Reviewed by Chris Roberts Released: September 30 1982 Bruce Springsteen Nebraska Genre: Folk Rock Allen's Rating: 4.5 out of 5 Chris’ Rating: 5 out of 5 Highlights: Nebraska Atlantic City Mansion On The Hill Johnny 99 Highway Patrolman State Trooper Used Cars Open All Night My Father’s House Reason To Believe I know The Boss’ Jersey bombast is too much for some folks. “Born In The USA” and “Born To Run” are just a few of Bruce’s unrelenting assaults, and if you’ve ever seen or heard his legendary live shows, you know Bruce and the E-Street band launch all the missiles. He’s the consummate rock star, both exhilarating and exhausting, but if you’re not into it, Bruce can look pretty silly. But Nebraska does not feature the E-Street band, or even Bruce the rock star. He’s not dancing in the dark. This is a dark night of the soul. Bruce the writer, in a rented house by his lonesome self. Nebraska is mostly simple compositions, played on an acoustic guitar, with an occasional harmonica or other small embellishment, home-recorded. While home demo tracks have become de rigueur, and MTV unplugged everyone in the nineties, Nebraska is another thing entirely. [1] Nebraska is about the stories, not the storyteller. In fact, Bruce isn’t even on the cover (a rarity in his discography). Instead, it’s a grainy, black and white photograph—a windshield view of a desolate highway. Aside from snow on the wiper blades, there’s nothing to identify the location. The photo sits between the words BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN, printed in big red letters at the top, with NEBRASKA handled the same across the bottom. Words on wide black bands, the kind you see on a letterboxed movie. This is fitting, as Nebraska is cinematic, showing us scenes with characters in conflict. And like a letterboxed movie, this album wants to show us the full picture, including the edges. The first song, “Nebraska,” establishes the album’s grim theme with it’s final verse. When asked why he killed ten innocent people, a death row murderer explains: “Well sir, I guess there’s just a meanness in this world.” This meanness is direct in the stories of a mob hitman, (“Atlantic City”), a cop killer (“Johnny 99”) and a cop who looks the other way when his brother commits a violent crime (“Highway Patrolman”). The meanness is also indirect. It’s wealth, in the stories of outsiders looking in (“Mansion On The Hill” and “Used Cars”), and struggles of conscience (“My Father’s House”) or the lack thereof (“State Trooper”). In the album closer, “Reason To Believe,” Springsteen does not offer faith as a solution to the “meanness in this world” only that it’s “kinda funny” that in spite of dead dogs, runaway lovers, broken promises, and everything else we’ve heard over these ten gloomy tracks, people do find “some reason” to believe. I remember listening to Nebraska in July 1989, speeding home at night on Interstate 5 somewhere between Lost Hills and the Grapevine; nothing but blacktop, scrub brush and a rusted billboard frame or two. Alone in the dashboard light, these songs felt like I’d tuned the radio to a cold, still-of-night broadcast from the central wastelands of the apocalypse. Gone were the Central Valley rancheros and all that was left were these decaying transcriptions from a failed civilization. Bruce described it like this: In the wee wee hours your mind gets hazy Radio relay towers gonna lead me to my baby Every song on Nebraska has at least some mention of driving or the highway, and many are told from the position of the driver’s seat. That specific lyric appears in not one, but two songs. In “State Trooper,” it’s in the thoughts of the unlicensed driver who’s committed some unspeakable crime and doesn’t want Mister State Trooper to pull him over—for the trooper’s sake. In “Open All Night,” the cops have already turned on their flashing lights, but in this case, the driver, on his way to see his girl Wanda, is “hummin’ like a turbojet” in his fully tuned ride and wishes the patrolman “good luck” catching him. Both songs also follow this lyric with the radios being “jammed up,” with “gospel” and “talk show station(s).” But it’s less the context and more the repetition that I find intriguing. These lyrics perfectly capture Nebraska’s dark night of the soul vibe, and the challenges we face finding salvation. Repeating them with different characters reinforces the universality of that challenge. Those same repeated lyrics also capture and compliment Nebraska’s lo-fi sonic texture. Words like “hazy,” “radio relay towers” and “radio jammed up” express the pervasive background hum inherent in Bruce’s demo recording. His original goal was to flesh the songs out with the E-Street Band—but the moments captured in the home recording haunted him. Like the sizzling of sodium lights in a parking lot, or echoes in an abandoned building, it’s both unnerving and sparely atmospheric, spiritually closer to indie rock than classic rock, and worlds apart from Bruce’s later acoustic albums (The Ghost Of Tom Joad and Devils And Dust). Back to that night, listening to Nebraska behind the wheel of my little red pickup, I probably thought of Johnny Cash [2] and the inmates he sang to at Folsom and San Quentin. I was working on my English major, so maybe I should have recognized Bruce was channeling Flannery O’Connor, who once wrote: “You arrive at enough certainty to be able to make your way, but it is making it in darkness. Don’t expect faith to clear things up for you. It’s trust, not certainty.’” That’s what’s going on in Nebraska, for sure. Of course, I found that quote Googling “Springsteen Scorsese” because I know movies better than I know books [3] (so much for that B.A.). Terrance Malick’s film Badlands was Springsteen’s inspiration for the song “Nebraska,” and Sean Penn’s film Indian Runner was inspired by “Highway Patrolman.” I can draw parallels to movies by Joel and Ethan Coen (“Blood Simple,” “Fargo” “No Country For Old Men” and “Oh Brother Where Art Thou”) and Martin Scorsese (“Mean Streets” “Taxi Driver” and “Goodfellas”). You probably can too. You know, the more I think about it, the more I’m not actually sure that I listened to Nebraska that night in July 1989. I know I was at a personal crossroads, so it feels right. I sorta wonder if Nebraska captured my “hazy” mindset so perfectly, that I’ve retconned my past. ********** 1. Bon Iver, The Killers and Kelly Clarkson are among the artists who’ve recorded albums inspired by Bruce’s minimalist approach on Nebraska. I could argue there’s probably not a No Depression scene without Nebraska. 2. Cash called his 1983 album Johnny 99, which included covers of “Johnny 99” and “Highway Patrolman.” He also covered “I’m On Fire” (a song which borders Nebraska) on the Nebraska tribute album, Badlands. “Badlands” is also the name of a song on Springsteen’s 1978 album, Darkness On The Edge of Town. 3. I have listened to the audiobook of Born To Run by Christopher McDougall, which is about barefoot running. I have not listened to Born To Run, which is Bruce Springsteen’s autobiography.
Sunday, December 17, 2023
Saturday, October 24, 2020
Bruce Springsteen - Letter to You
Bruce Springsteen
Letter to You
It’s not often I go song by song to review an album but I felt with this one that I had to.
So, let’s jump in to the latest Bruce Springsteen record.
“One Minute You’re Here”: It opens hauntingly. Like a ghost of The Rising. Strains of “My City in Ruins” or “The Fuse”… Play this at Bruce’s funeral. But it’s an introduction. A head fake. Because the real opener is:
“Letter to You”: Screams to open his concerts. I guarantee you it will. The Letter to You concert. Simple lead lines, predictable drum fills bring comfort instead of the laziness I’ve felt in the past. You know that when the solo is over he’s going to follow that with “Good evening, Los Angeleez!”. It’s ready made stadium music.
“Burnin’ Train”: I was worried, after those two tracks, that we would get more subdued Bruce. More Devils and Dust than The Rising. Look, Bruce isn’t ever gonna be as innovative as he was in the 70s. He’s not the wordsmith of Asbury Park, the hot blooded kid of “Rosalita”, the pensive evaluator of American lives of The River. Those days are over. He’s 70 something. He wants to ride his horses on the open fields of his estate in New Jersey. That’s this song. It’s a tailgate party at a Dude Ranch.
“Janey Needs a Shooter”. The loneliness and need of the lead character in this song resonates with those who have lost hope in 2020 and, for me, have turned to just about anyone for that hand.
“Last Man Standing” is this album’s “Surprise Surprise” by X. Another song about longing for the fun of being in a band. Bruce is more wistful and nostalgic. It’s something extraordinary. He’s the “last man standing standing now”. With two dead E Street members and many other friends gone, Bruce is staring mortality in the face. He’s also the last of the boomers of the era to fill stadiums like he does. The guys from The Castiles are gone, most of his compatriots have shuffled off and he knows the days are numbered. This is the first song to make me sad for the day that a hero of mine will one day no longer be here.
“The Power of Prayer”. Chords. Words. Bruce knows what to do with these. He can write this in his sleep. For me this is the Mary’s Place of the record. A song I know I’m supposed to sing along with but it’s sort of hollow. A song written around a statement that serves as a chorus and leaves me wanting.
End Side One.
Snap thoughts: It’s got a lot of great stuff going for it. Not the least of which is the way the band sounds, having recorded it live. But, also, I can not see myself returning to any of these songs. Maybe the title track. The rest of it I’m glad to know because I will want to sing along in concert.
“House of a Thousand Guitars” is the first song that made me think…did he write this in his studio, looking around at all his guitars? Is this the “Queen of the Supermarket” of this record. Feels like it.
“Rainmaker” is the Trump song. It’s vicious. But not as much as an indictment of Trump. It is. But it’s more about empathizing with the desperate who follow him and need him. It’s the Bruce we have been looking for during this dark dark time. He did not disappoint.
“If I Was the Priest” is another Castiles era track. Remember when Bruce was the “next Dylan”? And he employed wordplay that attempted to be just that? And then, poof, he never went back to that “Blinded by the Light” well? This is a track from that time, but spruced up with latter day E-Street glory. And it comes to life. It comes to life so well I kind of wish Bruce would re-record that first album with these grizzled and road traveled players. Thank god it fades out. I miss fade outs.
I had already dismissed “Ghosts” because of the Tom Petty interpolation of “Free Falling” and, I admit, it’s difficult for me to get over. He’s done it before. “Radio Nowhere” bit on Tommy Tutone and he’s taken a bite out of KISS, ffs. But the elegiac chorus, especially if listening to the album as a whole, actually manages to work.
“Song for Orphans” See: “If I Was the Priest”. An excellent 6+ minute track that I don’t know that I will ever return to.
“I’ll See You In My Dreams” takes us out. He hits this nail on the head. Like “The Show Must Go On” was the perfect career closer for Freddie Mercury, so is this for Bruce. In that context, he had me weeping at the end.
Bruce is a smart guy. He’s very aware. He peels the onion of the world, people he sees and, most importantly, himself. So, if he is at all like I expect him to be, he is aware that the end is coming. He’ll reach the age of life expectancy soon. Four hour concerts are going to be more and more challenging. They may be the elixir of his life but it gets harder to lift the chalice as we get older.
If this is the last Bruce Springsteen album, he has written an excellent eulogy.
A perfect letter. The “You” isn’t just the listener. It’s the band. The bandmates. And, most importantly, the music.
This is Bruce’s best collection since The Rising. And, I might add, that that record had it’s flaws. It felt, at times, like Bruce was trying to sound like what he wanted to remember Bruce sounded like. In that context, this is fuller and more realized and cohesive. Which makes it better than The Rising. Which makes it his best since Born in the USA.
https://music.apple.com/us/album/letter-to-you/1529959055
Friday, September 11, 2020
The 1980 Listening Post - Bruce Springsteen - The River
#412
by George Hillman
Bruce Springsteen
The River
Genre: Bruce Springsteen
Allen’s Rating: 5 out of 5
George’s Rating: 5 out of 5
THE RIVER
Bruce Springsteen has always been my touchstone. As I have grown/evolved/died and been reborn The Boss has always been there for me. Not so much his later music but when life became odious Born to Run or Greetings From Asbury Park New Jersey was always in the first aid kit. Greetings seemed like he desperately vomited everything he had on the vinyl and Born to Run was as if Bob Dylan met Phil Specter’s “Wall of Sound”. The River was way down the list and mostly forgotten but as I listened for the first time in decades I realized this album was more important than I remembered. It was what happened between his beginning and what came later in the 80s, a transition. It was a reaction both good and bad to the disillusion he felt over the years long court battle to gain control over his career which produced Darkness on the Edge of Town. It was also a precursor to what was coming which was Nebraska and a move towards folk music. This was two albums in one because it also was a preview of Born in the USA. With all the great rock albums he made it’s interesting to note that he’s won two Grammies for best folk album and never won for rock.
Practically every song on this double album could be a novel length review, but aint that Springsteen who could always say more with less, “Down in the part of town where if you hit a red light you don’t stop.”
The album starts with The Ties That Bind which is the equivalent of the 1986 Red Sox leading off Spike Owen which they often did. We then ramble through the street party that is Sherry Darling and rock into Jackson Cage and Two Hearts, then comes the first check. We get our first hint at where Bruce would be headed later in the decade. Independence Day is a song about father son strife. Not a new topic for Bruce but this one cuts like a knife. “They aint gonna’ do to me what I watched them do to you” This line expresses love in the purest most heart breaking way. It reminds me of Pink Floyd’s “Wish You Were Here”. Bruce sings as if his life was changing, and it is.
Hungry Heart was the hit, tame enough to be played on the radio. Nuf Sed.
Later in the decade Bruce’s charachters, which always drove his songs, became beaten down but on The River, despite running head long into adulthood and all the beat down that encompasses, they still had their strut, “When I’m out on the street I walk the way I want to walk.” Then we went down to The River. Like Dylans’ Maggie Farm this was Springsteens’ announcement that he was going in a different direction. ``
The first time I heard Point Blank was on WAAL in Binghamton NY. A very dark song for a top 40 station to put in their rotation. The story within a story of the singer seeing his ex on the street is very frightening. It made my girlfriend and I debate whether he actually shot her.
Cadillac Ranch was an upbeat rocker until a hearse passed by me one day and I saw the nameplate on the back and realized it wasn’t some rich ass hole taking his girl away, it was a hearse. In Springsteen canon the automobile was a vehicle of escape, redemption, now Bruce was saying there was no escape. “James Dean in that Mercury ’49, Junior Johnson Running through the hills of Caroline, even Burt Reynolds in that black Trans Am all gonna’ meet down at the Cadillac Ranch” which is a burial ground for classic Caddies outside of Amarillo Texas. Stolen Car doesn’t deceive with up tempo rock, it presents itself for what it is. This may be Springsteens’ best song ever. “All those letters” he wrote feel like the apocalypse as he fades into the darkness that is the rest of his life.
The album ends with Wreck on the Highway reminding us of Jim Morrisons’ dead Indians spread across the road in Dawns Highway. This song segues right into Nebraska which opens with Charles Starkweather and Carol Fugate on their killing spree.
This album seems like a mind fighting with itself. Unlike Sandinista by The Clash, another double album that is a two in one [one good, one that sucked] both sides of this mind are great.
https://open.spotify.com/album/6YNIEeDWqC09YIWzhoSVLg?si=FwxWqjSPR5aitDBYIDZC3w
Friday, February 8, 2019
The 1984 Listening Post - Bruce Springsteen - Born in the USA
Thursday, January 23, 2014
Lucky Town - Bruce Springsteen in the Reflecting Pool
Bruce Springsteen - Lucky Town - 1992
That's better.
The songs of Lucky Town are much more stripped down, less "produced" and poignant and sharp.
"Better Days" harkens back to "Ain't Got You", the themes of which are both what it's like to be successful and yet that not being the end all be all.
"Local Hero" is apparently about the time he saw a picture of himself in a storefront and went in to buy it only to be told that it was a picture of "local hero".
For my money, the best track on the album, well, one of them, is "If I Should Fall Behind". Which is actually better on the reunion concert video, and always better live, and also became one of my wedding songs.
Lucky Town is the anti Human Touch. Clocking in at just under 40 minutes it's a "record". At a time when every single album was supposed to use as much CD time available, resulting in 65 minute epics of filler, Lucky Town seems like an EP by comparison. 15 years before and 15 years later it would be the acceptable length (again). It's brevity, in comparison to the over worked predecessor, is welcome.
As are the songs. There's nothing "bad" here. When it's good, it's really good. When they aren't, you just move on.
Grade: B-
ASide: Better Days, If I Should Fall Behind
BlindSide: Local Hero, The Big Muddy, Leap of Faith
DownSide:
Human Touch - Bruce Springsteen in the Reflecting Pool
Bruce Springsteen - Human Touch - 1992
Almost terrible. Not quite but juuuuuuuuust about.
The songs all sound kind of the same, imbued with that early 90's AOR sound.
Some are just dumb. "57 Channels and nothing on", for example. It should come across as some kind of indictment of pop culture and television dependence but it doesn't. It sounds half written. Like Bruce was watching his tv and said, "Man! We've got, what? 57 channels? And NOTHING'S ON!" and then, he bolts up from the couch and pens this ditty, doesn't rewrite it, puts a production sheen on it and, bam, hit record.
Except that it wasn't.
"Loving you is a Man's Job"!?!? Are you kidding me????
And then he pulls out some ancient trope (Etta James had a song like this, I believe) and declares that when he sees the woman he lost with someone else he wishes he was blind. Extreme much? I don't buy it. Hey, Bruce, if you don't wanna see that, just close your eyes. Or man up. Turn the corner. Walk away. Something. Anything.
Human Touch was released at the same time as Lucky Town, because, hell Guns n Roses did that with Use Your Illusion 1 & 2, surely that is the new way to bilk money out of fans. It's a callous record. 50+ minutes of bad, and worse, forgettable, songs.
Grade: D
ASide:
BlindSide: Roll of the Dice
DownSide: Man's Job
Tuesday, January 21, 2014
Tunnel of Love - Bruce Springsteen in the Reflecting Pool
Bruce Springsteen - Tunnel of Love - 1987
"Ain't Got You". Man. If Bruce was confessional here and there on the last record, this song is the real deal. I don't know who it is he ain't got, but he's out there telling us all he's fucking rich, he's made a fortune but he still aches for the love that has eluded him.
Wow, Bruce. Just...wow.
Tunnel of Love is Bruce's adult record. It's where he really grew up and addressed and merged the dour sadness of, say, Nebraska and parts of The River, with a bigger production sound. If his producers had an eye on another 12 million seller, it sure doesn't sound like Bruce was interested in giving it to them. This is a big, anthemic, almost country album. (I see the bolo on the cover, Boss) It's heartland extreme.
And it works some of the time. It's a cold record. A post breakup record by a man looking inside and trying to figure out how to be whole. It's Nebraska on steroids, since he only used the band here and there. This is a man pushing 40 who has become some of the characters he's written about.
It's hard for me to love Tunnel of Love, because it's not really my kind of record, it still feels like it's written by and for adults, even though I'm older than Bruce was when he made it. But, I also love it because it brings me back to my first months in Los Angeles and it's like an orphan.
Some songs, like the first and the crackling "Spare Parts", which is a reexamining of the same characters we've heard before, the single mother who was left by an immature sperm donor to fend for herself. But, like I said, it crackles. And the heroine of the song, Janey, might lament her lot in life and try to give up her kid, but she looks at him and finds her hope and plunges on. I have hope for her.
The title track, despite it's deeply ploddy 80's sound, contains not just the most emotionally requesting lyrics since, I dunno, "I Wanna Marry You", but also the best guitar solo on a Springsteen song in a while.
Also, "Two Faces", which contains the same tone of and could be a companion piece to "I'm On Fire", but is a decidedly more honest song.
Other songs, like "Cautious Man" has its roots in Nebraska and, sadly, would be the kind of maudlin storytelling that Bruce would revisit throughout the 90s. And I know you feel guilty and like you're in the wrong relationship, Bruce, but, jeez, leave it off the MOR crap like "Walk Like a Man", with it's obnoxious heavy synths that have me reaching for the ff button.....
The album is good but not great. On first glance it appears to be a sad capstone to the era of Bruce phase 1. But, since he basically jettisoned the E Street Band, using them as special guests or session men here, this is really the beginning of Bruce Phase 2.
It's gonna be a long time in the wilderness.
Grade: B-
ASide: Ain't Got You, Tunnel of Love
BlindSide: Tougher than the Rest, Spare Parts, Two Faces,
DownSide: Cautious Man, Walk Like a Man, When You're Alone You're Alone
Born in the USA - Bruce Springsteen in the Reflecting Pool
Bruce Springsteen - Born in the USA - 1984
11 years in the making. Ladies and Gentlemen, Bruce Springsteen, megastar.
The 80s were a time for musical acts that blew up into the stratosphere. Michael Jackson. Madonna. Bruce.
It was the time when Reagan and his ilk tried to commandeer the title track on the merits of the uplifting, bombastic sound and the proto-anthem chrous, without giving one whit about what the song was about, which was in direct contrast to the sound. Did it matter that the deadbeat character, prone to violence, was sent to kill the vietnamese? Nope. He's 'merican. He's a soldier. He was BORN IN THE U.S.A., motherfucker.
As timeless as The River sounds, as immediate while definitively "classic rock" as Born to Run and Darkness on the Edge of Town are, Born in the USA, sounds of its time. It's 80's production, a stadium in the studio, with echoing drums and giant hall sounds, Born now sounds like a relic more than a classic.
Some of the songs don't merit the overproduction. Like, "Glory Days", for instance. And "I'm on Fire". Wrapped up in the radio friendly sounds, the characters that populate these songs are not heroes.
But, those that do deserve the epic sound, like the title track, are a punch in the gut and a fist in the air.
The relationship is crumbling in "I'm Going Down", but because of the over the top production the song doesn't have the oomph, the power of, say, "The River". I find myself tapping my feet during a song about a guy whose lover has left him. And the same with "Glory Days". These people are looking at the past through the rosiness of what was once great. Only in the video when Bruce was playing catch with his "son" did you get the sense that there was hope or at least acceptance of his fate. The production, hoever, just makes it a good ol's singalong. It's the "Sherry Darling" of USA. And many of the other songs just sound like hollow sketches, like "Working on the Highway". After a decade of fully realized characters and mindsets, this kind of track just feels like piffle. Like a "The River" leftover.
There's some great stuff here, though. Like the wannabes in "Darlington County" and the reflective, nostalgic love note to youth in the rocking "No Surrender" (one of the most kick ass Side Two openers in Bruce's career).
Even the ode to his friendship with Steve Van Zandt, "Bobby Jean" is great fun.
And, if you can get past the weird, Cars like arrangement of "Cover Me", it's not bad. Really, though, it sounds like "Shake it Up". With bigger drums. (And it suffers from 80s-ism. It's over at 2:39 mark but goes one for another 40 seconds. This is actually an illness that much of the record suffers from. "Glory Days" being the most egregious offender)
It's quite possible that my appreciate for USA is marred by how ubiquitous it was in 84-85. Just about every song was a single, deserved or not. I'm a big fan of the big hit, "Dancing in the Dark". The production and arrangement ruin the song and it's notorious that it was written because Landau didn't think the album had a hit single, but that's what it's about: Writer's block. Bruce had to write a song. But he ain't got nothing to say. So he said that. And then Roy Bittan and the gang muscled up into something that flew up the charts. And it's Bruce's most blatantly confessional song, maybe ever.
Go figure. The 80s were weird, man.
If it sounds like I don't like the album, that's not true. I'm making the horrible mistake of reviewing the sound and not the mood or the songs. This album has punch. It resonates. It's strong. And, where Nebraska hit the emotional nadir, USA has more in common with The River in that, even when he's talking in the voice of a loser or the downtrodden, he has filled the album with either real hope or contrapuntal "hope". Without the deep emotions of, say, "Independence Day", "Point Blank" or "The River", the album just can't have that seminal timelessness. But, heck, it's pretty damned good for the most part.
Grade: B+
ASide: Born in the USA, Darlington County, Glory Days, Dancing in the Dark
BlindSide: No Surrender, Bobby Jean
DownSide: Downbound Train, I'm on Fire
Nebraska - Bruce Springsteen in the Reflecting Pool
Bruce Springsteen - Nebraska - 1982
If Darkness of the Edge of down was dark, Nebraska is downright suicidal.
Death is all over this record, a series of 4 track demos Bruce released years before Rivers Cuomo or anyone else would think to do the same. From the Chicken Man who was blown up in "Atlantic City" to the murderous Starkweather inspired serial killer in "Nebraska"to the unemployed robber sentenced to life in "Johnny 99", this album is stark.
The "Mansion on the Hill" is unattainable to these people. The "Highway Patrolman" who lets his criminal brother get away does it because he doesn't see another way and "nothing feels better than blood on blood". The driver who is hoping that the "State Trooper" won't stop him could be the same driver in The River's "Drive All Night".
These are the darkest, coldest songs Bruce will have committed to record yet. Stripped down to him, his guitar and his harmonica, even the cover, with it's vast expanse of nothing stretching out through the windshield of a car headed...nowhere, Nebraska is unexpected.
It's haunting.
It's harrowing.
It kind of amazes. But it doesn't invite repeat listening. The songs are great. Here's a great cover of the last song, "Reason to Believe" by the Beat Farmers, a far more exciting version, in fact.
But their presentation is meant to scare. I think Bruce is mining some deep territory here. The father son relationship isn't just a separation like the one found in "Independence Day". No. This is the aftermath. In "My Father's House" I think we've seen that boy finally come to terms with his dad, come back to look for him, only to find that he's gone. Strangers are living there now.
The windshield may be heading to the unknown and desolate future, but it's really whatever would be found in that rearview mirror that this album is about. It's about the bad shit that has happened to people. People with no future.
Bruce has never sounded so hopeless.
Grade: B+
ASide: Atlantic City, Badlands, Reason to Believe
BlindSide: Johnny 99, Highway Patrolman, Nebraska
DownSide: Nothing is bad....just very very depressing.
Monday, January 20, 2014
The River - Bruce Springsteen in the Reflecting Pool
Bruce Springsteen - The River - 1980
Let's just get this out of the way: Gary W. Tallent is the unsung hero of the E Street Band. From the opening "Ties that Bind" all the way through the rest of the record, the dude is center stage and on fire. He makes The River one of the best, if not only, albums that I want to Air Bass to.
Okay.
The River opens like a concert. Four big, brawling rockers in a row. "The Ties that Bind", "Sherry Darling" (Simply one of the most fun and rapacious songs ever, tearing apart a mother in law with glee and abandon), "Jackson Cage" and "Two Hearts". We NEED "Independence Day" just to breath. And, dammit if that song isn't the Field of Dreams of songs. A boy and his father's parting. I am years away from it, and NOT looking forward to it.
And that's side one.
The River is the phoenix from the ashes of Darkness on the Edge of Town. Elegiac and majestic, bombastic and buoyant. With such heaviness that preceded it, The River HAD to be a double album. And it HAD to come fast. I'm not sure, knowing how much Bruce tours, how he managed to get the tracks and band together to record this, but maybe that's the trick: Because this album sounds better than all of his previous. Without giving in to commercialism.
Even though his biggest hit single from it, "Hungry Heart" seems tailor made for 70s rock radio (and it was ubiquitous at the time), he wrote it for The Ramones (!!!) and sang in a way that he almost never would again. With the swinging backup singers and the boardwalk calliope organ of Danny Federici, it's impossible not to tap your feet, feel good and want to go out on a first date down the shore when you hear it.
On The River, Bruce and his team so successfully bridge the 50s doo wop and 60's Spector influences and meld them into Bruce's own epic, stadium ready workaday, blue collar sound that the album is rendered timeless.
Bar band confections like "Crush on You" and "I'm a Rocker" and "Ramrod" and "Cadillac Ranch" are dust bowl singalongs that I just can't resist. I'm moving in my seat as I type. And there's a riff buried in "You Can Look But You Better Not Touch" that Keith Richards would be jealous of.
But it's the ballads that will break your heart. The lonely man, pining for the single mother in "I Wanna Marry You", the hopeless narrator in "The River", (who could, for all intents BE the father in the previous song - has there been a song that cut to the core of dead end life?), The welfare queen in "Point Blank" (who could be the same girl)...these tracks speak to a weary life of the lower than middle class, perhaps the heroes of "Born to Run" looked at through the filter of a harsher reality. It isn't enough to just wanna get out of town and leave a trail of romantic dust. That makes a great shot in the movies. But, afterwards, there's the residue of life. The aftermath. Unwanted children. Trapped marriages. It's not enough to pine after the girl after she's left you. It's the plaintive wail of one who doesn't want to just fade from her memory, her life. (And the damned thing fades out, too! Genius)
Bruce can break your fucking heart.
Look, I can just go on and on, you know? I mean, is there anything more heartbreaking than the narrator admitting that the letters he wrote to the girl made her feel 100 years old on "Stolen Car"? Probably not. Or as harrowing as the nearly torpid "Wreck on the Highway"? Not really.
I hadn't really listened to The River in earnest in a couple decades. I was missing out. Does it all get sort of exhausted by the fourth side? Sure. "The Price You Pay" doesn't cover new ground and you almost don't make it to "Wreck on the Highway" because of the show closing dirge that is "Drive All Night". But, those are transgressions easy to forgive.
Grade: A+
ASide: The Ties that Bind, Sherry Darling, Independence Day, Hungry Heart, Out in the Street, The River,
BlindSide: You Can Look But You Better Not Touch, Crush on You, Point Blank, I'm a Rocker, Fade Away, Stolen Car, Wreck on the Highway
DownSide:
Darkness on the Edge of Town - Bruce Springsteen in the Reflecting Pool
Bruce Springsteen - Darkness on the Edge of Town - 1978
2026 re-listen update:
It doesn't seem to matter that he looks like someone just caught him as he is getting over a cold and is surprised to discover he owns a leather jacket.
Can you guess that I hate this photo?
Darkness came 3 years after Born to Run. In 70's terms that's a lifetime. Today, Pearl Jam takes 4 years to release a record and it's part of the cycle. But music was coming a lot faster in those days. Bruce's first two records were released in the same year. Everyone was spitting out music by the ton.
After legal woes and production concerns, Darkness came out. I listen to it today and I can't quite get past the studio feel of songs that I have come to love in concert like "Badlands" and "Candy's Room" and "Adam Raised a Cain" and yes, oh, yes, "The Promised Land". That's not really fair, though. Bruce got the sound he was looking for. and his Orbisonian obsessions come true on the echo of his vocals. Just imagine how deep and harrowing "Adam Raised a Cain" would've been if Brendan O'Brien or Bob Rock or any of those early 90s producers had gotten their hand on it.
Damn, I wanna hear Temple of the Dog cover that right now. Or Soundgarden. Right now, dammit.
The album is wetter and danker than Born to Run. It's not as buoyant. It's not supposed to be, though. These aren't "Let's blow this town" stuff. It's heavy. And, if you can just get past Bruce's awful lead soloing, it's majestic.
"Poor men wanna be rich. Rich men wanna be king. And a king ain't satisfied til he rules everything."
Just hearing that lyric makes me wanna stand in a room with 30,000 other people and sing at the top of my lungs.
Darkness is a dark record. It's a bleak record. Bruce seems to really get his juices flowing when either he's unhappy or he's singing about people whose lives could use a little pick me up. He's a shaman for the working class and it's all over DotEoT. What's not on Darkness? The calliope, street vagabond busker feel of Wild, Innocent. Even the hopeful, soulful belief of the narrator in "The Promised Land" is rife with hopelessness. And, boy oh boy, if I never wanted to work in a factory, "Factory" sealed that.
Howzabout this? If The Wild and the Innocent and the E Street Shuffle is Bruce's Unforgettable Fire and Born to Run is his Joshua Tree, then Darkness is his Achtung Baby.
Except that he was doing it more than a decade before, so flip all that shit.
Grade: A+
ASide: Badlands, Candy's Room, The Promised Land, Prove it All Night, Darkness on the Edge of Town
BlindSide: Adam Raised a Cain, Racing in the Street, Street's of Fire
DownSide: Bruce's guitar solos. ;)
Born to Run - Bruce Springsteen in the Reflecting Pool
Bruce Springsteen - Born to Run - 1975
Oh, seriously, what can I say that hasn't been said before?
This album is the culmination of vision, artistry, toil, craft and showmanship. It's the pinnacle. It's one of the greatest albums of all time and there's little more I can say.
So, I won't.
Or should I? This is a Reflecting Pool, after all. I can't remember when I first heard BtR. Greetings was loaned to me by a friend when I was a teenager in Maine and I was astounded by what I heard coming from my shitty little turntable. He also lent me Don McLean's American Pie but I only listened to that once, Greetings was the real discovery.
And WIESS was something I came to much much later. On vinyl, but in my 30s. Cuz I missed it.
Born to Run has just....always been there. It's always been a part of the tapestry of my musical life. Woven in through classic rock and contemporary rock in the 70s and 80s. It's a friend I can visit who always seems fresh and welcoming and never boring or bored.
The life of rock and roll lives in this 40 year old record. For me, at least. I'm sure there are some Beatles fans out there, somewhere.
Grade: A+
ASide: Thunder Road, Born to Run, Jungleland
BlindSide: Everything else if you haven't heard it yet.
The Wild, The Innocent & The E Street Shuffle - Bruce Springsteen in the Reflecting Pool
Bruce Springsteen - The Wild, The Innocent and the E Street Shuffle - 1973
The puzzle isn't complete on WIESS. It's alllllmost there. It'll take another album to fulfill the promise made by marketing execs and Jon Landau.
But, this is a helluva sophomore record.
From the very opening, the lazy horns into the casual, jammy skiffle of E Street Shuffle, Bruce, the song writer, singer and leader is in fantastic form.
The album really shows its teeth on "Kitty's Back". This is where Steel Mill, the roots of Bruce, rear their powerful head. A band, tight and led but loose and comfortable, making unforgettable music. Anyone who wants to hear the earliest big band sounds of a big rock band, need only listen to the end of that song.
And, this is the one with "Rosalita" on it. Need I say more? The album sort of peter's out for me towards the end with the 9 minute New York Serenade. It's not bad, just nowhere near what he was about to come up with.
Springsteen's most experimental moments on future records will be hailed as left turns and an artist growing and trying new things. Feh. He was doing that 41 years ago.
41 years ago. Yikes.
Grade A
ASide: Kitty's Back, 4th of July (Sandy), Rosalita (Come Out Tonight)
BlindSide: Wild Billy's Circus Story, Incident on 57th Street
DownSide:
Greetings From Asbury Park, NJ. - Bruce Springsteen in the Reflecting Pool
But, with the cover/original hybrid of High Hopes arriving this week, I thought, let's jump in.
Bruce Springsteen - Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J. - 1973
I've heard that Springsteen wrote much of the tunes on the fly. Rewriting on the bus and so forth. There's so much legend and apocrypha surrounding the Boss it's hard to know what's true and what's not. But, see, even though he's a "man of the people", Bruce has been heavily marketed and branded from the beginning. His savvy on how to sell the Bruce Brand is remarkable. One of the reasons its so incredible is that he's managed to control his image, his sound, how he is perceived and heard without ever leading on that he is doing just that. In every way that he's been able to play the media/public game arena Queen was not. They always came across as corporate. Bruce seemed real.
The jangle guitar/bunch of dudes singing on a doorstoop street poet chaos of "Blinded by the Light" sets the stage. Once you hear it, it's impossible to enjoy Manfred Mann's cover, with it's over the top prog rocky-ness.
It's been written about for decades, but Springsteen's "New Dylan" mantle affects the album in a retrospective way. Turns it into a curio of sorts. Bruce would never wordsmith like this again. And some songs, like "Lost in the Flood" and "Mary, Queen of Arkansas" (shine boy for your acid brat? Yuck) suffer from it, where "Blinded", "Spirits in the Night" and "For You" (My personal favorite Springsteen song) all benefit. Weirdly, one of the best songs on the record, "Does this bus stop at 82nd st?" just feels half done. It doesn't end. It expires. Like he was writing it ON that bus uptown, and got to his stop and just stopped writing words. And yet, it works.
One of the things to love about records was that each side was a little show. We all know how Side 2 of Born to Run ends. The deepest cuts are inside the album. Sometimes the best are the ones closest to the center of the spinner.
Side 1 ends with the first attempt at an epic, "Lost in the Flood." The elements are there. The cars. The characters. It was the time of Mean Streets and street poets and Baretta. If Lost in the Flood feels like the streets of the lower east side it's supposed to. On the other hand, following it with The Angel is interesting. As a Side 2 opener it's terrible. The only salvation is knowing that the one two punch of "For You" and "Spirit in the Night" are next. Played in sequence, the angel could be an extension of the story of "LitF". The latter a macro look and the former a closeup of the story's main character. It works, even though the song is relatively weak and pedestrian.
Greetings is a disjointed album. Because the songs show up in concert often it doesn't sound dated but it's of its time. Vini Lopez's drumming is a treat every single time. He won't last with the band but the short time he was there he made an indelible mark.
Grade: B+
ASide: Blinded by the Light, Lost in the Flood, For You, Spirit in the Night
BlindSide: Does this Bus Stop at 82nd St? It's Hard to be a Saint in the City
DownSide: Mary Queen of Arkansas, The Angel