music

Revisiting: 14 Songs

/ Tony / 16 Comments

Background:

I got into The Replacements too late. I had to, really, they split up before I was eleven… What I mean is that they’re one of those bands that when I finally did get into them I hungrily devoured the lot and couldn’t believe that I’d left it so long to be hearing these songs. They’re a band that cast a long shadow and I’d heard more about them and their influence before I’d even heard a note of their music.

In fact, my first introduction was via the two Paul Westerberg solo tracks on the Singles soundtrack*. Having made the connection between singer and former band I went back, then forward into Westerberg’s solo discography.

14_songs_paul_westerberg_album_-_cover_artConsidered by many as pioneers of the alt-rock scene and with a legacy that’s at odds with the success they achieved during their run, The Replacements blew out of Minneapolis in 1979 as punk rock band whose début album, Sorry Ma, Forgot To Take Out The Trash, was a raw, raucous affair but, by the release of the follow up, Hootenany, the band was quickly evolving and songs like ‘Within Your Reach‘ marked the way forward as elements of blues, folk and chiming pop were bought to the fore along with Westerberg’s insightful and maturing song-writing skills. The difference between ‘Kids Don’t Follow‘ and the beautiful ‘Achin’ To Be‘ was massive.

Success wasn’t to be theirs, though. As much as they may have been at the forefront of the alt-rock scene, the self-destructive nature of the band meant that by the time the world started to pay attention, they were already imploding and they’re remembered more for potential than for breaking through. Poor production, famously disastrous live shows and TV appearances and internal strife meant that 1990’s All Shook Down would be their final album. That album was originally intended to be Paul Westerberg’s first solo album and, as such, features predominantly session musicians. The label talked him into making it a Replacements album. It would be three years before his first solo album would arrive…

The band (well, Tommy Stinson and Paul Westerberg) would reform 22 years later for a series of live shows, a victory lap for the praise and recognition they’d received after their split. There were a few abortive attempts at recording but Westerberg’s heart wasn’t in it and during the final shows he’d decorate his t-shirts with giant letters, eventually spelling out the missive: I HAVE ALWAYS LOVED YOU. NOW I MUST WHORE MY PAST.

14 Songs:

So, on a bit of a Bruce break**, I flicked as randomly as possible through my iTunes and landed on the brilliant ‘Runaway Wind’ from 14 Songs, which lead to digging out the CD and spending a few days with it in the car for the first time in a long time.

While it’s not exactly a masterpiece, it’s bloody good and starts with a run of four great songs, kicking off with a highlight, ‘Knockin’ On Mine’:

Don Was was a big fan of this album and would play it daily while recording The Rolling Stones’ Voodoo Lounge. I can get that, I love the guitar tones on this album and there’s a few on here that are clearly indebted to the Stones – this, the loose grove of ‘Dice Behind Your Shades’ and ‘Silver Naked Ladies‘ whose great instrumentation, bluesy guitar, honky-tonk piano (courtesy of Ian McLagan) and outright Jagger impression are so obvious I’d lay money on Westerberg having done a Jagger Shuffle*** dance in the studio. It’s a shame the lyrics are on the cack side. Don Was would produce Westerberg’s third solo effort and told him that Keith Richards would spend each morning cranking ‘Knockin’ On Mine’ out at full volume.

It’s assumed that ‘World Class Fad’ is about Nirvana’s Kurt Cobain… There’s an oft-commented upon similarity between the pair’s bands and Courtney Love was a big Replacements fan, her band often murdering covering ‘Unsatisfied‘. Chris Robinson of the Black Crowes**** had said “Yeah, Nevermind is a great Replacements record” which must’ve really cheesed Cobain. In the liner notes to the Westerberg’s Best Of (the brilliantly titled Besterberg) he slyly comments that “someone very famous thought it was about him” neither denying or confirming that it was… if that’s the case then “You wax poetic about things pathetic, as long as you look so cute” must have stung a bit. It’s a great tune though.

There was always a dichotomy in The Replacements between the soft and the hard. Westerberg has surmised it as “Sometimes you just love the little acoustic songs, and other times you want to crank the goddamn amp up, and those two parts of me are forever entwined.” That meant songs like ‘Here Comes A Regular’ rubbed shoulders with ‘Bastards of Young’ on Tim and the same is true in his early solo work though, free from the burden of being in a ‘punk’ band, there’s not so much hesitancy to bring out the acoustics or slower material.

‘Runaway Wind’ – for example is a great tune. Originally written for and turned down by Robin Zander, it’s vocal was recorded in just one take and features a brilliant Westerberg lyric: “You trade your telescope for a keyhole, Make way for the grey that’s in your brown, as dreams make way for plans, see ya watch life from the stands.”

Elsewhere tracks like ‘Even Here We Are’ and ‘Black Eyed Susan‘ are delicate, gentle acoustic numbers whose lo-fi production choices make them sound like lost, dusted-off gems sandwiched as they are between glossier sounding tunes and ‘Things’ is a delightfully sloppy yet endearing number. ‘Black Eyed Susan’ was recorded in Westerberg’s kitchen and the sound and lack of success in capturing a better take meant it made the album while ‘Things’ showed that even in his romantic tunes, Westerberg could add a tinge of sadness: “I could use some breathing room but I’m still in love with you.”

Even the best Replacements albums had some outright howlers buried in amongst the gold (I really don’t think anyone is going to make a case for ‘Lay It Down Clown’) and on 14 Songs that particular number is ‘A Few Minutes Of Silence’ – if the album had been called 13 Songs the track wouldn’t have been missed.

With the comic, cynical take on plastic surgery, ‘Mannequin Shop‘ (“You look bitching you look taut, I`m a itchin’ to know what was bought?”) oddly sequenced between the harder, more straight-ahead and solid rockers ‘Something Was Me’ and ‘Down Love’ I can’t help but think that, with better attention to the running order and a tiny bit more selectiveness on the tunes, 14 Songs would’ve gone from being bloody good to great in no time. It’s got a real band dynamic that’s often missing on singer-songwriter albums, a relaxed vibe and finds just the right balance between the two-sides of Westerberg’s writing, wrapping up his romanticism, wry lyrics and self-depreciating humour in a very strong collection of songs.

It wasn’t to be, though. Much like his former band, the album generated some strong reviews but failed to catch on commercially. By the time he released his solo record, the bands who he had influenced and shared listing with on the Singles soundtrack were getting the attention. From here there would be two more major-label albums before he’d ditch working with producers and go the home-recording route where he’d go on to pen some of his best work, even if not so many heard it (see 2008’s 49:00, if you can) before, following the 2012-15 Replacements reunion,  forming The I Don’t Cares with Juliana Hatfield. Their album, Wild Stab, is well worth a listen, too and I’ll finish off with a tune from it…. “Dreams I had before are now too bored to even show up.”

 

*If we’re talking best movie soundtracks (which I probably will one day) then this one will be way up the top of the list.

**It’s a lot of fun but I’m now about to hit the Top Five (which means I’ve already cleared fifteen) and could do with cleansing my aural palate a bit.

***We’ve all done it. I even had ‘Mixed Emotions’ played at my wedding so I could make use of the wooden dance floor this way.

****Is this really the first time I’ve mentioned The Black Crowes here? Given how near-perfect those first three albums were I’m very surprised…

Least to Most; Bruce – The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle

/ Tony / 61 Comments

“This boardwalk life for me is through
You know you ought to quit this scene too…”

thewildtheinnocentWhat a difference six months can make. After his début failed to propel him to the dizzying heights hoped for by his signing as a ‘new Dylan’, Bruce Springsteen entered 914 Studios in New York to record his second album. This time, though, things would be a little different. For one, Bruce wanted more control of the sound and production. For another, and perhaps prompting the former, Springsteen was fired up about playing with his embryonic E Street Band and had reignited his passion for a big, full-band sound that was absent from Greetings From Asbury Park, NJ.

Everything on here is aiming for epic – the sound, the instrumentation and even the characters. Before he started singing about the less fanciful Marys, Wendys and Joes his New York and New Jersey characters were more colourful than a ‘gang meeting’ on Hill Street Blues. On The Wild, The Innocent… there’s Power Thirteen and his girl Little Angel, Sandy, Kitty, Big Pretty,  Catlong, Missy Bimbo, the Flying Zambinis, Margarita, Sampson, Tiny Tim, Spanish Johnny, Puerto Rican Jane, Billy, Diamond Jackie, Little Dynamite and Little Gun, Jack the Rabbit and Weak Knees Willie, Sloppy Sue and Big Bones Billy all amidst a maelstrom of boy prophets, Latin lovers and hard girls on Easy Street. Not to mention a certain girl called Rosie. All within just seven songs.

And what songs they are. Here Bruce ditched the rhyming dictionary and attempts to sing a novel at speed in every verse, embraced the opportunity offered by the band and delivered a set of songs with more ambition in terms of lyrics and scope than you’d have guessed possible of him just six months earlier. While personally I’ve never been hugely fond of the opening cut (it’s down to that phunk keyboard line dancing all over it like some platform-shoed drunk disco elephant) there’s no denying its quality. Other than that, every other song here gets a five star rating from me.

With its wistful tale of Madame Marie, ‘4th of July, Asbury Park (Sandy)’  alone shows the strides Springsteen took as a songwriter between albums and the benefits of road-testing songs before getting into the studio. It’s easy to see why Federici asked to play this showcase on his last performance with the band and this most romantic of Bruce’s songs remains a live highlight decades later.

‘Kitty’s Back’ is a monster of a tune, clocking in at over seven minutes and showcasing Springsteen’s guitar chops (again absent through Greetings..) and proving what a wild, R&B/Soul/Jazz/Rock powerhouse outfit his band was. I’ve heard criticism that ‘Wild Billy’s Circus Story’ takes itself too seriously but to that I say “arseholes”. It’s a cracking, fun little tune and contains a great lyric: “the runway lies ahead like a great false dawn”. It’s odd but I think that Springsteen’s lyrics often get overlooked as some of the real nuggets like this one are often missed when reflecting on the overall story of the song. At just 23 Bruce was already coming up with some great lines.

Listening back through these albums has meant I’ve been discovering little gems that I’d almost forgotten and that’s certainly true of ‘Wild Billy’s Circus Story’. It also means my young son has been getting introduced to these and along with calls for this one (the “Elephant Song” based on Gary Tallent’s tuba blasts) he’s surely one of precious-few three year old’s calling out for “Rosie!”

Ah yes, ‘Rosalita (Come Out Tonight)’. There’s no getting away from just how fucking good this song is. Described by Bruce as an early ‘Born To Run’ but with more humour, this is a real indicator as to where Springsteen’s sound was going. Just listen to the mix of sax and guitar around the 5:10 mark, you half expect “the highway’s jammed…” to come barrelling in. In this instance, it goes back to the party instead. Rolling Stone have described this song as “a raucous celebration of desire.” It is a big, beautiful and triumphant song and easily one of Springsteen’s best and does remain the album’s biggest sign post as to what’s to come both in terms of it’s “it’s time to bust out of here” and it’s sound, made especially arresting by it’s sequencing.

The prototype of Bruce’s ‘busting outta here’ song sits between his two most unabashed and wonderful epics; ‘Incident on 57th Street‘ and ‘New York City Serenade’. ‘Incident on 57th Street’ is a massive song in terms of Bruce’s song-writing. It’s like listening to the sound of all the pieces aligning properly as Bruce steps aside and delivers one of his finest – and earliest – songs sung from an observational point that’s far greater than the sum of its parts.

Why I mention sequencing, though, is that the sound of the final, gentle tickle of piano notes is quickly blasted away by the sheer force and power of ‘Rosie’, making the juxtaposition between the two styles all the more evident.

And then there’s ‘New York City Serenade’. You know 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 not 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’*. I’ve played this song to people who thought they knew what to expect from a Springsteen song and they’ve always had to question whether it was really “that Born in the USA guy”.

One of my all-time favourite songs.

img_1456 What this also means is that Side B of this album might just be the finest 25 minutes of music put to vinyl.

Easily Springsteen at his most expansive, poetic and romantic, The Wild, the Innocent & The E Street Shuffle is a beautiful embrace of and gentle kiss goodbye to his boardwalk life as he takes his characters and breaks them out of their surroundings in pursuit of a new dream.

Oddly, though, his record label didn’t agree that the album was up to scratch. When Springsteen handed it in, the allies he’d had at Columbia were no longer in place. Instead of receiving the great feedback he’d hoped for, Bruce was instead told that the players were sub par and it was suggested that he re-cut the majority of it with professional studio musicians. Of course, this wasn’t an option. Unfortunately, sticking to his guns meant that Columbia buried the album. No release fanfare, no promotion, little distribution. Bruce would play shows in towns where they had no idea the album had even been released.

Thankfully, though, Bruce still had what it takes to cut it live and lay down a killer show. This lead to two things. The first was catching the eye of Jon Landau and the infamous  “I saw rock and roll’s future and its name is Bruce Springsteen,” review that would lead to the pair’s friendship and Landau becoming Springsteen’s manager.  Secondly, Springsteen took to taking aim at his record company during his on-stage patter. One particularly embittered voicing of his frustration happened at a college where the son of the label’s boss happened, unknown to Bruce, to be in attendance. Legend has it he called his father, explained just how much of an amazing act Springsteen was and what was being said and the head of the label soon sat down with his charge and said words along the lines of “what can we do to get this working?”

With Landau and his record label supporting him, it would be time to shed the mythic tales and follow The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle with a last chance power drive…

Highlights: ALL OF IT

 

*You’d sit on it and it would go “Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrgh!”

Least to Most; Bruce – Magic

/ Tony / 14 Comments

“I tried to combine personal and political, so you can read into the songs either way. You can read the record as a comment on what’s been going on, or you can read it just as relationship songs.”

bruce_springsteen_-_magicIn December 2016 Bruce sat down with Brendan O’Brien at his home, handed him a book of lyrics and then played the tunes on his guitar, offering the producer the pick of the litter. The two then decamped to Atlanta again and with a core band of Springsteen, Weinberg, Bittan and Tallent, laid the basic tracks for the album. Other band members were called in to lay down their parts as needed and sessions were complete within two months. Another example of the pair’s more precise recording practice, it meant that without the opportunity to spend protracted amounts of time exploring alternative avenues and ideas, all effort and concentration focused on the one group of songs and bringing them to perfection. Shorn of the fiddles of Seeger Sessions and the acoustic dirge of Devils and Dust, the resulting Magic is the high benchmark of Springsteen’s second chapter and bursts with a fire and passion that sets a lot of his work in the shade.

I’ll be clear – as if it wasn’t already – I fucking love this album. The songs here are harder and sharper than on The Rising, the E Street Band – during its late peak – is playing tighter than a duck’s arse and the result is a joy to behold. The sound is ridiculously lush and there’s more revealed with every listen; the mandolin on ‘Magic’, Federici’s organ on ‘Livin’ In The Future’, the moody atmospherics of ‘Devil’s Arcade’ but I’m jumping ahead….

It starts with guitars. A thousand guitars and pounding drums, as ‘Radio Nowhere‘ leads an impassioned, energetic blast of all the E Street’s finest qualities and Bruce growling out his call to arms “Is there anybody alive out there?” against a thumping beat and euphoric blast from Clarence Clemons’ sax. Magic is Bruce and the E Street tuned in and meaning business as they bore through a new Springsteen classic and straight into ‘You’ll Be Coming Down’ which sounds like a blast of Bruce’s sound from earlier decades:

Indeed, Bruce spoke of how for this album he tried to get back to his earlier, romantic sounds last heard on Born To Run and there’s a wealth of nostalgia in the sound*.

“There’s some classic Sixties pop forms. California-rock influences –Pet Sounds and a lot of Byrds. I wanted to take the productions that create the perfect pop universes and then subvert them with the lyrics – fill them with the hollowness and the fear, the uneasiness of these very uneasy times.”

Take ‘Girls In Their Summer Clothes’ – which, apparently, Bruce had little interest in but O’Brien pushed for its inclusion – as an example of this; the doubling up of Bruce’s voice for the first time in goodness knows how long against a gorgeous backdrop (and a great rhythm guitar part) . Or the horns of ‘Livin In The Future’ that blast like a Freeze-out on a certain avenue. Or the out-and-out joy of ‘I’ll Work For Your Love‘.

But even here, the fire lurks beneath the surface. Bruce is angry and the pain and disbelief are shot through every song no matter how much he may have tried to allow the songs to be taken without them. There’s the groundskeeper who “opened the gates and let the wild dogs run” in ‘Livin..’ or  how the “city of peace has crumbled, our book of faith’s been tossed” in ‘I’ll Work For Your Love’, there’s no getting around it and it makes for some of his finest and most pointed lyrics in a long time. Certainly the best of Bruce V.2

I’ve mentioned before that  ‘Gypsy Biker’ shares a lot of ground with ‘Shut Out The Light’. The earlier track was one of Springsteen’s Vietnam tunes, ‘Gypsy Biker’ is one of a more modern war – Johnny gets to pull out his Ford and polish up the chrome in the former, the biker in the latter is coming home in a coffin; “Sister Mary sits with your colors”. It’s one of his best.

I remember at the time of release, Magic was referred to as being about “love in the time of Bush” **. There’s no direct references here, no mention of specific wars or Bush (though it may well be his “boot heels clickin’ like the barrel of a pistol spinnin’ round” on ‘Livin In The Future’) but he doesn’t need to.  The threat he felt in 2006 is there throughout.  Perhaps its most telling on the beautiful title track. Quiet, gentle guitar and chamberlin undercut with strings and Van Zandt’s mandolin make for a soothing, hypnotic stroll or dance as Springsteen lists ‘magic’ tricks but then it’s there in the last verse:

“Now there’s a fire down below
But it’s comin’ up here
So leave everything you know
And carry only what you fear
On the road the sun is sinkin’ low
There’s bodies hangin’ in the trees
This is what will be, this is what will be.”

If there was any doubt left about this album’s thrust it’s obliterated by what comes next. ‘Last To Die‘ takes it’s lyrics from John Kerry’s testimony on Vietnam (“How do you ask a man to be the last man to die in Vietnam? How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake?”) and straps it to a howling, fierce track.

The album’s closing track*** ‘Devil’s Arcade’ is a dark bruiser of a tune that’s perhaps the most literal on it. A lover’s recall of portentous earlier memories and passion before her love enlists and winds up being wounded “the cool desert morning, then nothin’ to save, just metal and plastic where your body caved” and in a hospital while she waits for his touch –  Weinberg hammers home the rhythmic thump against the repeated “The beat of your heart, the beat of your heart”.

Again; it’s one of the finest things Springsteen has written and this album is chock-full of them. It’s strange to listen to this album again (though it’s rarely out of rotation) now as we find ourselves staring down even darker corridors than GW had lead the world. Then, as now, this album’s warmth and spirit remain a lighthouse; there is love, there is light and it needn’t be the monsters that call the tune, we have the choice.

Highlights: ‘Radio Nowhere’, ‘Livin In The Future’, ‘Your Own Worst Enemy’, ‘Gypsy Biker’, ‘Magic’, ‘Last To Die’, ‘Devil’s Arcade’.

*Something which would lead to a burst of writing just as the Magic sessions wound down and form the basis of Working On A Dream.

**Not the working title of a late-night Gabriel García Márquez adaptation.

***Officially. Following the death of Springsteen’s long-time assistant Terry Magovern, ‘Terry’s Song’ was added.

Least to Most: Bruce – Tracks

/ Tony / 26 Comments

“The alternate route to some of the destinations I travelled to on my records.” Bruce Springsteen

“Every song on Tracks is a lost argument”. Steven Van Zandt.

Strap in, this one is a long one…

bruce_springsteen_tracksIn 1998, with eleven studio albums to his name, close to 75% of Springsteen’s work remained in the vaults. His mammoth studio and recording sessions from Darkness on the Edge of Town onward meant that he’d essentially written four albums worth of material for every one that was released. His production and arranging partner for much of this time, Steven Van Zandt, would get frustrated by this practice – especially when he had to work so hard for his own songs – as many of his favourite tracks would end up shelved despite being the sort of thing other acts could make a career from but has referred to this period as Bruce’s “hundred song phase”. Not many artists are capable of such sustained writing periods, let alone when the material was so solidly strong.

When Tracks was released in 1998 it had already been whittled down from six discs of material to four and the 66 tracks ran from Springsteen’s 1972 audition tapes for Columbia through roughly chronological order to the late 90’s, divided up (as illustrated by the covers given to each of those discs inside the box) into what Bruce saw as the sections of his song-writing arc. Given that it came at the end of an otherwise sparse decade for Bruce fans, it was embarrassment of riches; of the songs included a handful had been released as B-Sides, some had leaked out on bootlegs and some had been heard live but never released. Plenty of them though had never even been heard of.

Those audition tapes kick proceedings off but, given the bare-bones approach to their released versions, don’t offer anything other than a passing interest and ‘Bishop Danced’ isn’t all that good if I’m honest. The first disc is made up of out-takes that, for the most part, it’s clear to see why; the songs are good ideas but don’t really make for strong contenders. I couldn’t imagine much debate went into ‘Zero & Blind Terry’ vs ‘Incident on 57th Street’ but the songs are good examples of Bruce working out ideas in the studio, with many a part stripped from one and dropped into another – albeit a couple of decades later with ‘Seaside Bar Song’s “the highway is alive tonight” lyric. But that’s because, up to, and including, the Born To Run sessions, Bruce’s writing hadn’t hit its stride (in terms of prolificacy not quality) and I imagine the constraints put upon him by the record label meant the time to do so wasn’t afforded to him in the way the Appel lawsuit would force it. For once the first disc reaches ‘Rendevous’ and the sublime ‘Iceman‘  we’re jumping into songs from Bruce’s most fertile period and the quality kicks up into a different gear. The leap is noticeable between ‘Linda Let Me Be The One’ and ‘Don’t Look Back’.

Now, in the same way the The Promise represents a lost album, the second and third discs of Tracks are nigh on faultless and could easily make up three classic albums from tracks completely omitted from The River and Born In The USA. Just take the breathless joy of Disc 2 opener ‘Restless Nights’ as Danny Federici whips up a dervish on his keys before Bruce’s guitar rips into it a minute and a half in:

Tracks like ‘Roulette‘, ‘Dolls House’, ‘Where The Bands Are’, ‘Loose Ends‘, ‘Living on the Edge of the World’ are pure, perfect three/four minute pop songs. Van Zandt was aghast that these were shelved – believing an album of these, plus ‘The River’ would be been a great thing. He’s not wrong. ‘Living on the Edge of the World‘ perhaps sounds strange but that’s because Bruce would take a few of it’s lines and strap them to altogether different beats for Nebraska‘s ‘Open All Night’ and ‘State Trooper’. Oh and there’s the absolute classic ‘Take ‘Em as They Come’ which just bounds along on a stellar beat that surpasses many a released song.

Slipped just before ‘Take ‘Em..’ is a Born In The USA out-take whose existence was previously unknown;

‘Wages of Sin’, another Bruce classic, is the first hint of what’s to come on Disc 3; a wealth of tunes that were recorded between 1982 and 1984 in that protracted recording period that lead to Bruce’s biggest-selling album. As big as that album was, the tracks that didn’t make the cut could easily be put together into an alternative album that would’ve been as good if not better. Just picking a handful of those tracks, say: ‘Wages of Sin, ‘Rockaway the Days‘, ‘Shut Out the Light’, ‘This Hard Land’, ‘Frankie’, ‘A Good Man Is Hard to Find (Pittsburgh)‘, ‘Lion’s Den’ will give you a strong album, if you were to add ‘My Love Will Not Let You Down‘, which breezes and rocks past plenty like on Born In The USA then you’ve got a classic and that’s without even mentioning another previously unheard of song – ‘Brothers Under The Bridges ’83’:

More than an ‘alternate route’ there’s alternate albums here. Oddly enough, Bruce even toyed with yet another album approach between Nebraska and …USA. Buoyed by the positive reception Nebraska‘s stripped-down sound received he headed back and laid down a few more tracks in a similar bare-bones, minimal approach before abandoning and heading back into the studio with the full band. Of those recorded during those sessions the soft tribute to Elvis, ‘Johnny Bye Bye’ and ‘Shut Out The Light’ would end up released as b-sides for ‘Born in the USA’ and ‘I’m On Fire’ before their inclusion on Tracks.

It’s not only ..USA that could’ve taken a different theme – just take a look at the difference in themes on those songs recorded during the Tunnel of Love sessions. ‘The Wish‘ is perhaps most known of these- a song Bruce wrote for his mother but felt unable to release officially given its sentimentality – while ‘The Honeymooners’ (a home-recording with the sound of dog barking captured in the background), ‘Lucky Man’ and ‘When You Need Me’ give a different insight to the men & women relationships that album tended to lean toward. Hell, ‘When You Need Me‘, similar in its uncomplicated sentiment as ‘Two For The Road’ is as content as Bruce would get this side of Lucky Town: “When you need me call my name, ’cause without you my life just wouldn’t be the same”.

The final disc loses the momentum a little with a lot of bass-heavy songs cut during the Human Touch sessions weighing it down. “I wrote about half a record on the bass, where you had a note and you had your idea. The only one that made it to release was ‘57 Channels,’”… indeed, and on Disc 4 there’s the remainder of those cuts – all exploring similar themes (internal dialogues working out psychological or relationships as Bruce himself was at the time) but none that really stand out as worthy of going further. That being said I’d rather something like ‘Gave It  A Name‘ or ‘When The Lights Go Out’ had seen release over the aforementioned Human Touch cut itself.

There’s still plenty to enjoy, though. In ‘Songs’ he explains that to shake off his writer’s block, Bruce started sessions for Human Touch by experimenting with different styles he “had always liked: soul, rock, pop, R&B”.  If you ask me, removed from much of the heavy-handed production that spoilt that album, they shine brighter here. One such song ‘Sad Eyes‘ is a cutting tune that’s better than most released on that album (and features David Sancious who also plays on ‘Part Man, Park Monkey’), ‘Seven Angels’ is back to the rock but undercut with more humour and looseness than anything that made the cut and ‘Gave It A Name’ – the master take couldn’t be found so Bruce and Roy Bittan recut the track in ’98 – is masterful in it’s minimalism. Oh, and there’s also ‘Happy’ the sole out-take from Lucky Town omitted only, I guess, because it shared the “gold and diamond rings…drug to ease the pain that living brings” line with the superior ‘My Beautiful Reward’.

The box is rounded out by the then-latest omissions. ‘Back In Your Arms‘ features the E Street Band and was recorded during the Greatest Hits sessions – like ‘Secret Garden’ it was originally one intended for Bruce’s shelved ‘Philadelphia’-style album – while ‘Brothers Under The Bridge’ is a beautiful out-take that was, exasperatingly when you considered what it could’ve replaced, omitted from The Ghost of Tom Joad and brings the set up to what was then Bruce’s most recent studio sessions. A story about a homeless Vietnam veteran living “who has a grown daughter that he’s never seen, and she grows up, and she comes looking for her dad. And what he tells her.” It would be performed live after ‘Born in the USA’ or ‘Shut Out The Light’ to place it within Bruce’s Vietnam arc and its one of those songs (like ‘The Promise’) whose live rendering meant fans were puzzled by its omission from the record.

Not everything on Tracks is brilliant but a lot of it is, much of it is very strong and some of the songs are absolute Bruce classics that stand above many in his catalogue. That’s why it’s on this list and why it’s on this list in this place; if I were talking to a Bruce newbie I’d recommend many of the songs on here well before a lot in his catalogue.

While many box-sets merely curate already-released material with a smattering of live cuts or offer up b-sides that are clearly inferior to their As, Tracks represents a much deeper fleshing out of the Springsteen narrative and emphasises just how strong a songwriter he is; even those tracks omitted from his albums piss all over many artist’s hits. Four discs and 66 songs is a lot to get through but it’s worth it. If you’re pressed for time then Discs 2 and 3 contain enough gold to make sure the box is worth of inclusion as an essential addition to a Springsteen collection / discussion.

Highlights: ‘Iceman’, ‘Don’t Look Back,’ ‘Restless Nights’, ‘Roulette’, ‘Take ‘Em as They Come’, ‘Shut Out the Light’, ‘My Love Will Not Let You Down’, ‘Frankie’, ‘Rockaway the Days’, ‘Brothers Under the Bridges ’83’, ‘Seven Angels’, ‘Gave It A Name,’ ‘Happy’, ‘Brothers Under The Bridge’

Not-so-highlights: The omission of ‘The Promise’. This actually lead to many a complaint from fans. A new recording of it would be slapped on the single-disc-sampler/cash-in 18 Tracks along with another couple of ‘new old’ tracks – ‘The Fever’ and ‘Trouble River’. 18 Tracks, intended for fans who didn’t fancy the full box, actually fared worse than Tracks in terms of sales and charting; Tracks was something of a hit for Bruce, hitting the Top 30 and shifting plenty of units, defying expectations for a Box Set in much the same way as Live: 1975-85 had a decade earlier.

Least to Most: Bruce – The Rising

/ Tony / 9 Comments

“I need your kiss, but love and duty called you someplace higher
Somewhere up the stairs into the fire…”

I’ve mentioned before that I think the negative reaction to Human Touch and Lucky Town gave more of a knock to Springsteen’s confidence than he’d be willing to let on; rather than follow Greatest Hits with a full blown reunion and band album he went the solo route and still wasn’t convinced that the Reunion Tour was a good thing practically up until the last minute. When that tour finished in July 2000, many assumed the next logical step would be to get the reconstituted band into the studio for a new album, presumably featuring some of the new songs they’d aired during that tour.

springsteen_the_risingBut… not quite. Instead Bruce spent roughly half a year logging up solo recording sessions, perhaps wary of going for another ‘rock’ album after so many years. Indeed, during press for The Rising he admitted hesitancy at returning to his ‘rock voice’.  Then, in March 2001, Bruce assembled his then core production team of Landau and Chuck Plotkin with Toby Scott recording and bought the E Street Band into New York’s Hit Factory. A handful of songs were recorded but the results… didn’t jump. It seems hard to think that with the band at full power a recording could be flat but it had happened before when he struggled with the sound on The River and Bruce has admitted that he realised he was now a better writer and singer than he was a producer and that modern techniques and equipment were simply unknown to him. He also felt that there was no unifying theme to bind the tracks written thus far into a ‘record’. If Bruce and the E Street Band were to move into the new millennium as anything other than an oldies touring act, he needed a new sound and a subject.

Then everything changed one terrifying and tragic September morning.

On his way home to his wife and kids that morning Bruce was sat at a stop sign. The driver of a car hurtling down the off-ramp recognised him, wound his window down and, as he drove past, shouted “Bruce, we need you now!” Bruce got the message, he just didn’t know how he could respond. Whether it was the call from the car or Bruce reading obituary after obituary mentioning victims being his fans*, but as he found himself glued to footage and, watching the firefighters making the ultimate sacrifice, climbing up the stairs, bidding goodbye to this world and stepping into the unknown… the songs started coming with ‘Into The Fire’.**

Some years prior, the president of Sony Records had mentioned to Bruce that producer Brendan O’Brien (Pearl Jam, RATM, STP amongst many others) had mentioned a desire to work with him. The two connected, met up and Springsteen played him a couple of tracks he’d written. Now, O’Brien is a very hands-on producer, in search of the ‘song’ he’ll roll up his sleeves and get stuck in. This doesn’t always please the artists. By all accounts his sessions with Aerosmith in 2009 were fraught with tension between him and Tyler partly due to the frontman’s displeasure at O’Brien’s methods**. When Springsteen played him ‘You’re Missing’, O’Brien jumped straight in re-arranging. Initially he believed Springsteen was impressed, though he later found out The Boss wasn’t so happy at the idea but realised this might be needed: “At one point Brendan said, ‘Well, I think we should find another chord for this spot.’ I said, ‘Find another chord?! Wait a minute, now! Hold on, hold on! Those are the chords!’ But then I’m thinking that my job now as the producee, is to say yes.” They cut the demo and Brendan told Bruce “this is good, now go write some more”.

When recording on The Rising began in late January 2002 at Southern Tracks in Atlanta, it was out with the old and in with the new. Brendan O’Brien produced and mixed and recording was handled by Nick DiDia. In the past Springsteen album sessions were long and laborious. As Van Zandt, back in the band sharing second guitar duties with Nils Lofgren, Bruce would “write a bunch of songs, we’d record them, then, you know, hang out for a bit. He’d write another bunch of songs, we’d record them. What would happen is, we’d always do two or three or four records before one finally came out.” For The Rising the band would run through the song a couple of times and O’Brien would call time to record. Recording sessions for the last E Street Band album, Born in the USA, took over two years. Recording sessions for The Rising took seven and a half weeks.

urlThe first new Bruce Springsteen album I bought on day of release, The Rising is the sound of Bruce and his band embarking on a new era, re-galvanised and sounding tighter and tougher than before, songs focused and punchier than in over a decade. Bruce said of the change in sound that “I heard the way we sound right now. Today. And I said, ‘Well, that’s what we need to do.’ If somebody has all our other records, I want to make sure they don’t have this one. You can’t replace this one with some of the other ones.”

O’Brien’s touch isn’t as heavy-handed and obvious as a later producer would be, the altering of the band’s sound more of an update than an overhaul. His work seems to be more in finding the essence of a song, distilling it down and bringing different sounds to the forefront – the guitar tone on here eclipsing that of Lucky Town / Human Touch for example – and adding subtle touches to the overall palette.

The Rising never tackles the theme of September 11th directly, but it’s shadow can be felt across the album. With ‘Your Missing’ and ‘Into The Fire’ nine of the album’s fifteen tracks were written post 9/11 while ‘Nothingman’ and ‘My City Of Ruins’ fit the overall feel perfectly.

While not quite the finest record of the Bruce V2 era it’s certainly up there higher than most of his recorded output since and marked a fine return to form. I’m not a fan of ‘Waitin’ On A Sunny Day,’ nor am I that bothered about ‘Lets Be Friends (Skin to Skin)’ but I find it hard to find a fault with the rest of the album and it gets many a play. These are songs of loss, sure, but they’re also songs of finding strength in that loss. Songs of love, faith and power. Themes Springsteen had sung of throughout his career and, with the rejuvenation offered by The Rising, would go on to do so into a new chapter of his career.

Highlights: ‘The Rising’ ‘Into The Fire’ ‘Worlds Apart’ ‘Mary’s Place’ ‘You’re Missing’ ‘The Fuse’

*Bruce would reach out to the families of those victims, talking and consoling at length.

**’Into the Fire’ wasn’t finished just yet so come the A Tribute To Heroes concert it was ‘My City Of Ruins’, written previously for Asbury Park, that Bruce played.

***The band was already fraught with tension, Tyler was using again and were abandoned much to the chagrin of other members even after, according to Brad Whitford, O’Brien “bent over backwards to do whatever he could to make Steven comfortable”.

We got the means to make amends… Pearl Jam and the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame

/ Tony / 13 Comments

Warning: rant incoming.

The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame is a strange thing. From where I sit it seems like a lot of back-slapping and congratulating from industry-types with very little real merit. Does it mean something to be a “Hall of Famer”? Does it add all that much credence anymore? Perhaps it means more in the States than it does here where a UK Music Hall of Fame sputtered, stalled and stopped before anyone paid it any attention.

Let’s spin back a bit to 1983; the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame was set up by Ahmet Ertegun (he of Atlantic Records) to “recognize and archive the history of the best-known and most influential artists, producers, engineers, and other notable figures, who have each had some major influence on the development of rock and roll” (Wikipedia) and began inducting such artists in 1986 with the first group of artists including Elvis Presley, Sam Cooke and Chuck Berry.

Since then each year a group of artists are nominated, voted for and inducted in a ceremony – again; from where I sit – that seems overly long on speeches and pretty short on the ‘rock and roll’. With each year there’s criticisms about who is and isn’t nominated (chief amongst which being that those controlling nominations, as a small group, are not musicians and nominate based on personal taste) and then there’s plenty of column inches and website debate and pages handed over to the ‘drama’ of which members from a certain band will be inducted, will attend, will tell the HoF to shove it…

From those Bozos in Makeup to Axl Rose’s tantrums, the question about which ex-members should be in alongside the nominees seems to draw more debate than discussing that band’s lasting impact. The cynical side of me (which seems to only get more so after a decade in marketing) certainly thinks that this is a deliberate act by the HoF in order to stir the pot, get more attention and create more buzz than the ceremony would otherwise get, nominating bands for whom the real question will be “will they induct that member who played tambourine on their first album or…?”

Nirvana had it in 2014 when those members inducted included Dave Grohl and not the four drummers that had sat on the stool pre-Nevermind. Would they induct Chad Channing or the first drummer, Aaron Burckhard? For, you see, there’s a criteria for getting in: “artists will first become eligible for the Rock Hall 25 years after the release of their first record (LP, EP or single)”. Bleach was released in 1989 (with Chad Channing on drums and Jason Everman on guitar*) but Nevermind, the first record Grohl drummed on, came out in 1991. It really adds weight to the idea that the HoF is after the popular vote more than anything – everyone loves a bit of Dave Grohl, nobody knows who Chad Channing is. There was, of course, a lot of online hubbub about the ‘snub’ of Chad.

Being the perennially nice guy of rock that he is, of course, Dave praised those drummers that had hit the skins before him in his speech and the band invited Channing to attend.

This year that question and the online buzz falls upon the collective shoulders of Pearl Jam. A band with a huge and dedicated following who forged a path for many to follow. Few can touch them live or match their unique set lists and they’re certainly the last men standing when it comes to the ‘Seattle Scene’. Their place in the Hall, even in the first year of eligibility, isn’t likely to be questioned. They’re also a band who, for the first half of their career, had a Spinal Tap scenario with their drummers**.

Released in August 1991, Ten featured Eddie Vedder, Stone Gossard, Mike McCready, Jeff Ament and, on drums, Dave Krusen. Krusen, though, had left the band in May due to alcoholism. His replacement, Matt Chamberlain only hung around for a handful of shows before heading off to join the SNL band. He suggested a guy to take his place; Dave Abbruzzese. Abbruzzese played drums through the rest of the tour supporting Ten, on Vs. and Vitalogy before he was fired in 1994.  During which time the band would tour extensively, Abbruzzese would write the music for ‘Go’, ‘Last Exit’ and ‘Angel’ and defined the band’s sound at the time with his ferocious drumming. The harder sound he bought helped them move away from being pigeon-holed as another clone.

If you ask a Pearl Jam fan what the band’s ‘peak’ period was I’m willing to lay money on a large percentage saying 1991-1994. Abbruzzesse was a key part of that sound. The problem is, he enjoyed it too much. I’m not talking piles of cocaine and claims of being a Golden God, no; he just loved it all and smiled too much. Rumours swirl as to why Abbruzzesse was actually let go but it boils down to the fact that he was obviously having fun. Vedder was, at this time, at his most serious and ‘punk’, it wasn’t ‘cool’ to be enjoying your success and, as the front man, he took most of the attention and it was a lot to handle. While the band withdrew from the spotlight, Dave would give interviews (albeit to drum magazines, not Spin or Rolling Stone). While the other members would go the Volvo or battered old truck route, Dave bought a Lexus. He didn’t really care about the famous Ticket Master Boycott either. Apparently the final straw for Dave’s tenure came when he accidentally broke the neck of one of Vedder’s guitars during Vitalogy sessions and didn’t hang around to tell Eddie or apologise. He wouldn’t be in the band when it came time to tour the album he’d helped create, he was let go – Vedder wouldn’t do it, the task fell to Stone Gossard.

Pearl Jam

Jack Irons, formerly of the Red Hot Chili Peppers*** was then in the saddle for four years and two albums before he ducked out (not happy with touring) in 1998 and then-former Soundgarden drummer Matt Cameron took the seat he still occupies. Now, Cameron is certainly the stick man with the longest tenure and its clear that he’s considered a full member of the band – Vedder continues to praise him and has credited his joining with keeping them together – but I don’t think I’m alone in seeing him as an outsider even some 19 years and five albums later.

Now of all their six drummers, only one, technically, qualifies: Dave Krusen. He played on Ten, twenty-five years ago. By all accounts he’s quite surprised at the nod. The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, however, is also inducting Matt Cameron. And nobody from the period between the two.

Now, out-dated and bloated an institution as it may be, if the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame are recognising Matt Cameron then they sure as shit should recognise Dave Abbruzzese.  As much of a deliberate poking of a hornet’s nest as the snub is, it’s also pretty unfair to then place the onus of dealing with the question onto Pearl Jam (ever-shy of such publicity and awards) to be the ones to deal with it. Dave, obviously riled himself, has said plenty, chiefly:

“I have always thought that every award given to a band that celebrates the bands lifetime achievements should be awarded to every person that was ever a debt incurring, life sacrificing, blood spilling, member of that band. Maybe the Hall should reevaluate the need to put all the monkeys in the same cage in order to boost revenue, and instead let the history of the band be fully and completely represented as they were and as they are. …leave it up to the group to show their true colors as they celebrate their own history in a manner of their choosing…

I will admit to wanting to look out over my drum kit at the faces of Jeff, Stone, Mike and Eddie. Looking to my left at my drum tech, the mainest of mellow, Mr. Jimmy Shoaf and seeing him give me that look that dares me to destroy my cymbals and kick the songs ass, the bands ass and the crowds ass… The idea of counting it off and giving the band, the music & the people all that I have to give, as I always have without compromise or hesitation… The sound of the people singing along… Making eye contact with the person air drumming their ass off right before the big drum fill, so we can do it together…
I loved it.
I loved it every single time.”

Pearl Jam have always marked themselves out as a band of integrity and honest values. They’re continually raising money and awareness for important causes and fighting the good fight. Again, it’s unfair of the HoF to put this on them but it is gonna be down to them to decide how to deal with the Dave question. History gives no real clue – their 2004 compilation Rearviewmirror featured photos cropped not to include him yet in 2016 the band performed his composition ‘Angel’ for the first time since 1994 with Vedder stating it ” was written by the guy who was our drummer. Dave Abbruzzese, We wish him well.”

How it’s dealt with come the night, though, we’ll have to see. And that’s how the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame keeps getting people to pay attention. And, damn it, they’ve suckered me in to giving a damn too. The rat bastards.

 

* albeit in name only and his image was ‘tastefully’ removed from the album cover come the 20th Anniversary re-release. Everman would go through a musical life of ups and downs which would include a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it stint on bass for Soundgarden before cutting his hair and joining the army where he would serve with the Rangers and Special Forces – it makes for a fascinating read.

** You can’t dust for vomit.

***and was inducted into the HoF in 2012.

Least to Most: Bruce – Born in the USA

/ Tony / 15 Comments

“You end up like a dog that’s been beat too much
Till you spend half your life just covering up”

bruceborn1984Bruce at his largest in terms of both commercial appeal and sound, this was the spark that ignited ‘Boss Mania’ and saw Springsteen go from playing to packed arenas of the faithful to selling out stadiums and play-acting himself to newer audiences against a screen that projected his newly pumped-up image punching his fist into the air, ushering in the final verse of the misappropriated title-track to his then-new album Born in the USA to the cheap seats at the back of the crowd.

Thirty million (and still counting) sales, seven top ten hits. That cover. That Ben Stiller parody. Born in the USA is Bruce’s biggest selling album and, probably, his most well-known.  Yet commercial heights do not always equal creative heights. There’s always a sacrifice, a deal with the devil to achieve those numbers. For my money, the production and sound on this blockbuster meant that the details that make for a great Bruce song were sacrificed somewhat.

But let’s not get confused, though. At this point in the list we’re really getting into the quality end of the spectrum, the wheat has been separated from the chaff and we’re down to lining up in order of personal preference and anything from here on in will likely regularly feature on any stereo and may well top other ‘favourite / best’ lists.

The title track is inescapable, even on this side of the Atlantic, whenever Bruce is mentioned. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, it’s a belter of a song. Let’s skip over the way in which it was misinterpreted as that’s been discussed ad nauseam. I think what fascinates me is just how different this version is from the original demo cut around the Nebraska sessions is (perhaps this was the key to the sacrifice – in its original form it would not have been so misunderstood yet would never have reached such a wide audience) and that the version on the album is only the band’s second take at it – Max Weibnerg didn’t even know Bruce was going to count the band in for another punch at the four-and-a-half minute mark but The Boss has praised ‘Born in the USA’ as his drummer’s finest recording*.

That being said, I dont’ always listen to it when I play the album so over-exposed did it become and it was one of those songs that put me off Bruce initially. Listening to Chapter & Verse recently it sounds so out of place sat between ‘My Father’s House’ and ‘Brilliant Disguise’ as to almost sound like the work of a different artist. Almost.

Perhaps it was a cultural thing – Reagan harped on about a new morning in America while that country’s cinema heroes of the early 1980’s were muscle-bound and jingoistic, here we were had Thatcher and mining strikes (cinema audiences dropped to an all-time low in ’84) so a bicep-baring Bruce singing heartland rock against a backdrop of the Stars and Stripes was never going to be as huge here as it was in the US** and I don’t think this one has quite the lasting appeal in comparison to his other work.

I think that those songs at the start of the album are the ones I enjoy least and rarely listen to. I’d struggle to quote a lyric from ‘Darlington County’ say, or easily recognise ‘Working On The Highway’ if played live. The recording of Born In The USA dates back to 1982 and many of the tracks were written at the same time as those that appeared on Nebraska**. Bruce himself has said that “if you look at the material, particularly on the first side, it’s actually written very much like Nebraska – the characters and the stories, the style of writing – except it’s just in the rock-band setting.” Given that the fabled ‘Electric Nebraska’ has yet to see the light of day I can see why, the songs just don’t suit the sound – in my own humble.

Perhaps its another one of those results of a protracted recording period. Sessions for the album were spread over so many months (years even) that it can seem a little disjointed and with so many songs recorded it would be hard to find the perfect balance and he toiled with it for a long time. At one point in 1982, with the demo tape that would become Nebraska ready for release and a record of band material also ‘ready’ he toyed with releasing the two as a double album; one solo, one ‘band’ with a tracklisting ready as:

BORN IN THE U.S.A
MURDER INCORPORATED
DOWNBOUND TRAIN
DOWN, DOWN, DOWN (I’m Goin’ Down)
GLORY DAYS
MY LOVE WILL NOT LET YOU DOWN
WORKING ON THE HIGHWAY
DARLINGTON COUNTY
FRANKIE
I’M ON FIRE
THIS HARD LAND

Yet then he released Nebraska as a stand alone (no tour, no real fanfare) and took a break before picking up recording again in early 1983 with newer songs coming up and wouldn’t conclude until February of 1984. As such a wealth of material was recorded and never released – you could easily pick a dozen of any such songs and create an album that would still be considered a classic. So the protracted recording, agonising and umming and erring (toying with releasing different selections and demos as is) as Bruce searched for that elusive ‘binding factor’ means that perhaps this record isn’t as consistent as it deserves to be.

But… but BUT. This album contains a wealth of such strong material that even if I tend to skip a few tracks a the start there’s enough here to warrant its inclusion in the top half of this list. Even limiting myself to two tracks from each album when I compiled my own Top 20 Springsteen songs was a tough one with this album and those I chose weren’t released as singles.

‘Downbound Train’ remains one of my favourite Springsteen songs and one I feel is criminally overlooked.

‘I’m On Fire’ gets many a play as does ‘Bobby Jean’. And then there’s ‘Dancing In The Dark’. When Landau listened to Born in the USA his reaction was “we don’t have a single” and told his charge to go home and write one. Legend has it a guitar was thrown at this point. However, Bruce set about writing about his frustration about writing – “It went as far in the direction of pop music as I wanted to go – and probably a little farther.” His biggest single to date (with it the album actually had seven) and one which initially wasn’t popular with the band. Van Zandt has said “It was much, much, much more produced. I didn’t like that song when I first heard it.”*** While it may still have its detractors I still really enjoy it a lot more than some of the album’s other singles like ‘Glory Days’.

Overall Born in the USA is something of a grab-bag album. Certainly affected by over-production in its unabashed reach for the maistream (no qualms here, if any artist is going to shift thirty million copies of an album I’d rather it a Springsteen than a Beiber) it nonetheless contains more than its fare share of solid Springsteen tunes that carry the album into the higher quality end of his catalogue.

Highlights: ‘Downbound Train’, ‘Bobby Jean’. ‘I’m On Fire’, ‘Born In The USA, ‘No Surrender’, ‘Dancing In The Dark’.

*While Weinberg is fond of the song for the same reasons, his favourite of these sessions, ‘This Hard Land’ was shelved like so many of the 80(!) recorded.

**It was a hit, though, nonetheless, topping the charts and shifting just over a million. I don’t feel though that it had quite the same cultural impact as it did for Bruce at home.

***Van Zandt would leave the E Street band in 82 (though this wasn’t really announced until after the recording of Born in the USA) and Nils Lofgren would join in time for the tour. The official line being that he’d joined in order to help see Bruce rise to success and, job done, it was time to focus on his own music.

Quick List: Top Five ‘River Songs’

/ Tony / 3 Comments

I was up in Cambridge the other day and aside from the usual insistence my mental jukebox has of lining up Pink Floyd songs, the chalked up directions to the Cam got me thinking about ‘river songs’ – songs either about or with rivers in their title.

Once I’d started thinking though it was quite the flood. However, here’s a quick Top Five:

Nick Drake – River Man

Pixies – River Euphrates

Bob Dylan – Red River Shore

I think that period from Oh Mercy to Time Out of Mind was one of Dylan’s finest so Tell Tale Signs: The Bootleg Seties Vol.8 is a real treasure trove and this is a real gem upon it.

REM – Find The River

Bruce Springsteen – The River

Was there ever any question this would be here?

Of course there could also be CCR’s ‘Green River’ (‘Proud Mary’ being overdone), Ocean Colour Scene’s ‘Riverboat Song’, ‘Dam That River’ by Alice In Chains, ‘Five Feet High and Rising’…..

 

 

Least To Most: Bruce – “halfway to heaven and just a mile outta hell”

/ Tony / 2 Comments

Ok, so I’ve just looked at my (much revised, scrawled over and rewritten) list and realised we’re at the half way point in my rambling about Bruce’s albums in Least to Most Favourite order. We’re ten down with ten to go and that feels like a good point to take a breather* and talk about some Springsteen songs (a couple of favourites amongst them) that wouldn’t otherwise get a mention and take a look at those releases that don’t qualify for the list.

Compilations 

Bruce was twenty three years into his recording career before he decided it was time for a compilation. 1995’s Greatest Hits oddly didn’t get the best reviews – many felt that by omitting anything prior to Born To Run, Bruce was cutting out an important part of his history (“no Rosalita?!” was a common cry in reviews I’ve found in archives**) and others suggested that these songs simply didn’t belong together and performed better in their original album sequencing… though isn’t that the case with all such compilations? Seems like a trite comment to make.

Personally, this was my introduction to Bruce Springsteen so I’m a little biased. I was a little put-off by the sounds of ‘Born In The USA’ and it’s kin (this was 1995, after all, and such sounds weren’t ageing well) but there was no denying the draw of songs like ‘The River’ and ‘Atlantic City’ which were the big hook for me.

I’ll also make a fight for the new songs included here that many a critic argued were weak. I think ‘Blood Brothers’ remains an essential Bruce Springsteen song and both ‘Streets of Philidelphia’ and ‘Secret Garden’ are strong tracks and that’s without the dusted-off and revisited ‘Murder Incorporated’ (which saw Steven Van Zandt return to the fold for the video and would become a real blazer on the Reunion Tour) and ‘This Hard Land’ – both Born In The USA cuts that didn’t make selection, the latter of which was Max Weinberg’s favourite tune. For a one-stop sampler of Bruce Springsteen V1***, Greatest Hits is still a damn good start for any Bruce newbie.

Strangely enough, just two studio albums later and with the successful launch of Bruce Springsteen V2 cemented, it was time for another compilation.

This time more space was allotted to it and the selection was allowed to span out across two discs so that The Essential Bruce Springsteen kicked off with ‘Blinded By The Light’ and wrapped it up with cuts from Live In NYC and The Rising making sure to include ‘Rosalita (Come Out Tonight)’, all the hits, some fan favourites like ‘Jungleland’ and ‘Nebraska’. Of course, the fans would already have all of these so a limited run with a third disc of rarities was offered and some of those are none-too shabby either. I particularly enjoy Springsteen’s live take on ‘Trapped’:

Odder still, in 2015 the track listing was revised. Out went ‘Jungleland’ and ‘Tunnel of Love’ and in came ‘Tenth Avenue Freeze Out’ and ‘One Step Up’ and a handful of other tracks were shuffled / cut in order to make space for a couple of bolted-on post-The Rising tunes. Bonkers, if you ask me; cutting ‘The Darkness On The Edge of Town’  to make space for something from High Hopes?! Why bother?

On the ‘Why Bother’ list is the 2009 Greatest Hits which was billed to Bruce and The E Street Band (is that only their second billing? Though they didn’t get the US cover) which strips it all back to one disc and adds a couple of newer tracks – presumably released to catch the newer casuals after Superbowl and festival appearances.

Chapter & Verse was released this year to coincide / accompany Bruce’s Born To Run book. It’s somewhat linear and obvious in its song selection and only really stands out in as much as being more ‘personally’ selected than the above comp and featuring a handful of pre-Columbia Recording Artist Bruce. The best of which being ‘Ballad of Jesse James’. I’ve yet to add this to the shelves as they’re not what you’d call ‘required listening’ for anything other than an intro to the origins story.

Live

In terms of live albums, while there’s certainly a couple listed on Bruce’s discography, Live 1975-85 is inarguably the best way to get a take on what makes Springsteen live so legendary. Sure, Live In NYC is a good capture of the reunited E Street Band (and the best place to hear its new songs) but it’s strange sequencing and fading out have hampered it and interrupt the flow.

Live 1975-85 contains 40 songs recorded with the band in its prime, a wealth of classics, Springsteen pre-song story telling and, in ‘Seeds’ another great original:

It’s only downfall – and one that was much picked up on by fans I’m given to understand – was that it didn’t include ‘Prove It All Night’ in the live reshaping (or at all, in fact) that had acquired a massive fandom. So here it is:

Worth mentioning that Bruce is more than savvy to the current musical buying trends and has made many a current and classic concert available for download at http://live.brucespringsteen.net/

EPs

1988’s Chimes of Freedom was released to tie-in with the Human Rights Now! tour. The live rendition of ‘Tougher Than The Rest’ is suitably girded by the E Street Band’s backing, ‘Be True’ is a decent enough tune but the flip side with Bruce’s take on Dylan’s ‘Chimes of Freedom’ and the acoustic ‘Born To Run’ and still captivating stadium-size crowds is the strongest, in my opinion:

Blood Brothers originally came with the film of the same name (in a very limited pressing) that documented the mini-reunion of the E Street Band. While the tracks included are certainly interesting there’s nothing really here other than curiosities – like the ‘alt’ version of the title song.

Which brings us to the last release of new Bruce Springsteen material – American Beauty. Now, if High Hopes was made up of songs that didn’t make the cut for The Rising or Wrecking Ball then an ep of songs that didn’t make the cut of THAT might be stretching it a bit….  Indeed it is. Nothing on here is particularly essential in its listening and there’s chunks of all that were salvaged and better used elsewhere, it’s release remains something of a mystery to me, almost an example of a big artist and major label slapping something together to cash in on Record Store Day and it pains me to say that as a fan. That being said, ‘Hey Blue Eyes’ is a very good song and I do play it a fair old bit on stream. One of Springsteen’s angry Bush-era political songs that isn’t mired by over-production – almost demonstrating in on four-track EP how clearly Brendan O’Brien is the better set of hands for Springsteen’s songs over Ron Aniello.

 

*Whether I’ll manage to finish this series by the New Year remains to be seen.

**Bruce made reference to this in the linear notes for The Essential and, if you watch the accompanying ‘Blood Brothers’ DVD, there was plenty of discussion against the inclusion of earlier tracks

***Bruce Version 1 extends from his debut up to the conclusion of The Reunion Tour. The Rising marked the emergence of Bruce Springsteen Version 2.0

Least to Most: Bruce – Greetings From Asbury Park, N.J

/ Tony / 10 Comments

“Madman drummers bummers and Indians in the summer with a teenage diplomat
In the dumps with the mumps as the adolescent pumps his way into his hat
With a boulder on my shoulder feelin’ kinda older I tripped the merry-go-round”

Pardon?

greetings_from_asbury_park_njGreetings From Asbury Park, NJ feels exactly like a debut album should: it’s full of energy, enthusiasm and awash with ideas – essentially what happens when an act has been working up these songs long before getting a deal and let into a recording studio. So here we find Bruce Springsteen at the tender age of 23, in thrall still to his idols, making his recording début not as a frontman for a rock band but, essentially, a solo artist with a few band members on a couple of tracks.

Indeed a bit of a dispute arouse very early in as Bruce wanted more tracks with his band (at that time featuring Vini ‘Mad Dog’ Lopez, Garry Tallent and David Sancious) whereas Mike Appel and John Hammond wanted more of the solo artist, acoustic feel. Not only that but Hammond’s boss, Columbia Records president Clive Davis,  didn’t feel there was a single on the album and sent his new signing back to work.

So Springsteen, proving his craft, wrote two – ‘Spirit In The Night’ and ‘Blinded By The Light’* (which would mark Clarence Clemons’ entry into Bruce’s catalogue). Neither would prove a hit for Bruce but Manfred Mann’s Earth Band would take ‘Blinded…’ to the top of the charts. The two songs pushed a trio of ‘solo acoustic’ songs off never to be heard from again. I’ve never been this song’s biggest fan, to be honest. I don’t like what I feel is wordplay for the sake of wordplay and I still can’t fathom the meaning of lines like “And go-cart Mozart was checkin’ out the weather chart to see if it was safe to go outside, And little Early-Pearly came in by her curly-wurly and asked me if I needed a ride, Oh, some hazard from Harvard was skunked on beer playin’ backyard bombardier”… it’s almost as though he’s just going for rhyme over reason… but that’s just me.

 

But then if – after seventeen studio albums – your début was still considered your best you’d have to wonder what you’re doing wrong, right? He’d later start finding his own voice and stripping away all the wordiness and start matching his poetry to more muscular, tighter rhythms that really worked together. At the time, though, I think he was desperate to get his foot in the door. I think he’s even explained that he’d sit on the bed with a rhyming dictionary to help with the lyrics. It’s a fun anecdote now but I think it does kinda harm the music – Jon Landau and his editing hand were still a way off.

I think the only reason I don’t spend as much time with this as I do with later albums is probably down to the production / guiding hands behind it. The whole ‘New Dylan’ tag that Columbia was marketing Bruce behind meant that  it landed somewhere between folk and rock and not firmly in either, in amongst some that don’t really leave much of an impression are some great songs on here that would later go on to become fleshed out monsters live restrained by their studio rendering –  as though Bruce wasn’t being allowed to really bust loose with his own material. When he’d play the final album to a friend, the question was “where’s the band?”

For my money the album’s stronger tracks are those which most prominently feature a band – ‘Lost In The Flood’ is an immense song for someone in their early twenties to have penned (and features Mr Van Zandt clobbering Springsteen’s Danelctro amp to get the opening sound) remains a favourite and I’m sure it’s not just one of mine, and marks the start of those ‘story’ songs that would continue on up to ‘Jungleland’.

As I’ve said, we’re already into real strong territory on this list so I won’t say anything on Greetings is bad, more that the kitchen-sink attempts don’t always work and songs like ‘Mary Queen of Arkansas’ and ‘The Angel’ don’t really hold long in my memory after listening. There’s just not much about them to kinda hang your hat on – they don’t have the melody / hook of ‘Growin’ Up’ or ‘It’s Hard to Be a Saint in the City’ which, although it’s almost drowned in the Dylanesque lyrical flood, points as to where he’d be going with his next effort in just a few months.

One of this album’s fans included David Bowie – who actually covered ‘It’s Hard to Be a Saint in the City’. Initially, though, it was meant to feature on his Young Americans album but, according to Tony Visconti, after they played the cover to Bruce, David and The Boss had a tense, private chat after which work on the song was abandoned (later released on Bowie’s 1989 box set).

I think what I really love about Greetings From Asbury Park, N.J – aside from the music – is the sheer journey it started. It’s amazing to listen to this and associate it the the same artist who, just a decade later, would be muscle-bound and singing about how he “had a brother at Khe Sahn”. Here he is in all his youthful, bearded glory, searching out the avenues his music would later stride down, a little in awe to the poetry of his idols over his own voice but still, unquestionably, massively talented.

Highlights – ‘Lost In The Flood’, ‘Growin’ Up’, ‘It’s Hard to Be a Saint in the City’.

*Jon Landau would pull the same method just a decade later, sending Bruce back to come up with a ‘hit’ as he felt that Born In The USA lacked one. Turns out that with the resulting ‘Dancing In The Dark’ it had seven singles in it.