Bruce Springsteen - Classic or Dud ?

get in the pit

With Dylan and Gene Simmons?

And Scarlet Rivera?

I think the speciation around substances being involved tangentially is hilarious. “Bruce was caught in a DRI! But ARE THERE MAYBE DRUGS INVOLVED TOO???” who gives a sh1t

― calstars, Thursday, February 11, 2021 12:08 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

fwiw i wasn't doing this and don't care about this story or bruce springsteen *at all* just getting itchy about ppl questioning this alleged .02 and how one could possibly be charged because you can be and many people are. it's not worth it to me to speculate based on this little information and i agree that would be stupid.

Fwiw, I think it's just as stupid as just as much bullshit when the cops arrest Joe Schmoe for blowing a 0.02 as when it happens to Bruce. Bruce will be just fine, most victims of this kind of thing aren't nearly as lucky and lose more than just a Super Bowl commercial.

this thread needs the Goldwater Rule

Never mind the thread, it's a good guideline in life.

I feel like I'm digging myself in deeper here and I should probably just shut up, but I realized that what I said upthread re: bipolar disorder probably came across as really unjustified armchair diagnosis. Just wanted to cite this passage from his book to show you where I got that:

(Talking about his father refusing to take his meds) "He told me he was frightened it would all go away: the energy, the purpose, even if it was aimless; the egocentric strength; the high of his manic state--everything but the long, drawn-out depressions. I understood. I'd been there, though not to his extremes. Manic depression, the bipolar personality. It's the prize in the Cracker Jack box in our family."

That passage stood out to me because bipolar happens to be the prize in the Cracker Jack box in my family as well; we've got quite a few people who are diagnosed and several others who have intense and scary mood swings but no diagnosis. One family member in the second category is a cousin who I shared a house with for several years, who has been self-medicating with alcohol in a big way for most of her adult life and is very much in denial about it. So there's a set of behaviors that I've spent quite a bit of time with up close, that I'm very attuned to, and maybe I'm primed to see them where they don't really exist. In any case, it's none of my business, and I was letting my personal shit influence my views of someone I don't know in a way that really wasn't appropriate. Sorry, everyone.

No need to apologize

Here for the Lily Dale redemption arc

yeah i mean it's not the first or last time anyone on here was speculating about a musician

Last chance power post

Baby you are O T M!!!

caaaaaaaaaaar

Tequila On A Motorbike
Sex In A Car!

The coverage of this is making a big deal out of Bruce initially refusing the breathalyzer. I would refuse too if you tried to breathalyze me right after I did a shot; there's no way that's going to give an accurate reading. Sounds like a trap.

Breathalyzer ARE traps. Never blow unless you haven't had one drink.

In some places not blowing is an automatic failure, though. A friend of mine got a DUI that way; he got pulled over, was pretty sure he was under the limit but not by much, and thought he had the right to ask for a blood test instead of the breathalyzer. He did not have that right, turns out.

I owned a police grade breathalyzer and even those instructions said you can't get an accurate reading unless you wait 30 minutes after your last drink

I blew like a 0.2 once minutes after one drink lol. not 0.02. 0.2

wow dang i knew they were wonky but that's crazy

Yeah, it wildly varies state by state and iirc, in some states you can get a 1-year mandatory suspension of your license for refusing one if the cops can "prove" you were driving under the influence, which at that point comes down to the cops witness statements and testimony. Which means you are basically screwed.

I mean, I'm sure it's a trap, that's what cops often do, wait around for someone to break a posted law (speeding, not coming to a full stop at a sign, etc.).

Why were the alleged fans not ticketed or arrested or whatever for drinking, too? And how in this day and age have none of their reported selfies showed up? Also, what's up with the cop noting that Bruce took 45 steps instead of a dozen or whatever? 45 steps is a lot! Maybe he was trying to escape!

there's a one step up and two steps back joke in here somewhere

Lots of jokes making the rounds of it not being the two shots that got him in trouble but 41 shots.

My favorite quips I've seen so far:

Springsteen, according to the officer, took 45 total steps during the "walk and turn" test "instead of the instructed 18."

Yeah and he plays 3h shows when everyone else phones in 90 minutes, so?

Baby he was born to walk

At least he'll be able to do a Patron tequila advert for next year's super bowl. Thom Zimny will have a field day with drone shots of Mexican Agave plantations.

Also enjoying the "was he swaying or waving" jokes.

I get that people can sometimes be impaired and not have it show up on a breathalyzer, but cops def abuse their discretion. Another friend of mine got pulled over for driving while Native, blew a .04 (he'd had one drink and was driving friends home from a party), and still had to go to jail for the night because the cop "used his discretion" i.e. jailed him for being Native.

like a river that don't know where it's flowin'
he took a wrong turn and he just kept goin'

In some places not blowing is an automatic failure, though. A friend of mine got a DUI that way; he got pulled over, was pretty sure he was under the limit but not by much, and thought he had the right to ask for a blood test instead of the breathalyzer. He did not have that right, turns out.

yes, you will spend the night in jail in Florida, but your lawyer will have a much stronger case

Conservative tabloid trash paper NY Post first day headline cover story was labeled “Born to Rum” in huge letters.

Doubt they’ll do a follow up re .02 aspect

Hindsight is .02 .02.

They actually did, I think! iirc they were among the first to run the "one shot" addition to the story.

Is Bruce really disliked by conservatives? I thought he sort of bridged the gap; as in even Chris Christie is a big fan.

you can't get elected in NJ w/o at least claiming as much

Chris Christie - "Too Bored to Run"

FWIW, I know someone who had to defend an elderly man for a DWI or DUI (forgot which). I don't know all the details, but this was in a rural part of the Midwest and IIRC he was pulled over for another reason, agreed to a breathalyzer, and to his surprise he was over the limit. The charges were dismissed because they were able to convince the court that the results were tainted by his dentures - there was no definitive answer but they found expert testimony that the adhesive he used could absorb enough alcohol that it would boost the reading (i.e. alcohol that wasn't actually in his blood stream would be detected). It was a low stakes case - no one was hurt and it was implied that the chances of any danger to someone else were very low given the circumstances - so who knows, it's possible that created enough leniency for the court to accept that argument.

Unrelated to current news, I was listening to "The Promise" (the outtakes collection) and it's really amazing how many great or at least solid songs he simply just left behind. I've got to assume he listened to a bunch of these and wondered why they never ended up anywhere. In fact, I could have sworn he made some jokes at the time, like, "huh, I was pretty good!" Or something like that.

The other thing that struck me (even though this is obvious) is how well he captured the Wall of Sound sound with just a five or six member band (plus, fair enough, backing vocals and overdubs). Like this one:

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

And then of course you have stuff like this that presages "The River" era:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gtxR_9j6kLg

Which makes sense, since Little Steven was always cheerleading for the '60s garage/girl group style stuff, and "The River" was iirc when Bruce let him have more of a say in what made it to the album.

Yeah, some people have said it would've been a perfect transitional or hybrid album between Born to Run and Darkness because thematically and even musically it straddles both, but after a three year delay (thanks to his legal battles with Appel), I can understand why he'd go for Darkness rather than an LP that feels more steeped in the previous one. It's too bad, there really should have been another one in 1976 or 1977. I wonder if the lack of a Springsteen LP in some ways helped Seger and Thin Lizzy with their commercial breakthroughs, which both came out in 1976 and sounded heavily inspired by Springsteen?

And Meatloaf!

Yeah, I dunno, Bruce himself has said he wished he released more albums.

I like that collection but I'm glad it never became an actual album, because I think a lot of the songs in it are just ever so slightly missing something - not as songs per se, but just as compared to the rest of Bruce's early work. I like "Breakaway" a lot, despite the kind of blah chorus, and "City of Night," b/c I love plotless vignettes of insomniacs wandering around cities at night (cf Kipling's "City of Dreadful Night" #onethread). And "Come On (Let's Go Tonight)" I might actually like better than both the songs that it split into. But the album overall I find just a tiny bit dull. It's fine, competent, catchy pop imo, but I think a lot of it's missing that characteristic spark of weirdness that makes for a really good Springsteen song.

I think that might be part of the point, though. It's a neat trick, putting together a collection of outtakes that's solid and worth the money but also illustrates that you made the right decision in what to put in and leave off. Bruce is very good at that.

Yeah, even if Appel went quickly and quietly into the night, there's no way everything on The Promise would've become an album for multiple reasons. I think it's reasonable that a single LP could've been drawn from it (i.e. not all 90 minutes of it), and it's likely that Bruce circa 1976/1977 would've developed those tracks to complete fruition, but who knows what that would've been.

It's too bad he didn't write actual lyrics to "Save My Love" and record it at the time, because that video of him playing it in '76 is so great. "Turn up your radio, 'cause I love you the most" is the most adorable placeholder lyric, and the re-recorded version will never measure up.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SN-ou-JqXqQ

Yeah, even if Appel went quickly and quietly into the night, there's no way everything on The Promise would've become an album for multiple reasons. I think it's reasonable that a single LP could've been drawn from it (i.e. not all 90 minutes of it), and it's likely that Bruce circa 1976/1977 would've developed those tracks to complete fruition, but who knows what that would've been.

I don't think "The Promise" (as released) is itself necessarily a good Bruce album, as such, or whether even pared down it might have made one. But had some of its songs been given just a little extra push ... yeah, maybe! Lot least because of course a lot of stuff Bruce was writing *did* get released, just by someone else. Pointer Sisters, Patti Smith, Gary US Bonds, Southside Johnny, Donna Summer, etc.

I was talking to someone about era-defining artists (which kind of translated into who was the greatest artist of any given stretch of time), and one commonality that rose to the top was how much they supported or contributed to other artists. It was pretty astonishing when you put it under close scrutiny - not only were they madly prolific and churning out great singles and great albums on nearly every outing, they were also writing or producing commendable records for other people, often their best or most popular ones. Bowie (Raw Power, Transfomer, Iggy's first two solo LP's, etc.), Prince ("Manic Monday," "The Glamorous Life," "Nothing Compares 2 U," the Time, etc.), Elvis Costello ("Girls Talk," The Specials, East Side Story, Rum, Sodomy & The Lash, "Shipbuilding," etc.) and Springsteen (as you've mentioned).

And Phil Collins.

I should probably add Stevie Wonder ("Tell Me Something Good," "Tears of a Clown," "I Can't Help It," "Until You Come Back To Me," Perfect Angel, etc.), maybe Public Enemy, especially if the Bomb Squad counts as an extension during their prime, and of course Kanye West and Kendrick Lamar.

Boy, the lyrics of "Tunnel of Love" (the song, not the album, but of course the album, too) are so good.

Not just the content but rhythmically too - I love how each verse flows, especially the first:

Fat man sitting on a little stool
Takes the money from my hand while his eyes take a walk all over you
Hands me two tickets, smiles and whispers good luck
Well cuddle up angel, cuddle up my little dove
We'll ride down baby into this tunnel of love

Seeing it on paper (or rather a screen) won't do it justice, you have to hear it

That actually might be the one Springsteen song where, much as I like the lyrics, I like the way it sounds even more. I just love the sha-na-na-na-ohs and the creepy overlapping backing vocals that feel like they're coming at you from all sides. I once managed to startle myself into jumping at my own shadow, walking along listening to it on a sunny day.

xp Yeah, I think about that opening verse a lot.