Bruce Springsteen - Classic or Dud ?

I was surprised my Late Era boys loved "57 Channels," my pick for worst Springsteen single to date.

I've never once thought of that song as being even remotely trenchant. Like songs deriding televangelists, it seemed like pretty easy pickings at the time, just one in a long line of "get off of my lawn" songs written about watching TV.

There’s a profile of Steve Van Zant from last weekend that makes me wonder if Human Touch and Lucky Town’s relative mediocrity was the by-product of changing the band’s dynamics.

Yet Van Zandt’s life has been bisected by his own decision to quit. He left the E Street Band in 1984, in protest at his lack of a formal role in decision-making. After that, he writes, suicide was his “constant companion and temptation”. Although he rejoined the band in the late 1990s, he still agonises over the decision. “It was the biggest mistake I’d ever made in my life, and everything I’ve accomplished was accomplished because of it,” Van Zandt, 70, says over Zoom from his home in New York.

E Street Band guitarist and actor Steven Van Zandt talks Springsteen, The Sopranos and why he doesn’t want to be the boss with @henrymance https://t.co/rTWblqBgoP

— FT Weekend (@ftweekend) September 28, 2021

There’s a profile of Steve Van Zant from last weekend that makes me wonder if Human Touch and Lucky Town’s relative mediocrity was the by-product of changing the band’s dynamics.

It didn't help. To my ears he started writing what people expected a Mature Bruce Springsteen to write and record with L.A. hired guns. The trouble is, Tunnel of Love and BIUSA were perfectly realized Mature Springsteen albums.

just one in a long line of "get off of my lawn" songs written about watching TV

I honestly think after "TV Party," no one should bother trying... those guys did it right, close the f'in book!

"Human Touch" is a weird song - the bridge/solo comes in really early (less than halfway through), followed by the first taste of the "outro" section; then the song keeps marking time until the real outro kicks in (followed by another solo), but the outro feels dissipated rather than having the desired "yeah!" effect.

There’s a profile of Steve Van Zant from last weekend that makes me wonder if Human Touch and Lucky Town’s relative mediocrity was the by-product of changing the band’s dynamics.

I can't find it at the moment, but IIRC Van Zant heard the two 1992 albums before they came out and told Springsteen he should re-record them with the E Street Band (probably a bit facetiously from a practical perspective but also as an honest critical assessment). They've done some songs like "Souls of the Departed" that weren't radically different but had an extra charge to them that really helped.

I think 57 Channels and Nothin' On is one of those lines that's better as a title than as an actual song. It's added a phrase to the language that instantly means something concrete to people who may never have heard the song, and the more our attention span gets eaten up by a huge variety of meaningless bullshit, the more useful the phrase is.

morrisp OTM there.

Broadly agree with Lily Dale but actually - I'd be happy now to actually hear '57 channels' again. That low bluesy edgy intro, Bruce singing into a big space about his bourgeois house - and the whole thing retains a kind of restraint doesn't it?

I like Bob's TV Talkin' Song too btw.

I quite like the Christic version of 57 Channels, it's more laid-back - doesn't take itself as seriously as the album version.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VNkqW-MrJZU

Yeah, the Human Touch songs don't sound so bad on those shows. One of my favorites from Springsteen's nugs releases, I wish he put it out back in 1991 instead of sitting on it for 25+ years!

Just when I wanted to cut him slack, I see his hair.

xp yeah, amazing shows all around. The performance I really love from Christic, though, is the one of "My Father's House," which manages to be better imo than the one on Nebraska.

I LOVE that song, and it really is a great rendition. Nebraska is my favorite (it's what made me a Springsteen fan for life) so the Christic shows were especially enjoyable for that reason alone - I don't think he performed many of those Nebraska songs alone and acoustic in concert before.

Those shows are great to hear back-to-back with the Broadway album. Sometimes the two blur together in memory, but the spoken interludes about his therapy sessions play well next to the Broadway show. I guess that was the first time the rest of the world found out about his personal struggles and how he found professional help? Even the (nervous?) audience laughter says a lot.

yeah, I think it must be! the way he says "I went to see this psychiatrist" and the audience laughs like it's the start of a joke and he has to say, "no, this is true, this is true." And then it's just such a good story; one of his best, I think. Up there with the Vietnam draft story, with that devastating last line just before the song starts.

If I'm remembering right, there's a similar moment at the start of "The Wish," which replaced "My Father's House" on the second night, so it seems like he deliberately carved out space in both shows to let the audience know about his therapy sessions.

The new song with mellencamp is pretty cheesy old man music, but it's fine.

wtf why is someone else named Lily writing about Bruce Springsteen for the New York Times?

I just saw the article, haven't read it yet, but felt the need to come here immediately and say that my name is not actually Lily and that is not me.

So I've found myself sort of fascinated by Adam Raised a Cain lately, and I'm wondering: what do you all make of the middle verse?

All of the old faces ask you why you're back
They fit you with position and the keys to your daddy's Cadillac
In the darkness of your room your mother calls you by your true name
You remember the faces, the places, the names
You know it's never over, it's relentless as the rain
Adam raised a Cain

The first and third verses are all epic East of Eden father/son drama, but this verse reads to me like it's Bruce's first comment on the price of fame, not being able to fully go home again, being The Boss, and yet feeling a sense of kinship and responsibility toward the same community that he's no longer completely a part of. A different kind of doomed inheritance from the one in the first and third verses, but related. He's not trying to antagonize his audience here; he slips it into the middle of a song about something else, and howls it out so that it's barely intelligible, but it's the start of a through-line that's going to end w/"Local Hero": "Well I learned my job I learned it well, fit myself with religion and a story to tell."

Anyway, that's the way I hear it, but I'm influenced by having read the Kipling story "The Knife and the Naked Chalk" - Kipling's version of the "Growin' Up" story - approximately one million times, and no one else has that particular problem, so tell me if this makes sense.

It's also the familiar story of the prodigal son returning home, and his friends family and former neighbors don't give a shit about where he's been or whether or not he's successful, just that he's back home and it's business as usual. Nothing's changed, not least at home.

Interesting. I hear "they fit you with position" as them caring that he's successful, wanting him to be successful, imposing a certain idea of fame and success on him. In later performances - like, around the time he starts playing it a lot for the Tunnel of Love tour - he changes "position" to "religion." And then that line pops up again in "Local Hero," but now it's "fit myself with religion" - it's something he's done to himself.

I guess one question is: is it good or bad - or neither good nor bad, just something you can't get away from - that nothing's changed at home, that your mother calls you by your true name? (Bruce getting all Ursula Le Guin on us.) I guess I was hearing it as a good thing overall - that for all the epic struggle of the first and third verses, home can also be a refuge from fame, one place where you're not expected to play the part of The Boss.

I feel like the ideas here are sort of deliberately muddled, like Bruce is trying to work through a lot of confused anger at people he loves - including the audience that he's very emotionally close with at this point in his career - without alienating anyone, and so it all kind of gets lumped in together: his father's anger, his mother's love, the burdens and expectations of fame.

Another way to read that verse is that they're basically asking him, wait, *why* are you back? We gave you a position in life, we gave you a car, we sent you on your way. Maybe home is a place he can't escape, or doesn't want to. Cain is cast into exile, but Bruce (or the narrator) doesn't have that luxury. He's compelled to return, in some way actually a *subversion* of the prodigal son parable.

Yes, that makes sense. and I think that's sort of what I was trying to get at - the feeling that the community he's trying to write about & stay faithful to doesn't necessarily expect him back or have much of a place for him; that he's gotten too famous writing about these people to really be one of them anymore.

and yeah, I think the Cain/exile thing makes sense, the idea that fame is its own form of exile.

And yet "you remember the faces, the places, the names." They're part of him whether he wants it or not; he's like one of those Faulkner characters who carry the whole entire South around inside them at all times.

my brain's all foggy today; I hope this makes sense.

It seems to me that this verse is about how someone who thinks he has reinvented himself and distanced himself from his family is caught up in those old ties when he returns home; and maybe he can honestly see that he hasn't changed as much as he thought.

that makes total sense to me and I think I was overthinking it

It could be from a rock star's perspective, but just as easily a doctor, an academic etc. who thinks they have transcended their class background.

I do think the "why are you back?" is really important, but you're right, he doesn't have to be famous for that to be the question everyone's asking. This could be anyone who was raised in a place where being successful means getting to leave.

Ken Rosen, who writes the E. Street Shuffle blog, has a series called "Roll of the Dice" where he analyzes every Springsteen song in detail, in a "What is this song about, what story is it telling?" way. He's offered me the chance to write guest posts whenever I have a different take on a song from him. My first one, on "Western Stars," is running today. Hopefully there will be more!

https://estreetshuffle.com/index.php/2021/11/04/two-faces-western-stars/

So what do you do when you discover a reader whose comments deserve a “Hold my beer” subject line? Well… I hold her beer.

Thanks!

Looking forward to reading it!

Last night I had to drive one of my kids and her friends up to Milwaukee for a concert. The first half I patiently endured their music and didn't even say anything. But about halfway through my daughter, sitting in the way back, surprised me by switching the music to Springsteen on shuffle, for my benefit. And then left it there! It was great to hear them all sing along with "Santa Claus is Coming to Town." One of them, in the passenger seat, told me she was trying to get School of Rock to do a Christmas show (she's Jewish, lol), and said they claimed there weren't enough Christmas rock songs. Then she pointed to the speakers and said "hello!?!"

The shuffle also played "High Hopes," which I hadn't heard since whatever year it came out. I know the song is only five minutes long, but it felt like 20, and it's one of the better ones on that album, iirc. It made me feel a little bad for Bruce, because for a couple of albums you can really hear him struggling to do something new or different, or sonically relevant, and it just rarely works. Sure, when it *does* work you get something like "Streets of Philadelphia," but when it doesn't ... oof. I think Bruce has only relatively recently come around to fully embracing that what the fans want is the same ol' Bruce, the best Bruce he can be, which is intuitive but he only in the last several years seems to have stopped resisting it. Reminds me of a reported exchange with Sting at a 2010 rainforest benefit.

The concert’s unannounced performer, Bruce Springsteen, joked that when Sting had told him the theme was ’80s nostalgia, he had responded, “Sting, we’re ’80s nostalgia.”

That's awesome! Makes me think of the bit in Bruce's book where he walks into his kid's room and finds him listening to early Dylan, and he's clearly just bursting with pride that his kid is voluntarily listening to the music he likes. A real "stars, they're just like us!" moment.

for a couple of albums you can really hear him struggling to do something new or different, or sonically relevant, and it just rarely works.

I know what you mean; it all feels so - directionless. Like he's just throwing anything in that sounds different from his usual stuff, without having a real sense of why or what he's going for.

"Streets of Philadelphia," otoh, feels like he did have a vision and a reason for working with that particular sound; I really wonder about the other stuff that sounded like it that he scrapped.

Heard “Brilliant Disguise” in CVS today; didn’t remember the tempo being as fast as it is. Good song…

One of his best.

Definitely. Even people I know who don't like Springsteen all that much tend to single that out as a great song.

didn’t remember the tempo being as fast as it is

I just went back and listened, and yeah, it was surprising to me to, but I'm not sure why. Something about the vocals, maybe? Definitely helps give it that edgy, jittery feeling.

too

I'm sure this has been posted here before (possibly by me), but I love the Brilliant Disguise video, and I love this piece by the director, Meiert Avis, about the whole process of coming up with the concept and pitching it to Bruce and then making it: http://meiertavis.com/archives/1215

Was googling around for other stuff and found this complete, pretty well shot/sounding video of his Paris 2016 "River" gig:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JBzrwbarzx4

xpost That was great, good find!

Loved your piece, too. I never listen (or did much listening) to that album, which makes your observations all the more fresh and interesting.

Thanks! I have mixed feelings about Western Stars the album - I think there are about four songs from it that I still listen to regularly - but I do like that song. I think it's partly that the use of the orchestra makes sense to me on that song, as part of the story the song is telling,in a way that it doesn't necessarily on the rest of the album.

The funny thing about writing for the blog is that I'm pretty much limited to the songs Ken and I disagree on, which isn't really that many of them. So I have kind of a random handful of songs to choose from, but it's fun trying to figure out what to say about them.

And thanks for reading! It feels like a silly thing to be proud of, but this is actually a major personal milestone because it's the first time I've brought myself to actually send out something I wrote to anyone.

Listened to "Trapped" again and was thinking (and I know he didn't write it) about what a good and odd and striking choice it was to have the anthemic chorus be the part about being trapped, not the part about knowing one day you'll escape.

It's definitely one of the all time most inspired covers. Like, "Jersey Girl," that was practically written for him. But "Trapped" took some imagination.

Yeah, and I think it's so interesting what he does with it. The original doesn't have that stark difference between the verses and the chorus; it's bouncy and determined and hopeful all the way through. Springsteen takes it and does his dark verse/anthemic chorus thing with it, but bc the hopeful lyrics are all in the verses, that means that he dials the hope way down and the frustration way up. So the effect you get is someone sort of grimly promising himself that one day he'll get out, and then giving in to this scream of rage and frustration that right now he's so far away from that.

Saw this in an old Glenn Kenny blog post on Frank Borzage's History Is Made at Night:

"Apparently when Bruce Springsteen and Jon Landau were trying to figure out what title to give the album that subsequently became Born in the U.S.A., they combed through the index of Andrew Sarris's The American Cinema, and very nearly settled on History Is Made at Night."

Great film BTW, Criterion just released an outstanding 4K restoration as well. And if you watch the Criterion extras, they point out that Borzage himself loved the title, emphasizing that it helped secure his interest in the project after a producer pitched it to him.

So with that in mind, I followed up on the discussion upthread about the BitUSA leftovers and tried piecing together an album with that title.

Running time 44 minutes, 48 seconds, all but the first and last tracks taken from Tracks. (Opener taken from Greatest Hits, closer from The Essential Bruce Springsteen's third disc of bonuses though I think they couldn't find the master and used a bootleg.)

History Is Made at Night

Side A:
1. Murder Incorporated
2. My Love Will Not Let You Down
3. This Hard Land
4. Frankie

Side B:
5. Pink Cadillac
6. Man at the Top
7. Shut Out the Light
8. Wages of Sin
9. Janey, Don't You Lose Heart
10. County Fair

Nice! Did you deliberately keep it to officially released tracks and not allow any bootlegs?

I'm trying to figure out if I would order the tracks any differently. I think I might replace Man at the Top with Rockaway the Days, and I'm not sure about Wages of Sin because there's so much lyrical overlap with My Father's House. (I also don't really like Wages of Sin, but that's just me.)

I was thinking about moving County Fair to the beginning, but maybe that would give it too much of a "Bruce Springsteen is the Village Green Preservation Society" vibe, idk.

Yes, only official releases. I wanted to program something that was reasonable on some level - like, if Landau & Co. made a serious attempt to create a second album from the leftover material and the final result had to get Springsteen's approval. It felt like official releases would bypass a lot of issues - every track would be genuinely finished, there was a better sense of how Springsteen would sequence this material thanks to Tracks, and everything would presumably come from the best known sources. (IIRC, nine of those ten were even freshly mixed from the multi-tracks. I have a feeling the multi-track for "County Fair" was somehow lost, one reason it was excluded from Tracks and the main reason why the official release sounds very similar to what's already been bootlegged.)

As the sequence fell into place, I noticed how some of it echoed Born in the USA. Like the two most dance-oriented tracks are in the second and penultimate slots. "Murder Incorporated" stuck out at as the opening track from the start, and the martial drum beat that opens it somewhat recalls Born in the USA's opening. And "County Fair" recalls "My Hometown" - both are quiet tracks that seemed to be built from small-town-life observations. "County Fair" also seemed like an appropriate ending given the album title, with the narrator holding his girl and looking up at the stars, wishing the moment would never end. (Now that I think about it, that's also the ending to the Borzage movie, but in a very different setting...hell, it's possibly the ending to MOST of his movies, especially Man's Castle.)

"Rockaway the Days" is catchy, that simple acoustic guitar riff was burned into my memory after one listen. That track and at least three others were in the running initially, but I wanted to keep the whole thing to a realistic LP length. At one point I had "Man at the Top" before "Bye Bye Johnny" - it seemed interesting to connect those two songs, but ultimately the latter was so short that it didn't seem to register as much as I would have liked. I've always liked "Wages of Sin," but Springsteen especially liked it after forgetting about it altogether - IIRC it was one of his favorite finds for the box set, so I thought it should have a slot.

What's a good outtake that hasn't been officially released? Anything you'd want to sequence in?

That all makes sense, and now that you've said it, I totally see what you mean about echoing the structure of Bitusa, especially side two. I just wonder if maybe "Murder Incorporated" promises an album that's not actually what you get from Bitusa outtakes, since the overall vibe here is so much more uncertain and flattened and wistful than Bitusa.

It does sound like an opening song, though, and you're right, "County Fair" is a good closer and matches nicely with "My Hometown;" I take back my suggestion about opening with it. (I think what I was going for had something to do with growing up, maybe? It starts out with this sense of youthful wonder, and then by the end of the song you're older and life has taken you and deposited you somewhere further on and lonely, and I think that's why I saw it as an appropriate opener to an album about being in your thirties and adrift from the things that used to make life meaningful to you.)

I like "Man at the Top" fine, but it stays in the outtake category for me because "aim your gun and shoot your shot/ everybody wants to be the man at the top" feels like a retread of "Hungry Heart." "Rockaway the Days" I think is a cool song in a few ways; I like that riff, the story is a rare (at the time) attempt at third-person narrative, and it's one of his classic songs about how you should have sex with him because the world is terrible, which is a Bruce theme I always like.

It makes sense for "Wages of Sin" to have a slot; it's a good song and a big song, I just find it hard to listen to. (I get an abuser vibe from it that disturbs me because it seems unintentional, but that doesn't mean it shouldn't be on the album.)

I'm thinking about bootlegs, and I'm really not sure - maybe "Drop on Down," but I have no idea where to put it.

My brain is insanely fried from teaching after a four day weekend, so I hope at least some of that made sense.

After a quick listen, I get what you mean about "Murder Incorporated." If you sample the other nine together then go back to it, the differences are even clearer. It does feel like it should be setting up an angrier and more defiant album.

Your description of "County Fair" actually reminds me of Bob Seger's "Night Moves" and how both songs end with a desire for time to stand still - in one case, to freeze a feeling happiness, in the other to keep the past from drifting further away while everything moves deeper into an uneasy future. There's plenty of good reasons to start an album that way as it sets up a lot of territory to explore. ("Night Moves" nearly does, it was the second track.)

I also noticed beginning with The River, Springsteen ended his albums quietly, and I think that may have been another reason why ending with "County Fair" felt like a natural choice to me. Born to Run and Darkness finished with big, defiant climaxes, but then you have "Wreck on the Highway," "Reason to Believe," "My Hometown" and "Valentine's Day," and I get a similar unease from each of them. Even when there's a wife or child serving as an anchor, life's taken the narrator further from comfort (a comfortable past or some earlier peace of mind or false sense of security about their lives). Those albums were done when Springsteen hit his 30s, so it's possible getting older played a natural role in his inclination to close an album that way.

Almost forgot the ending to "Rockaway the Days"! That's a strangely common scene in a lot of movies where something awful has happened and the couple has sex. Off the top of my head, that's what happens in JFK when they find out RFK has been assassinated, there's a scene like that with Denzel Washington in He Got Game, etc. That must've been the inspiration behind Will Ferrell's line in Wedding Crashers: "grief is nature's most powerful aphrodisiac."

And I know what you mean about "Wages of Sin." Springsteen actually speculated he set it aside because it touched a nerve. There's no description of abuse IIRC, but it sets it all up. Like the mindset and all the trouble brewing in the narrator's mind - domestic violence feels like a logical and inevitable result. Like others have said, he has an amazing gift for empathy and he's brilliant whenever he taps into that, but the results can be chilling depending on the subject.

Just think, you have a four (or five?) day weekend NEXT week! I love this time of year but work-wise it does throw you off a bit.