Bruce Springsteen - Classic or Dud ?

Maybe Nils and Garry et al. don't sweat as much? For sure their hair game (along with Steve, of course) means staying out of the rain and/or wearing hats.

Speaking of which, I'd never seen this story before:

3. There’s another reason for the bandannas.
As a teenager, Van Zandt was involved in a car accident in which he was thrown through the windshield. The damage to his scalp made it impossible for hair to grow back in certain places. After wearing hats for years, he switched to babushkas, and they’ve been his trademark fashion statement ever since.

!?

I vividly remember the white suits and fedoras you first wore in the E Street Band.

I never liked that look. I went through a windshield somewhere in the Seventies (laughs) — I don’t even remember how — and my hair never grew in right. So I was wearing the hats. Then I switched to the bandannas. I just didn’t feel like wearing a wig all the time. Luckily, in rock & roll, it’s looked on as an eccentricity. If I was a Supreme Court judge, I’d be in trouble.

For the record:

Over the years, Petillo modified the guitar quite extensively in his basement shop in Neptune, New Jersey, adding his patented triangular Precision Frets, changing out the pickups and waterproofing the guitar with stainless steel and titanium hardware and silicone gaskets for reliability in the sweat-soaked environment that is a Bruce Springsteen show. “You could play (it) underwater,” Petillo explained in a 1984 interview.

Whole story of the Esquire is here: https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/bruce-springsteens-favorite-guitar-the-story-behind-one-of-a-kind-fender-119846/

Ah, ok, that makes more sense. I thought it was something like, “Hey, make it so I can play this in the rain. Don’t worry about the others, they can get umbrellas or something.”

That's fascinating. I actually had no idea Bruce always used the same guitar. Funny considering that he seems to put on a different voice for every album.

Tom Petty and Mike Campbell had an old Tele they used on every album too.

I don’t remember what he said to do it, but I saw Springsteen solo in an arena in 2005, playing almost none of the hits, and somehow setting the expectations for the audience so it wasn’t just people constantly yelling out for the big ones.

^^ only big single in that set was “Tougher Than the Rest” and he closed with a Suicide cover.

He did do hits that tour, but he often radically reworked them. Look up the spooky banjo "I'm On Fire," for example.

Happy Birthday, Bruce! 70!!!!!

Some good stuff here: https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/seven-thoughts-on-bruce-springsteen-his-70th-birthday-888688/

I particularly liked this take:

1995’s The Ghost of Tom Joad stands as the most prescient album in Springsteen’s catalog.

At the time, he faced widespread skepticism for writing a group of songs centered on the cracks in American prosperity and the stories of migrants from Mexico. Didn’t he know that we were in the middle of an economic boom? But Springsteen saw those tales as connected to the ones he’d been telling since 1978’s Darkness on the Edge of Town, and he couldn’t have been more right. As Rick Perlstein argues in his book Nixonland, the doomy decline of the Seventies never really ended in the U.S. — the boom years in the Eighties and Nineties were just masks that would fall off. Springsteen, for one, saw through them.

I also liked Lucy Dacus's essay in Vanity Fair about Dancing in the Dark:

In the second verse, he says, “I check my look in the mirror / I want to change my clothes, my hair, my face.” I had never heard a man express discontent with his appearance before. I thought low self-esteem was reserved for young women like myself and my friends, sometimes it felt like only I knew what it felt like to feel wrong in my own body. Did this man suck in his stomach? Did he compulsively cut his hair and garments on a whim? He opened a window for all of us to watch him, tearing around his bedroom in dissatisfaction. And with that, every bedroom in the world opened up to me. The song sent my mind floating above my whole neighborhood, and the next and the next. Roofs across the city lifted like lids off of pots, allowing me to peer into countless rooms of people pulling at their faces in the mirror. I was not alone.

https://www.vanityfair.com/style/2019/09/lucy-dacus-happy-birthday-bruce-springsteen

She gets at something that fascinates me about Springsteen's lyrics, which is the way his relentless self-examination somehow comes across as empathy rather than self-absorption.

Well, that's being an Everyman for you.

He's doing a concert movie of the new songs in October -- sounds a little like the (really good) short film he did from Asbury Park a few Christmases ago.

He's performing with a 30-piece orchestra at his own barn, which fits with my thinking that he might tour this one by performing with city symphony orchestras...

I think he did the movie because he already said he's not touring this album.

I pretty much wept through this, but mostly because of Pete:

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

Ahh

The movie looks like it's going to be a continuation of the Born to Run/Springsteen on Broadway memoir kick he's on - lots of life lessons, musings about Love and vague confessions of unspecified shitty behavior. I'll probably still go see it though.

Legends of Springsteen:

https://www.azcentral.com/story/entertainment/life/2019/09/29/bruce-springsteen-paid-bartenders-medical-expenses-matts-saloon-prescott-arizona/2222859001/

so awesome

awww, what a sweetheart

I keep trying to get into the Boss, but why is everything so frenzied all the time? It feels like every second (of the early records at least) he's shouting and cramming as many words in as possible while there is also a saxophone solo AND a keyboard solo all simultaneously and the band is playing at 10. Obviously the songwriting is masterful, and he seems like a great dude and a lot of my favorite people love him, but it's a bit like listening to an Albert Ayler record at times while also trying to make out lyrics.

Um, he wants to give the people value for their hard-earned dollar?

try the new one... and Tunnel of Love

Start with Born to Run, which isn't all that busy, or probably Darkness, which is even more pared down. Hell, Born in the USA, despite having a number of ubiquitous hits, that one's worth it just to hear what an incredible record it is, despite it overexposure. The songs you possibly haven't heard only make the record *better*. If you like any of that stuff you'd likely love The River as well, which is half heavy singer/songwriter, half sorta '60s party/garage rock.

And then, yeah, Nebraska, Tunnel of Love, etc.

oh if by early busy stuff you meant specifically the first two albums... hell yeah, what Josh said

BTW, some good essays in that Long Walk Home collection. It's very contemporary, so there are plenty of mentions of Trump and the Broadway show, plus a surprising recurring emphasis on 9/11/The Rising and "American Skin (41 Shots)."

He's very young on the early records and he has a lot of ideas that he's super excited about. Later he starts paring things down. I would try Nebraska - just make sure you have enough time to sit down and listen to the album all the way through. It's one of those albums that you really have to hear as a whole - or at least that's what I've found.

The tendency to cram too many words in never really goes away, though.

he has got and has always had a lot smashing in his guts

(Darkness is just the greatest)

xpost Eh, sure it does, especially compared to the word salad of the two early albums.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yk8iXy-aw30

if you're looking to make sense of the early records without getting lost in the flood of sounds, this take may do the trick. it's my favorite Bruce moment, song, performance, etc. I could spend the rest of my life inside the way he sings "upstairs a band was playing, and the singer was singing something about going home".

I love that boot/show, because "Born to Run" comes *third*, after that particular epic and a cover, showing that the guy, as reported, truly had no real idea what he had on his hands just yet.

awesome, I'll have to check that show. Incident was my fave song of his for ages, and a great way into the first two albums, now that you mention it

In looking up who the drummer was on this date (I was hoping for Ernest "Boom" Carter), I stumbled across the story of how Max joined by answering an ad in the Village Voice.

The ad said, "No junior Ginger Bakers."

Euler, I've been meaning to thank you for recommending that performance - you were talking about it on another thread so I checked it out, and I love it. That moment is just wonderful.

This is reminding me to go back and listen to that whole show. Everything I've heard from it just blows me away.

Also love the way he draws out the "she did not really mind" on the line before it.

Darkness is a good place to start if you want unbusy Boss. Nebraska, def. Even Ghost of Tom Joad is a good one for that.

better yet - and this is just a thought - maybe try watching the Bruce on Broadway netflix special? a good unbusy way into the body of his work since it’s mostly him & a piano, and he’s such an engaging storyteller he might convince you to try the busy stuff again :)

As someone who just recently got way into Bruce, it was Nebraska that flicked the switch and made me a convert. I already liked what I’d heard, but the first verse of “Reason to Believe” made me go, “Wait, who IS this guy?” Nothing I knew of his work or his image had really prepared me for a song about a guy poking a dead dog with a stick by the side of the road.

I’ve also come to love The Wild, the Innocent and the E. Street Shuffle – I’ve been listening to it as I walk around the city, and at first it just seemed like a jumble, but the more time I spend with it the more I get out of it. "Sandy" is such an amazing combination of beautiful and funny – I tried to keep track of all the characters in the song that the narrator seems to be more attracted to than he is to Sandy, and I lost count. But the way he names and praises everything in Asbury Park, the good and the bad, as he’s getting ready to leave it – it’s just gorgeous. And "Incident" is wonderful, and "Rosalita" is just pure stupid joy.

The E. Street Shuffle cracks me up as well. I don’t know which I like more, the blatant homoeroticism or the fact that the E. Street shuffle only seems to have one move (everybody form a line!) OK, Bruce, we’re all lined up – what do we do now?

(None of this is really answering the question about where to start - I'm just happy this thread got revived because nobody in my actual life wants to hear me talk about Bruce.)

It's kind of crazy how he managed a fusion of Dylan and balladeer and funk-soul review on that album.

Here's how it was put in that book of essays I was just reading: "His debts to Phil Spector, the girl groups, Dylan, Elvis, Motown, the Byrds, New Orleans and James Brown are obvious. His synthesis is not."

I feel like there’s a strong sonic overlap between the E Street Band and the Saturday Night Live Band.

A question, for people who like The Wild, the Innocent and the E. Street Shuffle - do you like "Wild Billy's Circus Story?" And if not, why not? I think it's great, but it seems like a lot of people who are into that album don't like it, and I can't figure out why.

I keep trying to get into the Boss, but why is everything so frenzied all the time? It feels like every second (of the early records at least) he's shouting and cramming as many words in as possible while there is also a saxophone solo AND a keyboard solo all simultaneously and the band is playing at 10. Obviously the songwriting is masterful, and he seems like a great dude and a lot of my favorite people love him, but it's a bit like listening to an Albert Ayler record at times while also trying to make out lyrics.

I always recommend the Live 1975-85 album, which made a true believer out of me. Such breadth: storytelling, theatricality, intimate club sets vs stadium rock, "Racing in the Street"!, "The River" (with story)! And Roy Bittan as the unsung hero.

I always think Roy is the unsung hero.

def. prefer the scruffy wool-cap bruce to the vein-popping super-sized bruce. anyone else ever envision bryan ferry covering "sandy"?

I haven't, but I've wanted to hear Nick Cave cover the entire Darkness.

Haha, great description, TSF.

I always think Roy is the unsung hero.

Listen to the Dire Straits songs he guests on and it really underscores how much he brings to the table. I'm thinking of all the great stuff he does here, especially at the start and toward the end:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kQ4_eH_DBSc

Boy, that video is weird! I guess the made two different ones?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DQTw7vb9Jo8