Bruce Springsteen - Classic or Dud ?

Oh hi. I recently started to emerge from my COVID cocoon and did the karaoke thing as promised, “Prove It All Night.”

I've been listening to THE PROMISE.

I don't think all of it is so great, but I do think - if an artist c.1979 had released just this LP, and made none of Bruce's other LPs, it would still be admired and viewed as a historically interesting tribute to big 1960s pop among other things.

This never occurred to me until Jimmy Guterman pointed it out, but the closing guitar solo in "Human Touch" really does sound like a Richard Thompson solo. (It's also unfortunate that the single edit fades it out because it's the best part of the track.)

Re: The Promise, I agree pinefox. I do think it's a shame Springsteen held back that material for 30 years, but at least it was finally released. Several cuts wouldn't have been usable in 1979 since they were successfully re-worked for Darkness on the Edge of Town, but you could easily replace them with the Darkness outtakes on Tracks which were arguably stronger ("Don't Look Back," "The Iceman," "Give the Girl a Kiss," "Hearts of Stone"). I'm not sure whether a double LP or single LP would be better - on the one hand, I can see how half the set doesn't rise to the same level as the other half, but at the same time, I think a single LP would have the same problems as the shelved The Ties That Bind LP due to the general frothiness that dominates so much of the material.

Like a lot of Springsteen, the "Human Touch" solo is more how he plays it than what he is playing. Here's a good live version with some guitar closeups from 2009. He's barely playing many notes, tbh:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=srmQtMZPKN4

I always though the song reminded me a lot of "Tunnel of Love," which of course has a killer Nils solo. He gets to cut loose here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I4606sXyaRU

I was shocked at how little Nils had to do when I saw the show a few weeks ago, he's the most talented musician on stage.

When I was new to Springsteen, I mistook "Human Touch" for "Tunnel of Love" before I realized they were two different songs from two different albums. I think this happened when I heard Greatest Hits - I previously caught the video for Tunnel of Love somewhere (maybe a DVD?) and just assumed it was the same song.

https://www.instagram.com/p/Crj2R8CoY5S/

birdistheword: Yes ... a single LP of the best of THE PROMISE would be strong! Picking the best 11 tracks or so out of that. Or even those that aren't on DARKNESS.

One thing about THE PROMISE as I recall is that by the end he keeps coming up with ever more epic finale numbers ... there are about 3 in a row, and they're all good.

Great photo. I love that Bruce and Spielberg have been vacation buddies for years, and that he's also ended up friends with Obama. I wonder if in my lifetime there will be a sitcom called "Everybody Loves Bruce."

I think Springsteen has said one of his biggest regrets is not releasing more records. He sure had more than enough material for them, though they might have affected the impact of the albums he did release. For sure his problem in the last decade or so has probably been releasing too many records (not counting the maybe, what, ten discs of awesome unreleased stuff).

Yeah some friends of mine happen to be on vacation in Spain and saw the Obamas with Spielberg at the Picasso museum, but Bruce skipped it

Heh

I'm not sure whether a double LP or single LP would be better - on the one hand, I can see how half the set doesn't rise to the same level as the other half, but at the same time, I think a single LP would have the same problems as the shelved The Ties That Bind LP due to the general frothiness that dominates so much of the material.

So what would you keep/sub in from Tracks if you were putting together a single LP of The Promise?

I agree with you about the frothiness. I think I talked about this upthread, but for me the problem with the Promise is that the songs mostly feel like they're lacking something - there's a quality of distinctiveness, weirdness, personality, that's there in most of Bruce's pop songs, even the fluffy ones, and isn't present in most of these. There are enough dark songs that with a single LP you could have a dark/light balance like The River, but I think in practice it would be hard to make the songs complement each other in the same way they do on The River, because a lot of the light ones just don't have enough substance.

I think I'd keep "Breakaway," "City of Night," "The Promise," "Come on (Let's Go Tonight)," probably add in "Don't Look Back," maybe "Outside Looking In" - what else?

I fear that the balance isn't right on THE RIVER itself. Far too much straight-ahead bar-room rock, too little Darkness. I've always been mystified by that.

FWIW from THE PROMISE, songs not on DARKNESS, for a single LP?

GOTTA GET THAT FEELING
3. OUTSIDE LOOKING IN
4. SOMEDAY (WE’LL BE TOGETHER)
6. BECAUSE THE NIGHT
11. SAVE MY LOVE
12. AIN’T GOOD ENOUGH FOR YOU
13. FIRE
16. COME ON (LET’S GO TONIGHT)
19. BREAKAWAY
20. THE PROMISE
21. CITY OF NIGHT
+ THE EXTRA ONE AFTER THAT ?

12 good tracks.

Yeah, I haven't counted but I def have the impression that there are more light songs on The River than dark songs. And then the dark songs are so heavy that the transition to and from them can be a rough one; sometimes I listen to The River and find myself skipping the title track because I'm enjoying the upbeat barroom-rock vibe and I don't want to be plunged into despair.

I like that tracklist! Except maybe for THE EXTRA ONE AFTER THAT which I'm not a big fan of.

"Breakaway" for starters is outstanding?
"The Promise" and the extra track also I think.
"City of Night" good enough.

"Come On" fine but didn't that become "Factory" or something?

"Ain't Good Enough For You" is good rock & roll comedy.

"Save My Love" is very strong pop albeit afaik the version we have is a late remake, not 1970s.

"Because the Night" wasn't on an original LP and merits inclusion?

"Outside / In" is OK sort of Buddy Holly pastiche
"GGT Feeling" is passable
"... Together" feels ambitious but also doesn't quite pull off the scale.

does EXTRA TRACK have a title?
I've always thought it was very strong.

Come On (Let's Go Tonight) turned into two songs: Factory and Johnny Bye-Bye. I think I might like it better than both of them, though.

Outside Looking In is pastiche, I agree, but I think that unlike a lot of the poppier songs on The Promise, it's lyrically very Bruce, and the idea that you can write a catchy pop song about being a weirdo outsider is something Bruce is still working up to at this point.

The extra song is The Way. It's the one Bruce didn't like but someone else - Jimmy Iovine? - loved, so he put it on the album as a bonus track.

I will never forgive the album version of Save My Love for not being as good as the half-finished, placeholder-lyrics-and-mumbling version from this video.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SN-ou-JqXqQ

I still wonder, though, to what extent the dark and the light songs go together and if it all adds up to a coherent album. Does "The Promise" really work as a title track, for instance? The immediate comparison is to "The River" because it's so dark, but unlike that song, it's not really picking up many of the themes from the rest of the album. It works fine as the title track of a collection of outtakes, because the overarching theme is just "look at all this stuff I couldn't release," and "The Promise" captures a certain feeling of outraged self-pity about that. But as the title track of an ordinary album composed of this stuff? I think it would feel misaligned with what the album actually is.

“The River” is such a great song in every way that it’s almost unfair to compare something else to it, but I for one often find it hard to think without resorting to such comparisons so I will give it to you.

1. Man, that is the first time I've ever seen Steve with no headgear! I've occasionally looked around for citations for which solos on the E street music 1975-1985 he was known to have played, but no dice. anyone?

2. I listened to Human Touch and Lucky Town out of pure curiosity recently: the former is alleged to be him trying to get a bit of what his buds Gordo and Petey G had that he might have felt his shit lacked; the latter is alleged to be compensatory for the LA slickness of the former; but honestly, I don't see what about them is so egregious that the fanbase rebuked them; both are of a piece with everything else he's ever done, probly to a fault. Is it simply that the stans thought that doing something —or anything— without the E street band was unforgivable? I probly would be more interested in him if he worked with different collaborators.

3. It seems that his response to raising ticket prices has been, "I'm doing it, you can have your money back if you don't think it's a good show," which is characteristic, if also smug. Has he said something along the lines of "my touring operation, which numbers in the hundreds," (does that sound right?) "was unable to work for three years; they are more or less my dependents and unlike me are not extremely wealthy, known to go to Spain with the Spielbergs and the Obamas; I need to raise ticket prices to help the people who have been with me for decades, not just my band but the people whose names you will never know." Maybe he should, if that is true.

I actually don't remember 'The Promise' (the song) well now so will have to listen again.

'The River', the song, is so outstanding, almost the essence of The Boss - not much else can match it. I don't particularly agree that 'The River' shares much with the rest of THE RIVER. I wish it did.

But I think I take the point, Lily Dale, that the putative LP of THE PROMISE would feel uneven.

'The Way', from memory, is powerful!

What I was trying to get at about "The River" is that it takes place in the same world as the rest of the album, which is the world of being in a small town, working-class, in your thirties, where a lot of your life decisions got made early and not necessarily by you, and where everything kind of centers around marriage - as in, you're either married or on track to get married, or you're divorced - and where your life ends up boiled down to a series of repeated gestures that give you some sense of freedom, whether that's going down to the river or going out on a Friday night. You get a sense of that world in a series of snippets and vignettes over the course of the first side of the album, and then "The River" is where it finally coalesces into something like the story of a life.

That's what I'm missing with "The Promise" - that sense that this story is formed out of the same raw materials that form the rest of the album.

I guess to me The River fits with the rest of the album, even the lighter songs, because when you're living that kind of life you can't afford to spend most of your time thinking about your life as a whole; a lot of the time you're just, like, thinking about the coming weekend, and that smallness of focus is part of the story. I think I compared Bruce to Jane Austen once and I stand by that; the intense focus on the small details of a constricted life tells its own story.

^Booming Boss Lily Dale posts as per usual, which is what I was pretty much expecting and hoping for after I almost deliberately misconstrued your earlier post or at least focused on the wrong aspect of it.

Thank you! I don't think you misconstrued me, but it certainly helped me think about why I made the comparison. I am like the writer in a Kipling story who does not ignite but must be detonated. I wait for the rest of you to post interesting things and then jump in.

I take Lily Dale's theory to imply something like - a bland bar-room rocker is the sound of the bland Friday night of a character, who then ends up (maybe two days later, or two years later!) having the profound, melancholy emotional journey of 'The River'.

But it's also as if 'The River' has more insight than (and even into?) the other songs, more of a meta-relation to them, rather than merely being part of the same life story as them.

I realise that there are also a few more profound songs on the LP, 'Independence Day', 'Stolen Car', that don't belong on that bland category. But I'm always surprised by the low level of much of the material compared to the title track.

I am on record as a decently ardent Bruce stan. "Because the Night" is one of my least favorite songs in the universe (which is a pretty big universe, as universes go).

All versions of Because the Night, or specifically the Patti Smith version?

This is a good question because I feel like her version is much better but am wondering how others feel.

His version has always been a live showcase, are you talking about that or the eventually released studio version?

Think I am talking about the studio one.

Also reminds of a more general question about Bruce’s singing. Sometimes it seems there is an element of a Mick Jagger problem in there where he is sort of misapplying his shouty rock voice and alternating it with his whispery voice instead of actually, you know, singing. Not sure if this actually applies to “Because the Night” though.

Listened to one live version. Still prefer Patti Smith version. Because more vulnerable maybe, especially in quiet part?

Feelies did a good cover too. No sorry, that was “Dancing Barefoot.”

Here I post and I don’t know why

Lily Dale, good question. Tentative answer: probably all?

Ms. Smith was and is a punk/avant garde icon whose signature output was mostly abstract, oblique, strange, metaphorical. Mad respect to Patti.

Why, then, give her a song that is so straightforward that it could just be an instruction manual? Like, when I was a kid we were given well-intentioned books about sex that were approximately as sexy as that song.

Patti didn't need the world's boringest sex anthem. She deserved something with some metaphor, something with some nuance, something with complexity.

There is no complexity or nuance in "take me now, take me now, take me now." It's among Bruce's laziest lyrics.

"Atlantic City" has at least three more levels than "Because the Night."

Natalie Merchant was a believable vocalist for it because we didn't, generally speaking, expect profundity from Natalie "Eat For Two" Merchant. We expected profundity from Patti Smith and got "take me now" times eleventh.

For some reason I feel like I will die on this stupid hill. No one of Patti Smith's age and intelligence and creativity is just saying "take me now" over and over again. It's embarrassing and dumb and she deserved a better song.

I think it's quite a good melodramatic rock song and I like Bruce Springsteen's version of it, and respect him for writing it.

I don't think Patti Smith is my cup of tea.

To me "Because the Night" is kind of a sequel or answer to "Tonight's the Night" by The Shirelles, so I don't care if might seem silly for an older person to sing it since it sort of bridges some kind of gap.

See also "Tonight," by the Raspberries. It's a worthy genre excercise in this sort of very specific micro-niche of the teenage longing song.

I don't like the song much either (the lyrics are so awkward... "Love is a banquet on which we feed"!). I think Natalie was a good vocalist for it, not necessarily because we don't expect profundity from her, but because it works well with her voice and "removed" approach to the lyrics she's singing generally.

He should have given "Because the Night" to Robert Gordon and "Fire" to Patti Smith.

Heh

What I find really interesting about "Because the Night" is that Bruce's version is like this broken link between something like "Night," with its theme of "I work all day but at night, out in my car by myself, I feel free" and a later song like "Cover Me," with its theme of sex as protection from a scary and depressing world.

In Patti Smith's version, it's basically just a love song, though I think "the way I feel under your command" is sort of uncomfortable in a memorable way. But in "Because the Night" (Bruce's Version), the chorus actually means something; it matters that the night belongs to lovers, because the singer doesn't feel like anything else in his life belongs to him. This is a blue-collar dude, someone who's supposed to be tough 24/7, basically asking his lover to help him build a blanket fort to hide in because he feels powerless and bullied at work. Even that "take me now," sung by a man to a woman, feels more startling than the other way around; it's a romance-novel cliché, but it's usually the woman's line.

Take me now, baby here as I am
Pull me close, try and understand
I work all day out in the hot sun
Break my back till the evening comes

Come on now, try and understand
I work all day pushing for the man
Daylight’s gone, take me under your covers
They can’t hurt us now
They can’t hurt me now
They can’t hurt you now

But Bruce couldn't actually write that version of "Because the Night" - not then anyway, and not without help. It could have been like "Hungry Heart" - the song where Bruce figured out how to tell his own distinctive kind of story and write a big anthemic pop hit at the same time. But he wasn't there yet, and it's kind of a missed opportunity, because I don't think he ever wrote another song that so explicitly linked the sex-as-protection motif to the abusive nature of blue-collar work. "Cover Me" is more like "please have sex with me because I read the newspapers too much," which is also fine but not the same.

Lily Dale, I respect you immensely and this is a good conversation to have.

I still think it's a bad song and I hate that it exists.

Like, how can someone write masterpieces, and also this tossed-off trifle, and get praised to the skies for the dross instead of the masterpieces?

Personally I don't get it, but de gustibus and such. People can like it if they want but it's not my cup of tea.

First, great posts Lily Dale! Really enjoyed reading through this conversation. Second, I can see all the knocks against “Because the Night” and I don’t especially like Bruce’s version — but I’ve always loved Patti Smith’s. I think she nails the Springsteenian epic tone and makes it sexier — Patti was less abashed about sex than Bruce.

That's why this and "Fire" were left of "Darkness," iirc, because he didn't really want any of that stuff on the record. "Candy's Room" is there, of course, but that song is the furthest from romantic (or Romantic).

Personally, I think that was just a convenient excuse for not being able to finish the song until after he'd handed it off to Patti Smith. It would have fit the tone of the album fairly well imo, in a way that "Fire" doesn't; it's driven by the same simmering working-class anger that you see in the rest of "Darkness." I think Bruce just couldn't write that kind of song yet, and Patti Smith was - as you say, tipsy mothra - more comfortable writing about sex than Bruce was at that point.

Holy crap, this thread got a ton of posts today. Lily Dale, I need to think about that tracklist - will circle back later!