Bruce Springsteen - Classic or Dud ?

The two songs that stood out the most were "Worlds Apart" and "Paradise", I was surprised by how well the former worked. I would definitely start by cutting "Mary's Place" and "Let's Be Friends".

That said, the COVID era had me cringing every time Bruce and Little Steven got close on the mic.

I felt the same way! Def. weird but inevitable to see him with, yeah, no original members on stage with him, but he's been pretty subtle about the way he's handled that over the years. For that matter as used to I am at seeing him with a bunch of people on stage, it's easy to forget that for most of his career it's just been him and five or six other guys, and wild to think that during his formative years it was just him on guitar.

I also played The Rising not too many months ago and found it overstuffed, but no more than it's always felt that way to me. I've never minded Sunny Day, and actually found that song a strange salve in the post 9/11 times. I also listened to the new one on headphones for the first time, and it sounds great that way. (Midway through "Janey" I kind of guiltily wished the current band and producer would re-record "Darkness," as apocryphal as that would be.)

I've been in big Bruce space because I also got around to his book, which was a lot better than I expected.

still releasing legendary shows too - https://live.brucespringsteen.net/live-music/0,25780/bruce-springsteen-the-e-street-hammersmith-odeon-london-uk-11-24-1975-mp3-flac-or-online-music-streaming.html

ohhh i love that Hammersmith show

they're mostly the same set as the first Hammersmith Odeon release (6 days earlier) but this one is so much more... triumphant?

I blame WXRT for ruining this album for me.

It always drove me nuts when the XRT DJs would talk about their legendarily huge library and still overplay the same songs over and over.

I think I'm going to take the plunge and buy myself the '75-'85 live box next. Don't think I've heard it since my parents played their original copy back when it came out. I used to be fascinated by that box.

I've generally avoided it, especially now that you can legally get great sounding version of all or most of the unedited source shows.

Fair, I'm not sure I'm ready to jump whole hog into full shows at this point and I like the idea of a compilation of those years.

The 11/24 Hammersmith Odeon show is surprisingly MUCH better than the one they released years ago. Too bad it's not the one they filmed, but who knows, the cameras may have been one reason why the earlier show was noticeably inferior (like it made them more self-conscious).

After a long break, I thew on the new one yesterday with my personal tweaks, and it really sounded great. It really felt like it lived up to the subsequent hype (Greil Marcus gushed "an ’80s or even ’70s Springsteen album with a decades-older self-questioning voice — the best of both worlds") but with the big caveat that I dropped tracks 6 & 7, which I'm reluctant to revisit.

I couldn't really get into the live box set for some reason, but I've gotten really into downloading full shows lately. I think I need to hear the live songs as part of a set to really appreciate them. I'm partway through the Hammersmith show right now, and so far it's great.

I also took a break from the new album and then listened to it again today, sort of nervously, and I agree, I think it holds up. The only tracks I skip are #5 and #7. And to my great surprise, my favorite songs from it are all new ones: "Burnin' Train," "Ghosts," "Rainmaker," "One Minute You're Here." The old songs are good, but they're not propping up the album.

The live set is of course solid, but I really do think of Bruce live recordings as entire epic sets, which have their of own energy, rhythms and surprises.

the live box was the first Bruce tape I had when I was a kid, so those versions of the songs are definitive for me

The live 75/85 box is one of my favorite things Bruce has put out.

Speak of the devil, previously released or no this is what it's all about:

8 of the finest performances from Bruce Springsteen's 1978 tour are now available in a limited, collectible box set. This 24-CD set contains all five of the legendary radio broadcasts on the Darkness tour.

Release date: February 1, 2021
Pre-order now: https://t.co/riu86xUY3h pic.twitter.com/LqnoB14RFX

— Bruce Springsteen (@springsteen) December 18, 2020

I just watched the "Letter to You" doc/film and ... eh. I enjoyed bits and pieces of it, and it looks good, but it's pretty full of itself as anything more than a gloried promo.

Hilariously, but a nice touch, if you already own the CDs you can apparently just order the empty box for $15!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D5spzEx-wMo

I have finally properly heard LETTER TO YOU, and must properly read the detailed response.

My own feeling:

Bruce Springsteen could literally release an hour of himself reading the NJ telephone book, and I'd listen. So, I like it.

But - I find this LP rather predictable, four-square, solid with almost no swerves, diversions, flourishes - into different time signatures, different melodies, styles, arrangements ... It's as if he has written a bunch of songs in the same rhythm, with similar chords, similar melodies, and recorded them in a similar way.

Isn't that what you expect from him? Well - MAGIC, WORKING ON A DREAM, WESTERN STARS all had more musical surprises, I think. Maybe the solidity might be what one wants from Bruce. But I think I want a bit more.

Songs I quite like so far: the opening track 'one minute you're here'; 'last man standing'; 'if I was the priest' with its bid to be 1973 Boss again.

agree that it's not adventurous but at the same time while I appreciated the production on western stars I think the songwriting and lyrics on this so so much better, western stars felt all dressed up and no place to go

I think one maybe not revelation but still relevant aspect of the album is that even if his songs aren't always up to his past standards (I mean, high bar, right?) he still sounds really good for a 70-year old. I think from the very start he's put a lot of thought into what he wants to do, and to be honest thinking *too* much has been his crutch since the mid-'70s. That's surely why so many songs were left off his albums for others to record, or just shelved entirely, how he ended up with literally albums and albums worth of stuff, much of it as good as his best stuff. And even his best stuff, like "Born to Run" (the song), he famously sat on it for six months, not sure what to do with it. "Nebraska," he tried relentlessly to better the home recording until he gave up and released it more or less as is (one of the few real risks of his career). "Hungry Heart," his first real hit, he had to be talked out of giving away. "Born in the USA" I think was the last time they all recorded live in a room until this new one, and even that album featured marathon sessions, take after take after take, with lots of strategic stuff on his mind.

Fast forward to "Tunnel of Love," which barely used any other musicians, or the breakup of the E Street Band, which probably happened because he was struggling with what to do next. Around that time he was doing all those one-offs, like "Missing" or "Lift Me Up" or "Streets of Philadelphia," which are all incredible. Since reuniting the E Street Band he's been kind of stiff and searching for something that clicks while still somewhat playing it safe, with a couple of rare exceptions, like the "Seeger Sessions" or his solo tour, which found him reinterpreting his catalog in often really cool ways. I think to be honest it's really hard to write good songs, especially when you're not leaning on a genre crutch (like country music, say, where the style and production can do a lot of the heavy lifting for you). I wish he had better lyrics, but that's weird, too, because he's such a good writer. His essays, speeches/introductions, book, stage script, it's all really quite good, and often profound. Why he can't often port that over to his music is a mystery.

xp
I see what you mean, but like ums I find this lyrically much stronger than most (all?) of his recent albums - more vivid, more convincing, and more consistent. On Western Stars, I kept running into lines that made me cringe and took me out of the song. That's been an issue for me with a lot of his recent work - either a persistent lyrical vagueness, or lyrical weak places that let down an otherwise good song.

This album, I can listen to in the same way I listen to The River - letting all of the solid bar-band music carry me along, and each time getting a little more out of the lyrics and the singing. And I do see variety in this album, actually - not coming from the band, so much as from the sense that a lot of eras of Bruce's songwriting are jammed in here side by side. To me, that musical predictability works for the album because it provides a through-line; when you've got 22-year-old Bruce and 70-year old Bruce and elements of River and BITUSA and Magic-era Bruce all in the same album, it helps to have it all sounding like the E. Street Band at their most solid and dependable.

That said, I could use one less song about George Theiss, as "Last Man Standing," "Ghosts," and "I'll See You In My Dreams" all cover essentially the same lyrical ground.

I wish I could hear the great quality, eg lyrical, that you do here!

The lyrics have mostly disappointed me.

I find: a positive: most of the songs have some kind of recognizable, distinct piece of melody.

Less positive: they tend *only* to have this one bit of melody.

'House of a Thousand Guitars' is a clear example, but it seems pervasive.

Again, the lack of *rhythmic* variation also bothers me a little. Even a couple of waltzes could have helped with that.

Josh: he sounds good for a 70-year-old -- absolutely -- this was my claim about 200 posts ago upthread! That he was the most consistent person in pop history and a treasure just for carrying on this far, this well.

I love "Janey Needs a Shooter" so much, probably a top-10 song of the year for me. I know it's an older composition but it's still wild to hear Bruce owning the shit out of bands practically half his age like The Killers and Walkmen.

I don't think the lyrics reach the peaks they did in the seventies and eighties, but I do think they're fairly solid. (The exceptions being the song Letter To You, which I think is lyrically very weak, and also, to a lesser degree, Last Man Standing and House of A Thousand Guitars.)

A few examples of things I like:
The simplicity and vividness of the images in One Minute You're Here - the approaching train, the two friends walking arm in arm down the midway, the very Springsteeny red river on the edge of town, the ache of age in "on the muddy banks I lay my body down, this body down." I like that apart from the title phrase, it's all showing, no telling.

I think he hits a nice balance with the sexual imagery in "Burnin' Train" - it's thematically not that different from "Because the Night" and "Cover Me," but it's more graphic without being so graphic it's embarrassing.

Rainmaker - really, I like everything about this song. The central argument, the anger, the perceptiveness about people needing something to believe in, the line "in a burning field unloading buckshot into low clouds."

Ghosts - I mentioned this already upthread, but the refusal to distinguish between love and friendship, and the central idea of his ghosts bringing him to life, both ring very true to me and feel like classic Bruce.

Looking back at all that, I see that everything I like about this album essentially comes down to something I recognize - something that makes me go, "Yup, that's Bruce!" And that's partly, I think, because I haven't had a lot of those moments lately. I know not everyone feels that way, but to me, The Rising is where the personality coming through Bruce's writing changes, or effaces itself, or something; where he starts to feel less direct, less real, less vulnerable, and more like a successful, middle-aged Famous Artist who I don't like nearly as much. Sure, I have criticisms of the writing and the music and whatever, but what it really boils down to is "I don't recognize this guy."

The Bruce who wrote Letter to You? I recognize him. And so part of what I feel, when I listen to this album, is delight at realizing that all his anxieties and obsessions and preoccupations and loves haven't gone away, that the guy who used to write "the world is terrible so let's have sex" songs and love songs to his lost friends and songs about the price of false hope still cares about those things; that the guy who created this indelible landscape full of rivers and edges of town and far hillsides and starless skies is, on some level, still there. To me, this is the album that reconciles who Bruce was forty years ago with who he is now, in old age, and despite all its weaknesses I love it for that.

I agree about the opening track. A highlight!

'Rainmaker' feels corny to me - Bruce taking it a bit too easy.

Lily Dale, I like the idea of what you say, and as a theory of how Bruce changed it feels quite plausible or accurate (if harsh, as I think he remained often great). But where I differ is, so far I don't hear the change you do in this LP - I don't hear an 'old authenticity come back', rather I hear the same performance of the last 20 years, but a bit less inspired. It feels precisely like, say, THE RISING, to me.

WESTERN STARS had a lightness that to me was different, charming, deft, surprising - just thinking of the strings on the first two tracks, doing something wonderful that Bruce had almost never done. That album came out of the blue to me, but set a standard that's perhaps hard to match.

I think the authenticity I'm hearing is the vulnerability that comes with writing about old age. For a while now, Bruce has been writing from a position of comfort, of knowing that he's made a success of his life, that a lot of people look to him for life lessons, and that his music brings people consolation and catharsis. He's not wrong about any of that, but it's hard for someone to carry around that much sense of his own importance and still write with the kind of open anxiety and vulnerability he had as a younger man. I think writing about old age - how surreal it is, and the losses that come with it, and the things that are left - has brought him back to his strengths as a songwriter.

I did like Western Stars, but the storytelling on it felt very stylized and didactic to me, like a Victorian morality tale about what happens when you throw away the good things in life. There's something very refreshing about Letter to You and its admission that being lonely is something that can happen to you no matter who you are or how you live your life.

He's writing about death, certainly. Is he writing about other aspects of old age?

A musical detail I quite like on LETTER TO YOU: 3 songs have guitar breaks that just play the (not terribly distinguished) melody on a low tremolo.

That's a simple musical motif I'm fond of.

I was too unkind to 'Rainmaker'. The lyrics do at least contain detail and thought. If there is a mini-genre of Trump Protest Pop, this is probably one of the more intelligent members.

But the theory I arrived at before last listen was that my view might be the opposite of Lily Dale's (much as I like and appreciate what she writes about Bruce): Namely:

Late Boss is best when he is artificial, scripting, performing, playing a role, NOT when he's falling back into authenticity. The latter seems to me to produce a lack of distinction. The former produces ...

'Magic' (the voice of a Dick Cheney)

'Queen of the Supermarket' (Bruce did say he genuinely found supermarkets interesting, but the sub-adequate shopper in this wonderfully corny song is not him)

'Jack of All Trades' (I disagree with comments above about WRECKING BALL: I find the role-playing here, complete with Biblical feeling and violent anger, thrilling, one of the best things he's done in 20 years)

'The Wayfarer' (a simple lyric maybe, the musical invention brings the sense of artifice, drama, romance).

In short I think he's often good at the 'method acting'!

isn't "Janey Needs a Shooter" a Zevon track?

I don't think I understand that song.

Actually I don't understand the previous post either - my ignorance. Is it saying that the song is a pastiche of songwriter Warren Zevon (whom I don't know)?

It's a co-write! (just looked it up) Although in that case the song is "Jeannie Needs a Shooter," are their two different songs with almost the same name?

Okay, so "Jeannie Needs a Shooter" is based on "Janey Needs a Shooter." http://brucebase.wikidot.com/song:janey-needs-a-shooter

Yeah, it's a rare (only?) case of another songwriter completely having their way with an incomplete Bruce song. Usually when he gives them away they're all but done or fully formed, like "Because the Night" or "Protection."

when he is artificial, scripting, performing, playing a role,

I think the Broadway show was an essential step, because it was all four of these things *and* authentic. It literally begins with his tale of his magic trick that he also uses to start his book:

I come from a boardwalk town where almost everything is tinged with a bit of fraud. So am I. By twenty, no race-car-driving rebel, I was a guitar player on the streets of Asbury Park and already a member in good standing amongst those who “lie” in service of the truth . . . artists, with a small “a.” But I held four clean aces. I had youth, almost a decade of hard-core bar band experience, a good group of homegrown musicians who were attuned to my performance style and a story to tell.

This book is both a continuation of that story and a search into its origins. I’ve taken as my parameters the events in my life I believe shaped that story and my performance work. One of the questions I’m asked over and over again by fans on the street is “How do you do it?” In the following pages I will try to shed a little light on how and, more important, why.

DNA, natural ability, study of craft, development of and devotion to an aesthetic philosophy, naked desire for . . . fame? . . . love? . . . admiration? . . . attention? . . . women? . . . sex? . . . and oh, yeah . . . a buck. Then . . . if you want to take it all the way out to the end of the night, a furious fire in the hole that just . . . don’t . . . quit . . . burning. These are some of the elements that will come in handy should you come face-to-face with eighty thousand (or eighty) screaming rock ’n’ roll fans who are waiting for you to do your magic trick. Waiting for you to pull something out of your hat, out of thin air, out of this world, something that before the faithful were gathered here today was just a song-fueled rumor.

I am here to provide proof of life to that ever elusive, never completely believable “us.” That is my magic trick. And like all good magic tricks, it begins with a setup. So . . .

Actually, for me, the first time I saw this sort of self-aware side of Springsteen was in, of all things, his VH1 Storyteller episode, where he pulls back the curtain and tells a funny story about a strip club:

“I used to like to go to strip clubs. Back before they were fancy. Back in the prehistoric days before the lap dancing. One time, as I reached the parking lot, a man and a woman spied me and said ‘Bruce, you aren’t supposed to be here.’ I could see where they were going with the whole thing, so I said, ‘I’m not. I am simply an errant figment of one of Bruce’s many selves. I drift in the ether over the highways and byways of the Garden State, often touching down in image-incongruous but fun places. Bruce does not even know I’m missing. He is at home right now, doing good deeds.’ That usually stupefies and satisfies them. Hey, I gotta get through the world somehow.”

Even then, is the story made up? Parts of it? All of it? Who knows, right? But iirc this (2005?) was the first time I ever heard him talk about himself and what he does in this way.

Usually when he gives them away they're all but done or fully formed, like "Because the Night" or "Protection."

I got fascinated by "Because the Night" a while back and went and listened to the early demos, and it actually wasn't anywhere near complete when he gave it away. Patti Smith wrote most of the lyrics, and then when Springsteen started covering the song in concert, he gradually changed the lyrics until he had his own version. (I'm not trying to WELL ACTUALLY you, I just think Bruce's version of "Because the Night" is really interesting.)

pinefox, I don't want to give the impression of not liking Bruce's storytelling, because I do - when I listened to Nebraska for the first time, I went, "OMG this guy is the great American short story writer of the late 20th century, WHY DID NO ONE TELL ME????" I think he has a great imagination, and even what seems like realist storytelling has his own signature touch of the weird and the surreal, and I don't want to discount any of that.

But - how can I put this? - I also think that in his earlier work, most of his characters are basically him. I think that early Bruce is really haunted by "what if" - what if I never found music? What if I never made it out of my small town? What if I didn't have the friends I have, or the support I have? What if I let myself drift too far out of the world? I'm not saying they're all exactly, literally him, I just find his writing most powerful when it's tinged with a kind of "there but for the Grace of God," anxiety, because it gives his writing conviction, imo, it lets him immerse himself in all the little details of people's days and nights.

I think that over years of comfort and fame, that sense of "that could be me," faded out and had to be replaced by pure outside-in imagination, which is why the songs on, say, Wrecking Ball don't carry the same conviction for me that the earlier work does. One reason Western Stars works for me is that it does convey that sense of identification, but now the central "what if" is "what if I fucked up my marriage and ended up alone?" So I like Letter to You, not specifically because it's about Bruce, but because I think it lets him tap into emotions about age and loss that are very central to him right now.

I hope I don't come across as argumentative, by the way! I respect your opinions, I'm just trying to clarify mine. I know I'm writing a lot but I'm not trying to steamroller over anyone, I just enjoy this.

I mean, tbf, I think this is the Bruce demo that established the song for Patti:

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

Is it done? Clearly not, no way. Is it 90% there? Yes, except for the lyrics. Did Patti Smith write most of those and make it the great song that it is? Absolutely!

No no no.

It took Natalie Merchant to coax forth its greatness.

Yeah, musically it's there, you're right. I think of it as a collaboration, though, because of the stop-and-start way it got written. Bruce writes the music and the hook, Patti writes the lyrics, Bruce goes back and modifies her lyrics more and more until he has the song the way he wants it, which is substantially different from her version. It seems like he must have had some block with that song, and hearing her version helped him get past it.

xpost lol. But ... kinda! She definitely made it more popular, imo. Fun forgotten trivia: touring behind their big breakthrough in 1992, the 10,000 Maniacs drummer broke his arm, and his sub was ... Max Weinberg!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_1iVIlAQekM

I think that song specifically exemplifies him overthinking things. Iirc he left it off Darkness because he didn't want any love songs on there, but touring behind that album it became an epic linchpin of the set. "Fire" was another love song he left off that became a hit for someone else.

I'm pretty sure Natalie Merchant's was the first version I heard.

Anyway, I like Bruce's version of Because the Night. This idea that manual labor is not just hard and exhausting but also kind of stressful and traumatic, that this laborer dude is coming home from a workday where nothing belongs to him, not even his body, and he just wants to crawl into his lover's bed and ask her to protect him. It's the kind of thing Bruce started writing more in his mid-thirties, and it's interesting to see him starting to feel his way toward that kind of writing in 1977-78 when he's still very much in tough-guy mode.

I don't know that Fire would have fit well on Darkness, but I think Because the Night would have. It's got that same kind of simmering working-class discontent thing going on that the rest of the album has.

I have to say, though, I really wish it didn't have that big guitar solo whenever he plays it in concert. Nothing against the solo itself, but the last thing a song undercutting traditional ideas of masculinity needs is a big showboating guitar solo imo.

"Jeannie Needs a Shooter" is based on "Janey Needs a Shooter"

If I were still making mixtapes I'd find some way to get these bracketing "Janie's Got a Gun"

xpost

If you'll excuse my going on about this for a bit: one of the things that interests me about Springsteen is his obsession with safe spaces, with finding or creating places where you can be yourself, feel free, be protected from the general oppressive horribleness of the world, etc. etc. Early on, it's often a distant, far-off haven, the "place where we really want to go," in "Born to Run," the little cafe in Rosalita. Starting with "Night" and going on through Darkness and The River, there's a real focus on the night and the street as these places where you can shake off the pressures and expectations of the workday world and be yourself - little pockets of safety and freedom carved out of an otherwise stifling life. "Because the Night" marks the beginning of a different kind of search for a safe space, where two people together build a wall strong enough to protect each other from the outside world. "Cover Me" is the first song like this to make it to an album, but one of my favorite examples of this shift is "Rockaway the Days," which takes a verse from Badlands and flips it inside out:

Poor man wanna be rich, rich man wanna be king
And a king ain't satisfied till he rules everything
I'm gonna go out tonight, I'm gonna find out what I got

becomes

Rich man want the power and the seat on the top
Poor man want the money that the rich man got
Honey, tonight I'm feeling so tired and unsure
Come on in, Mary, shut the light, close the door

It's like he's running the film in reverse; that confident swagger out alone into the night becomes a retreat into safety, closed doors, the comfort of another person. And he's kept writing that sort of thing; "Burnin' Train" is a late, great addition to the genre.

This is why I find "Because the Night" so fascinating; it strikes me as a transitional moment, and one that Springsteen seems to have found difficult; he couldn't finish the song on his own, or put it on an album, but he was drawn to it enough to keep working on it. And he couldn't seem to make up his mind about how vulnerable he wanted the song to be; sometimes he sings "They can't hurt you now," but sometimes it's "they can't hurt us now" or "they can't hurt me now," which makes a big difference imo.

Jump forward a bit from "they can't hurt you now" to "Independence Day:"

Cause the darkness of this house has got the best of us
There's a darkness in this town that's got us too
But they can't touch me now
And you can't touch me now
They ain't gonna do to me
What I watched them do to you

Definitely the feeling of a shift in his songs from a hopeful (or desperate) attempt to escape to a safe place to being a ore pessimistic stuck and the outside world trying to close in, a sort of going nowhere vibe that courses though the rest of "The River" and "Nebraska." "Born in the USA" (at times) finds a bit of humor on the situation (like in "Glory Days") but maybe it's not a coincidence that he was drawn to a song like "Trapped."

Well, it seems like I'm caught up in your trap again
And it seems like I'll be wearing the same old chains
Good will conquer evil and the truth will set me free
And I know someday I will find the key
And I know somewhere I will find the key

Well, it seems like I've been playing your game way too long
And it seems the game I've played has made you strong
But when the game is over, I won't walk out the loser
And I know that I'll walk out of here again
And I know someday I'll walk out of here again

But now, I'm trapped, ooh yeah, trapped
Ooh yeah, trapped, ooh yeah, trapped, ooh yeah

Now it seems like I've been sleeping in your bed too long
And it seems like you've been meaning to do me harm
But I'll teach my eyes to see beyond these walls in front of me
And someday I'll walk out of here again
And I know someday I'll walk out of here again

Etc.

I think the songs he famously had the most trouble finding a place for are "The Promise" and "Frankie." "Frankie" I think was done and slated as a possibility as early as "Darkness." And "The Promise" was always such a beloved Boss leftover that there was shock it didn't make it to "Tracks," and only showed up - in a piano only re-recorded version, no less - on a bonus disc that either came with/after "Tracks" or came with the "Songs" book (iirc). And then it still didn't show up until the "Darkness" outtakes set, which of course knew well enough to name itself after that song.