Bruce Springsteen - Classic or Dud ?

Lily Dale
I just don't love the brand, kind of dorky to me, it's probably a great guitar but just image wise I'd prefer Bruce with an old vintage Gibson or Guild not a a new one with onboard electronics

just an aesthetic thing

Steve Cropper was asked why he plays Peaveys and not vintage Teles; he said, “It’s kind of like once I drove a Ferrari, I never went back to a Chevrolet.” Maybe Bruce feels similarly wrt Takamines vs. an old Gibson.

a lot of it too i'm sure is just not wanting to bring some super expensive vintage guitar out on the road

also, anytime you see any artist of note playing a new guitar (not vintage ones in their collection) you can probably assume they have an endorsement deal with the manufacturer

I thought this was interesting:

https://www.musicradar.com/news/how-takamine-acoustics-became-the-hardest-working-guitars-in-music

How often does Neil Young play Hank Williams's original guitar when he tours? I remember watching Heart of Gold and thinking, "man, if I had that guitar, it would give me too much anxiety to take it on the road with me."

Wait, what?

a lot of it too i'm sure is just not wanting to bring some super expensive vintage guitar out on the road

You definitely wouldn't want to fling a super expensive vintage guitar at your manager's head. Much better to have something new and shiny around when the guitar-flinging mood hits.

Iirc Neil takes it out on every tour!

Neil takes enough vintage gear on the road he probably has some private security force mixed in with the Roadies protecting it.

Reminds me of how Bonnamassa has a ex-secret service guy looking after one of his old Les Pauls.

That's odd, since every guitar in Bonamassa's possession is, by definition, worthless.

Mike Campbell has said that he stopped taking his prized '59 Les Paul and '50s Broadcaster out on the road some time ago. He's afraid someone will steal them.

a lot of it too i'm sure is just not wanting to bring some super expensive vintage guitar out on the road

i don't think springsteen is worried about that. he toured for decades with his '50s fender esquire! i assume he actually likes how the takamine sounds onstage.

(on the other hand, iirc, he played gibsons -- it might have been a single gibson, in fact -- throughout the "western stars" film. maybe it would look weird on film to be strumming a japanese guitar while playing a set of western-inspired songs?)

Nebraska was recorded on a Gibson J200.

That discussion with Bruce and Nona was so great.

I was thinking about Bruce and shaggy-dog stories and trying to think of instances where he does a big wind-up to a story and then deliberately lets it go nowhere. "Darlington County" and "From Small Things" come to mind as songs where he does this, but I feel like it's a big part of his stage humor too? Anyway, it made me revisit this amazing performance of "Crush on You," where he makes an elaborate show of telling the story behind the song - "Names have been changed to protect the innocent," and then the story is basically "I saw a hot woman driving a car."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RF7sfErwIgU

"Darlington County" ends on a good punchline, at least!

It does! So I'm not sure it technically qualifies as a shaggy dog story, but I have it on my mental list because of the disconnect between the "Woohoo ROAD TRIP!" way the narrator tells the story and then the basic meaninglessness of everything that happens in it. And the way the punchline doesn't really wrap up or make sense of the story. He lost track of his buddy for days, at the end he saw him getting arrested, what happened to him in between? No idea.

Yeah, I remember asking my dad – "What does that mean? Why was he handcuffed?" etc.

Yeah exactly. It feels like you ought to be able to understand what's going on, but no. The song just doesn't give us that info.

I think of a shaggy dog story as having a sort of false punchline: a line at the end that's in the right place for a punchline, but instead of pulling the whole joke together, it leaves the most important parts of the joke open and unresolved. Like, instead of getting a laugh from telling you the meaning of the joke, it gets it from unexpectedly denying you the meaning you were waiting for.

And I feel like that's what the end of "Darlington County" is. It's a great line, but if you think of this as a story being told by this narrator character, it's also like: That's it? That's your big road trip story? Spent some money, did some union work, picked up a hooker, buddy got arrested, shalala, shalala, WOOHOO! It's the most amazingly accurate depiction of the way people tell stories when they have no actual point to make but assume that all travel is inherently interesting. It reminds me of reading endless student essays about trips to Disneyland. I love it.

I don't know why he says, at the end of the song: 'I seen the glory of the coming of the lord'.

Steve Cropper was asked why he plays Peaveys and not vintage Teles; he said, “It’s kind of like once I drove a Ferrari, I never went back to a Chevrolet.”

I like this!

xpost Well, Darlington County is most likely South Carolina, so it's possibly just a goofy Civil War reference. Like, we went down south, saw the glory of the coming of the Lord, then left and went back home.

Also saw this ... ambitious take:

Perhaps in “Darlington County” that glory is actually the flashing lights of the state trooper’s Ford. The allusion to The Battle Hymn conveys a sense of the lawman’s moral authority and the complete domination of Wayne’s attempt to “secede” from a life he didn’t want.

Could also, I suppose, just be a sex joke.

I don't know why he says that but I think it works great. It's a bit of a Dylan trick, maybe - dropping a borrowed line of some classic song into a new setting that makes you sit up and pay attention. You know what comes after "mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the lord," and it's not a dude handcuffed to a police car. So there's the comic subverting-of-expectations thing, and the shift from the sublime to the ridiculous - because that line is grand and glorious, and I can't help finding it stirring even in this context - and something about that shift just sums up the whole song for me, the way the narrator sets out to tell this great story about his epic road trip with Wayne and then it's just two dudes going somewhere for work and one of them getting arrested.

You know what comes after "mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the lord,"

I don't. Is this better known in the USA?

I agree that it's a grandiose phrase followed by bathos, but I think for me the first phrase is too vague and untethered to anything else to work so well.

I think my sense has always been that the two lines are referring to the same thing, not separate. So the idea that the 'glory' is the flashing lights *does* make some kind of sense; or just the unkind idea that it's 'glorious' to see his friend arrested.

I'm 100% sure that 'my eyes seen the glory of the coming of the lord' is a satisfied reflection on recently acquired carnal knowledge.

He got some, is what he's saying.

xpost It's "The Battle Hymn of the Republic," one of those broadly patriot songs that most Americans probably know. Interesting backstory here:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_Hymn_of_the_Republic

He got some IN A CAAAAAARRR, is what he's saying.

Fixed

I don't know why I thought the Battle Hymn of the Republic was widely known outside the US. All of these explanations make sense imo.

The line is "Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the lord/ he is trampling down the vineyards where the grapes of wrath are stored," and of course it's a battle hymn, so it's all about the righteous wrath of God. So I think this

I think my sense has always been that the two lines are referring to the same thing, not separate. So the idea that the 'glory' is the flashing lights *does* make some kind of sense; or just the unkind idea that it's 'glorious' to see his friend arrested.

makes a lot of sense to me, but he wouldn't necessarily have to think it's glorious that Wayne is being arrested - he might just see it as divine justice/ Karma/ what have you catching up with Wayne.

These lines have been somewhat elucidated!

Springsteen dropping more hints about a BITUSA set on his radio show:

"None but the Brave," I believe, was recorded for Born in the USA, for which many, many, many, many other songs were recorded, many of which could have come out, but did not, due to insanity.

Hard to say what a BitUSA box might contain, since so much has been released already. For sure the "Darkness" and "River" sets featured a few surprises.

I don't know if this is up to date, but I found:

Currently, thirty-two different songs have been officially released from the Born In The U.S.A. sessions, including those originally recorded for but not included on Nebraska. There are thirteen other songs that are circulating unofficially as complete takes in very good sound quality. Eight songs from Nebraska ("Atlantic City", "Johnny 99", "Used Cars", "Nebraska", "Open All Night", "Mansion On The Hill", "Highway Patrolman" and "Reason To Believe") are known to have been recorded with the band, plus another thirty-three songs that may have been worked to completion. Altogether these total eighty-six songs, fairly consistent with Weinberg, Plotkin and Springsteen's recollections.

Might work best combined with an expanded "Nebraska," if they ever did that. Otherwise I expect some redundancies with some other releases.

I just read the rather syrupy Dave Marsh book (Glory Days) and knew the story in some detail. The full-band versions of Nebraska material are, to me, interesting - an archival curiosity. But, perhaps in an old-fashioned way, I choose to respect the official releases as canonical.

Like, I have read early drafts of Mrs. Dalloway and Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man and Lolita, but only as keys to understanding the canonical work.

It'll be no different from getting the full band Racing in the Street in the Darkness box.

I don't know, I think it could be more significant than that. Have you heard the "Nebraska" version of "Pink Cadillac" compared to the slick electric version?

I would love to have actual official releases of "Child Bride" and "Drop on Down," if nothing else.

xp Will do!

Full band Nebraska would be a more significant release for sure, but it's not gonna affect the "canon" or anything.

What I really want from a BITUSA box set is an album's worth of the drony depressive stuff he was recording around 1983/84 that doesn't sound like anything else he did. Stuff like "Unsatisfied Heart." I could listen to that miserable, unintelligible monotone all day.

Lily Dale is showing deep knowledge here. I thought I loved the Boss but I have never even heard of the 3 songs she cites.

the full band Racing in the Street

Is this different from the one at the start of THE PROMISE? (Which I think starts magnificently, but loses by not having the more varied chord structure of the LP version - which *is*, of course, a full band version.)

Have you heard "The Klansman"?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wDLL1OsYjRM

xp Yeah, The Promise one I meant. Yeah, really I should've said faster arrangement or whatnot.

Josh in Chicago: I have not. Baffled by how many extras songs the Boss wrote.

On LETTER TO YOU, I don't understand 'Janey needs a shooter', 'if I was the priest', and 'song for orphans'.

Does anyone else?

I know that Janey needs a shooter, like, now!

That's a good reading, Maffew12. Hard to disagree.

There's a light on yonder mountain and it's calling me to shine
There's a girl over by the water fountain and she's asking to be mine
And Jesus is standing in the doorway in a buckskin jacket, boots and spurs so fine
He says, "We need you son tonight up in Dodge City
'Cause there's just too many outlaws trying to work the same line"

Now if Jesus was a sheriff and I were the priest
If my lady was an heiress and my Mama was a thief
If Papa rode shotgun on the Fargo line
There's still too many bad boys trying to work the same line

Well sweet Virgin Mary runs the Holy Grail saloon
Well for a nickel she'll give you whiskey and a personally blessed balloon
And the Holy Ghost is the host with the most, he runs the burlesque show
Where they'll let you in for free and they hit you when you go
Mary serving Mass on Sunday and she sells her body on Monday
To the bootlegger who paid the highest price
He don't know he got stuck with a loser, she's stone junkie what's more she's a user
She's only been made once or twice by some kind of magic

If Jesus was a sheriff and I were the priest
If my lady was an heiress and my Mama was a thief
And Papa rode shotgun on the Fargo line
There's still too many outlaws trying to work the same line

Well things ain't been the same in heaven since big bad Bobby came to town
He's been known to down eleven, then ask for another round
Me I've got scabs on my knees from kneeling way too long
It's about time I played the man, took a stand where I belong
And I forget about the old friends and the old times
There's just too many new boys trying to work the same line

Well if Jesus was a sheriff and I were the priest
If my lady was an heiress and my Mama was a thief
And Papa rode shotgun on the Fargo line
There's just too many outlaws trying to work the same line

Well there's a light on yonder mountain and it's calling me to shine
There's a girl over by the water fountain 'cause she's asking to be mine
Jesus is standing in the doorway, six gun drawn and ready to fan
Said, "We need you tonight son up in Dodge City"
Told him I was already overdue for Cheyenne

If Jesus was the sheriff and I were the priest
If my lady was an heiress and my Mama was a thief
And Papa rode shotgun on the Fargo line
There's still too many bad boys trying to work the same line

A Western fan, I like the Western theme. But still don't know what the song's saying. Maybe it's not saying anything.