October 23, 2020
If you are a regular reader of this blog, you know that I am a music junkie and you can probably guess my favorite bands, based on which ones I come back to frequently. My top tier bands are probably (in some order, depending on the week) Dave Matthews Band, Pearl Jam, R.E.M. and Bruce Springsteen. Not only am I an avid listener of the music of these bands, but I’m a collector of anything I can get my hands on. My music tastes have evolved over my lifetime, but one of the few constants in my music library is Springsteen, who I’ve been listening to for over 35 years. He has a new album (Letter to You) out today, along with an accompanying music film available on Apple TV+ that includes performances of songs from the album, and behind the scenes footage of the making of the album, which Springsteen recorded with the E Street Band in only five days about a year ago.
So, with the release of new music from Springsteen, I thought this would be a good time to share why Springsteen’s music means so much to me and my favorite selections from his vast catalogue. Now, I could just rank all of his albums (his new one being his 20th), or I could just pick my top 100 (or 200) Springsteen songs. But that’s kind of boring. Besides, it would take me way too long to decide the rankings – I spent more time than I care to admit in ranking my favorite David Fincher films for last week’s post.
It Began in the Summer of 1984
For me, my love of Springsteen’s music came with the album that would be his biggest commercial hit, Born in the U.S.A. While it was my introduction to his music and I still like it, I’ve grown to like others more. More on that later. Back in the mid-1980s, the music consumption of a twelve year-old came from two sources: FM radio and MTV. Luckily, most of my readers are of an age that they actually understand what those words mean. With the radio and video popularity of the singles from Born in the U.S.A., I quickly became a fan. My older sisters also listened to Springsteen, and I may have been exposed to some of his earlier work in 1984 and 1985, but I’m not sure. There is one music acquisition I vividly remember – when I received the Live 1975 – 1985 box set (on cassette of course) for Christmas in 1986. I wore out those tapes, especially the second and third ones with songs from his most recent albums. I was hooked, and from that day forward I would go back in time to discover his six preceding albums, and immediately buy his new albums as soon as they were released. Over thirty years later, I’m listening to Letter to You on release day.
There are a number of reasons that Springsteen’s music resonates with me. First and foremost are the lyrics – he is a true music poet. The stories in his songs can range from the down on his luck factory worker, to a young man discovering the love of his life, to an older man’s appreciation of family. His songs have covered the themes of fathers and sons (written from Springsteen’s experience as both a son and a father), to political statements, lending his voice to those who are in need of help from their government. He’s recorded the serious, the silly, the rockers, and the beautiful. In addition to lyrics that can deeply affect you, the melodies of his songs are a perfect complement to the stories he tells. The most famous member of the E Street Band was saxophonist Clarence Clemons, who was with Springsteen from 1974 until his death in 2011. While the Big Man’s sound was certainly memorable, to me the most integral members of the E Street Band are drummer Max Weinberg and pianist Roy Bittan, who have both been with Springsteen since the early days. They help form a strong rhythm section that is the backbone of Springsteen’s most well-known songs.
The last trait of Springsteen that impresses me is his work ethic and the sheer volume of material he has produced. In addition to his twenty studio albums, he has dozens of unreleased songs that were left on the cutting room floor, some of which have been released on various box sets. In my post about musicians who take risks, I wrote about the 70-80 songs he recorded as part of the Born in the U.S.A. sessions alone. And of course, he is probably best known for his relentless touring over the last 45 years. Hopefully, we haven’t seen the last of the live Springsteen concert experience. He is hoping to tour with the E Street Band to support the new album, most likely in 2022. My sisters and I are already planning to go and I can’t wait.
We’re going to cover my favorites across different categories. Let’s jump in and start with the studio work.
The Studio Albums
I guess I’ve always had an inkling for my favorite Springsteen albums (and the few that don’t work for me), but preparing for this post was the first time I actually thought about how I would rank them. I won’t bore you with the ranking of all 19 (pre-Letter to You), but I’ll share my top five.
#1. Darkness on the Edge of Town (1978) – This one gets the slight edge over my second choice for having a few more songs and a track listing that is about as perfect as you can get. When you open with Badlands and close with the title track and in between you get concert staples The Promised Land and Prove It All Night, mixed in with the contrast of a hard rocker like Adam Raised a Cain with the soft piano in Racing in the Street, this is quintessential Springsteen.
#2. Born to Run (1975) – Springsteen’s third album is the one that brought him his earliest taste of fame, landing him on the cover of Time and Newsweek the same week, calling him the “future of rock ‘n roll.” Along with Darkness, this is pretty much a perfect tracklist from top to bottom, with two of his most famous live songs, Thunder Road (as the opener), the title track (as the first song of side two – back when we flipped the record or cassette), my favorite Springsteen track (Backstreets), and closing with Jungleland, the nine-minute opus to small town desperation, which we see in many of Springsteen’s songs. One of the best albums of all-time.
#3. Tunnel of Love (1987) – Coming off the wildly successful marathon Born in the U.S.A. tour, Springsteen wrote a quiet album about relationships. Tunnel of Love was a deeply personal album, with themes impacted by his recent divorce and was a departure from the usual Springsteen album. I wrote about this phase in Springsteen’s career here and it was another example of his ability to pour his real-time experiences into lyrics that resonate long after they are recorded.
#4. Lucky Town (1992) – When I’m looking for that quieter Springsteen sound, I will often find my way back to Tunnel of Love, or Lucky Town, an album that was released on the same day as a companion album, Human Touch. Unlike my #5 pick, this was not a double album. Human Touch was more of the traditional pop sound (with some unfortunate synth choices, frequently seen in the early 1990s), recorded with a band Springsteen pulled together after disbanding the E Street Band. Lucky Town, is a much better album, featuring another evolution of Springsteen’s life integrating into his music. Five years after Tunnel of Love, where he was reflecting on the breakup of his first marriage, on Lucky Town he is relishing in the love of his new marriage to Patti Scialfa, and becoming a father for the first time. While intending to write one more song to finish Human Touch, he came up with ten new songs and decided to record an entire album. Because the sounds and themes were so different, he decided to keep them as separate albums, but release them on the same day. An excellent album.
#5. The River (1980) – Despite the large number of songs Springsteen usually records as a lead up to album releases, The River (featuring twenty songs) is his only true double album. This one was not one of my favorites over the years, but has moved higher on my list following The River Tour in 2016 (which we will get to). While there are a couple clunkers on this album (Crush on You is pretty bad), it’s overall very strong and includes concert staples The Ties That Bind, Out in the Street, Hungry Heart, the title track, as well as some lesser known but beautiful tracks like I Wanna Marry You, Fade Away, and The Price You Pay. This album is another example of Springsteen’s evolution as a songwriter, as he was approaching 30, thinking about getting older, and what he wanted out of life beyond playing music. He thought about relationships, marriage, family and how his own upbringing influenced his current feelings. He noted on The River Tour in 2016 that he wanted the album to be like an E Street Band show – featuring fun, dancing, laughter, jokes, sex, good comradeship, love, tragedy, faith, lonely nights and teardrops. It sure delivers.
Hidden Gem Tracks
In addition to his twenty studio albums, Springsteen has released dozens of songs that were recorded, but never made the final albums. This came in the form of a few collections including Tracks, a 1998 box set of over 60 songs, most of which were previously never heard; The Promise, a 2010 double album of outtakes from the Darkness on the Edge of Town sessions; and The Ties That Bind, a collection of unreleased songs from The River sessions. There are also numerous songs that have shown up on soundtracks, greatest hits compilations, and B-sides (remember those?) Rumor has it that there is also a Tracks 2 in the works. You can’t say that he hasn’t worked hard these last fifty years! Here are a few of my favorites and where they can be found.
- Meet Me in the City – the opening track to The Ties That Bind collection, and a song that would have fit perfectly on The River. It frequently opened the show on The River tour in 2016.
- My Love Will Not Let You Down – a casualty of the Born in the U.S.A. sessions, one of the dozens left off the final album. Available on Tracks.
- Janey Don’t You Lose Heart – a song that sounds like it would have fit in perfectly with No Surrender and Bobby Jean from Born in the U.S.A., also available on Tracks.
- Loose Ends – I heard this one at my first Springsteen show in 1999, not knowing what it was, but it has since become one of my favorites. An outtake from The River, and available on The Ties That Bind.
- The Promise – a classic Springsteen story of young people trying to figure out their place in the world, recorded as part of the Darkness sessions, and a bit of a sequel to Thunder Road. Available on The Promise.
The Live Experience
As much as I love Springsteen’s studio work, if I’m looking to immerse myself in his music for a long drive, or to listen to something while writing, I’ll usually pick out one of his live shows. He is best known for his marathon concerts where he brings a high-level of energy for several hours, frequently changing up the setlists, so that you could see shows on back to back nights and have a completely different experience. In the 1970s and 1980s, his shows were frequently recorded by audience members and bootlegs quickly made the rounds. It wasn’t until 1986 when his live music would be available commercially, with the release of Live 1975-1985, a forty-track collection spanning live performances from the Born to Run tour, through tours for Darkness and The River, all the way up through the recently concluded Born in the U.S.A. tour. Although there are a few questionable inclusions (and omissions), the collection is a good document of a time in Springsteen’s career and features my favorite versions of Thunder Road (a quiet version with just Springsteen and Bittan on piano), Growin’ Up (where Bruce tells a story of his youth, with his family in the crowd), and a riveting version of Backstreets. These examples are why I love listening to live music – at times, listening to the same studio track over and over again can get boring. But when you have an artist that brings a unique experience to a performance, you never know what you will get – it could be a new arrangement on an old classic, a tribute to a recently deceased musician (Take It Easy for Glenn Frey or Purple Rain for Prince), a song the band hasn’t played in over a decade, or a request from the crowd that they figure out on the fly. When my friend Mark and I saw them in 2009, they played Wild Thing for a fan with a sign, with Bruce telling the crowd afterwards “You can’t stump the E Street Band!”
Despite the success of the Live 1975-85 box set, we really didn’t get a lot of live Springsteen material for several years. There was an underwhelming release of Live from New York City in 2001 from the Reunion Tour, but not much else until 2014 when we were blessed with the beginning of the Live Archive Series. Springsteen partnered with a nugs.net, the same company that manages Pearl Jam’s live releases, to distribute live concerts from the early days of 1975, through entire legs of his 2014 and 2016 tours. To this day, there is still a new concert released about once every month. Here are a few of my favorites.
#1. New York, NY– 7.1.00 – After a decade apart, when Springsteen reunited with the E Street Band in 1999 for a world tour, excitement and ticket demand was off the charts. I still remember telling my wife that I absolutely had to get tickets because I had never seen them and you never knew when they would tour again. As it turns out, I saw them in Boston (it was amazing and yes, I have a bootleg copy of the show that I still listen to) and have seen them three more times since then. Yes, I have the best wife, who understands and supports my music and concert addiction. Anyway, back to this release. After a short European tour in the Spring, they launched the U.S. tour with fifteen (!) nights in East Rutherford, NJ in July 1999. They then toured around the country, and finished with ten (!) nights at Madison Square Garden in June 2000. The last few shows at MSG were recorded for the Live in New York City CD (and HBO concert film). The problem I have with that release is that it is a hodgepodge of songs from a few nights and we don’t get the full concert experience. That was fixed when this show (the last night of the Reunion Tour) was released in its entirety. A perfect concert that documents the energy, commitment and rebirth of the E Street Band. This tour would catapult Springsteen into a new era of recordings and tours with the E Street Band that we’ve seen the last twenty years.
#2. Boston, MA – 2.7.16 – To celebrate the release of a remastered version of The River and accompanying The Ties That Bind box set, Springsteen decided a unique approach to the band’s tour in 2016. They would play The River album in its entirety at each stop, followed by another dozen or so songs. This is the rare occurrence where seeing back to back shows would be somewhat repetitive. Springsteen tried the full album routine in 2009 when, during different shows, he played some of his early albums in their entirety. I particularly like this Boston show as we get to hear one of my favorite albums front to back, but in a live setting, and some comments from Bruce in between songs about the meaning of the next song and how it fits together with the rest of the album. Beyond The River tracks, the rest of the set is solid too. Like most shows from this tour, it features Meet Me in the City as the opener.
#3. East Rutherford, NJ – 8.20.84 – The last night (of ten!) shows in NJ, recorded during the height of the Born in the U.S.A. tour and all of the Springsteen mid-80s insanity. All of the early hits, and the E Street Band at its best.
#4. Tampa, FL – 4.22.08 – Recorded during the tour for 2007’s Magic (a very good album, and just outside my top 5), this was the first show the band played after the passing of organist Danny Federici. The show begins with a studio recording of Blood Brothers that was played during a video tribute to Danny, followed by an emotional version of Backstreets. You can hear the pain in Springsteen’s voice at times during the song. The show also features a few oldies (4th of July Asbury Park and Growin’ Up) as a tribute to their fallen bandmate. A unique and emotional show.
#5. East Rutherford, NJ – 9.22.12 – The birthday show. Springsteen always seems to bring out the best for his home state of New Jersey and this was no different. The last stadium show to support the Wrecking Ball album, the concert was delayed two hours due to thunderstorms, but that didn’t stop the band from playing a full show. Although they didn’t take the stage until 10:30, they still played for 3 ½ hours, finishing close to 2:00 AM. In the middle of the show as the clock struck midnight, Bruce turned 63 and the crowd sang Happy Birthday to him. There are some wonderful song choices in this show, but I love it most because it epitomizes Springsteen’s dedication to his fans.
Those are just a few of my favorites. There are dozens of live shows available at live.brucespringsteen.net, available in CD and MP3 formats, including some excellent older shows from 1975, 1978 and 1980. And they are available for pretty reasonable prices considering how much music you get in one concert.
Everything Else
What on Earth else could there possibly be? Well, just a few things.
If you like to read, I recommend Springsteen’s autobiography Born to Run, released in 2016, and Bruce Springsteen: The Stories Behind the Songs by Brian Hiatt, a former Rolling Stone writer. Hiatt’s book (published in 2019) is an excellent accounting of all of the stories and recording session details from every song Springsteen has recorded, including the outtakes that showed up in the box sets and on B-Sides. There are also some wonderful pictures throughout the book.
If you are a video fan, there are a handful of other good resources. You can start with Springsteen on Broadway, a Netflix film of the solo show that was heavily influenced by the 2016 biography. Springsteen tells the story of his life, interspersed with performances on guitar and piano. There is also the excellent concert film Western Stars, which I wrote about earlier this year here, and a ton of videos on his official Youtube channel.
One Last Thing
I watched the Letter to You film on Apple TV+ and (although I am very biased), I have to say that it was excellent. Watching the band in the studio work through the songs Springsteen had written was so interesting to me. They have played together so long that they have a shorthand language to work through the song’s details quickly. After only one listen, I’m also liking the new album. It reflects the continued evolution of Springsteen as a songwriter, exploring the themes of getting older, looking back on the events of your life (the ups, downs, and regrets), and reflecting on his time with the E Street Band, and how much his extended family means to him. He even pulled three songs off the shelf that he wrote before his first album and recorded them with new arrangements. These are incredibly old songs. We’re talking about songs written in 1972. Wait a minute….thinking….that was the year I was born. OK, maybe not “incredibly old.” Let’s call them songs that have aged nicely with time. Yeah, let’s go with that.
I hope you enjoyed this week’s post on one of my favorite musicians and you found some new music to check out. Thanks for reading and I’ll see you next week. If you’d like to be notified of future posts, you can subscribe here.