Bruce Springsteen - Classic or Dud ?

The last time I listened to this album, really listened to it, I was struck by its poetry. Which, I mean, duh, it's so self consciously poetic. But I'd gotten so used to the myth and pageantry behind everything that it'd been too long since I just listened and let it wash over me. I was reminded of, of all things, the Tears for Fears Songs from the Big Chair doc, where they marvel at how well these words written by kids stand up today. Richard Thompson says as much in his book, about iirc Meet Me on the Ledge, observing how strange it is to hear and still sing words written by yourself so long ago yet have no real idea of their inspiration or meeting. Bruce was college-age when he wrote much of the Born to Run album. How many of us wrote or made anything back then so full of meaning we'd still be proud of several decades later?

I’m still proud of the negative review of Mighty Aphrodite I wrote in the college paper.

Lol

It's now officially "sways."
https://www.app.com/story/entertainment/music/2021/07/18/bruce-springsteen-thunder-road-lyrics-marys-dress-sways-waves/8007408002/?utm_campaign=snd-autopilot

totally baffled that people would think or hear 'waves' but it seems like this is indeed a thing

that's what i always thought

Crazy that it turns out we could just ask Jon Landau and have him resolve this decades-long mystery. What else could we ask him?

is it Hungry Heart or Hungry Fart?

if it's officially sways bruce shd now change it to waves bcz it makes the song and the line better

then he shd place a nice sharp pin on landau's office chair bcz fvck that guy

What’s wrong w/Landau, is he disliked in BruceWorld? (I don’t know a lot about him)

nor do i

Landau's's fine.

I think the biggest source of confusion stems from it being both "waves" and "sways" in official documents (books, songbooks, etc.), which is weird. For example, I have the official songbook right here, and it's "waves":

https://i.imgur.com/Sn7C38a.jpg

Given how carefully they (esp. Landau) watch over stuff, it's so strange that they should ever have fucked up the lyrics to the first song, one of his best known, on possibly his most beloved album, for so many years.

That said, I agree it should be waves, like a flag. Trees sway, not dresses.

Meantime you'll all want to listen to this

https://slate.com/podcasts/hit-parade/2021/07/bruce-springsteen-billboard-chart-records-slate-music-podcast

Hmm, not sure I buy the stated premise. It's not like he gave away "Blinded" to Manfred Mann (who also covered one or two other Bruce songs). See also: Bowie (another early adopter), or, like, Allan Clarke from the Hollies, who released a cover of "Born to Run" in 1975 (!).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K9pQjDaxAKE

I think Bruce just had more songs than he knew what to do with. Also, "Fire" (I want to say originally intended for Elvis (RIP)), and "Because the Night" and other songs from the "Darkness" era, apparently just didn't fit the mood of the record, though of course Bruce had no problem incorporated both into his stellar live sets of the time. There were a handful of Bruce songs he tried again and again to get onto records ("The Promise," "Frankie," etc.), but they just didn't fit, either.

xp I can't dislike Landau after reading the part of Bruce's memoir where he has his first big depressive breakdown and calls Landau in a panic from across the country and Landau not only convinces him he needs therapy but immediately finds him a therapist and gets him to an appointment in a matter of days. Getting your severely depressed friend therapy from across the dang country is not easy (I've tried), and from what Bruce says in the memoir, it sounds like it pulled him out of a pretty scary place.

As for Landau's effect on Bruce's work, I'm inclined to think that if Landau hadn't turned up when he did, Bruce would have found himself someone else like him.

Allan Clarke from the Hollies, who released a cover of "Born to Run" in 1975 (!).

Clarke is quoted in the liners to the Hollies Epic Anthology that they'd received a large package of Springsteen publishing demos sent out in hopes of generating covers. He had just rejoined the band, but was still recording as a solo artist, so he saved "Born To Run" for himself and cut "4th of July, Asbury Park (Sandy)" with the band. They liked the songs, but thought they were too long, so each recording is trimmed down from the originals.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8S1t43j1I_g

I should really listen to the podcast before passing judgment, but it seems to me that for a while there - "Darkness" era, maybe "River" era as well - Bruce was really good at writing catchy but slightly derivative pop songs that didn't really express that much of his own personality or artistic vision. "Fire" is a good song but it's very much Bruce doing Elvis, and I think "live staple that's not on an album" is the perfect place for it.

With "Because the Night" he got close to writing a big pop hit that also sounded like him, but he couldn't finish it without help. There's a reason why "Hungry Heart" was the first of those songs that he kept for himself, imo; it's because it was the first one that really worked, as far as telling a Bruce Springsteen story efficiently within the framework of a super-catchy pop song.

So it seems to me that it's less about Bruce figuring out how to keep his hit songs for himself, and more about Bruce figuring out how to write hit songs that told the kind of stories he wanted. (And maybe allowing himself to write that kind of song, as well.)

otm about "Hungry Heart," that's why I ended up making it #1 on my ballot for the ILM Bruce poll — it distills Bruce-ness to a compact 3-minute single, from its loser/loner POV to its explicit Spectorisms. (Despite being a perfect single, still didn't crack the top 40.)

D'oh, I take that back — I was looking at its year-end chart ranking. "Hungry Heart" actually peaked at #5 on the top 40, his first top 10 hit. So, yes, a perfect single.

It's amazing how long it took him. Never had a number one! (Neither did CCR, iirc)

guys - you're not going to believe this but it's actually

Mary's dress weighs

:O

They've announced on FB a new concert film built from the No Nukes footage that'll be out later this year.

except that it turns out the show wasn't actually called "no nukes." it was "no newts." a salamander protest event. springsteen fans have been hearing it wrong for 40 years. this will be corrected in the movie and in all other materials going forward.

Mary's dress

http://www.slate.com/content/dam/slate/blogs/the_slatest/2015/02/26/the_dress/150226_SLATEST_TheDress-proof590.jpg.CROP.original-original.jpg

👋 🌊 👋

oh give me a break

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/22/books/barack-obama-bruce-springsteen-renegades-spotify.html?action=click&module=Well&pgtype=Homepage§ion=US%20Politics

Yanni's dress waves
Laurel's dress sways

Renegades = globally famous, incredibly successful rich people

For anyone who's paywalled, that NYT article says that Bruce and Obama are going to release a book based on their podcast.

Considering that the podcast itself was just the two of them reciting stories that they've already told in their memoirs, this opens up dizzying possibilities: book-podcast-book-podcast-book-podcast, on into infinity.

Leave it to Tom Morello to make "Highway to Hell" suck like something from the end credits to "Transformers 8." But I bet it would have worked with just Bruce and Eddie Vedder.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZuNlA6BB28E

yeah otm — esp the bridge! that part was super annoying. i’m into interpretation but that was just willful jagoffery, guitarwise.

I don't get how anyone can listen to Bon Scott AC/DC and think, 'you know what this needs - the echo and reverb from a Pink Floyd cover band'.

F'n wrong, next question.

Aww yeah - https://pitchfork.com/reviews/albums/bruce-springsteen-born-in-the-usa/

I luv Sam S.'s writing, but if anything I wish he had dwelled a little more on how great the album and its songs are. Too much historical "context" here (a common pitfall of these Sunday retro reviews).

Meanwhile, Bruce's daughter got a silver medal in Olympic horsey jumping.

I actually like that Fork piece a lot, esp. the way the whole thing hinges on "No Surrender," which is a good hook.

Is the conceit of the opening paragraph—suggesting that Bruce was concerned the message of the title track or cover art may be misinterpreted—actually true?

No, in fact iirc the opening graf says it *wasn't* either of those things.

I read it is saying they were concerns, but not his primary concern. If he wasn’t thinking of them, why mention them? Seems “anachronistic” or something.

I think he's just presenting it like "here are all the things you've heard about this album that have since become points of discussion, but none of those things are what was actually bugging Bruce."

Big Bruce should have got the tony soprano role

The pissing on the flag thing is dumb. Did anyone ever really think that? I always thought it was one of those fake urban legends.

(Misinterpreting “BITUSA” the song is dumb too, but at least I know that really happened)

Ugh "No Surrender" is the bane of the album for me. Should've swapped it out for "Pink Cadillac."

Should have swapped it out for "This Hard Land," which I would have put in place of "Working on the Highway" on side one, and maybe moved "Highway" to the start of side 2. "No Surrender" has always been a full-on "album track" to me.

I like BitUSA just fine, but if he wanted to, he could've saved his B-sides and released a solid follow-up just months later using those and other outtakes - "Frankie," "This Hard Land," "Pink Cadillac," "County Fair," "Shut Out the Light," "My Love Will Not Let You Down," "Janey, Don't You Lose Heart," "Wages of Sin," "Man at the Top," "Lion's Den," "Stand On It," "Johnny Bye-Bye"...that's more than enough.

That would work better imo than trying to sub any of those b-sides or outtakes into the album itself, since BITUSA has such an identifiable sound, and there's a lot more variety in the outtakes.

You've all heard my thoughts on "No Surrender" before; I've never understood why people think it's hopeful. I've always found it one of the more depressing songs on the album, a midlife crisis in song form. Frustration with your friend/lover/partner/whoever for getting older and not wanting the same things you both wanted together when you were younger, because it's easier to be angry at them than to acknowledge that you're getting older too.

I like the line about the energy of the album being a prolonged runner's high, but the rest of this essay doesn't really match my sense of what Born in the USA is.

I have a hard time mentally moving the tracks of BITUSA around because I feel like a lot of the songs come in pairs. Darlington County and Working on the Highway are a pair; so are Downbound Train and I'm on Fire - two Nebraska tracks that still sound like Nebraska - and then Bobby Jean and No Surrender. I've never seen that kind of sequencing anywhere else and it's one of the weird things about the album that I like so I wouldn't want to mess with it.

It’s obviously a helluva challenge to review a totemic album from the ‘80s… the two paragraphs in the middle where he’s talking about the album’s sound are great, but I think Sodomsky tried to find his way in via a side door and sort of got lost.

I agree, but I don't think it was necessarily a bad idea to focus on Steve's departure from the band, which I do find interesting because it's kind of a fault line in the middle of the album. I mean, one of the things that really stands out to me about Bitusa is how much recording time it covers, so that it ends up tracking a change in Bruce's songwriting over a couple of years. The album to me feels like half Nebraska - pure dangerous isolation - and half a struggle to break free from that kind of isolation; desperate energy and a sense of reaching out for any kind of human connection, however tenuous.

And I think Steve leaving is probably part of that change, from like a "let's psychoanalyze Bruce!" standpoint. For one thing, it means the collapse of any illusion that the band is just going to be a family forever. If you're a naturally family-oriented guy and you've been relying on your coworkers to fill that space in your life, that would be a fairly jarring wake-up call.