» Listings for 2024

1. 2023/4 Albums Thing 333 - Bruce Springsteen “Born In The USA”

   Posted on 9:00am Wednesday 8th May 2024

   This albums title track could very well be one of the most misunderstood songs in America’s history and consequently Springsteen doesn’t play it very often in the USA. Republican President’s Ronald  Reagan and Donald Trump have both either referred to “Born In The USA” or played it at political rallies. The stars and bars are a very powerful symbol in America so to put it on the cover of your album attracts much attention. Springsteen is a proud American but understands its realities. Those Republicans obviously only heard the chorus and saw the flag because if they’d listened to the verses they would have heard Springsteen asking why, for millions of Americans who, like him, were “Born In The USA”, why aren’t things better for them

   “Born down in a dead man's town

   The first kick I took was when I hit the ground

   End up like a dog that's been beat too much

   'Til you spend half your life just covering up”

   Bruce Springsteen was a huge success by 1984 but Columbia wanted hits both in terms of singles and multi million selling albums. Well they got both from “Born In The USA”, it produced 7 (US) top 10 singles and has sold over 30 million copies worldwide. It put Springsteen up in the “pop” firmament alongside the likes of Prince and Madonna. Although that first hit single proved somewhat contentious.

   Recording had begun in January 1982 and by the start of 1984 Springsteen considered the album finished, but Jon Landau still thought the record lacked a lead single. Springsteen’s response to that was “I’ve written 70 songs for this album, if you want another one write it yourself”. However, two days later in a New York hotel room Springsteen played Landau “Dancing In The Dark”, a hit single about not wanting to or knowing how to write a hit single, that he wrote in 40 minutes. It was recorded the next night and went on to be the worldwide hit that launched “Born In The USA”.

   These songs are great, the likes of “No Surrender”, “Bobby Jean”, “Darlington County” and “Glory Days” as well as the title song and “Dancing In The Dark” are likely to turn up whenever you go to a Springsteen gig. But this one isn’t a record I play very often. Because of its very 80’s production I much prefer to hear most of these songs played live where they take on the sound of the band and are much less sterile. Most of them I have available on various live album releases or as part of gigs I’ve downloaded from live.brucespringsteen.net. In fact I have live versions of all but 2 songs (“I’m Goin’ Down” and “Downbound Train”) and when we saw the Wrecking Ball Tour in Ireland in 2013 the album was performed in its entirety.

   “Born In The USA” made Bruce Springsteen a global superstar, a celebrity, something that never sat well with him. He played the game, did the year long world tour and made millions of dollars for the record company. The “Born In The USA” tour was where he moved from arenas to stadiums, demand for tickets in Europe was so high he had to and he still maintains he and the band are bigger in Europe than in the US where they still play arenas in the main. Many people’s lasting impression of Springsteen was formed at this time. If Columbia Records were expecting a quick follow up in the same vein they were to be disappointed, they’d have to wait 3 years for another studio album and chest thumping stadium rock it wasn’t.

   Born In The USA - https://youtu.be/EPhWR4d3FJQ?si=-DPi-6_VDKdFkD0_

2. 2023/4 Albums Thing 332 - Bruce Springsteen “Nebraska”

   Posted on 9:40am Tuesday 7th May 2024

   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 Natalie Cole.

   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

3. 2023/4 Albums Thing 331 - Bruce Springsteen “The River”

   Posted on 9:40am Saturday 4th May 2024

   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