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Bruce Springsteen

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My favourite outtake with an official release!

Have loved this song since I first heard about by chance in about 2008 on YT.

I love how joyous it is, I love how relaxed the vocal is. The rhythm guitar is fantastic, the keys are great — subtle a lot of the time, but they’re beaut.

What I love I most about all of this is the imagery and how fun it is. Just brilliant. I’m so happy.

It would not have fit on BTR, but damn, this is one fun song!

And the bridge, woah!

“Oh watch yourself now!”

Listen with headphones and turn it up!
 

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Happy 50th BTR

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This happened overnight/this morning at Monmouth University.

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Someone I know was lucky enough to be there, and posted this about the event. It's a long, but very enjoyable read.



Wow! It was an embarrassment of riches!!!! This was a once-in-a-lifetime event and a privilege to witness it.

Capped off by a performance by Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band performing “Thunder Road” and “Born to Run” at the “Born to Run 50th Anniversary Symposium” at the Pollak Theatre at Monmouth University today.

This is going to be very, very long because there is so much to write about.

After lunch, our phones were locked up so there are no pictures or videos of the panels Bruce was on or the performance. However, it was professionally filmed and hopefully it will be able to be seen when the archives opens next year.

I'm not even sure where to start. I'll start with the end, which was Bruce Springsteen backed by Little Steven, Garry Tallent, Roy Bittan, Max Weinberg, David Sancious, Ernest "Boom" Carter and Ed Manion closing the eight-hour-plus event with awesome performances of "Thunder Road" and "Born to Run" in a 700-seat theater!

“I always wanted to say this — Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band!” said Bob Santelli, executive director of the Bruce Springsteen Archives and Center for American Music, before Bruce and the band played.

I will look it up, but I believe it's the first time Boom Carter has performed with the E Street Band in 51 years. The stage setup was from left, looking at the stage, upfront Ed Manion (on sax), Garry Tallent, Bruce and Steve. In the back was David Sancious on the left, the two drummers and Roy on the right.

At the end of "Born to Run," all the band members came to the front of the stage. Both David Sancious and Boom Carter made sure they were on either side of Bruce for the final bow, I guess to make sure they are in any photos taken by some of the professional photographers who were shooting at the time including Rob DeMartin and Danny Clinch. Hey, this may have been a one-and-only final chance for them to do this.

Then you had the panels. Bruce was on three of them.

His first one was Writing "Born to Run," the Song.
Bruce came out to a rousing ovation and joked "I'm glad I missed the last panel," that had some funny and strange moments. He was interviewed by Bob Santelli.

Bruce talked about living at 7 1/2 West End Court in Long Branch. He said when he heard "Greetings" had sold 23,000 copies, "I thought that was great! Where are all these people?" But the record company didn't think so.

About writing the song "Born to Run" he said, "I knew if this one doesn't click, I'm back in Asbury Park." He said he was sitting on the edge of his bed and he's still not sure "Where I got the Born to Run name from."

He said he listened to a lot of Roy Orbison and used to buy 45s of songs he liked at a store in the New York City subway.

He got the "Born to Run" rift from Duane Eddy and "I liked the Phil Spector sound, the Beach Boys, Bob Dylan, Chuck Berry and I wrote about cars and girls. Something that spoke to me at the time. I needed to speak to the times, we had just gotten past Vietnam. There was a lot of innocence and I got to put them in the car."

Bruce admitted the start of "Born to Run" is the same riff as Little Eva's "Locomotion."

"There was a lot of dread," he continued. "The writing at first was totally a B movie. I went line by line. It took me six months to write it. I had to invest myself into what I was writing. I was tagged with the new Bob Dylan thing and I was really trying to get away from it."

He said when he first signed with Columbia Records, he was a solo act and even Mike Appel was surprised when he showed up with a band. He then imitated Appel's voice saying, "You really know what you are doing!"

Bruce talked about when he was growing up, you would see movies every weekend, just to go to the movies, not even worrying about what you were going to see. "It was $1 to get in when you were 13 and 35 cents when you were 12, so my mother would have me say I was 12 to get that discount."

"With 'Born to Run" I started to write in a cinematographic way."

He discussed how there was "less Jersey Shore in 'Born to Run' and that he still writes in a spiral notebook, just as he did then."

Touring back then was a lot of time on the road, "you were playing and driving," he said.

He talked about the piano he composed "Born the Run" the song and the album on was a spinet piano that was his Aunt Dora's and that's how he learned to play piano originally.

Bob Santelli asked Bruce if the "Wendy" in "Born to Run" was from a poster he had in his bedroom of Peter Pan and Wendy, he said that was true and "I'm not sure what that means for my adult life."

When he first heard the recorded version of "Born to Run," he said, "Damn! That sounds f****** good! Yeah, that's how I f****** sounded when I first played it at 7 1/2 West End Court."

He said how Mike Appel was ruthless promoting "Born to Run" and if you didn't like Bruce Springsteen, "you were f*****, you were getting coal for Christmas."

Bruce said he has always been involved with the audience experience," and when asked by Bob Santelli how the song sounds today, he said, "It sounds like I f****** sound. Sounds exactly how I wanted it to It is still one of my favorite recordings."

He mentioned that he recently rode with Jimmy Iovine (who was on a later panel) and they road through Freehold and Asbury Park and ended up in front of 7 1/2 West End Court just as "Jungleland" was ending.

Bruce's second panel was "Writing 'Born to Run' the album, with Jon Landau and moderated by author Peter Carlin.

I could write so much but here are some quick hits from that:
Bruce said he had invited Jon Landau to a warehouse in an industrial park in Neptune while they were rehearsing "Thunder Road."

He talked about Jon wanting to do an edit on the beginning of "Backstreets" but not that much. "I took it to the extreme as I always do!"

"We were going to make the greatest rock and roll album of all time!" Bruce said and Jon continued, "That's what we did!" to a rousing ovation.

Bruce also said of "Backstreets": "Its a song about a great friendship and a great betrayal. I thought of Asbury Park, but it really brought me back to Freehold."

He asked for some of the lyrics of "Backstreets" to be shown on the teleprompter as he said, "I'm 76, I don't know any of them (the lyrics)."

He said a lot of "Born to Run" is the guy, the girl and the car.

They then discussed "Jungleland" and had some of the lyrics on the teleprompter so he could read them off. "The poets down here, don’t write nothing at all, they just stand back and let it all be" was taking the tragedy of the record and "it leaves you with gratitude. Eight years of Catholic school added a lot of fuel to the fire in that song."

He said "Meeting Across the River" was a unique song and Tom Waits really liked it. "It's the perfect intro to 'Jungleland.' As a prologue, it doesn't get better than that."

Bruce did a shoutout to Peter Carlin for his new book, "Tonight in Jungleland." "The book means a lot to me."

Bruce's third panel was "Roundtable Discussion: The Making of "Born to Run"
This was my favorite panel of the day. The panelist were Bruce, Jon Landau, Mike Appel, Jimmy Iovine, Roy Bittan, Garry Tallent and Max Weinberg.

Everyone contributed and Jimmy Iovine, who is now a very rich person in Beverly Hills, talked about how he faked a lot of it trying to show he knew what he was doing as an engineer on the recording. "I had never mixed an album before," he said. Jimmy was funny throughout this.

He said he remembers Bruce always saying two words over and over: "No! Again!"

Bruce: "These are all the people I wanted. It was all or nothing for me. My life was on it. These are the guys who were there when you needed them."

When the recording sessions were over, and they started the tour he said, "F***, I'm free!

The day kicked off with a panel moderated by Tom Cunningham Springsteen On Sunday on 107-1 The Boss with Tom Cunningham
with Garry Tallent, Boom Carter and David Sancious titled: "1974: The E Street Band."

David said he suggested Boom to Bruce when he needed a drummer to replace Vini Lopez. Boom said he auditioned twice. "It was a lot of songs to learn," he said. "I hadn't heard of a lot of the songs. I was in Atlanta at the time."

Tom Cunningham said that Boom played 83 shows with Bruce and Boom said, "I can't remember any of them" and there were "no nonsense rehearsals."

When asked about the song, "Born to Run" Garry Tallent said he liked it right away." David Sancious: "I thought the song was pretty cool! Bruce rewrote the lyrics to it at least four times."

David said he lived around the corner from Boom in Asbury Park before he (David) moved to Belmar.

Every other panel was interesting including Pam Springsteen interviewing Eric Meola and Little Steven, Ed Manion and Bob Santelli were on a panel talking about what was going on at the Jersey Shore at the time.
 
Have spent a couple of months with Tracks 2 now. Initially I listened to the stream, but that makes it hard to get a decent feel for the music. I always find streaming a disjointed experience, ends up as background music in the car / office / plane / hotel room, and a set like this with so much material can end up with them running together.

Once I got the vinyl I was really able to get into each individual albums and spend proper time with them. Overall verdict, this is extraordinarily good. As a big fan of Dylan's bootleg series, Neil's Archives and the many recent Wilco reissues, I always walk into these sets with an understanding that some music didn't make the cut for good reason. However, the sheer volume of great music, and consistency throughout is well above my highest expectations. Yes, there are clunkers in there, but the proportion of good to bad is miles above what we had any right to expect.

To me, the meat of this set is the middle five albums. LA 83 and Perfect World are nice to haves, but they don't really fit. The LA sessions are clearly demos, and Perfect World is just a collection to wrap up some more recent material. Most of the songs on Perfect World are great, but they are also the most "Springsteen" sounding in the set.

What makes the key five albums so great is they go off into directions he rarely if ever otherwise explored. Nothing here could pass for an E Street record, or E Street lite in the case of the 92 albums.

Streets of Philadelphia Sessions is a real gem here. The "drum loop" aspect is overstated, but it has some of the best material he produced in the 90s. Quite the sliding doors moment - where does his career go if this is released rather than Greatests Hits and Joad?

Twilight Hours is the sort of thing Neil Young would throw out there without a thought, but Bruce (and Jon) and so conscious of the cultivated image of Bruce, you can see why they held it back. It is quite unfathomable that they kept this in the vault and released that Karaoke soul covers record. Including the Harry Potter song was a strange choice - it just doesn't fit here. Would have been better saved for Tracks 3 or tacked onto Perfect World.

Side 1 of Somewhere North of Nashville is the only segment of the box I don't love. The rockabilly rave ups are not to my taste, and are quite repetitive. It comes back though on side 2.

Inyo in the logical successor to Joad, leaning into the Mexican themes in the music as well as words. A lovely album in isolation, but it is clear why he wanted to move in a different direction at that time. Great to have now though.

It is so funny to think what things would be like if the Streets of Philadelphia record and one of Somewhere North or Inyo were released in the 90s. Does the reunion get delayed? Does Bruce explore more musical styles in the 2000s beyond E Street Bruce or solo acoustic Bruce?

The E Street Band is Bruce's Heartbreaker, and it could have been fun if they were more like his Crazy Horse - always ready to be dusted off to hit the road again, but not an anchor preventing his working with a wider variety of musicians. If is a fun alternate timeline to speculate on.
 

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Planet14 said:
Have spent a couple of months with Tracks 2 now. Initially I listened to the stream, but that makes it hard to get a decent feel for the music. I always find streaming a disjointed experience, ends up as background music in the car / office / plane / hotel room, and a set like this with so much material can end up with them running together.

Once I got the vinyl I was really able to get into each individual albums and spend proper time with them. Overall verdict, this is extraordinarily good. As a big fan of Dylan's bootleg series, Neil's Archives and the many recent Wilco reissues, I always walk into these sets with an understanding that some music didn't make the cut for good reason. However, the sheer volume of great music, and consistency throughout is well above my highest expectations. Yes, there are clunkers in there, but the proportion of good to bad is miles above what we had any right to expect.

To me, the meat of this set is the middle five albums. LA 83 and Perfect World are nice to haves, but they don't really fit. The LA sessions are clearly demos, and Perfect World is just a collection to wrap up some more recent material. Most of the songs on Perfect World are great, but they are also the most "Springsteen" sounding in the set.

What makes the key five albums so great is they go off into directions he rarely if ever otherwise explored. Nothing here could pass for an E Street record, or E Street lite in the case of the 92 albums.

Streets of Philadelphia Sessions is a real gem here. The "drum loop" aspect is overstated, but it has some of the best material he produced in the 90s. Quite the sliding doors moment - where does his career go if this is released rather than Greatests Hits and Joad?

Twilight Hours is the sort of thing Neil Young would throw out there without a thought, but Bruce (and Jon) and so conscious of the cultivated image of Bruce, you can see why they held it back. It is quite unfathomable that they kept this in the vault and released that Karaoke soul covers record. Including the Harry Potter song was a strange choice - it just doesn't fit here. Would have been better saved for Tracks 3 or tacked onto Perfect World.

Side 1 of Somewhere North of Nashville is the only segment of the box I don't love. The rockabilly rave ups are not to my taste, and are quite repetitive. It comes back though on side 2.

Inyo in the logical successor to Joad, leaning into the Mexican themes in the music as well as words. A lovely album in isolation, but it is clear why he wanted to move in a different direction at that time. Great to have now though.

It is so funny to think what things would be like if the Streets of Philadelphia record and one of Somewhere North or Inyo were released in the 90s. Does the reunion get delayed? Does Bruce explore more musical styles in the 2000s beyond E Street Bruce or solo acoustic Bruce?

The E Street Band is Bruce's Heartbreaker, and it could have been fun if they were more like his Crazy Horse - always ready to be dusted off to hit the road again, but not an anchor preventing his working with a wider variety of musicians. If is a fun alternate timeline to speculate on.
Click to expand...

Nice write up. Agree, Streets of Philadelphia sessions is awesome.
 
Gasometer said:
Not long to the movie now.
Click to expand...
I'm a big fan of Stephen Graham, but apart from that i'm not excited at all. The guy playing Springsteen doesn't convince me, and the crux of the story is interesting but not interesting enough for a movie. I'll still go and see it and will be happy if i'm proved wrong.
 

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