Living Proof

I could just as easily go to bat for ‘Better Days’, ‘Local Hero’ and even the title track but ‘Living Proof’ has continued to grow in my esteem over the years and especially as a parent, it feels all the more powerful.

Least and Most: Human Touch

/ Tony / 4 Comments

You know how it is with quotes and soundbites – sometimes their origin gets lost even when the quote itself remains pure and valid. I’ve got a sneaky feeling it was Hall of Fame related – possibly while inducting someone else – but Springsteen is on record and oft-cited as saying “I tried it [writing happy songs] in the early ’90s and it didn’t work; the public didn’t like it.”

Now the problem with this is many-fold and as we now lurch into the ’90s with this series, this feels as good an opportunity as any to address this.

Firstly – pretty sure Springsteen’s work of the previous decades is also littered with ‘happy’ songs too. I don’t think anyone is getting a lump in their throat listening to ‘I’m A Rocker’ or ‘She’s The One’ nor would they with the upbeat songs in the decades to come.

Secondly – it wasn’t the emotional nature of the songs that went unliked. It was the quality.

If there is a third point here, and I’m fairly certain of that, it’s that the ’90s were as prolific for Bruce as any other decade. We just haven’t heard most of it as it’s been shelved. I’ve seen mention, at some point, of five unreleased records from the ’90s. Even Van Zandt mentions going down to Rumson to hear a new batch of songs while the Boss fretted about not having a single yet. I haven’t spoken much about ‘Unrequited Infatuations’ yet but you have to take some elements with a pinch of salt as Van Zandt feels to have single-handedly shaped entire careers and global political movements with just a few sage words at the right time. However, given that he claims that havingtold Springsteen to revisit his Nebraska vibe resulting in The Ghost of Tom Joad, that puts this conversation in the early ’90s. Springsteen’s early ’90s seems to be more a period of second-guessing than it does of making happy songs.

Back to point 2 though…. listening back through the albums in sequence again for this series has been great. It’s also given me a different perspective on this album. I can’t remember the point in my collecting that I originally purchased Human Touch (and probably Lucky Town at the same time) but I know it wasn’t in release order. It makes it all the more evident that quality control suffered a big drop off with Human Touch. There were always lesser songs on Springsteen’s albums but Human Touch feels like the first time in which – rather than give such tunes to other artists or assign them as b-sides – the minor material makes up the bulk of the album and, while it’s not all bad, the good songs feel like outliers. After waiting four and a half years for a new Bruce Springsteen album and getting just shy of an hour’s worth of this lesser material, it’s understandable that it wasn’t well liked.

It could be that there’s a lack of chemistry between Bruce and ‘The Other Band’ that means the weaker elements of the songs can’t be carried over by great playing, but it’s not like he picked up of people that only knew a few chords. The songs are simply ineffective. There’s a song about TV, ffs. There’s also a song about feeling like a Real Man with his girl that actually contains the line “Rambo he was blowin’ ’em down”. It’s come to something when ‘Pony Boy’ isn’t the worst thing on an album.

Least: Cross My Heart

‘Cross My Heart’ is a pretty unforgettable and unremarkable tune. It doesn’t even sound like Bruce is that enthused about it and he’s the one singing it. Listening to Tracks it feels like he had half a dozen that were pretty much the same song as this and may just as well have chosen one at random to put on the finished disc. It tries to lift the beat and find momentum at points but it honestly feels more like a backing track and really sits amongst his lesser material for me.

Most: With Every Wish

Yeah, for all the mountain of filler there are some pretty good songs here that feel exactly how you’d want Springsteen to sound at the start of the ’90s. The title track is a bit of a gem. ‘Roll of the Dice’ – written with Roy Bittan – feels like it could have made a good E Street rave up given a chance.

‘With Every Wish’, though, is the rarest of things on these albums: it feels like a natural Bruce Springsteen song. The gentle nagging melody, the cautionary tale of love, the sweep of strings and a horn (courtesy of Mark Isham’s muted trumpet) that make it feel like it comes from a different, better album. It feels as close to a natural follow on from Tunnel of Love‘s material as you can get. It had me hooked the first time I heard Human Touch and still holds my attention throughout. The fact that it’s more sedate in its pace and accompaniment means not only is the production less overwrought and feel of session players absent but it suits Springsteen’s more mature songwriting themes that little bit better too.

Least and Most: Tunnel of Love

/ Tony / 5 Comments

While he’s never pulled a Landing On Water style curveball, it’s not as though Springsteen has ever really repeated an album formula since he broke through. From the success of Born To Run he dialled the production down for the leaner, meaner Darkness… while Nebraska‘s stark, acoustic desperation was an equally far cry from the sprawl of The River. Following Born In The USA‘s success with a similar stadium-pleasing muscle-bound punch would have been an easy call and the ’80s were full of similar ‘dial it up a notch for more dosh’ examples. Bruce, however, was ready to move on and look inward instead.

Tunnel of Love is one of Springsteen’s finest albums. Where he’d undoubtedly written about men and women before, this time the voice felt real and the vocabulary didn’t feel borrowed. Just as Springsteen himself got off the road and started to look at his own married life and the issues he was dealing with, he took his characters out of their cars and sat them at the table to take a long hard look at each other. As genuine and nuanced a set of songs as he’d ever release with a gorgeous sound and production.

So is there a least favourite lurking among yet another stellar collection of songs? Yup…

Least: I Ain’t Got You

I guess this is here to say ‘this isn’t another ‘rock’ album’ but ‘I Ain’t Got You’ is an odd choice for Springsteen. By all accounts it lead to the second of Springsteen’s three fights* with Steven Van Zandt when he played it for him. As SVZ put it, when Bruce played it to him: “People depend on your empathy!” I said. “It’s what you do best. They don’t want advice from Liberace or empathy from Nelson Fucking Rockefeller! You shouldn’t be writing shit like this!” While it wouldn’t be the last time Bruce wrote in this style (see Better Days’ ‘a life of leisure and a pirate’s treasure’) it’s more jarring thanks to it’s almost entire lack of musical accompaniment.

Most: One Step Up

This one’s easy for me. ‘One Step Up’ is not only an album highlight but one of my favourite Springsteen songs. A pensive ballad with haunting production that’s got just the right amount of that late-’80s vibe and a simple but effective melody that ticks away throughout that’s possibly the most on-the-nose reference to a marriage breakdown as the album would contain: ‘another fight and I slam the door on another battle in our dirty little war.’ It represents not only a break with the past – Springsteen played every instrument on the track himself with Patti Scialfa adding vocal harmonies – but a clear indication as to where his song writing would move him next, only he’d never quite the balance as perfect as this.

*For those keeping score: Fight 1 was over creative and decision making input around the sessions for Born In The USA which led to SVZ’s departure. The third was down to Springsteen’s induction into The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame without the E Street Band.

Least and Most: Born In The USA

/ Tony / 6 Comments

“Sometimes records dictate their own personalities and you just have to let them be…. I finally stopped doing my hesitation shuffle, took the best of what I had and signed off on what would be the biggest album of my career”

Work on what would become Born In The USA began in early 1982. The years of sessions would yield close to 80 songs – including those that became Nebraska – would see the departure of Steven Van Zandt and an album that went through multiple versions before the forces that be put an end to the inertia that Springsteen seemed stuck in and his most grab-bag collection of songs was released to kick off BOSS MANIATM with Rambo Bruce rocking a head band or bandana and flexing his way across a stadium stage near you for a year and a half.

I’ve written about those multiple versions, those ‘what could have been‘ albums already. But here we’re talking about two songs from the album we did get. An album that’s a real curate’s egg. king at how this was the last of Springsteen’s albums where there were whole multiple albums of outtakes, you get the feeling that this is the point at which he was starting to get lost in his search and could’ve ended up carrying on to Chinese Democracy lengths if he wasn’t careful. Which certainly explains the reserve with which he’s come to view the album too.

Thing is, each of these songs work. This is still peak-period Springsteen so none of these songs are ‘bad’ in the traditional sense (don’t worry Human Touch is only a few years away) but the album lacks the consistency / sense of cohesion that previously embodied his work. As such, and not so surprising given that seven of its twelve tracks were released as singles, it feels like a compilation rather than an album.

Least: Cover Me

I feel like I’m in a minority with this one given that it was a hit single and all but there’s something about it that just means I don’t take it in as much as the rest of the album. Maybe it’s because it wasn’t written as his own song. It was intended for Donna Summer. While ‘Hungry Heart’ was initially meant for The Ramones it felt like a Springsteen song meant to be given away rather than writing specifically for someone else’s voice. As such the feel of the song in amongst the rest of the album doesn’t gel for me.

I will say, though, that in many respects, this song is a noteworthy one. Just as the message of ‘Born In the USA’ become overlooked some flag-waving Republicans (oh, those were the days, right America? How bad does Reagan seem now?),Springsteen’s singing a song written for and from the female voice without any alteration to lyric is a wonderful thing – here’s Springsteen with his stocky frame now bedecked with muscles calling for a lover to ‘wrap your arms around me, cover me’ and protect him a rough world that’s only getting rougher.

It’s the directness of those lyrics that make it tough for me to call it ‘Least’ but it’s the sound of it that I can’t quite vibe with. He struggled trying to find a way to get it right live on that Born In The USA tour too… it wasn’t a regular set list staple until Arthur Baker’s remix gave him a way in by slowing it and making it a little ominous and brooding. The live versions are now pretty fucking great, but we can’t count those here so let’s move along…

Most: Downbound Train

Only on an album where the majority of songs were released as singles could a song this strong be considered a ‘deep cut,’ but ‘Downbound Train’ feels like a piece of over-looked gold in amidst a sea of chest-thumping stadium pleasers. “Now I work down at the car wash, where all it ever does is rain” might be one of my favourite Springsteen lyrics but this song is fucking stuffed with them, all evocative… what about the whole fucking verse:

“There in the clearing, beyond the highway
In the moonlight, our wedding house shone
I rushed through the yard, I burst through the front door
My head pounding hard, up the stairs I climbed
The room was dark, our bed was empty
Then I heard that long whistle whine
And I dropped to my knees, hung my head and cried”

‘Downbound Train’ is one of those first clutch of songs that came from Springsteen’s home recordings that included Nebraska‘s songs and tracks like ‘Born in the USA’ and ‘Johnny Bye Bye’ that he put to tape in 1982 and appeared on almost every potential track list for release between then and the final album. In less than a decade since the thesaurus-groping first two albums he’d distilled his songwriting down to the point where he could render a full story of broken hopes, marriage and lives with much clearer precision.

Pain, hope, desperation… it’s all there in a tune containing some of his most aching lyrics put to a great driving (or train-like chugging) melody with just the right amount of that ’80s synth. To me, this is the biggest indicator on the album of where we’d find New Jersey’s finest on his next outing.

Least and Most: The River

/ Tony / 6 Comments

In theory this is where it gets easier. For while Springsteen was still churning work of unyielding quality some of those tracks, in retrospect, probably should have been left in the vault. Doesn’t necessarily mean that choosing a ‘most’ is going to be easier but singling those ‘meh’ tracks out gets simpler

The River, released – just before I was – in October 1980, was Springsteen’s double album statement of purpose. We’re deep into Bruce’s era of stockpiling songs here and between the end of 1979 and May 1980 when recording sessions began and ended across two different phases, close to 60 songs were recorded to a finished state. As the studio time began to clock up an antsy Steven Van Zandt already wanted out, he was convinced to stay put by being made part of the production team that already included Springsteen and Jon Landau. SVZ’s imprint is clear on many of the shorter, punchier tunes but The River is a sprawling beast of an album that for many years became the best one-stop-shop for all things Sprinsgsteen. It’s why he couldn’t let it go – despite a couple of finished, mixed versions going to the label – as a single album:

“It wasn’t big enough. It wasn’t sprawling enough. It didn’t include enough. I’d gotten to the point where I wanted to include everything that I did, from the party material to my character studies, and I didn’t think I could do that successfully on one album at that time. I didn’t take it back with the intention of making two…. I just took it back with the intention of making it better.”

So, twenty songs. Are they all gold? Of course not. Hell, this is the first of many instances where archival releases would beg the questions ‘how did X make the cut over this?’ With that in mind…

Least: Crush On You

“Ooh, ooh, I gotta crush on you, Ooh, ooh, I gotta crush on you, Ooh, ooh, I gotta crush on you tonight”… I mean, it sounds naff enough once, let alone when it’s repeated ad nauseum after just the second verse. Verses so slight they feel like they were put together with fridge magnets. No amount of SVZ styled garage-band-rave-up sound can save this – even Springsteen has called it the stupidest song he’d ever recorded and would sarcastically refer to it as ‘a masterpiece’ in 2009. It becomes even more questionable when you weight it up against the aforementioned tracks consigned to archival releases like ‘Take ‘Em as They Come,’ ‘Roulette’ or ‘Where The Bands Are.’

Most: The River

This is very tricky. I love ‘Point Blank’, ‘Stolen Car’, ‘Wreck On The Highway’…. ‘Two Hearts’ is an underrated slab of brilliance and ‘Out In The Street’ and ‘Hungry Heart’ are undisputed fucking gems. But the second that harmonica hits or Bruce utters ‘I come from down in the valley’ you know where you are. It’s a PIVOTAL song in his back catalogue and while he still felt he needed four or five songs in the same style to make an epic album, Van Zandt was right when he said you only need ‘The River’ and you’ve got an amazing album.

Least and Most: Darkness on the Edge of Town

/ Tony / 19 Comments

Have I mentioned that some of these are gonna be harder than others? That few artists have as impressive a streak of great albums as Springsteen? Good. Because I’ve now reached my favourite Springsteen album. One of my favourite albums of all time: Darkness on the Edge of Town.

This is the first of many Springsteen albums where – after legal wranglings stopped him going into the studio for a bit – the man they call Boss began writing more tunes than anyone could possibly fit onto one album as he racked up studio time searching for the right songs and final album. It meant that three years separate it from his breakthrough and that it would, looking back, become his first left-turn from what was expected in a move he’d repeat throughout his career. Who knows: had he gone back into the studio with Jon Landau when he first wanted to – his manager Mike Appel wanted to take advantage of Born To Run‘s success with a live album instead – we might just have got Born To Run 2: The Road Worrier. The songs on Darkness.. instead drew their inspiration from characters by Johns Steinbeck and Ford, the music lost the ‘everything but the kitchen sink’ production in favour of something leaner, rawer and tinged with attitude of the nascent punk scene somehow married to Springsteen’s interest in country too. These weren’t ‘losers’ anymore, they were working class heroes living tough lives against a tough sound in which The E Street Band provide the power to give them an edge.

The result is damn-near unimpeachable. This one, though, is an easy choice for me:

Least: Factory

To me ‘Factory’ sucks the air out the album just as it’s gotten going on Side B with ‘The Promised Land’. I get it; it’s the counter to ‘Adam Raised A Cain’ in as much it’s his exploring the mundane daily toll of his father’s working life but it lacks the urgency, the punch and visceral nature of both the album’s other songs and those others he would write dealing with the same matter. The music doesn’t work for me – it didn’t work when used as ‘Come On (Let’s Go Out Tonight)’ and makes Springsteen’s invite to party (at the flipping factory of all renowned swinging hotspots) as inviting as a cold-water enema.

Most: Racing In The Street

Hell, it might just be one of Springsteen’s best ever songs. I’ve still got a love for the ’78 version too but the original has always hit hardest. One of the first songs he started writing for Darkness.. it didn’t need to evolve so much as refine until the solo piano song ‘Dying in the Street’ until it became the epic call back to Born To Run‘s dreamers who now lived only to hit the strip. Who knows when or how he hit upon the line – “Some guys they just give up living and start dying little by little, piece by piece” – that pins the song down and grounds it but it makes it one of the best he’s put to tape.