Bruce Springsteen - Classic or Dud ?

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."

I'm torn between being excited about Tracks II and wondering why he seems to have decided against releasing anything from the Born in the USA era.

I ended up going to Hamburg to see Springsteen there - well, mostly to visit Hamburg and then see friends in Paris and Rouen, but I had this ticket for Springsteen and thought why not?

It ended up being a great decision! He was much better than he was in Seattle in February, for one thing; it was all still the same scripted show, with a few ad libs, but he seemed to have relaxed into it, and he was feeding off the energy of the Hamburg audience, which was bigger and more joyful than the Seattle audience. His voice even sounded stronger. And I thought it was strong in Seattle, apart from some creaky moments on the songs from Letter to You, but here he sounded great all through. The middle-aged German woman next to me was losing her mind with excitement - except when he started "Nightshift" and she was like, "This is a great song but not the way he does it," and went off to get a beer.

I learned that German audiences go nuts for "The River" - that was the moment when everyone who was still sitting got to their feet - and Springsteen rewarded their faith by doing some really gorgeous wordless "oooh-oooh-oooh" crooning at the very end - the kind of thing he can only sometimes pull off depending on how strong his voice is on a given night. Here he sounded wonderful.

The thing that made me feel insanely lucky, though, was that he played "Darlington County" followed directly by "Working on the Highway." Neither is on his standard setlist, as far as I know, and "Working on the Highway" wasn't even planned for that night; it was supposed to be "My Hometown." Given how much time I've spent on here talking about the structure of Born in the USA and the way it's made up of pairs like a DNA helix, to get one of those pairs together in a show felt like an amazing gift just for me.

It was a much shorter show than the one in Seattle, so I was glad I hadn't missed the Seattle show - there we got Rosalita during the encore, and I was sad for the Germans that he left that one off. But here we got "Bobby Jean," which was wonderful. Overall it was a big night for Born in the USA.

I will never stop being amazed by the miracle that transforms songs you are only kind of okay with into a song that you absolutely love at the moment he's playing it. I've always found "The Rising" sort of overcooked, and when I hear it on the album I start thinking grumbly thoughts about how the Kipling poem "Gethsemane" does the same thing but sparer and better. But let Springsteen play it in concert and I turn into a Yvonne in Casablanca when the Marseillaise is playing.

It helped that I had a much better seat here than in Seattle; there I could barely afford the most distant nosebleed seat; here, it was much cheaper and my seat was not only better but actually good. And overall it was just an amazing energy - walking to the concert from my hostel fifteen minutes away in this massive stream of people moving like a zombie horde toward the stadium, hanging out outside the stadium before the concert eating a cheap bratwurst and drinking expensive water while "My Hometown" blasted over the speakers, and then walking back in the same stream of people at the end.

My hostel, chosen for proximity to the arena, was so awful that I got literally zero sleep that night, and I had to get up at 4:45 in the morning anyway because the only way I could get out of Hamburg was to take the 5:45 train to Köln. And now I'm in Paris with a migraine, and I might be sick? But the concert was amazing.

Setlist differences: More than I expected! I had been prepared for it to be exactly the same, but the Seattle show had "Trapped,""Burnin' Train," "Candy's Room," "The E. Street Shuffle," "Johnny 99," and "Rosalita," while this show had "Darlington County," "Workin' on the Highway," "Bobby Jean," "The River," "Nightshift," and "Mary's Place." Looking at it now, that adds up to a lot of songs! So glad I got to see both shows.

*"I turn into Yvonne in Casablanca," I meant to say - not "a Yvonne," although I supposed that works too.

I wish I'd known about Bruce Springsteen's UK concerts, and been able to attend one. I only find out about things after they happen.

Lily: I enjoy 'working on the highway' a lot, can't take 'darlington county' very seriously. What did you get out of hearing them together?

I'm not really a fan - admire more than love his work, with a few exceptions - but a friend messaged me a few days before the Saturday Hyde Park concert & said he had a spare & did I want it (no cost) & I thought I'd be an idiot not to. Didn't know 3/4 of the songs, felt a bit of a fraud pressed among the real fans but it was amazing, completely sucked me in and I am largely converted (tho going back to his albums afterwards I'm still a little disengaged, like I struggle to keep my attention switched on through any of them really. He seems to be a small doses artist for me).

I will never stop being amazed by the miracle that transforms songs you are only kind of okay with into a song that you absolutely love at the moment he's playing it.

From the perspective of a casual, otm. I would have said I didn't like GLory Days. Now I love Glory Days.

Love conversation stories like yours!

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My text messages to a friend literally go from "all these songs are the same song and everybody knows all the words. Luckily, I am high" about an hour in to "i love it i love all of it" about an hour later.

oh I should also say thank you to the Springsteen crew on here - over the years various threads (the poll especially) made me appreciate him more and then in the couple of days before the gig reading through ilx chat about him gave me context/pointers/places to start. So much thoughtful and loving discussion!

I enjoy 'working on the highway' a lot, can't take 'darlington county' very seriously. What did you get out of hearing them together?

Good question! Neither of them is exactly one of my favorite Bruce songs, though I like them both and I love "Child Bride," the song on the Nebraska tape that turned into "Working on the Highway." I think it has to do with a few things:

1. I love "Born in the USA," but a lot of it is made up of huge hits that it's no surprise to hear in concert. "Working on the Highway" and "Darlington County" are both (to the extent that anything on BitUSA can be minor) more minor songs off it, so hearing them back to back feels like getting a tiny snippet of the Born in the USA tour.

2. They're a pair, and one of the things I think is very cool about BitUSA is the way at least half the songs on it come in pairs: these two songs, then the Nebraska songs "Downbound Train" and "I'm on Fire," then "No Surrender" and "Bobby Jean." Almost everything on Born in the USA is wearing some kind of disguise, but these two have roughly the same disguise: they're both songs from the POV of men who are absolutely not succeeding at life, but who are presenting - maybe even seeing - their lives as a fun-times workin' man's anthem.

You've got Darlington County, which initially sets itself up as a story about a road trip from the POV of someone who doesn't actually know how to tell a story, so it's already sort of intentionally boring in a way I find funny, maybe because I've read so many boring personal essays by college students who went to Disneyland once. "Me and my buddy drove to another county to do union work and pick up hookers, and we listened to rock music on the drive" is very much not a story, but the narrator tells it like it is the most super cool thing that ever happened to anyone. But then the actually interesting part of the story - the part where Wayne disappears, never shows up for work, and then gets arrested for an unknown crime at the very end - happens mostly offstage and is never explained. And yet the narrator never, ever gets that this is actually a strange and potentially disturbing story about his buddy going off the rails; it's shalalas the whole way through.

"Working on the Highway" pairs with "Darlington County" because it's also disguised as a dudes workin' together anthem. What's behind it, of course, is a much more explicitly disturbing story about a guy who's in prison for basically grooming and kidnapping an underage girl. But you have that same sense of denial and the same way of hiding the real story behind a screen of working class masculine community; in both songs there's a feeling of anthemic togetherness, of dudes working together, traveling together, that dissolves, when you look closer at the song, into one dude completely on his own and not wanting to admit it. So the songs match with each other, in a way that they don't quite match with anything else on BiTUSA, though of course most of the songs on that album are wearing some kind of disguise. And I've never been quite sure whether Bruce knows that he structured BitUSA in pairs, so it's cool to get some kind of confirmation that he also sees these two songs as going together.

3. This one is more of a stretch, but... "Child Bride," the song that turned into "Working on the Highway," is obviously not a song I feel much sense of personal identification with, and yet there's a moment at the very end that I did very much identify with during the pandemic. It continues the story past the point where "Working on the Highway" stops, and the last verse is the narrator in prison, thinking about freedom.

There's nights I can't sleep
No matter how hard I try
So from my window I watch the moonlight
Fall on the far hillside
I imagine I put on my jacket
Go down to this little roadside bar
Pick a stranger and spin around the dance floor
To a Mexican guitar

There's something about the smallness of that fantasy, and the way it still feels so completely out of reach, the total impossibility of just putting on your jacket and going to an ordinary bar and hearing some music, that summed up a lot of the feeling of the pandemic for me. And last year, when everyone else was coming out of the pandemic and going back to their normal lives, I was sick in bed almost the entire summer. So hearing "Working on the Highway" sent my brain to "Child Bride," which made me very forcibly aware that after what felt like years of semi-isolation, I was at this exact moment in a foreign city by myself, dancing in a sea of happy strangers.

Amazing. Thank you for all of that!

This reading of the Boss as writing 'unreliable narrators', characters who say something without understanding that they're revealing something, songs that are really about something dark though the voice thinks it's light ... It's a very interesting approach and one that I first saw from ILM poster Dave Q, a remarkable character who posted here over 20 years ago.

Maybe it gains some credence from the genetic approach of hearing earlier versions (like 'child bride' which I don't know) which confirm what a song was really about before it was 'disguised'.

Nonetheless, while enjoying this approach, I'm slightly sceptical about it. I feel that the bar-room cheer of these two songs is more dominant than a dark underside. I don't feel too sure that we're really meant to think that the former is superficial, the latter the truth. In truth I'm not really sure that I think 'Darlington County' is very serious at all. Though it's more interesting if it is, and if you're right.

I strongly agree that 'Darlington County' is a very UN-interesting story on the face of it. I've always found that somewhat a drawback, though you're finding a different way around it, Lily.

FWIW the single thing that has always connected the two songs for me is the character, I think, 'handcuffed to a state trooper's Ford' (?) in the first song and the character being 'put in a black and white' in the second.

I think this is the really interesting paradox of Springsteen, that he's fundamentally interested in the way people need hope and will find hope where none exists, and that leads him to have this deep interest in the kind of false hope that rises out of isolation and desperation - something like Atlantic City, where the character's irrational hope for a better life is clearly leading him to an early death or a long prison sentence. But at the same time he recognizes that the line between false hope and real hope is a very thin one, and that this ability to make hope and joy and community out of nothing at all, while it can be deeply dangerous, is also sustaining and essential. So the songs on BitUSA aren't just dark songs disguised as fun party anthems, they are fun party anthems, but made out of the material Springsteen had to hand at that time, which was all dark. Despair and isolation transmuted by the alchemy of rock music itself, and by Springsteen's belief in its power to do pretty much anything, into a source of communal joy.

I hope that made sense, I feel like I could put it better if I weren't so jet lagged.

Like for instance I would not have said the words "interest" and "hope" one billion times in a row. Oh well.

There's a similar theme in both songs about escaping to a mythological paradise only to discover the destination just as fraught as the origin. Highways are of course an obvious connection between both songs, but they're also literal connections, tethers, if you will, to reality, pulling you back to the place you started from. That's certainly the case with the ironic conclusion of "Working on the Highway," which (like lots of Bruce) is itself tethered back to similar turns/themes in Chuck Berry travel/escape songs like "Promised Land" (god knows Bruce sure had that title/theme in mind a lot).

"So the songs on BitUSA aren't just dark songs disguised as fun party anthems, they are fun party anthems, but made out of the material Springsteen had to hand at that time, which was all dark."

I think that does convince me more than "this fun anthem is really a dark story in disguise".

I also reflect that when the Boss wants to be "dark", he can just be ... dark, and brooding. "darkness on the edge of town", "candy's room", "nebraska", whatever - so it's not as if he needs a (brilliant) disguise for this material.

re 'working on the highway':

'What's behind it, of course, is a much more explicitly disturbing story about a guy who's in prison for basically grooming and kidnapping an underage girl.'

The song doesn't state that she's 'underage', or that she's been kidnapped and left against her will. There is conflict with her family.

>>> Saved up my money and I put it all away
I went to see her daddy but we didn't have much to say
"Son, can't you see that she's just a little girl
She don't know nothing about this cruel, cruel world"

I don't take the father's description of the girl to mean that she is literally underage. And the fact that the narrator saves up his money and asks for her hand suggests a quite respectable and above-board romance, not the secret abduction of a minor.

But admittedly the fact that the narrator can be arrested suggests that he has committed a crime, supporting your view.

I think this is the really interesting paradox of Springsteen, that he's fundamentally interested in the way people need hope and will find hope where none exists, and that leads him to have this deep interest in the kind of false hope that rises out of isolation and desperation

At the end of every hard-earned day people need some reason to believe.

I think this is the really interesting paradox of Springsteen, that he's fundamentally interested in the way people need hope and will find hope where none exists, and that leads him to have this deep interest in the kind of false hope that rises out of isolation and desperation

At the end of every hard-earned day people need some reason to believe.

One might even say that everybody's got a hungry heart

Re: secret seduction of minors, I have a good friend that cannot listen to "I'm On Fire" because she always hears the "little" part of "little girl" literally.

Springsteen did seem to have this theme on his mind a lot at the time, not just explicitly in stuff like the proto-"Highway" "Child Bride," but also "Nebraska" (the song) which is of course based on a true story with the same general subject matter (man runs off with teen/underage girl; Caril Ann Fugate was 14). We're a long way from the ebullient courtship at the center of "Rosalita," or even romance of "Thunder Road."

The 'genetic approach' of pointing to earlier material, which seems valid, would also have to bring in - is it 'Spanish Eyes'? - to a reading of 'I'm on Fire'.

In 'I'm on fire' it is logical not to take 'little girl' literally if we agree not to take 'daddy' literally.

See, I always took "daddy" literally, but "little girl" as more of a casual nickname, a la "baby" (which rarely literally means "baby").

I feel like there is no way to read I'm on Fire without acknowledging how menacing it is. I didn't feel that way when I was a little girl but as an adult, it takes a lot of mental gymnastics to reframe it as anything but "appealing predator" (which is a real thing, fwiw, and I never thought of Bruce as That Guy himself but the character is def based on a type of person who exists)

Lily how fun to see him play those lesser BitUSA songs!! Thank you for sharing.

It's totally menacing! The jittery guitar strums, the ominous synth wash -- he's like the guy in "State Trooper" before he kills the cop.

Lily's posts awesome as usual, though I slightly disagree about "Darlington County" being "intentionally boring," or that the narrator doesn't know how to tell a story – I could listen to that guy talk all night! Where the girls are pretty but they just want to know your name... Our pa's each own one of the World Trade Centers... he's a total character. If anything, the details of Wayne's arrest are probably not worth going into; who cares about Wayne, lol

My introduction to "Working On The Highway":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OCnF8BBsZmE

The thing about "daddy" and "little girl" is that you can say one or the other without it seeming particularly creepy, but put them together and you are suddenly very much in creep territory, which I think Bruce mines to ambiguously menacing effect in "I'm on Fire." I've always wondered if he was influenced there by Van Morrison's "He Ain't Give You None," which also puts those two words together and has the same "I don't know how old these people actually are but this whole thing is creepy as hell" vibe.

But "Working on the Highway" I think is very clearly about someone who is in prison for taking a minor across state lines; he took her to Florida and got arrested for it, and now he's on a road gang. I mean, it helps to know that it was originally called "Child Bride," but really the essentials of the story are still there in "Working on the Highway." If the song doesn't explicitly say it, I think that's just because the narrator doesn't quite get that he committed a crime. There's a disconnect in his mind the whole way through; he hears what he wants to hear and sees what he wants to see, and everything else gets elided. He talks to her father and her father says "She's just a little girl," and our narrator dismisses this as "We didn't have much to say," when in fact the dad is using the words "little girl" completely literally and is very clearly saying "Stay away from my child." He knows he got arrested, and he knows where he is, but there's no sense of cause and effect here; there's no sense that he did something bad and is reaping the consequences.

At the end of every hard-earned day people need some reason to believe.

But that's the thing that's so interesting, that I was trying to get at upthread - "Reason to Believe" is a super bleak song, just as "Atlantic City" is bleak, and they're both songs that are explicitly about the dangers of that kind of false hope. But Springsteen can also write something like "Badlands," or "Promised Land," where you know the narrator is kidding himself that his life is going somewhere good, and yet the song invites you to scream along with it in your car on your way to your shitty job, and there's a kind of double-exposed feeling of simultaneously knowing that it's a hopeless wish-fantasy and letting yourself be the narrator and believe in it for the space of the song. And then when he plays it in concert, and you're singing "I believe in a promised land," the sense of hope absolutely takes over; it's like singing a hymn.

Or take something like "Dancing in the Dark" - you can listen to alone in your room or dance to it in a stadium in a crowd of thousands, and it works both ways but very differently. One way you get depressed introspective restless FOMO, the other way you get fun party anthem, but neither one is the "real" meaning; they're just the two sides of the song.

Referring to one's SO as "my old man" or "daddy" or "my old lady" or mama" seems particularly 1970s.

Joni Mitchell did both ("My Old Man" and "you're a mean old daddy") on Blue. Jimi Hendrix sang "I'm going down to shoot my old lady." Madonna sang "You are my baby love." John Lennon sang both "Girl" and "Run for your life if you can, little girl."

Just a handful of examples but one could go on for hours. Ultimately up to you how you interpret "I'm on Fire."

I know this is totally introducing an extra-textual element to the analysis, but the object of grease-monkey Bruce's desire in the "I'm on Fire" video is definitely no little girl!!

But "Working on the Highway" I think is very clearly about someone who is in prison for taking a minor across state lines

It's his Chuck Berry song.