Bruce Springsteen - Classic or Dud ?

This is the most I've thought about this song as anything more than something I really like from both Patti Smith and Springsteen, and a highlight of many a '78 Bruce boot.

The Springsteen lyrics website has lyrics for two different demos. I'm not sure which one Bruce gave Patti. This is the first one:

Come on now try and understand
Oh baby take me by the hand
Work all the day in the hot sun
Ah ah ah, till the morning comes

Come on now, baby here na me
Na na day, you'll be looking for me
Daylight come take me under your cover
They can't touch me now
They can't touch me now
They can't touch me now

Well love is here and now
And I would leave it on the line for love

followed by a bunch of mumbling.

This is what I meant when I said you could see where Bruce was going with the song. It's not entirely mumbling; the lyrics are about halfway done. But all the consciously poetic stuff in the song comes from Patti Smith, including the "fire I breathe" line that sounds like it ought to be Bruce.

What I find funny about Patti Smith's version is that she kept Bruce's "they can't hurt me/you/us now, because the night belongs to lovers" but it no longer really links up to anything else in the song. In Bruce's version there really is a "they" that he wants protection from. In Patti Smith's version, the memorable line is "under your command" - the sex gets dialed up, the paranoia gets dialed down.

both versions are great, Patti Smith's performance of it is *incredible*, agree with what Lily Dale seems to be saying about her verses having a 'fill in your own blank' kind of feel, thought it was a 10k Maniacs original initially (i think i was still very young when i learned that it isn't)

Full circle: here is a live set from 10,000 Maniacs when Max Weinberg was filling in on drums!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_1iVIlAQekM

(No "Because the Night," though)

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.

Lily Dale's totally otm about this. FWIW, I used to fiddle with The River, trying to get "Loose Ends," "Roulette" and "Be True" into the tracklist, but I gave the released album a few close listens a couple years ago and it really struck me how I underrated Springsteen's sequencing. There really was a flow that, as Lily Dale points out, made all these songs work like snippets or vignettes of the same community. You really get a deep sense of their lives, and every track really had its place.

Re: the 1992 albums upthread, I frequently hear people say he should've combined the two, but I think the title track is the only thing I'd keep from Human Touch. I still wish the E Street Band recorded the songs, but this is what I'd put on now (with imaginary vinyl side breaks):

Side A:
Human Touch
Lucky Town
Local Hero
If I Should Fall Behind
The Big Muddy

Side B:
Better Days
Living Proof
Book of Dreams
Souls of the Departed
My Beautiful Reward

Re: The Promise, it's actually really tough to pick out an LP that I could see coming out 1979. You have some songs that were clearly reworked or stripped for parts for other songs on Darkness, some favorites that don't match their live renditions, and some favorite bits were actually recorded decades after the fact. ("Save My Love" was completely re-recorded in 2010 and my favorite part of the alternate "Racing In The Street" is the new overdub of David Lindley's fiddle.) And would Springsteen release his own version of songs he's given to others? I tried to take these into consideration, but it was impossible to do so consistently.

At the moment, I have a 45 minute playlist that's roughly sequenced:

1. Gotta Get That Feeling
2. Outside Looking In
3. Someday (We'll Be Together]
4. Iceman
5. Because the Night
6. Rendezvous
7. Give the Girl a Kiss
8. Hearts of Stone
9. Fire
10. Don't Look Back
11. The Promise
12. City of Night

FWIW, three of those songs were given to others, "The Promise" should have an extra lyric that for whatever reason was dropped from the 2010 release, and IIRC "Give the Girl a Kiss" and "Hearts of Stone" both have horn and maybe vocal overdubs by the horn section in the Max Weinberg 7 (Conan O'Brien's NBC band).

Make that FOUR of those songs were given to others, all before 1980.

Re: the 1992 albums, I might also keep only the title track from Human Touch, though I'd be willing to consider 57 Channels as well. It's obnoxious but it's also distinctive, in a way that most of the songs on that album aren't. Ideally, I think I'd want to have a fairly equal balance of songs from both albums, so that the sequence could track the change from the emotional numbness of Human Touch to the fragile happiness of Lucky Town. But for that to work there'd have to be more good songs on Human Touch, and there just aren't.

I might replace The Big Muddy with Gave it a Name, and I would definitely include Loose Change, probably somewhere on the first side. Let's see, how about this:

Human Touch
57 Channels
Loose Change
Gave it a Name
Local Hero

Lucky Town
Living Proof
Better Days
If I Should Fall Behind
My Beautiful Reward

Great posts.

"Human Touch" is sound, solid only in retrospect; I loved his solo at the time.

Ooh, "Gave It Name"'s a good one. I have nothing against "The Big Muddy," but it does feel like a strange choice that doesn't really fit in with the album's thematic continuity. "Souls of the Departed" too for that matter.

I also have a soft spot for "Sad Eyes," "Over the Rise" and "Happy," also from Tracks - Disc Four didn't get much love when it was reviewed, but I kind of like those quiet, mood pieces. I also grew to enjoy the B-side "Part Man, Part Monkey" after the 2005 tour, it became a hilarious response to the Creationist/anti-evolution nonsense that was getting a lot of attention at the time.

my dream one-album version of human town also includes the christic institute version of "real world."

"Real World" and "Happy" would both fit well on the first side of my version, as they're both songs where he's saying he's happy but that feel depressed or anhedonic; they go along with the low-expectations, "I'll take what I can get" message of "Human Touch." I like the idea of ending the first side with "Local Hero" as it's kind of a transition between the two; it's got a burned-out vibe but also ends on a note of renewal.

So I've been trying to put this together as an album with two sides, but if I just treat it as a playlist, here's one possible sequence. It starts with the singer in a relationship that is working but that isn't enough to get him out of his haze of depression; there's a sense of trying very hard to be happy and not quite succeeding. Then there's a break marked by the frustration of "57 Channels" and the outright self-loathing/depression/paralysis of "Gave it a Name" and "Loose Change," then a tentative coming back to life with "Local Hero" and "Lucky Town." By "Living Proof" the happiness is real but fragile, and that carries us through to the end of the album.

Human Touch
Real World (Christic)
Happy
57 Channels
Gave it a Name
Loose Change
Local Hero
Lucky Town
Living Proof
Better Days
Souls of the Departed
If I Should Fall Behind
My Beautiful Reward

I wouldn't want a 1992 LP without 'Man's Job' - which includes one of my favourite of his instrumental breaks.

For sure 'Sad Eyes' is superb, but I don't know the background of TRACKS material enough to say which of it should go on which LP / period.

I wouldn't want THE PROMISE without 'Breakaway' or indeed the hidden 'The Way'.

He seems like a good bloke, and I really enjoyed his autobiography, lots of things to take away there.

Didn't make me want to dash out and buy any of his records though.

I used to say I never owned any Bruce, but thanks to Discogs logging, I find he's on one of the NME cassettes doing 'Viva las vegas', and I admit I was tempted by his version of "Dream baby dream" on 10” but the price was/is ridiculous.

It's also on the High Hopes album.

But then you have the High Hopes album, which is quite a burden.

His cover of that song is not that good anyway. Feel like I recently revived another thread about this.

Oh, here: Covers of Elvis Presley tunes

FWIW, IIRC the "Dream Baby Dream" 10" single uses a live performance from his 2005 tour that hasn't been officially released elsewhere (not even on nugs.net)

I have a couple of his 2005 shows from nugs and his performance of that song was pretty consistent night after night, so I never felt the need to buy it elsewhere.

High Hopes is disposable, but it does have a couple of tracks I really like: "Hunter of Invisible Game" and "The Wall"

"41 Shots" is a great song, but you're better off with the live version from 1999, either on record/CD or DVD.

Bruce Springsteen's cover of "Dream Baby Dream" reminds me of this bit in The Last Samurai by Helen Dewitt:

I would say But he is like a man who plays Yesterday on the piano with Brahmsian amplitude & lushness and so casually kicks aside the very thing which is the essence of the song he is like the Percy Faith Orchestra playing Satisfaction

I've gone back to ONLY THE STRONG SURVIVE.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ps8s-wQStgU

That was really really good.

Bruce Springsteen paid a visit to Shane MacGowan ahead of the E Street Band's shows in Dublin this week.

Credit: @victoriamary pic.twitter.com/OzyKYHaI3M

— CONSEQUENCE (@consequence) May 3, 2023

Bruce Springsteen holds court at Irish town pub, leads patrons in song: https://t.co/7ZqmQxI4Iv pic.twitter.com/BSzczfFuhQ

— CONSEQUENCE (@consequence) May 4, 2023

The Darkness Tour '78 , a selection of 20 tracks from previously released full shows:

https://open.spotify.com/album/09rNh6weVS43LVc4sRt5WV

https://brucespringsteen.net/news/2023/celebrating-45-years-of-darkness/

I return to LETTER TO YOU, having been disappointed by it.

I actually enjoy it. I'm liking how often it does a thing I like which is "guitar solo plays the melody". And I'm at last just hearing much of it as "pastiche of the E Street Band".

Just this week I noticed how many live albums, singles, and all sorts of stuff Spotify (and everywhere else) has for Springsteen.

Really enjoyed this solo electric-piano “Tunnel of Love”:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=92yhQNYpMCw

I continue to play LETTER TO YOU, and to be somewhat confounded by it.

The oddest thing about it is the way that fairly standard new material is mixed with revived old material. The sound is similar, but the lyrical approach is patently different. The older songs might actually be better, but the LP lacks coherence as a result.

>>> It features three tracks originally written prior to Springsteen's 1973 debut album, Greetings from Asbury Park, N. J.: "If I Was the Priest," "Janey Needs a Shooter" and "Song for Orphans." Springsteen came across earlier recordings of these songs with John Hammond while assembling a compilation album.

All 3 of these old songs are quite puzzling to me. I cannot quite understand what these lines mean:

'Janey needs a shooter now'
'If Jesus was the sherriff and I were the priest'
'The Confederacy's in my name now, the hounds are held at bay'

which are in their choruses. I think I see that the first might mean 'Janey, a vulnerable woman, needs me, a man with a gun, to kill these 3 other bad men who harass her' - though 'shooter' is still an odd way to put that.

Reading on wiki that the LP was recorded live in studio surprises me. It does not sound to me more organic, more live, less processed or compressed than his other work; on the contrary.

The new songs I still find to be of mixed quality. The title track is among the better ones.

Fwiw I think Bruce has admitted "Priest" is gibberish.

I can believe the album was recorded more or less "live," but Ron Aniello still sucks.

If Springsteen gets someone else to produce, who would be right for him? It's hard for me to say because he had such a long and fruitful relationship with a producer who was an anomaly. I can picture producers who could create a sound that would be great for his next record, but that's more on the engineering side - who would be a great fit in terms of picking, re-shaping and editing the material?

He produced the Seeger Sessions himself, and it sounds great. He needs someone either pretty hands-off, or someone who can trick him into thinking he is hands-off. I don't think it's that complicated. Literally anyone would say yes. Maybe not Dylan, but Dylan too has been doing a great job producing himself for the last couple decades.

Maybe a country ish guy, like Dave Cobb, or Frank Liddell?

xp That's interesting because Landau definitely was not hands off, and his role was kind of what I had in mind when I qualified my question with the remark about "the engineering side." IIRC engineers had more sway with the sound of Springsteen's records (e.g. Jimmy Iovine on Darkness when he made them spend two whole days on the drum sound alone, a practice Iovine was notorious for on his own productions). Probably for the better because after the MC5's Back in the USA was universally criticized for its thin mix, Landau probably realized that wasn't something he did well. Landau locked horns with Springsteen on other issues and I remember him saying he was able to do that because once he became Springsteen's producer, he rarely produced anyone else - there wasn't another record for him, or as he put it to Springsteen, "this is MY life too" or "this is all I have to show for the last 2-3 years of my life" so he really pushed when he thought Springsteen should do something a certain way.

Jason Isbell's too much of an established artist to take the job, but I could see him being great.

That reminds me, one thing O'Brien wanted to do was pare down The Rising because he thought it was too long and didn't think all 15 songs should've been on the album, but Springsteen said he wanted the sprawl and O'Brien conceded to that point. I also remember Springsteen making the point that back in the day, Landau would never let him put a "pop" song like "Waiting on a Sunny Day" on an album.

If we’re looking for someone who can get the sound of guys playing in a room and record it really well, the answer is Albini. If Bruce wants and editor and someone to hold his hand, then maybe not. The Seeger sessions is probably the best sounding album he’s made since Tunnel of Love (which had a dated production that somehow works really well).

Who actually produces Dylan’s stuff these days? I know it says Jack Frost (Dylan), but I doubt he’s actually twiddling the knobs. But that’s the sound Springsteen needs. Brendan O’brien suuuuuuuuuucks and puts Bruce at a distance from the listener. I hate his dramatic echo shit that he busts out periodically.

But O’brien was right about the Rising. It’s too long. A shorter album with a follow-up ep would have been sweet.

Albini would be an absolutely terrible fit.

xxp Dylan's engineer Chris Shaw pretty much handles all the sound - Dylan handles everything that isn't technical.

What do you think is bad about the production of LETTER TO YOU?

T-Bone Burnett

Sylvia Massey producing Springsteen could create a miracle. Hell, get Dave Jerden in

Kinda surprised (and relieved) he hasn’t hit up Rick Rubin yet.

xpost

I would if I needed to but Sylvia Massy don’t miss https://t.co/GxG3rxZNRn

— Jason Isbell (@JasonIsbell) June 12, 2023

I always thought Richard Hawley eoulbeen a good fit, especially for the high and lonesome ’Western Stars’ type of material.

The answer's hiding in plain sight – Roy Bittan, who together with Steve Earle sprinkled magic dust on Lucinda Williams' Car Wheels on a Gravel Road.

At this point I'm tempted to say any producer other than the ones he's been choosing would be better, but also at this point I think it's too late for Bruce to change direction. I mean, he could get practically anybody he wanted, many of whom would probably work for free, so the fact that he hasn't indicates he just won't.

The follow-up to Tracks is supposedly coming this fall, according to an article in Uncut magazine.

the final paragraph here on the Tracks wikipedia page also teases possible complete unreleased albums maybe

I think this is the exact quote in Uncut? (still reading, it's a long article)

"He's been dropping hints that later this year he'll release a massive compilation of five unreleased albums he recorded in the late 1980s and early 1990s."