bruce springsteen

Least and Most: Nebraska

/ Tony / 7 Comments

How many artists can manage to create a five-star album when they weren’t actively trying to make an album in the first place?

I’m not going to reiterate the story behind Springsteen’s Nebraska. Aside from the fact that there’s already a film of the period in the works – honestly though; ‘man makes austere collection of songs on home four-track as guide for band, carries it around in pocket for so long it nearly gets absorbed by his denim before putting them out as is’ feels as thrillingly entertaining as watching Timothee Chalamet trying not to look like he knows what instragram is for long enough to finish singing ‘Like A Rolling Stone’ – it’s been told many a time.

My connection to Nebraska goes back to 1999, hearing ‘State Trooper’ played over the end credits of a Sopranos episode and – streaming services that mug off artists not being a thing yet – went out and picked up both my second and third (having picked up Greatest Hits in ’95) Springsteen albums in one hit as it came as double-cd combo with Darkness… Talk about an auspicious intro.

This, then, is the hardest one of these for me. There’s not a single song on Nebraska I don’t enjoy. These are ten songs that feel perfectly placed and without an ounce of fat on the whole joint. If I were to be picky, very, very, very picky – which is what I’d have to be to even think like this – I’d say that, possibly..

Least: Used Cars

But only because compared to everything else the lyrics sound a little slight. But then that’s not necessarily a bad thing because Springsteen was ‘high’ on Flannery O’Connor’s work and her ability to write pure narrative including from a child’s perspective and the songs simple yet pure dream of a greater life typified by the feeling that a lottery win would mean – of all things – the ability not to drive a used car is pitch perfect especially as it follows up ‘State Trooper.’ So this isn’t so much Least more like a Least (barely) but still fucking great….

Which leaves the trick of identifying the other end of the spectrum but for me that’s relatively straight forward…

Most: State Trooper

It has to be, for me: it’s the one that sent me spiralling deeper into Springsteen’s catalogue and still captivates me. That pulsating guitar line that emulates the monotonous, repetitive sound of the road.. the pleading ‘Please don’t stop me, PLEASE don’t stop me’… it’s perfect.

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.

Least and Most: Born to Run

/ Tony / 9 Comments

All the redemption I can offer, girl, is beneath this dirty hood…

I want to know if love is wild, girl I want to know if love is real…

Man there’s an opera out on the Turnpike, there’s a ballet being fought out in the alley…

It’s chapter three. In which our hero gives the E Street a shuffle, welcomes back an old confidante and gains a new one to boot, sharpens his street poetry to make it more universal, plucks his characters from their boardwalk hideouts and puts them into something chrome wheeled and fuel injected so they can bust out of Asbury Park en route to becoming rock and roll future. That’s right; it’s the Catalina fucking wine mixer Born To Run.

Once again – and certainly for the next few posts – I’ve placed myself in a tricky spot: citing a track that I find my least preferred on an album that’s easily one of Springsteen’s finest and no doubt a favourite album of many. Born To Run has become one of those albums – you know: an instantly recognisable cover that’s been parodied countless times, one that’s stuffed full of killer songs and tracks that delight night after night after night after night… one that routinely tops magazine ‘best of this or that’ polls etc.

Does it even have a track that I don’t love as much as the others? Well, perhaps not but that’s not really what we’re looking at here but there is one song that I certainly listen to and recall less than others and that means that..

Least: Night

AGAIN – this isn’t a slight of ‘Night’ but I can’t recall much about it even now after having run through the album again yesterday. It’s a great tune and on any other album wouldn’t be here – hell even Bruce’s least memorable cuts are better than many artists’ highs… but it has the misfortune of being a three minute blast of good stuff in between two fucking great cuts; ‘Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out’ and ‘Backstreets’. It’s like the definition of a filler slot, it would have to be a really remarkable track to stand its own there and it’s to the song’s credit that it’s still bloody good… but there’s nothing stand-out about it for me. That’s all.

Picking a ‘most’ from Born To Run is almost as challenging to be honest. I mean, there’s ‘Thunder Road’ which is one of his finest, there’s the title track itself and the the previously mentioned ‘Backstreets’… but there’s nothing really like..

Most: Jungleland

It’s beyond compare, really. It’s like everything great on this album was building up to the magnificent epic that straddles nearly ten minutes of pure delight at the end and manages to encompass everything great that Springsteen had hinted at in his music to come and would for decades yet to arrive. The street poetry is there, the surging hope for better tomorrows, the ridiculously moving saxophone break, the builds and release and powering along, and the fact that, somehow, he manages to make the whole thing still feel like an anthem to be blasted to a stadium full of fans giving as much passion as they can ‘tonight…. in… JungleLAND’.

Fuck yes.

Least and Most: The Wild, The Innocent & the E Street Shuffle

/ Tony / 7 Comments

Might as well tackle the bull by the horns, as they say. Though who in their right mind would want to tackle a bull at all, let alone by the pointy end. Probably the same person who’s trying to find a ‘least’ track on a pretty-much faultless album. I reckon this is more one for Tom Cruise and his IMF team than it is for me. I don’t grin “like an idiot every fifteen minutes” though.

Put simply The Wild, The Innocent & the E Street Shuffle is the beginning of Springsteen’s unimpeachable run of albums. It delivers on a promise that wasn’t all too apparent on his debut released just eight months prior. After plenty of shows with the fledgling E Street Band and with keyboard player David Sancious as his first musical lieutenant, the songs on The Wild.. add strains of jazz and other styles to Springsteen’s street-life scenes and boardwalk characters and while the lyrics still feel like he’s falling through the pages of a thesaurus, they’re getting ever tighter and more evocative. The run of ‘Incident on 57th Street’, ‘Rosalita (Come Out Tonight)’ and ‘New York City Serenade’ mean that Side B is easily the greatest second half of any album out there alone.

Given the sheer brilliance of these early albums, while I hope it’s not needed, I’ll add a caveat to this that I’d rather take these songs other plenty of others and that ‘least’ is meant only in a relative sense. Now, with that being said I’m also fully aware that I’m probably committing an act of Bossphemy when I say…

Least: The E Street Shuffle

That’s definitely the sound of ‘boo’s not ‘Bruuuuce’ I hear right now, I’m sure. Again: I fucking LOVE this album. But there’s something about the opener in comparison to everything that follows that feels a little, well; lesser. It feels a little like Bruce is trying too hard to get that live show stopper song into the mix that he’d perfect with ‘Tenth Avenue Freeze Out’ and ‘Out In The Streets’.

Lyrically…. it’s a jumble. While just one song later we’ve got pure evocation with “the fireworks are hailin’ over Little Eden tonight, forcin’ a light into all those stoned-out faces left stranded on this Fourth of July” on ‘The E Street Shuffle’ we’ve got a ‘man-child’ giving double shots to ‘little girls’ and some dude called Power 13 and his girl Little Angel? Again, this is only a relative ‘least’ because I’m comparing it to the utter ‘provoke a gold-rush and mass migration to the west’ level of quality the rest of the album has both lyrically and musically.

There, that’s the hardest ‘least’ I’ve faced while putting this together. I need a lie down. But before I do…

Most: New York City Serenade

I’m not one to reinvent the wheel or work too hard – or hard at all – when I don’t have to. As such I’m going to borrow from my Least to Most take on The Wild The Innocent.. and say “there’s a few, a small few songs that I’ll listen to where the opening bar is so immediately ‘right’, so ‘spot on’ and tuned to me that it affects me to the core. It’s like an instant high. ‘New York City Serenade’ is one of those. That hammer of the piano strings, the cascade of notes that follows. Sometimes you’ll hear an intro that’s perfect and you’ll think ‘ok, how’s this gonna get marred?’ because not everything that follows can be as good. With ‘New York City Serenade’ everything works beautifully, the arrangement is so perfectly put together that every element just flows into the next in a way that makes it seem like effortless poetry. There’s not a single bum note or misstep in the entire song. Bruce Springsteen was 23 when he wrote and arranged ‘New York City Serenade.’ When I was 23 I though it was a good idea to call a band ‘Wookie Cushion’”.

This isn’t just my favourite song on this album, it’s one of my favourite songs of all time.

What are you thinking? Should I be strung up for suggesting ‘The E Street Shuffle’ is lesser than ‘Wild Billy’s Circus Story?’

Least and Most: Greetings From Asbury Park, N.J

/ Tony / 3 Comments

Am I really kicking off a new series? Is it another Springsteen-focused run? You betcha.

This shouldn’t be as time consuming to write or read as previous though. The idea is a pretty simple one: Bruce has twenty studio albums – discounting archival boxsets and karaoke soul cover albums – and having recently spent time running through the lot of ’em I’m gonna be picking two tracks from each, the most and least played / loved / enjoyable from my perspective. Granted, with so many five star albums in the mix it’ll be easier with some than others but that’s part of the ‘game’, right?

Spending time with Springsteen’s catalogue again recently I’ve noticed how my appreciation of certain albums has changed over the years and his 1973 debut Greetings From Asbury Park, N.J. is one of those that’s grown in my appreciation.

Adding an unbridled sense of exuberance to Dylan style thesaurus-wrestlers with exaggerated imagery and street scenes, Springsteen’s debut sets folk-based tunes to an electric band backing. This phase of Springsteen’s career was short-lived. The coffee-shop folkie mode he’d shifted to after Steel Mill seemed to have run its course even with Bruce for as soon as he’d signed as a solo artist he assembled a band again to cut his first album – which was also the first and only time he wrote complete lyrics before the music.

It’s pretty hard to identify lesser tracks from Springsteens early albums (early as he’s now into his sixth decade of releasing them) but ….

Least: The Angel

‘The Angel’ is such a slight, seemingly ineffective song that you’d pretty much forget it after hearing the album. It’s only been performed live twice. Ever.

Meanwhile there’s a wealth of great songs on here that stand up to constant repeating. Whether it’s the radio ‘hits’ – ‘Spirit In The Night’ and ‘Blinded By The Light’ – that he was sent to write after handing in an album that Columbia felt lacked any or the familiar ‘Growin’ Up’ and ‘For You’, these early nuggets are as golden as they get. For me, though, there’s one that stands head and shoulders above the rest…

Most: Lost In The Flood

It’s epic. It’s ridiculously well-written and arranged for a dude of 23 and has remained a fan favourite and crowd pleaser since. There was talk that Steven Van Zandt had a hand in creating some of the song’s sounds (particularly the explosion through the amp at kick-off) but he’s on record as denying that and there’s no mention in either Springsteen or SVZ’s* auto-bios. It’s one of those brooding, sparse story songs that Springsteen would smash out of the park throughout his career. Is is it his first Vietnam song? I think so… correct me if I’m wrong. Hell, I even had a ‘Bronx’s best apostle’ t-shirt for years my adoration of this song is so strong. It sits right in the middle of the running order but, to me, this is a key puzzle piece on the road to Born To Run and Darkness – it’s an underdog saga with just a small glimpse of hope.

To paraphrase El Duderino, though, this is just, like, my opinion, man. Let me know if you think I’m miles off.

*Reading Unrequited Infatuations it would seem Van Zandt was completely off Springsteen’s radar between his signing with and releasing his first two albums for Columbia as he wasn’t part of the band you get the impression he was having a little bit of a sulk about it.

Midweek Spinnage

/ Tony / 3 Comments

Been a while… again. Without further mumbling, it feels like a good ‘get over the mid-week slump’ exercise to share half a dozen of those things that’ve been getting into my ears this last week or so.

Wilco – Either Way

I’ve been slowly but shortly putting together and whittling down a list of what I would consider to be 100 albums that are essential to me – in a way revisiting a list I put together some sixteen years ago. I haven’t mentioned them much here, if it all, but Wilco are a wonderful band and their Sky Blue Sky is definitely on that list. It’s easily their finest album and I love this tune especially.

Gary Clark Jr – Bright Lights

Listening to the iPod on shuffle in the car can often mean a few tracks get skipped but whenever a tune from Gary Clark Jr’s Live comes on I’ll end up turning shuffle off and lining up the full album. I’ve been spending more time with his studio discography lately and his 2011 Bright Lights EP is a favourite and this is a hell of an earworm.

Larkin Poe – Preachin’ Blues

Across the summer, the park behind my house hosts a number of festivals and concerts. This weekend past was the ‘Maid in Stone’ festival which veered towards the hard rock / metal crowd. On our usual evening walk on Sunday, the cub and I were lucky enough to get there just as Larkin Poe kicked off their set and so sat under a tree a few yards from the stage – while not within the festival grounds – and got to enjoy a solid slab of the great stuff.

The National – Fake Empire

I added Boxer to the vinyl shelves this weekend (in a nice yellow hue) and hearing this made me harken back to a time that – while not all that long ago – seems like a lifetime ago in terms of political news from a former colony.

Bruce Springsteen – Rockaway the Days

This year marks the fortieth anniversary of Springsteen’s monster Born In The USA. Understandably, given how he’s since shared his dissatisfaction with the grab-bag nature of it, if not sadly, we’re not getting anything to celebrate the milestone beyond a coloured version of the record with a few extra photos in the liner. No The Promise or Ties That Bind revisit. Which is a shame for, as I’ve already covered in a three-parter, there were multiple versions of the album and a bounty of songs that were recorded and discarded before the final album emerged. While getting those out into the air wouldn’t necessarily cause a reevaluation of the album, it would certainly be great to get them all collected into one place and show that the scale of Springsteen’s vision at the time went far beyond the twelve tracks that kickstarted his Rambo era of stadium domination.

Pearl Jam – Wishing Well

They may have cancelled their London show at the last minute but I’m still spinning Pearl Jam on any day ending in ‘y’. This cover – from 2015’s Christmas single – has cropped up a few times lately and is still worth a listen.

Wooo! You got a date Wednesday, baby! Midweek spins

/ Tony / 2 Comments

The will is there, the time isn’t always there for getting back into this after a summer lay-off… but lobbing up a quick ‘I’ve been listening to this sort of thing’ list isn’t a bad way to get into it, I guess.

It’s been a surprisingly music-heavy time lately helped by needing (thanks to throwing my back into a ridiculous shape) to work from home a bit more meant the turntable got more action than usual. Though that does mean less of my listening went to ‘new’ music rather than newer stuff from the familiar like the new albums from Slowdive (a clear march on album of the year) or Explosions in the Sky (absolutely brilliant).

Slightly off topic but I’ve also been enjoying the Wes Anderson helmed takes on some Roald Dahl short stories that have been added to Netflix lately. As a fan of both film maker and writer it’s been great to sit down as a family (my wife and I are about halfway through ‘Asteroid City’ and waiting for it to really take off…) but more surprised to see the credits for each of them cite Maidstone Studios (about a mile or so from our place) as a location for filming. While a lot’s been filmed there over the years (it used to be the location for Jools Holland’s Hootenany) it’s a surreal idea to think Wes Anderson was working away that close to home.

Getting back to the listening…. I don’t think I even made it all the way through the new song from U2, ‘Atomic City’. What a lot of shite. I wouldn’t say that they’ve done much of note for some time but someone clearly bypassed all elements of quality control there in the rush to cash-in even more from their no doubt minimum wage gig at the Sphere. No doubt Rolling Stone will praise it as record of the year… Anyway here’s a quick heads up on what I have been listening to….

Bleach Lab – All Night

Bleach Lab’s newly released debut Lost in a Rush of Emptiness is a wonderful thing, another gorgeous slab in what seems to be a resurgence of etherial, shoegaze fuelled dreampop.

Cocteau Twins – Heaven or Las Vegas

Speaking of etherial shoegaze lushness… I’m fast playing catch-up with Cocteau Twins and their Heaven of Las Vegas album has been getting a lot of spinnage lately.

Motörhead – Emergency

It can’t always be ‘Ace of Spades.’

Bruce Springsteen – Burnin’ Train

I’m toying with the notion of updating my ranking of Springsteen’s albums given he’s released two studio albums since then. A recent free-trial of Apple TV meant I was able to watch the Letter To You feature which was a lot of fun – the somewhat overly hokey voice-over narrative aside – and much more of an insight into the E Street Band’s recording approach than ‘Blood Brothers’ proved especially when it came to Stevie Van Zandt’s role in terms of arrangements and increased solo playing as on this cut. I really must get hold of SVZ’s book….

The War On Drugs – Change

What to do when you discover a new record shop has opened in your town after years of no alternative to HMV? Well… you go in and browse and if you find I Don’t Live Here Anymore on vinyl for a tenner less than you’ve seen it anywhere else you buy it, take it home and spin that sumptuous album because no matter how many times you hear it it’s still fucking great.

Mitski – Heaven

One of those names I kept hearing / reading but never followed up on until I heard ‘Heaven’ on the radio a couple of weeks back and have been hypnotised ever since.

Springsteen on Saturdays: A Long Chat

/ Tony / 3 Comments

Ah alliteration, an alluring arrow to ideas…. as I typically only listen to Springsteen on days ending in ‘y’ the start of the weekend usually finds me enjoying a little Boss Time.

There’s a good couple of articles about Springsteen in this month’s Uncut magazine – one dealing with the events of 1973, the other following Bruce across a few stops on his current Bargain Prices Tour. One thing that struck out is that – especially given that the article must have been ok’d for publication from Springsteen’s camp – is that there’s once again mention of the recently touted ‘album-focused’ archival set: Bruce is hinting that he’s got a few unreleased albums in the vaults from the ’90s and that it’s time for a re-evaluation of a period usually considered one of his less prolific.

There are a couple of things to consider here. The first is ‘peak’ Bruce’s prolificacy – Steven Van Zandt’s comment that Springsteen always ‘had half an album’s’ worth of material ready to go was an understatement: as recent archival releases of Darkness…, The River and an examination of the variations Born In The USA went through show it was more a case that for every album he was releasing he’d written at least three times as many as saw the light of day. The vaults have been kept pretty tight since Tunnel of Love but it’s looking now like this continued for some time. The second is that, when Bruce was uncertain he’d second-guess himself – it’s why one of the anticipated elements of the ‘album-based’ project is the ‘lost’ ’90s album he recorded using programmed beats akin to ‘Streets of Philadelphia’ that’s been gathering dust in the vault due to the lukewarm reaction his previous albums had received.

Back in 2013 Bruce pointed out: “there’s a record that we recorded, mixed and didn’t put out. Bob Clearmountain mixed it, spent a lot of time on it… didn’t put it out. That was, like, ’94. And it still intrigues me. I still go back to it. There are still things on it that I really like, and I may go back to sort of say, ‘Okay, well, why…?’ Sometimes it’s timing, you know. There was a particular reason that I didn’t put out that group of music. Sometimes the timing just doesn’t feel right for that kind of record.”

By all accounts – and there were references to it in the ‘Blood Brothers’ vid that documented the awkward E-Street Band reunion Bruce, opted for the Greatest Hits album instead of releasing it – the album dealt once again with relationships between men and women. It would be his fourth such release in a row and the consensus was maybe that would be just one too many. ‘Secret Garden’ was one of those songs that was repurposed as a band song and ‘Missing’ sneaked out on the soundtrack to Sean Penn’s ‘The Crossing Guard’

Also on that list of songs originally recorded early in the ’90s was a take on The Rising‘s ‘Nothing Man’ and a song called ‘Burnin’ Train’ which arrived on 2020’s outstanding Letter To You in a much more E Street punched up form.

Looking at the lyrics – “I wanted you to heal me but instead you set me on fire” – it wouldn’t be hard to see them attached to a moodier, synth-heavy tune from that era and, as Tracks‘ ‘Leavin’ Train’ and ‘Land of Hope and Dreams’ from later that decade point out, Bruce was swinging those train metaphors around in the ’90s with the same heft he once swung ‘fuelie heads’ about. Similar lyrics grace ‘Waiting On The End of the World’ (not a Sunny Day)

While Bruce would pull this one out for a try with the band in ’95 those “For one deadly love like a disease, I came to you crawling on my knees” put this in the same ‘must be from the lost album songs’ pile for me. The fact that he couldn’t get a take he was happy with with the band enough to release to me suggests that – much like Nebraska – these were songs that didn’t always work with the full band. 

Anyway, my digging around for more on Springsteen’s ’90s output meant I discovered the famous ‘Molly Meldrum’ interview was available in full. Back in ’95 Springsteen was doing the press rounds for Greatest Hits: Bruce sits in a studio and a cast of interviewers get their 15mins to ask the usual pre-cleared questions, get the standard answers, a wry throaty chuckle and out they go before the next. You know the drill. Turns out Australia’s Ian ‘Molly’ Meldrum wanted more. In fact he took a swing in an effort to get an exclusive for his ’90 Minutes’ show by throwing in a wildcard at the end of his interview and just kept going.

Meldrum is clearly a fan and has plenty of knowledge – including the cut verse from ‘Glory Days’ about Springsteen Sr. – and the fact that he’s asking unique and insightful questions means Bruce is intrigued enough, and often on the back foot, to keep going even though his management team were gesturing at him to stop whenever he cast a glance their way.

So we get an unexpectedly interesting interview instead of the usual stage-managed Q&A. Meldrum wasn’t actually allowed to use anything but his original 15min of footage – Springsteen’s team were apparently furious even if the Boss seemed pretty obliging about it all. Thankfully it was 25 years or so ago so you can now see the whole thing on YouTube which, if you have the time to sit back and enjoy 90 mins of cracking interview (I know, that’s like 100 tiktoks long) I heartily recommend. Though I appear to unable to embed the thing so you’ll have to pop it open from here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mnWrBbt8h4k&t=768s

Eleven

/ Tony / 18 Comments

According to the mighty notifications bell it’s been eleven years since I started putting words on page here. I did toy with the idea of doing ‘eleven things that have changed since’ but then that would move this blog’s wheelhouse into either the personal or political arenas into which it only occasionally dips. Though I think we could probably all benefit from taking a moment to think of how – a relatively short space of time ago – there was once a time when a certain orange defendant was just an annoying twat of a failed businessman and nobody really considered membership of the EU to be a problem.

It’s a nice thought, isn’t it?

Also – thanks to those that have read the increasingly infrequent output of this blog and creating blogs that I continue to read even if I no longer contribute so much.

Anyway, keeping with the music theme I thought I’d mark this historic moment by hurling eleven great Track Elevens at you. Once upon a time only double albums made it to eleven tracks, in the era of CD bloat many should have stopped at that point and now, while we seem to be veering a little closer back to shorter album run lengths, they typically mark an album’s closing point. There is, of course, very little scientific method to the selection and probably a few I’ve missed but, in the immortal words of The Ramones: “hey, you there – let’s get going”

Pearl Jam – Release (Ten)

Ten might not be their best album but ‘Release’ is one of their finest and works as both a great album closer and concert opener.

U2 – Acrobat (Achtung Baby)

Always good to highlight little-known bands. Achtung Baby may be a bit bloated but I’ve always had a soft spot for ‘Acrobat’ even if it took the band 27 years to recognise it and play it live (probably in some dingy basement somewhere).

REM – Nightswimming (Automatic for the People)

There are so many brilliant albums from those first few years of the 90s… and Automatic for the People isn’t even REM’s finest. The ‘Ride’ of their side may be handicapped by its first three tracks – ‘Monty Got A Raw Deal’, ‘Ignoreland’ and ‘Star Me Kitten’ probably aren’t anybodies favourites – but then ‘Man on the Moon’, ‘Nightswimming’ and ‘Find The River’ is one of the best ‘final three’ since The Wild, The Innocent… and ‘Nightswimming’ is just pure gold.

The Black Crowes – Descending (Amorica)

Amorica is a damn fine album, damn fine. In retrospect I don’t think it was just the pubes that killed it – 1994 may not have been the optimum time for a southern, blues-rock album to be welcomed by the mainstream. ‘Descending’ is both a long-time Black Crowes favourite of mine and a great album closer. I’ll get out of the 90s on this list soon I’m sure.

Bruce Springsteen – The River (The River)

When The River was briefly a single album the title track sat in the middle of the running order. Expanded to a double it still, kinda did but by lobbing it on to the end of the first half of the album Springsteen puts one of his finest songs in place as a reward for making it through ‘I Wanna Marry You’

Pink Floyd – High Hopes

Until recently a beautiful final word from Pink Floyd. It’s still beautiful.

Jimi Hendrix – Are You Experienced? (Are You Experienced)

Not necessarily stoned…

Portishead – Glory Box (Dummy)

Ah, back to the 90s. Dummy is just sublime and ‘Glory Box’ one of my favourites and they slapped it right at the end of the album.

Dinosaur Jr – What If I Knew (Beyond

Closing off their first album since the original lineup got back together with a great tune felt like a way of saying ‘more to come, stay tuned’,

The Replacements – Can’t Hardly Wait (Pleased To Meet Me)

Yes, the Tim era versions with the ’til it’s over’ was great but this – with Alex Chilton on guitar, horns and strings – is as close to perfect as they got.

The Beatles – Blackbird (The Beatles)

Technically it is track eleven… because that’s what ‘track 3 on side 2’ translates to on CD and streaming etc.

Regina Spektor – Somedays (Soviet Kitsch)

I could, and probably should, write an individual piece on Ms Spektor. Soviet Kitsch is her third album and first for a major and can be seen as the template from which all her future albums would follow: there are pure, well-crafted tunes with just the right amount of refinement while still retaining enough rough edges, quirk and personality to make it engaging and all underpinned by Spektor’s vocals – wonderfully typified by the album closer ‘Somedays’ which she also closed the show with the one time I was able to catch her live some misty years ago.