Music for Roctober - #5 - Bruce Springsteen
In 1973 Bruce Springsteen released two albums: Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J. and The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle. Both albums were critical successes but failed to connect popularly. Asbury Park sold 25,000 copies in its first year of release and Wild and Innocent suffered from similar results. Sometimes the public doesn't know what it has; such was the case with the songwriter Bruce Springsteen
Allmusic captures his Weltanshauung perfectly with it's overview of Asbury Park:
"Bruce Springsteen's debut album found him squarely in the tradition of Bob Dylan: folk-based tunes arranged for an electric band featuring piano and organ (plus, in Springsteen's case, 1950s-style rock & roll tenor saxophone breaks), topped by acoustic guitar and a husky voice singing lyrics full of elaborate, even exaggerated imagery. But where Dylan had taken a world-weary, cynical tone, Springsteen was exuberant. His street scenes could be haunted and tragic, as they were in "Lost in the Flood," but they were still imbued with romanticism and a youthful energy. Asbury Park painted a portrait of teenagers cocksure of themselves, yet bowled over by their discovery of the world."
Cocksure maybe, but by early 1974 CBS was close to cancelling Springsteen's contract. In that setting Brice Springsteen wrote songs for his next album at 7 1/2 West End Court in Long Branch, New Jersey during the early months of 1974:
I love Springsteen's description the album, Born to Run. He explained that each song on the album was part of events that "could all be taking place on an endless summer night."
The title track was composed as a letter to a girl, an inpatient invitation to go, to run, to love. The results are history. "Born to Run" was a breakout song on a breakout album for Springsteen. The song was well-practiced as a key part of Springsteen's concerts well before it was released on the album. While it only reached #23 on the U.S. charts and never charted internationally, it has aged very well and is widely recognized as one of the greatest rock songs of all time:
Live from the Hammersmith, Odeon, London - 1975:
Allmusic captures his Weltanshauung perfectly with it's overview of Asbury Park:
"Bruce Springsteen's debut album found him squarely in the tradition of Bob Dylan: folk-based tunes arranged for an electric band featuring piano and organ (plus, in Springsteen's case, 1950s-style rock & roll tenor saxophone breaks), topped by acoustic guitar and a husky voice singing lyrics full of elaborate, even exaggerated imagery. But where Dylan had taken a world-weary, cynical tone, Springsteen was exuberant. His street scenes could be haunted and tragic, as they were in "Lost in the Flood," but they were still imbued with romanticism and a youthful energy. Asbury Park painted a portrait of teenagers cocksure of themselves, yet bowled over by their discovery of the world."
Cocksure maybe, but by early 1974 CBS was close to cancelling Springsteen's contract. In that setting Brice Springsteen wrote songs for his next album at 7 1/2 West End Court in Long Branch, New Jersey during the early months of 1974:
I love Springsteen's description the album, Born to Run. He explained that each song on the album was part of events that "could all be taking place on an endless summer night."
The title track was composed as a letter to a girl, an inpatient invitation to go, to run, to love. The results are history. "Born to Run" was a breakout song on a breakout album for Springsteen. The song was well-practiced as a key part of Springsteen's concerts well before it was released on the album. While it only reached #23 on the U.S. charts and never charted internationally, it has aged very well and is widely recognized as one of the greatest rock songs of all time:
Live from the Hammersmith, Odeon, London - 1975:
It's okay. I don't like it all that much. Bodhisattva ...it was my Born to Run. Turn it up.
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I really prefer the drive and pace of the YouTube version of the song live in a 1974 London concert, but this one is good, too. I believe the really good initial guitar solo on the one above is the same studio freak that came to The Midland Theatre twice as a part of Crosby & Nash. Great guitarist, name escapes me at the moment. Does session work and did it with Steely Dan well. Steely Dan really was playing music highly influenced by BeBop. It was no fleeting reference when they sang about Charlie Parker. It could be hot stuff. When I listen to Parker's Ornithology, I think of what Becker & Fagen were trying to get at on some of their stuff.
Have a good weekend.
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