Well Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band in Cardiff on Sunday was everything we wanted and needed it to be. A couple of surprises on the setlist and all the classics you could want. If you get the chance to see him on this tour you should. There was nothing played from this album so let’s get to it…

"If I had to pick one album out and say, “This is going to represent you 50 years from now” I'd pick “Nebraska” ” - Bruce Springsteen April 2023

After releasing a double album, after having hit singles, after performing an 11 month long, globe spanning Arena tour and being hailed as one of the biggest emerging stars in the world, whaddya do ? Well if you’re Bruce Springsteen you release your 4 track cassette demos recorded in the bedroom of your rented house in a small town in central New Jersey and featuring just you and minimal instrumentation as your next album. “Nebraska” is still regarded as an absolute triumph and one of Springsteen’s very best records.

Think back to 1982 and the albums that major artists were releasing (and make no mistake, after the success of “The River”, Springsteen was now a major artist), the biggest sellers; Michael Jackson “Thriller”, Prince “1999”, Toto IV, Fleetwood Mac “Mirage”, Dire Straits “Love Over Gold”, Phil Collins “Hello, I Must Be Going”, multi-million selling, records with multi-million dollar budgets and huge productions…nobody was making, or even considering making anything that sounded like “Nebraska”. To be honest neither was Springsteen. As he started writing he thought he was simply preparing demo’s for his next album. Songs were coming to him fast and he decided he needed some way to get them recorded as he wrote. 

One of his crew, guitar tech Mike Batlan, set him up with the newly available Tascam Series 144 4 track cassette Portastudio, a couple of microphones and and an old echo unit so his boss could get his new songs down on tape ready to present to the  E Street Band. Springsteen proceeded to write some of his most personal and hard hitting songs. Influenced by his past, his family, ordinary Americans and classic American Gothic literature and films, he wrote a set of songs unlike anything he’d previously bought into being.

Tucked away in Colts Neck, NJ Springsteen initially wrote and demoed 15 songs that he shared with Jon Landau, sometimes he recorded more than one take of a song (3 takes of “Atlantic City” and 2 of “Reason To Believe” for instance) with different arrangements or lyrics. All the songs that made it onto “Nebraska” were recorded (“My Fathers House” was recorded at Colts Neck but wasn’t one of the initial 15 sent to Landau). The remaining six songs demoed were “Bye Bye Johnny”, “Losin’ Kind”, “The Child Bride”, “Born In The USA”, “Down Bound Train” and “Pink Cadillac”. Three of those were never pursued further, two made it to his next album and the last one ended up with the Pointer Sisters.

There was just one copy of the tape and Springsteen had this delivered by “a guy from Jersey” to his manager, Jon Landau, with a covering note so he could hear what his charge had been doing. He listened made some notes and sent the tape back to Springsteen (whether or not via the same “guy from Jersey” we don’t know), it was the only copy and he needed it. Some weeks later the E Street Band convened in a New York studio to work on these new songs. Springsteen bought the cassette with him, in his pocket, not even in a case, and this is what will become the master for his next album !

As he and the band tried to flesh out arrangements for the songs it started to become clear that the best arrangements were those he’d already recorded and that his next album should be what was on that cassette. The tale of getting those recordings from the cassette to professional tape is a whole other thing. Portastudios were never designed to do that so whole new processes had to be invented by studio engineers. The songs couldn’t really be mixed due to the way Springsteen had recorded them (echo effects had been recorded directly to the cassette for example) so what you hear on the record is pretty much what was on that cassette.

“Nebraska” feels like hearing black and white depression era America. Songs like “Johnny 99” and the title song are every bit as cinematic in scope as “Jungleland” but this time it’s simply one man and his guitar. In “Johnny 99” Ralph’s job has gone (the Ford company really did “close down the autoplant in Mawah” in summer 1980 putting 4,000 people out of work), couldn’t find another, couldn’t pay his bills and ended up cracking and murdering a shop worker after getting drunk. The record is incredibly personal throughout. “Used Cars” is a childhood memory of Dad always buying 2nd hand cars with a problem and an aspiration that “…the day my number comes in I ain’t ever gonna ride in no used car again” (it’s kinda ironic that he now has a collection of classic, or used, cars).

Springsteen has said in interviews that some of these songs were so personal that he didn’t think he could ever have played them to or with the E Street Band. “My Fathers House” is a quite remarkable song. It revolves a round a dream, trying to escape the woods and whatever is chasing the narrator. The thing that saves him is arriving at his fathers house and falling into his arms. The dream continues as our storyteller drives over to his fathers house to find that someone else is there and that “no one by that name lives here anymore”, a stark reminder that, no matter the difficulties, your parents won’t be with you forever and those difficulties can be overcome. Given Springsteen’s relationship with his father this one must have been tough to write, maybe the reason that it (plus “Mansion On The Hill” and “Used Cars”) are written from the viewpoint of a child ?

“Nebraska” is one man and his guitar delivering incredibly raw and personal moments into song. It still stands as an incredibly brave move by an artist who was on the brink of mega stardom to rein everything back and release this record. But release it he did and it really is one of Springsteen’s very best.

Johnny 99 - https://youtu.be/OQUcqK1Op6Y?si=3d92jiXPUrWqI7MF

Bruce Springsteen signed with Columbia Records as a solo artist. Although his name is forever tied to the E Street Band none of his (studio) albums are by Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band, only Bruce Springsteen. Singer and band were inducted separately into the Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame (even though members of the band lobbied hard that it should be together). The E Street Band are integral to Springsteen’s mojo but he has always kept a separation between Bruce Springsteen and Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band. 

“The River” though, is Bruce and the band’s band album. A record that tries to capture what they do on stage, in the studio. A record that tells you about years and years of one night stands in Boardwalk bars and the musicians it made of this bands members. It’s borne out of endless repetitions of “Louie Louie” and “I Fought The Law” for the drinkers and the dancers. But it also tells you about the troubles of those drinkers and dancers when the rave-ups calm down and its quieter, with only the band, the bartender and the lost and lonely left at the bar. To balance out “Sherry Darlings” exuberance there is “Stolen Car”s loss and regret, For all of “Crush On You” and “Cadillac Ranch”s bravado there are the lives that didn’t turn out as planned in “Point Blank” and "Fade Away”. 

Side 1 is an adrenaline rush of 60’s garage band euphoria. “The Ties That Bind”, “Sherry Darling”, “Jackson Cage” and particularly “Two Hearts” thunder along but are bought back down at the end by Springsteen’s first truly great song about his relationship with his father. “Independence Day” tells of a father and son relationship that knows each of their importance to each other but cannot be contained in close proximity. A father set in his ways and a son that wants more out of life but which are still the things a father wants for his son. It’s a brutally honest look at Springsteen’s connection with his Dad and one of the songs he feels is at the heart of what “The River” is about.

Side 2 gets back to that bar band we know so well. “Hungry Heart” was the albums lead single, Springsteen’s first big hit single and still a huge song in his live shows where the crowd always take the first verse before The Boss picks up the chorus. Then we’re back to that garage band feel with “Out In The Street”, “Crush On You” and "You Can Look (But You Better Not Touch)" before the garage ballad of “I Wanna Marry You” which gives you a picture of the barroom lovers dancing in a spotlight while the band plays….and then…  

The first half of the album ends with the song “The River”. The opening harmonica wail sets the tone and I’m betting that at a live show every hair on the back of every neck on every person stands up and every one gets that shiver. He’s played “The River” on seven of the eight occasions I’ve seen him live, there’s only “Born To Run” I’ve heard all eight times so it’s clear how important the song is to Springsteen himself. It’s a song of love and hope and despair, yes at its heart it’s the story of his sister and her husband but here Springsteen also starts introducing some of the themes he’ll expand on in a few years time, we’re all proud Americans but The USA we were born into isn’t working for us. This is another Bruce Springsteen, he’s still singing about cars and girls but in a very different way to how he dealt with those subjects on “Born To Run”. I’d argue this song is where the Bruce Springsteen we’ve come to know since the mid-80’s mega stardom of “Born In The USA” begins.

The second half is a little more subdued. You still get the bar band garage rockers like live favourites “Cadillac Ranch”, “Ramrod” and “I’m A Rocker”, but there are far more of the slower, introspective songs in part two. The superb “Stolen Car”, “Fade Away” and “Wreck On The Highway” stand out. Side Four is however home to what is almost certainly my least favourite of Springsteen’s songs, “Drive All Night”. It’s an eight and a half minute dirge about what I recall as driving all night to buy your girl some shoes (I know that’s not what it’s about but that’s what it feels like). 

We went to see Springsteen in Kilkenny in Ireland in 2013 on the Wrecking Ball tour. One of the reasons for going to Ireland was that, unusually for Springsteen, there were to be support acts. One of them was Damien Dempsey which we were incredibly excited about and the other was Glen Hansard of The Frames (and maybe more famously to most “The Commitments”). Damien was great as always and Glen Hansard played for far too long and I didn’t really enjoy any of it. Toward the end of his set Springsteen announced he wanted to invite someone out to sing with him. Out trotted Mr Hansard and “Drive All Night” was the song they were to perform. This time a song on record that feels like it lasts a lifetime dragged on for what I swear were several of them, hells teeth I thought it would never end !

“The River” marks a change in Bruce Springsteen. His next album won’t feature a band at all, the one after that will shoot him into the “pop” mainstream and after that he becomes quite the changed character. Part of that is a reaction to that elevation to being a “pop” star that he really didn’t like and part of it stems from the breakdown he suffered during this whole period which he documents in his biography “Born To Run” (well worth a read BTW). We’re in the eye of the period where Springsteen is developing into one of the great songwriters of our times, and he’s still working it all out.

Stolen Car - https://youtu.be/f0RNWwXcQiU?si=dd-D8T5tl5MoOgnw

Following the arrival of Jon Landau as producer of “Born To Run” and subsequently as his manager, replacing Mike Appel, Springsteen sued Appel in July 1976 to win back ownership of his work. The court case had the knock-on effect of preventing Springsteen from recording for a year, during which time he and the E Street Band played every 2nd and 3rd rate venue and town in America. The legalities were settled in May 1977 and he was ready to record again.

During the absence from the studio Springsteen wrote up to 70 new songs and sessions began on June 1st 1977 for what would become “Darkness On The Edge Of Town”. These sessions were far from quick and far from easy. The lawsuit with Appel was settled on 28th May 1977 and Springsteen and his band started recording 4 days later. The sessions ran until March of 1978 across two studios (Atlantic and the Record Plant) with Springsteen demanding perfection from his bandmates while giving them very little idea what he actually wanted.

Of the reported 70 songs written for these sessions 32 are known to have been recorded. 10 made it to the album, three (“Independence Day”, “Sherry Darling” and “Ramrod”) were held over for his next release and many of the others were gifted to other artists: "Hearts of Stone" and "Talk to Me" to Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes, "Because The Night" to Patti Smith, "Fire" to Robert Gordon, "Rendezvous" to Greg Kihn, "Don't Look Back" to the Knack and "This Little Girl" to Gary U.S. Bonds. Many of the leftover songs (22 of them in fact) were finally released in one form or another in 2010 as the album “The Promise”***. 

“Badlands” kicks things off with a drum roll and a classic Roy Bittan piano intro but the opening lyrics aren’t telling us of bucolic scenes and visions of Mary, things are altogether less idyllic “Light's out tonight, Trouble in the heartland, Got a head-on collision, Smashin' in my guts, man, Caught in a crossfire, That I don't understand”. A darker scene is set for what is to follow.

“Adam Raised a Cain” is the first installment in Springsteen’s look at relationships between a father and a son, a subject he would return to again and again. “Something In The Night” begins as though we’ve broken through some clouds into the bright sunlight but the lyrics tell a different story of being alone, drinking, driving listening to the radio and always coming back to “something in the night”, a metaphor for depression (?), something Springsteen has admitted to wrestling with for years. 

Side One closes with with one of my absolute favourite of Springsteen’s songs, “Racing In The Street”. The chorus is based on Martha & The Vandellas “Dancing In The Street” (“Summer’s here and the time is right for racing in the street”) the song however is so much less upbeat than any Motown. The two main characters could easily be the boy and girl from “Thunder Road” or “Born To Run” but instead of showing a little faith or busting out of here their lives have taken another turn. He races cars while she, instead of dancing, “sits on the porch of her Daddy’s house” where “all her pretty dreams are torn”. These aren’t the hopeful dreamers anymore, these are people upon whom the world has settled its woes and started to crush them. It’s an utterly beautiful song and Roy Bittan’s closing piano offers hope that their lives will be better after they’ve been to sea “to wash these sins off our hands”. I’ve been waiting since I first saw Springsteen in 1981 to hear it live again, if that happens in Cardiff on Sunday (he has been playing it on this tour) there might be tears.

“The Promised Land” opens Side Two with a title that seems to offer something a little less ominous, and indeed it begins on a more optimistic note with our subject working hard and ready to take charge of his life. But by songs end he can see the dark clouds and the approaching storm, hoping it might “Blow away the lies that leave you nothing but lost and broken hearted”. In a glimmer of hope though he still believes in a Promised Land.

“Factory” transforms “Born To Run”s “Mansions of glory” into ”mansions of fear” and “mansions of pain” in a song generally about working men yet specifically about his Dad and the effect factory life had on their family. “Streets of Fire” is desparate, it doesn’t like itself, it’s the sound of loneliness and giving up. Bruce’s voice and Danny Federici’s swirling Hammond organ at the start give it the sound of a funeral dirge to go with lyrics like “I live now, only with strangers, I talk to only strangers, I walk with angels that have no place”.

“Prove It All Night” was this albums lead single and has become an important song in Springsteen’s cannon. It was the 2nd song on the set list the first time I saw him, it was the 3rd song on the set list the last time I saw him 42 years later. It doesn’t matter how hard you work, how well you do in life, you gotta prove yourself over again every time, the never ending struggle is  what is being related. The album closes with its title track. Again, like “Racing In The Street”, our protaganists could well be the boy and girl from “Thunder Road” or “Born To Run” but the ensuing years have dragged them down. They’ve parted, she has moved on, he is resigned to a life alone. It’s a beautiful if tragic song with another wonderful performance by Roy Bittan.

“Darkness On The Edge Of Town” is structured very much like “Born To Run”, each side is bookended by big statement songs (“Badlands” and “Racing In The Street” on side 1, “The Promised Land” and title song on side 2) while the other songs fill in the details between. But if “Born To Run” was built from pure romantic fantasy, “Darkness On The Edge of Town” presents the flipside of harsh reality. 

The sound of “Darkness…” is markedly different to its predecessor, where “Born To Run” was made in cinematic, widescreen technicolour “Darkness…” is smaller, more claustrophobic, taughter (more taught ?), it’s all very tense, not quite black and white but definitely closer to sepia tinted. I’m not saying it sounds rushed but there is a feeling of urgency about it. Some drum parts sound unfinished, there is a hint of out of tune-ness about some guitar parts. It has an air of “we’ve done that let’s get on to the next thing” about it all. The mix is very dry and flat (well that’s what it sounds like to me).

The clue is right there in the title isn’t it ? “Darkness On The Edge of Town” is dark. If “Born To Run” was the early morning sunlight and the bright lights of the city then “Darkness…” is the dusk followed by endless night. It’s not asking you to take chances, it’s telling you how your life might be after living out those dreams, the characters are less carefree and definitely feeling the pressures of what their lives have become.

Springsteen said of this album in a 1987 interview “That whole Darkness record was about that [what happens after you realise the dream]. I wanted to come back and confront some things. What had happened after “Born to Run” ? Where were my friends ? Where were the people that mattered to me ? My frivolous little trip–okay, it was fun, but in and of itself it just didn’t hold enough to keep me very fascinated.”

Racing In The Street - https://youtu.be/cm9UuM3UXdc?si=1dgtV9Oc9aFU5T0u

*** A quick note on my feelings about “The Promise”. It seems to be regarded these days as an “official” Springsteen release rather than a compilation of unreleased material (see “Tracks”). It’s one of the very few Springsteen official releases I don’t own on vinyl (“Live In New York City”, the plugged in Unplugged album and “Only The Strong Survive” among them). I do own “The Promise” on CD and I’ve listened to it quite a lot in an attempt to discover what it is about it that sends some of The Bosses fans into absolute raptures. To me it sounds like exactly what it is which is, with very few exceptions (“Because The Night” and “Fire”), a collection of substandard demo’s and outtakes. I can’t think of anything on “Darkness On The Edge Of Town” that I would lose to be replaced by anything from “The Promise”.