Bruce Springsteen - Classic or Dud ?

poor Boss, that sounds painful:(

oof.

Someone online mentioned that they “used to love Springsteen,” but then read his autobiography… and that ended that. What’s in the book that would cause such a turnaround(?)

Nothing I can think of. Some vague stuff about emotionally abusive tendencies that he had to unlearn in therapy, but nothing damning as far as I know. I would it expect any turnaround to be in the other direction; the book is so human and funny and weirdly relatable, I feel like you could walk away with a personal liking for Bruce where you hadn't had one before.

Just saw that the U Talkin' U2 to Me? people are doing a Springsteen podcast. I think I may have reached the stage in my Bruce fandom where listening to something like that just frustrates me because I'm not the one talking, but I'll probably give it a try anyway.

The only thing I can think of is that if you weren't already aware of how much self-conscious myth-making there was with the boss, the book makes it pretty plain. But there's no real dirt there that would turn off a fan.

omg i cannot fathom loving Bruce LESS after reading his book!

it’s written so well & he’s so candid about his mental health. it’s one of my favorite autobiographies

One thing that irks a friend of mine is that Bruce never says when or how he learned the piano! It's all guitar guitar guitar, but he's a fine piano player, most of Born to Run was written on piano, it would have been nice to learn about his introduction to playing piano.

I could see the book turning off people in the habit of looking at their favourite musicians as superhuman. Like my dad with "outlaw country" nonsense. I once showed him the "Guy Terrifico" movie, a great send-up of those tropes involving his beloved Kris Kristofferson. He was legitimately pissed off when I told him it wasn't real.

I tend to think all guitar players play a bit of piano, some better than others (i.e. Mick Ronson, Keith Richards, Lennon, Bernard Butler, etc.)

I think it was/is pretty common to have a piano around the house, or to know a bit of piano, certainly more than guitar. I think that's why Bruce (and others) know some piano. But for example, I saw Crowded House recently, and Neil Finn revealed it was more or less mandatory for everyone in the family to learn piano (specifically "Lara's Theme"), so that's his musical origin story. I assume Bruce learned piano well before he picked up a guitar, and if he didn't, that would have been good info, too.

Bruce's book is readable and likeable. I agree that no reasonable person would be deterred by it, probably the opposite.

Bowie and Edge play both reasonably well too.

Here's Bruce talkin' 'bout (and playing) piano on Howard Stern. He says he wrote all of "Born to Run" on his aunt's piano, but who taught him?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uZi79ulSp4E

Anyway, just for point of comparison, here's Bowie's "Life on Mars?" demo, which sounds pretty solid:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8R8mm-hWAv4

Not a lot of clips of him playing piano, though, but here is a clip that has him playing with Iggy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i2eB8f020Pc

The way I figure, if you're good enough to play live, in any context, you're good enough. Still, I'd love to know if they took lessons, did the family teach them, did they pick it up at home, etc.

Bowie played the piano on "Oh! You Pretty Things." On later records he plays more piano and keyboards than guitar.

I'm sure, though in the studio it's a little hard to know who is contributing exactly what. I mean, why would Bowie play much piano when he's got Mike Garson, you know? Same with Bruce and Roy.

The person on social media expanded on their comment re: the book. Without directly quoting (to keep it from being searchable) I'll sum up the complaints as involving: (a) the manner in which Bruce talks about the women in his life; and (b) his "playing favorites" with band members (including one who requests more money, and Bruce responds with a joke). This person feels that Bruce comes off as petty, unkind, and lacking in self-awareness.

Oh well – I'm interested in reading it (based on the comments above, which I certainly trust more)

I love that delivery of the word "wheels."

I think he talks somewhere about practicing piano at his aunt's house because he spent a lot of time hanging out there after school. I don't remember him saying who taught him, maybe the same aunt? Presumably he learned piano like a lot of kids do, but didn't associate it with rock music until after he'd learned the guitar and was playing in rock bands, so it just doesn't come into his formative "this is how I became a rock musician" story.

Bruce Springsteen has continued to recover steadily from peptic ulcer disease over the past few weeks and will continue treatment through the rest of the year on doctor's advice. With this in mind, and out of an abundance of caution, all remaining 2023 tour dates for Bruce Springsteen and The E Street Band will be postponed until 2024. Rescheduled dates for each of the 2023 shows, including those postponed earlier this month, will be announced next week, all taking place at their originally scheduled venues. When the new 2024 dates are announced, those unable to attend on the new date who purchased their tickets through official ticketing companies have 30 days to request a refund. All tickets for postponed performances will remain valid for the newly announced dates.
Said Springsteen: “Thanks to all my friends and fans for your good wishes, encouragement, and support. I'm on the mend and can't wait to see you all next year."

:(

Interview with David Sancious:

https://timmorse.com/david-sancious-interview

Iconoclassics is issuing Sancious & Tone's Dance of the Age of Enlightenment, a lost album that was supposed to be released by Arista back in the '70s. (This is the band Sancious formed with Ernest Carter after they both left the E Street Band.)

At the end of the interview, Tim Morse asks Sancious this:

I’ve heard you’ve been working with Bruce Springsteen - is there an album coming out with you on it?

Yeah, but I’m not sure when it’s coming out. When I was working on it I was told it should be released sometime before the end of this year. It’s the second volume of the soul music project that came out, called Only The Strong Survive. He called me in last November to do publicity for the first volume - Jimmy Fallon for four nights. We did four songs from that album, it was great fun. We had like a nineteen piece band, we had a horn section, a choir - it was brilliant, really cool.

How did you get involved in recording Volume Two?

I got a phone call saying that he was working on a volume two of this project, would you like to come into the studio? And I said, “Yes, absolutely.” I was there four or five days and we did about fourteen songs. Most of the songs were already recorded, it was just me and him and an engineer. Me overdubbing keyboards on a bunch of tunes. We finished that in March of this year, I don’t know when it will be released. But he said he’d very much like to do a tour with that ensemble from the Jimmy Fallon show.

So it’s possible you could be touring with Bruce next year?

It’s more than a possibility, I’m in. We’re both looking forward to it!

For no particular reason, I was just thinking about how much I like this outtake. I love the bridge: "I want to weep but I'm broke inside and the tears won't run/ I want to sleep but there ain't no dream and the sleep won't come."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aAEphLhWX0w

Didn't know that song, but yeah that's a great lyric

So apparently Bruce is planning to do a feature film about the making of Nebraska, which seems like not a great idea, but maybe he'll surprise us? I read the Warren Zanes book about Nebraska recently, and all the interviews with Bruce are just kind of meaningless filler, the kind of thing he trots out when he either doesn't remember or doesn't feel like saying anything personal.

disagree
this seems like a great idea
100% will watch

I hope you're right! I can imagine a version of a Nebraska doc that I would love. I'm just not sure if we'll get it from current Bruce, but I hope we do.

What could be so compelling that would warrant an hour plus doc? I thought he just wrote those songs in his kitchen or something and recorded them simply

I can see an interesting doc for diehards that would accompany a box set, but hard to imagine what this would look like that would play in a cinema.

Maybe we'll get Unsolved Mysteries-style dramatic enactments of the songs?

CHANNING TATUM IS...JOHNNY 99

I really need to get into this C5X 40558… I inherited it from my dad:

https://i.imgur.com/FXZGIYF_d.webp?maxwidth=1520&fidelity=grand

(he’s still alive, for avoidance of doubt)

Box set glory days

Nebraska remains the high-water mark for four-track cassette Portastudio recordings.

I would happily watch at least 45 minutes of someone interviewing Chuck Plotkin about Nebraska. He was my favorite part of the Darkness doc.

https://www.instagram.com/p/C20aKzMIGVW/

:(

RIP mrs springsteen <3

RIP.

One thing I'll always remember from his Broadway show:

My mother loves to dance. She grew up in the ‘40s … with the big bands and the swing bands, and that was a time when dancing was an existential act. She’s 10 years into Alzheimer’s and that’s taken a lot away from us. But the need to dance hasn’t left her. She can’t speak. She can’t stand. She can’t feed herself. But when she sees me, there is always a smile. Still a smile. And there’s still a kiss. And there’s a sound which she makes when she sees me. It’s just the sound, but I know it means ‘I love you.’ And when I put on Glen Miller and she starts moving in her chair … she starts reaching out for me, to take her in my arms once more and to dance with her across the floor.

It's probably the only truly positive thing I can think of when dealing with someone lost to Alzheimer's, like the one thing it can't take away.

I should say "when coping with someone lost to Alzheimer's"

The Tracy Chapman/ Luke Combs duet is reminding me of how much I love this video: the warmth, the mutual respect and friendship, the brilliant and subversive choice of verses for Chapman to sing, and the way Bruce turns away from the audience to sing the last "This is your hometown" directly to her.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KCYbnLNEPD4

I heard "Brilliant Disguise" in the supermarket this morning and almost just stood there to listen.

Kind of crazy that the original Wailers (i.e. Bob Marley, Peter Tosh, Bunny Livingston) did their first shows in the U.S. opening for SPRINGSTEEN in 1973 (sadly, the only tour they'd do before Tosh and Livingston split). Springsteen doesn't mention them at all in his book, but I was wondering, has he ever talked about them or at least say whether he caught their opening shows?

is it you baby
or 20% off chicken thighs

xp

xp That's funny, I just saw an "Upstairs at Max's Kansas City – BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN and THE WAILERS" ad posted on social media earlier

No Woman No Sex In A Car

Inspired by snagging two tickets to see Jon Brion here next week, did I ever post this recording of Brion and pals improvising a Springsteen show on New Year's Eve here some long time ago?

https://robby-blog.s3.amazonaws.com/2008/jon-brion-does-bruce-springsteen/jon-brion-springsteen-song.mp3

hey Springsteen thread, this is a really dumb + annoying question, but if anyone wants to team up with me to pitch a 33 1/3 book, let me know? They've already done one on Born in the USA, which kind of included Nebraska, but that's it as far as I know. I would be most interested in The River or The Wild, the Innocent and the E. Street Shuffle.

I have nothing to offer the team in terms of writing cred or musical knowledge, so I would not be a very sensible choice of co-writer, but just throwing this out there.

(also if anyone wants to write about the Vulgar Boatmen, lmk)

Springsteen is being sued for "negligent misrepresentation and unjust enrichment" due to the use of a 1968 Pontiac GTO on the cover of Only the Strong Survive. The car's owner, Louis A. Billotti (who later died of COVID):

was asked to bring his classic car, which is registered with the state as a historic vehicle, to Colts Neck, New Jersey, for a photo shoot on Oct. 18, 2021, the complaint said. He did not know who would be involved in the session, but Springsteen arrived, posed with the car and spent some time talking with Billotti about vintage cars.

At the end of the photo shoot, the photographer gave Billotti a check for $450, the court papers said. The words "car prop" were written in the memo field of the check.

Billotti was told by someone "acting with authority" that if the photos with his Pontiac were chosen for the album cover, he would receive a contract offering him terms of compensation, the amended complaint said.

A plaintive note: From the time of the photo shoot and through his hospitalization, the GTO owner "often spoke of the October photo shoot to several witnesses to nearly the day he passed and asked his son about whether the contract had come in the mail," the complaint said.