Bruce Springsteen - Classic or Dud ?

Actually, I do love the Seeger album as much as any of his stuff.

well, that could be hyperbole, but I like it a lot.

Oh, that one's great, yeah.

And Springsteen produced it himself! Just like Dylan produces himself. I wonder if Springsteen produced all of his later albums himself if they would be better. Brendan O'Brien might be right for Pearl Jam, but really did Bruce no favors.

It's actually him and Landau, just like all the classics.

I bet he finds self-producing to be a shitload of work and he, Scialfa and the kids are better off outsourcing it.

I'm a big Glen Campbell fan so I love love love Western Stars.

yeah i like it a lot

I like a lot of it but find it really depressing.

I only listened to it once ...

I like the title track, Tucson Train, Hello Sunshine and Stones, don't mind the rest. But he sounds even more depressed than usual on it, and it bums me out.

The Rising was my first Springsteen album, just out of university, so it has a special place for me, even the bad tracks. “let’s be friends” still makes me grin like an idiot. “nothing man” is one of my favourites in the “Bruce does lonely synth ballad” genre

But I could give or take everything he’s released since except the Seeger album and a couple tracks on Magic.

I love him though, obviously

More importantly, having seen him lots and lots, there are very few, if any, blatant beer line songs (Waiting on a Sunny Day, maybe, though I liked that one when Rising came out), even when the set is heavy on new stuff. Even the Working on a Dream tour was pretty good, even if it was packed with his weakest material that I don't want to see performed again.

I would love to see him live. Up until a few months ago, I liked his music but hadn't really paid that much attention - hadn't listened to half his classic albums, had no idea that his concerts were supposed to be something special. Then, under the pressure of first-year teaching burnout, I listened to Nebraska and immediately had to immerse myself in all things Bruce. I'm kicking myself now for not even trying to see him when he was touring.

He hasn't announced any sort of slowdown has he? I'd think the next studio project has to be E-street?

Glad I got to catch the Magic tour. I'll probably travel to catch the band once more.

Liking Western Stars a lot in the meantime

Yeah, he's saying he wants to make another record with the E-Street Band and then tour, but as far as I know he hasn't finished writing the songs for it, so it could be a while.

if you are a fan & haven’t seen him live, i highly recommend it if you ever get the chance. one of the best performers around.

Of all time, really.

I predict, based on a few factors, that he and the E Street band will tour sometime in late 2020, 2021 at the absolute latest, but I would wager 2020 and also that it could be among the last of his band barnstormers. They're all getting older, and to be honest the last couple of times I saw Springsteen live were the first couple of times he remotely showed his age. Singing was rougher, stage demeanor slightly more subdued. Great shows, though!

Tbf the Stones are a few years older, but they have been sticking to pretty safe 2 hour sets. I'm not sure if Springsteen would do that.

It's just so different to any other stadium show I've seen. I have no idea how he creates such intimacy, to the point where even in the company of thousands, you feel he's singing to you, talking to you, playing the songs for you. You perceive a generosity, a degree of commitment and gratitude towards the audience in his performance that I never experienced from anyone else. And I suppose making you feel this is part of the show, I think? But it is still a lovely thing.

Way back when, in the Remnick New Yorker profile, they describe him rehearsing the show, beat for beat, in an empty arena, right down to some of the banter. Now, of course a lot of the shows remain relatively loose or spur of the moment, but I think he recognized that there are at the very least basic criteria that must be met for a show of that size and scope to work (esp. one without light shows or fancy sets or whatever doodads most arena acts lean on; for sure Pearl Jam, another band known for epic sets, spontaneity and lack of special effects, took more than its share of notes from Vedder buddies Bruce). I assume for Bruce in recent years there has also perhaps been a recognition that even his unfathomable energy, enthusiasm and charisma may have its limits as he gets older. It's part of what he describes in the Broadway show, iirc, as "the magic trick."

Early on in the stadium days he talked to Bono apparently, comparing notes on “how the fuck do you reach a crowd that size?” But even so he dispenses with a lot of the props that U2 still use. There’s a lot of old school gospel preacher in what he’s doing imo - reaching out physically to individuals, imploring the crowd, sharing stories, or just that alchemy of somehow uniting everyone behind a feeling

Heh, Bruce was well accustomed to playing stadiums when U2 was just barely out of the theaters.

The incredible thing about Bruce is that it has never been about the light show, it has always been about him. He's the light show.

exactly

ugh lol i had that bono/bruce thing around the wrong way - mr veg told it to me & i got it mixed up! hee

Bono's rock hall induction speech was really good, iirc.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r96COJZ5nnU

Bruce returned the favor later when he inducted U2, which was pretty good, too.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a0X2jAr79io

I love the fans at Bruce’s shows - that really helps.

Obviously every concert is full of fans but Bruce shows tend to have the most “pinch me, I can’t believe I’m here, this is awesome” fans in my experience (maybe the Pet Shop Boys were close). They’re just super excited and happy, whereas a lot of fan audiences can be indifferent or keep themselves to themselves. That helps the whole communal-but-intimate vibe.

Also at one Rising gig Bruce threw his setlist in the air and it literally landed at my feet - amazing moment.

The one time I saw Bruce around the time of magic I sat behind a guy who screamed shut up liberal when bruce started talking about George w Bush.

and I love it when some of the stuff I’m indifferent to on record suddenly sounds amazing live (I think “long walk home” was a magic tour highlight, for example). He seems better than most at lifting B/B minus material live

Xp lol 2008

Bruce shows tend to have the most “pinch me, I can’t believe I’m here, this is awesome” fans in my experience

Well that's probably true. But, to be honest, I think it goes beyond the fans. Shows are actually awesome and when I was there I really couldn't believe it was happening. It was like scoring a goal in the world cup finals, all the time, for three hours and a half.

Fun article by Wesley Stace in the New York Review of Books about Springsteen concerts and how Springsteen creates that illusion of a small space. Apparently he douses himself in water to enhance the droplets-of-sweat-flying-off-him-in-all-directions look.

https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2019/09/21/springsteen-at-seventy/

That's a great essay, thanks. I've seen my share of Bruce dousing himself with water (what better way to show off his excellent hair transplant, lol), but the dude does sweat a ton. He famously had his guitar tech waterproof his Telecaster, so that he won't get electrocuted. When I saw him play Wrigley Field a couple of years ago, it rained pretty hard the second night, but he was the only member of the band who didn't take shelter and spent the duration of the storm out with the fans.

He famously had his guitar tech waterproof his Telecaster, so that he won't get electrocuted.

Maybe Nils and Garry et al. don't sweat as much? For sure their hair game (along with Steve, of course) means staying out of the rain and/or wearing hats.

Speaking of which, I'd never seen this story before:

3. There’s another reason for the bandannas.
As a teenager, Van Zandt was involved in a car accident in which he was thrown through the windshield. The damage to his scalp made it impossible for hair to grow back in certain places. After wearing hats for years, he switched to babushkas, and they’ve been his trademark fashion statement ever since.

!?

I vividly remember the white suits and fedoras you first wore in the E Street Band.

I never liked that look. I went through a windshield somewhere in the Seventies (laughs) — I don’t even remember how — and my hair never grew in right. So I was wearing the hats. Then I switched to the bandannas. I just didn’t feel like wearing a wig all the time. Luckily, in rock & roll, it’s looked on as an eccentricity. If I was a Supreme Court judge, I’d be in trouble.

For the record:

Over the years, Petillo modified the guitar quite extensively in his basement shop in Neptune, New Jersey, adding his patented triangular Precision Frets, changing out the pickups and waterproofing the guitar with stainless steel and titanium hardware and silicone gaskets for reliability in the sweat-soaked environment that is a Bruce Springsteen show. “You could play (it) underwater,” Petillo explained in a 1984 interview.

Whole story of the Esquire is here: https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/bruce-springsteens-favorite-guitar-the-story-behind-one-of-a-kind-fender-119846/

Ah, ok, that makes more sense. I thought it was something like, “Hey, make it so I can play this in the rain. Don’t worry about the others, they can get umbrellas or something.”

That's fascinating. I actually had no idea Bruce always used the same guitar. Funny considering that he seems to put on a different voice for every album.

Tom Petty and Mike Campbell had an old Tele they used on every album too.

I don’t remember what he said to do it, but I saw Springsteen solo in an arena in 2005, playing almost none of the hits, and somehow setting the expectations for the audience so it wasn’t just people constantly yelling out for the big ones.

^^ only big single in that set was “Tougher Than the Rest” and he closed with a Suicide cover.

He did do hits that tour, but he often radically reworked them. Look up the spooky banjo "I'm On Fire," for example.

Happy Birthday, Bruce! 70!!!!!

Some good stuff here: https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/seven-thoughts-on-bruce-springsteen-his-70th-birthday-888688/

I particularly liked this take:

1995’s The Ghost of Tom Joad stands as the most prescient album in Springsteen’s catalog.

At the time, he faced widespread skepticism for writing a group of songs centered on the cracks in American prosperity and the stories of migrants from Mexico. Didn’t he know that we were in the middle of an economic boom? But Springsteen saw those tales as connected to the ones he’d been telling since 1978’s Darkness on the Edge of Town, and he couldn’t have been more right. As Rick Perlstein argues in his book Nixonland, the doomy decline of the Seventies never really ended in the U.S. — the boom years in the Eighties and Nineties were just masks that would fall off. Springsteen, for one, saw through them.

I also liked Lucy Dacus's essay in Vanity Fair about Dancing in the Dark:

In the second verse, he says, “I check my look in the mirror / I want to change my clothes, my hair, my face.” I had never heard a man express discontent with his appearance before. I thought low self-esteem was reserved for young women like myself and my friends, sometimes it felt like only I knew what it felt like to feel wrong in my own body. Did this man suck in his stomach? Did he compulsively cut his hair and garments on a whim? He opened a window for all of us to watch him, tearing around his bedroom in dissatisfaction. And with that, every bedroom in the world opened up to me. The song sent my mind floating above my whole neighborhood, and the next and the next. Roofs across the city lifted like lids off of pots, allowing me to peer into countless rooms of people pulling at their faces in the mirror. I was not alone.

https://www.vanityfair.com/style/2019/09/lucy-dacus-happy-birthday-bruce-springsteen

She gets at something that fascinates me about Springsteen's lyrics, which is the way his relentless self-examination somehow comes across as empathy rather than self-absorption.

Well, that's being an Everyman for you.

He's doing a concert movie of the new songs in October -- sounds a little like the (really good) short film he did from Asbury Park a few Christmases ago.

He's performing with a 30-piece orchestra at his own barn, which fits with my thinking that he might tour this one by performing with city symphony orchestras...

I think he did the movie because he already said he's not touring this album.

I pretty much wept through this, but mostly because of Pete:

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