Bruce Springsteen

[Cruyff14]

I am currently reading Bruce Springsteen and the Promise of Rock n Roll.

In his audition to Mike Appel, Bruce played "It's Hard To Be A Saint In The City", which is the song which got Bruce his record deal pretty much. When he met with John Hammond, one of the big wigs at Columbia, he played it again, and I am pretty sure this version would have been very similar to the one played in the office of that morning of May 1972.



You guys gotta get your hands on this book.

 

[Cruyff14]

Yeah, well this is where I differ from most Bruce fans. Born To Run is a very good album but it's not one of my favourites when I compare it to several others.

Wow. Greatest album of all time for me. I am shocked in a way.

How do you rate a song like Lost In The Flood?

 

[AtomicBlonde]

Wow. Greatest album of all time for me. I am shocked in a way.

How do you rate a song like Lost In The Flood?

Not a great song for me but it's so hard to "rate" art. That song is just like a long, rambling poem but much later in his career when he started writing about his own life experiences and relationships is when I think he became a truly great songwriter.

 

[Cruyff14]

Not a great song for me but it's so hard to "rate" art. That song is just like a long, rambling poem but much later in his career when he started writing about his own life experiences and relationships is when I think he became a truly great songwriter.

Oh hmmm. I understand what you're saying, but listening to it, the imagery that the lyrics provide is wow, combined with the huge wall of sound that you're thrown into, amazing for me.

 

[Cruyff14]

WOW

 

[Cruyff14]

DrVanNostrand RussellEbertHandball UpForGrabs Ford Fairlane jpkennedy

Bruce's speech to Steve giving him the Big Man Award.

Some very good anecdotes about their friendship/relationship

 

[UpForGrabs]

Am trying to scrounge around and see if there's a video clip of Bruce's 1992 Saturday Night Live performance of 'Living Proof'. Tore the house down.

The audio's available on an old bootleg called 'Deep Down in the Vaults'. Might see if I can post it later on when I get home (if my memory isn't leaking like a dodgy submarine).

 

[DrVanNostrand]

Over the last 5 minutes I've become incredibally confident we will see Bruce on our shores in early 2013. From his website:

Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band have just announced they will play the final stop of the Wrecking Ball Tour 2012 at Palacio De Los Deportes in Mexico City on December 10.​

Combine that with this...

It is confirmed: Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band will play Rock In Rio 2013!​

Bruce & The E Street Band are back to Brazil to play at the Rock In Rio festival on September 15, 2013, 25 years after the only concert of his career in the country at the Palmeiras Stadium​

​

​

They make it clear Mexico will be the last stop for 2012 (not the Wrecking Ball tour, period), and a confirmed gig for September next year. That would be an awful long layoff to come out and do a single gig. It seems very likely (to me anyway) that Bruce will do his first ever tour of South America (not counting the Human Rights Now thing) after he's done a lap of Australia. Southern Hemisphere FTW.​

​

Just not in March plz, I'll be overseas, although feel free to visit NZ while I'm there. I will go to everything on the east coast and the pennies have been saved well in advance. FFS don't get conned into playing Suncorp Stadium.​

 

[RussellEbertHandball]

The Boss and Bill Clinton were at an Obama campaign rally today in the critical state of Ohio - a few hours ago.

Bill Clinton introduces Bruce with a "Over the last 50 years, one of the coolest dudes I've ever met..."
Bruce comes back with "I get to speak after President Cinton, thats like I'm going on after Elvis here..... If he'd have brought the saxaphone, I was gonna (applause) if he had only brought that saxaphone you would have seen a real jam up here"

He does a fantastic pared back version of No Surrender. You get to really appreciate the power of the words in this version. (Look at the number a phones video taping the performance - remeber when they wouldn't let you take a camera or video camera into a concert?? Those days are gone)



You then get about 4:50 of political Bruce then followed by The Promised Land



Obama asked him to write a song for his campaign. Maybe around our campaign slog Forward - so he wrote something - bit of a laugh after 2 and half minutes of that he then sings Youngstown - what else in Ohio.



2 more videos
An interesting acoustic version of We take care of our own and on the 100th birthday of Woodie Guthrie he sings This Land is Your Land - all the choruses


And Thunder Road to finish.

 

[jpkennedy]

I've been listening to Bruce every morning before work. I always walk into the lab with a big smile on my face. Is it even possible to be sad listening to Rosalita?

 

[Cruyff14]

I've been listening to Bruce every morning before work. I always walk into the lab with a big smile on my face. Is it even possible to be sad listening to Rosalita?

Hell no!

 

[RussellEbertHandball]

I've been listening to Bruce every morning before work. I always walk into the lab with a big smile on my face. Is it even possible to be sad listening to Rosalita?

Who needs amphetamines and other uppers when you blast out Rosalita or a few other tracks. I'm gonna post one later - almost did it yesterday - and if this song doesn't get you tapping your toes and a big smiling on your face and want to strutt around the room with your air guitar then you probably don't have a pulse.

 

[DrVanNostrand]

+1. Cryuff, this acoustic version of Rosalita that sounds like it's from a studio jam session circa '73 is like, the greatest thing ever.

 

[KnobHead]

Up until about 10 - 15 years ago I was very much a "born in the USA" boy, never bothered listening to other Bruce material

What a mistake that was

Then heard Nebraska one day, soon it was Born to Run, The River, Darkness on the Edge of Town. And the material he's released since 1995, The Uprising, Ghost of Tom Joad, Devils & Dust, Wrecking Ball etc, the guys a magician

It's very rare for Bruce to have a downer. He's been unbelievable for over 35 years

 

[Cruyff14]

+1. Cryuff, this acoustic version of Rosalita that sounds like it's from a studio jam session circa '73 is like, the greatest thing ever.

Yes, great version. The one from 1996 is also good (the other acoustic version I gave you).

 

[DonDraper]

This setlist got me VERY excited.

Setlist:
The Promised Land
The Ties That Bind
No Surrender
Hungry Heart
We Take Care of Our Own
Wrecking Ball
Death to My Hometown
My City of Ruins
Spirit in the Night
The E Street Shuffle
Jack of All Trades
Prove It All Night
Candy's Room
Darlington County
Shackled and Drawn
Waitin' on a Sunny Day
Drive All Night
The Rising
Badlands
Thunder Road
* * *
Queen of the Supermarket (solo acoustic)
We Are Alive
Born to Run
Glory Days
Dancing in the Dark
Tenth Avenue Freeze-out

 

[Cruyff14]

The only thing that really stands out is Drive All Night.

 

[DonDraper]

No Jungleland just realised. Still I'd be pretty happy if I got that

 

[DrVanNostrand]

Queen of the Supermarket (solo acoustic)

The piss has officially been taken.

I woke up this morning to the sounds of my mother playing Nebraska in the living room. I told her Tom Joad is a better album. I'm bracing to recieve my 24hrs notice.

 

[Cruyff14]

I don't see people's problems with Queen. I mean obviously it is not his finest piece of music, but it's fun and catchy.

And BToR is better than both DrVanNostrand

 

[Cruyff14]

UpForGrabs Ford Fairlane DrVanNostrand RussellEbertHandball Don Draper

One of the true epic performances. Not long after he played it for the first time in 19 years in Philly. You can hear the crowd screaming every word. It's chilling.

Listen to the passion/emotion in "Upstairs the band was playing and the singer was singing something about going home" (One of my favourite Bruce lines too)

 

[UpForGrabs]

UpForGrabs Ford Fairlane DrVanNostrand RussellEbertHandball Don Draper

One of the true epic performances. Not long after he played it for the first time in 19 years in Philly. You can hear the crowd screaming every word. It's chilling.

Listen to the passion/emotion in "Upstairs the band was playing and the singer was singing something about going home" (One of my favourite Bruce lines too)

Yeah, one of his greatest.

Love that performance, but I'm also partial to the version played in Los Angeles the previous year, courtesy of a trio of requests from Edward Norton (he also requested 'The Promise' and 'For You').

 

[Cruyff14]

Yeah, one of his greatest.

Love that performance, but I'm also partial to the version played in Los Angeles the previous year, courtesy of a trio of requests from Edward Norton (he also requested 'The Promise' and 'For You').

Didn't know Ed was a big fan!

Don't know if I have heard that one, best one I have heard is from NYC on November 9 2009

 

[RussellEbertHandball]

Didn't know Ed was a big fan!

When The Promise doco/film was released - not sure if it was released @ The Toronto International Film Festival or just before, I saw this interview of Ed Norton with Bruce at a public session of the TIFF.




Edit it actually was a 70 minute interview. From about 40% down the page

http://backstreets.com/newsarchive39.html

BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN: MAVERICK
In conversation with Ed Norton at TIFF The Bruce Springsteen record that became Darkness on the Edge of Town arrived out of a "search for a purposeful work life," as Springsteen told Edward Norton in the interview the actor conducted with him as part of the Toronto International Film Festival's Maverick series on Tuesday evening.

The interview lasted about 70 minutes, and both stars wore almost identical outfits. There was a wide range of topics, including the influence of film on Springsteen's work, the realization that you have a platform to express important issues to a fan base, the origins and influences of the new direction Springsteen's music would take, and the growing connection to political reality contained within Springsteen's songwriting.

Norton began by referencing the changing tone of Bruce's work that Darkness is known for. He noted that Bruce was one of the first people to "look at the darkness in the country and get your audience to come there with you," and he asked Bruce how he gained the confidence to think his audience would follow him to such a difference place. "Blues did it first," Springsteen answered. "And Dylan went there with 'Highway 61,' which gave me the first portrait of how the country felt."

When Norton asked about current artists that Springsteen enjoys, he quickly named Pete Molinari and The Gaslight Anthem, and he also talked about how his son has gotten him into some punk bands like Against Me!, Bad Religion, and The Dropkick Murphys. "That's the gunslinging life," Bruce said. "You’re always looking over your shoulder."

Through much of the evening, it seemed Norton had a bit of difficulty in focusing his questions coherently (it was useful to remember that, at the end of the day, Norton is still a fan getting the chance to interview one of his heroes — being nervous is understandable). Often it was Bruce who kept things focused when it appeared that his interviewer was struggling. But Norton held up his end by taking the discussion to some interesting places: one of my favorite questions was, if given the chance to see a documentary like the one they just completed on Darkness, but about an album by another artist, which album would it be? After a moment’s thought, Bruce responded with Pet Sounds, or maybe Highway 61.

Norton asked specifically about "The Promise" getting cut off the album, and Bruce called the song "too self-referential," and that they tried to get "the ten toughest songs."
The best quote of the evening might have been when Bruce said he once heard Martin Scorsese say that the goal of an artist is to "get an audience to care about your obsessions," and that Darkness was the album where he started to do that. Bruce also mentioned the importance of Scorsese on his own work; Taxi Driver had just recently been in theaters, and when the Born to Run tour hit Los Angeles the guys met Scorsese and Robert DeNiro, who screened Mean Streets for them.

For anyone that believes Bruce sometimes has trouble remembering his own lyrics, one of the biggest surprises of the night came when he corrected Norton on that front. Norton was asking about the Kingsley Street reference in "Racing in the Street," when Bruce quickly jumped in and said "that’s 'Something in the Night.'"

As the evening wound down, Bruce tried to put the album in perspective. "It was not a modest undertaking; we set our sights big,” he said, going on to state that, in many ways, "the first three records were prequels to this one, and Darkness was the beginning of a long conversation I've had with my audience." It's a conversation we've all been lucky to be a part of.
- September 15, 2010 - Daniel Joyaux reporting. Read more by Joyaux (from TIFF and beyond) on his blog, Third Man Movies & Culture.

http://backstreets.com/newsarchive39.html

 

[Cruyff14]

Oh yeah, I remember that actually.