Bruce Springsteen - Classic or Dud ?

I like your posts a lot, Lily Dale, I just don't have quite your erudition.

The more I listen to "Ghosts" the more I like it.

I was thinking about what you said upthread, VG, about Bruce not being afraid to just write a song about how much he loves his friend, and realizing that one reason this feels so much like classic Bruce to me is that he's doing that thing he used to do all the time where he just refuses to make any distinction between the language of romantic love and the language of friendship. "Your love and I'm alive" is so Bruce and I love it.

And I like that he includes himself as one of the ghosts. Makes me think about how odd it must be to live with all these reminders of what he used to look and sound like when he was young, and what it must feel like to try to inhabit songs that he wrote as a very young man. I think writing about old age works well for Bruce; he's always been so good at writing about his anxieties, which are also our anxieties, and while he's been shielded by fame and money from a lot of the stresses of everyday life, the stress of aging and loss and trying to make your peace with it all is something he shares with the rest of us.

thanks lily, this reminded me to listen to "ghosts"

it's fuckin great??

the posts on it here have been really thoughtful, and hearing it made me realize that, even if it's not my favorite recent vintage bruce song, it feels like classic bruce in the way it tells a story both through its lyrics and through its arrangement. "count the band in and kick in the overdrive / [music cuts out] by the end of the set we leave no one alive" is EXTREMELY effective

lily otm about bruce’s refusal to distinguish between romantic love vs friendship love, it is probably the thing I love most about this song! and what I love about his older songwriting in general too.

also after listening a few more times I love how triumphant “ghosts” is
it’s very GHOSTS: MOUNT UP lol

it feels like classic bruce in the way it tells a story both through its lyrics and through its arrangement.

Agree, and I was thinking: it's also classic Bruce in that it adds to the ongoing origin story he started telling at least as early as Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out and has been returning to ever since - the one where he starts out as a lonely rootless alien thing drifting alone through cities at night and then puts a band together and meets Clarence and makes his band into a family and himself into a human being. It could be a bookend to Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out: from "I'm on my own/ and I can't go home" all the way to "I'm out here on my own/ and I'm coming home" - the Big Man is gone and he's on his own again but the sense of belonging remains.

I'm back at THE RIVER.

'Wreck on the Highway': I like the ending, how he (so predictably and characteristically) describes 'watching my baby as she sleeps', then doesn't rhyme it, singing that he's thinking about ... 'a wreck on the highway'.

And then the false ending or extra outro.

I don't think I have the love for 'Drive All Night' that others do.

I love Wreck on the Highway. So restrained, and so devastating. Something very powerful about that idea of just casually crossing paths with someone else's tragedy, and it leaving a mark on you even though it's not really part of your life. Also the only Bruce song I've made my dad listen to that got an actual "that's good" out of him as opposed to polite tolerance.

Excellent!

Think he sings about a 'state trooper knocking on the door' - ahead of his song 'State Trooper'. I love Bruce's specific references to the authorities, police, etc.

Listening today, I also thought this song was as Country (& Western) as that LP gets.

There are several fatalistic "it could have been me" sort of death fantasies in Bruce's catalog, especially that era and some of those aforementioned songs. State Trooper, Stolen Car, Wreck on the Highway...

I like how indirect the storytelling is. All you know at first is that there was an accident, you don't know how much time passed or what happened in between the man asking for help and the ambulance arriving. And then the narrator starts thinking about the man's wife getting the news, and you realize for the first time just how bad it was.

"Ghosts" is great. First thing from him I've heard in a long time that has that big emotional "lift" in the chorus that to me is sort of key to Springsteen.

I could even see it sticking around in the setlist (if tours still exist) in subsequent tours.

Like the details - Les Paul, Fender Twin etc he's lost that over the years.

Only thing I don't like is the intro drums, feels very "100 Royalty Free Big Rock Drum Loops" but i'm not a big fan of Max in general.

production as always in late period is grey, flat, "professional" in the way that modern rock records sound like shit. a windmill i can't stop tilting at, but the ship has sailed, anyway 10th Avenue Freeze Out autoplayed after and sounded like the world opened up in my headphones in comparison.

How many times in Bruce's work does a man sit up at night while his woman sleeps, and the moonlight shines through the window, and he thinks about [betrayal / love / being a cautious man / God's grace / Elvis Presley / a wreck on the highway] ?

Variant: he runs out of the house at night, through the woods, across the highway, and collapses, his shirt soaked from sweat, and finds himself outside his old house, and looks up, with a realisation about [betrayal / loss / his father / God's grace / a downbound train]

fwiw I heard Letter to You on the radio the other day and it sounded great.

xpost you left out the part where he puts on/takes off his jacket - a key moment in all Bruce's dream sequences and midnight epiphanies.

How many times in Bruce's work does a man sit up at night while his woman sleeps, and the moonlight shines through the window, and he thinks about [betrayal / love / being a cautious man / God's grace / Elvis Presley / a wreck on the highway] ?

Heh, now I'm imagining a Bruce song where he thinks about all of these at once.

One of the many great things about Dylan's Springsteen parody is that it totally ends this way: "Sometimes I think of Tweeter/ sometimes I think of Jan/ sometimes I don't think about nothin' / but the Monkeyman."

I think I read in Michael Gray's BOB DYLAN ENCYLOPEDIA that that was a Boss parody!

I don't think I would have realised otherwise.

Well, It's tricky, because the music doesn't sound at all like Bruce. It sounds, of course, like the Traveling Wilburys. But the lyrics are hilarious. Bruce and Bob are friends, or at least as friendly as anybody can be with Dylan. I wonder what Bruce thought of that? I've always wondered why he's never performed it, which would be hilarious too.

Sometimes I wonder if it makes Bruce sad that Tom Petty got to be in the Traveling Wilburys and he didn't.

I agree, that song doesn't sound like Bruce. In a way, it feels less like a straight parody and more more like a complicated in-joke for Springsteen fans. He bypasses the really obvious jokes - cars, girls, factory jobs, dads - and goes straight to the more obscure stuff, like the trans character, the sister, the "lonely guy thinkin' baout things" ending, and all those b-side song titles.

Sometimes I wonder if it makes Bruce sad that Tom Petty got to be in the Traveling Wilburys and he didn't.
I'm not sure I'd want to hear Jeff Lynne's signature on Springsteen's music. To be fair, it worked very well on (most of) Petty's Full Moon Fever where, on a modest scale, it fit the whimsical and occasionally wistful nature of those songs. Otherwise, his sound is usually way too glossy for my tastes.

no room for a gruff voice in the traveling wilburys, though that would have been a funny addition.

Yeah I don't think Bruce would have meshed well w/the Wilburys at all, for many reasons. But it is kind of funny that three of his musical heroes formed a group with another heartland rocker and then made fun of him on their first album.

handle me with CAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRE ohhhh aaaa ohhhhhhh oooooo

unrelated: I love all the footage of Bruce in Roy Orbison’s “Black and White Night”
He looks so genuinely excited to be there & to be playing the songs, like he’s turn & grin at whoever’s standing next to him with a “can you BELIEVE this shit?” look on his face
he looks like a little kid at times <3

Absolutely. My friend and I find it hilarious that he was ever in a guitar duel with James Burton, but you can tell that Bruce truly understands and relishes his role on that stage.

I'm not sure I'd want to hear Jeff Lynne's signature on Springsteen's music.

Yeah, I can't even imagine what a gated snare would sound like on a Springsteen song.

there aren't any gated snares on born in the u.s.a (the album)?

(I was joking)

That childlike joy is one of Bruce's most endearing qualities imo. I love the bit in his autobiography where he gets to rehearse with the Rolling Stones and he can barely contain his fanboy glee and there are SO MANY CAPITAL LETTERS.

lol yes that was great

What's great is that Bruce reveals that same childlike enthusiasm whenever he pops on stage with anyone, from b listers like Southside Johnny or Joe Grushezcky (however you spell it, from Pittsburgh) to random bar bands

Yeah, I can't even imagine what a gated snare would sound like on a Springsteen song.
Clever, but it takes a lot more than a gated snare to make a record sound like a Jeff Lynne production. (thank god)

fwiw I may have mentioned it, but Bob Clearmountain has said the heavily gated BitUSA era snare was all Bruce's idea, so maybe he would have been all in on Lynne.

Of course. FWIW, this came up during Tracks, but the mixing engineers went on record at the time saying Springsteen loved bathing his vocal in echo and giving it a humongous sound, something he completely reversed by 1998 when they remixed those recordings and stripped out the reverb per his request as he now wanted a more "personal" sounding mix.

Besides the squashed, far-mic'd drum kit, Lynne likes a lot of acoustic guitars and not much bass, typically compressed to hell, and then you have the way he mixes those distinctive harmonies that are probably the most grating thing about his records. Above all, the key is the way everything is compressed (reportedly done with Universal Audio solid state limiting). Springsteen was making shiny, pop-friendly records in 1987, but they didn't sound nearly as synthetic.

(to be fair, a lot of people probably love that sound - Harrison, Petty et al wouldn't have sold so many records then if they didn't)

I finish with THE RIVER again. Still a bemusing LP, with so much seeming filler, but good songs also, and the title track a masterpiece that could stand for his whole career.

I go on to WORKING ON A DREAM for the first time in years. The quality of this record is so high. Songs like 'life itself' and 'good eye' take the Boss to a different realm. 'This life' with its Beach Boys approach and unusual chords, and lines about looking through a telescope! ... This feels to me like the greatest thing he's done since TUNNEL OF LOVE - save perhaps WESTERN STARS. No-one ever mentions it - maybe because, I always say, Bruce's consistency is just so high, people take it for granted.

October 23rd baybee 😃

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-news/bruce-springsteen-letter-to-you-date-1066105/

Reviews are popping up and the ones I've seen have been very positive.

OK, first song is one of the best things he's done since "Tunnel of Love" imo.

Four or five tracks in and I think I'm calling it: barring some sort of precipitous nosedive, this is his best since "The Rising," by a long shot, and probably better. Seems to have finally cracked the production problem, too, because the album even sounds pretty great.

OK, "Power of Prayer" is not necessarily bad, but it's not really my thing, either. Immediately bounces back with "House of a Thousand Guitars," though.

Final (first) reaction. The album's great, but it's also the start-to-finish Bruciest album he's done in a long time, which I can imagine some will find exhausting. Factor in the three old songs and it's really doubling (tripling) down on his own mythology/mortality. There's a sense of self-awareness to this album that finds him finally giving in to the temptation to ... be himself? Rather than asking "what would Bruce/E Street Band do?" and then doing something different, this album is him leaning hard into his strengths from the perspective of an old guy whose friends are all dying and leaving him behind to carry the weight of their souls.

I didn't like "Power of Prayer" either, it's too corny.

But the album starts off great. It got less interesting as it went on, but that's just after one listen. Maybe it'll grow on me, so we'll see. I started listening in the late '90s, and no newly released Springsteen album (not counting archival releases) has ever won me over that quickly. I wound up liking Wrecking Ball, Magic, Devils and Dust and half of The Rising, and it took some time.

Gah, I wasn't planning to try to listen to it before the release date, but the suspense is driving me nuts.

I can't say I'm a fan of "Songs for Orphans" (which I didn't know about - it was written in 1971 and a publishing demo apparently circulates), but except for "Power of Prayer," the other ten track are hanging together pretty well for me.

xpost Do it!

Listening again, those first four songs culminating in a powerhouse like "Janey" are just unstoppable. But "The Power of Prayer" ... I just can't take it, it's too corny, and throws off my listening experience. But then it pretty much bounces back. I still think it's his best band album since "The Rising" - that's the easiest part. Whether it's as good as or better than "The Rising," I'll have to think about it.

Re: "Orphans," several different recordings actually circulate. What's probably the demo does nothing for me, but two live performances are very different and much better IMHO. All with just Springsteen on an acoustic:

From Springsteen's very first radio performances, still the earliest circulating 'live' material with what would become the E Street Band (though again it's just Bruce on this song). From WBCN-FM on January 9, 1973.

From the Devils and Dust tour, Nov. 22, 2005, this is an official upload from nugs.net and it's actually the first official release of this song ever (dated March 1, 2019). The whole show is up on nugs.net for purchase. Reportedly the 1st (and only) time he's played it in concert since the early 70's