Can I call you Boss?
Under new management
In one of Anthony Bourdain’s Parts Unknown episodes based in Porto, he mentions “Saudade”, a Portuguese term that he attempted to explain as:
“…a kind of melancholy — a yearning to get back to something or someone lost, perhaps to a happier time.” During the pandemic I had that feeling about reconnecting with music and especially live music.
One artist in particular, that I reconnected with was Bruce Springsteen whom I had neglected for many years and especially his early records of the 70’s.
A passage that I had read which stuck with me was the following from ‘Killing Commendatore’, a 2017 novel written by Haruki Murakami where he articulates the joy of listening attentively to ‘the River’ album. While I was familiar with a number of tracks from the record I hadn’t really ever invested any time being immersed in that record.
While doing the grocery shopping in my local supermarket during a lock-down period, one of the few places I could go at the time, I noticed they were selling a small number of vinyl records including ‘The River’ and was prompted to pick it up solely by remembering that passage. I think that record purchase was what started my journey of rediscovering Springsteen and his allure, collecting his studio albums along the way, or what my daughter refers to as my “Bruce obsession”.
Looking back further, ‘Born in the USA’ released in 1985 was the album I was most familiar with from my teenage years probably because Springsteen played his first ever show on these shores in front of 65,000 people at Slane Castle as part of the accompanying Tour, which made a big media splash at the time and also with the rise of music videos on MTV which makes me sound and feel very old just now.
Since that first Springsteen record purchase I became more engrossed in his music and stepped up my effort further to complete his studio albums collection and acquire his full catalogue, from start to finish.
What really hooked me back in completely though, was his ‘Darkness on the Edge of town’ album that I picked up in a local record fair and especially for some reason the track ‘The Promised land’ which resonated deeply. I absolutely adore that song and album and always play in its entirety, and would never dream of shuffling on any of the outstanding tracks. Its hard to comprehend right now that the record wasn’t an instant success with fans and Springsteen himself has commented:
“the songs from Darkness on the Edge of town remain at the core of our live performances today and are perhaps the purest distillation of what I wanted my rock ’n’ roll music to be about”
This is still the case, looking at one of his latest setlists which is made up of entries from the following records:
- Darkness on the Edge of Town 6
- Born in the U.S.A. 5
- Born to Run 5
- Letter to You 4
- Covers 4
- The Rising 2
- Wrecking Ball 2
- Greetings From Asbury Park, N.J. 1
- Live/1975–85 1
- The River 1
During those COVID years, I consumed any available Springsteen material, documentaries including the wonderful “The Promise: The Making of Darkness on the Edge of Town”, “Wings For Wheels The Making Of Born To Run” and “Letter to You”. I watched the movie “Thunder Road” ( also because Jim Jarmuch referenced it as inspirational in an interview. Incidentally I never realised that Robert Mitchum’s son was in the supporting cast) and I checked out the very dark and troubling Terrence Malick’s Badlands movie with Martin Sheen starring as the homicidal Charles Starkweather.
For more easily digestible viewing recently, I watched his terrific performance with the E Street Band Live from Barcelona for `The Rising’ tour from ’02, they were seriously cooking that night and the audience responded in kind. I also came across wonderful anecdotes including where Springsteen “lifted the striking miners’ spirits” by donating to their cause back in the mid-’80s and being one of Conan’s all time favourite guests.
Despite her regulars quips about not understanding my fascination with Springsteen, I received a gift from my daughter of Bruce’s Born to Run autobiography, where he explains his complicated relationship with his home town of New Jersey, growing up in a Irish/Italian household, his early music influences including the impact of Elvis, his Father and Mother, the painstaking approach to his recording, his musical journey guided by home, roots, community, responsibility, cars, girls and fortune. Much of this subject matter is covered in his live show Springsteen on Broadway. There are interesting little nuggets such as they toyed at one point with the idea of a double record, with the acoustic Nebraska and the electric Born in the USA in one package. Thankfully, common sense prevailed on that idea.
I finally got to see “the Boss” play live last year in Dublin and am planning to go again this weekend! (A friend of mine has the amazing feat of seeing all of his 31 performances in Ireland since 1985). I have been going to live concerts since the mid 80s but watching him play live that evening was one of life’s most joyous musical experiences, with three generations of people coming together to sing their hearts out to every song.
I’m a self proclaimed music nerd and I can’t resist a best of music or any albums list where for example music sites on the web produce a Bruce’s studio albums ranked. Some are utterly terrible, just clickbait but others are genuine, and always draw further debate and discussion.
It has been fun hunting down his records, some of which are currently out of print and record stores tend to have the same Springsteen content, but I scoured Discogs for the cheapest shipping cost for ‘Working on a dream’ to complete the collection of all 21. I have listened to all the Springsteen albums multiple times, one a day in order of release is my favourite approach. The beauty of this was I had lost touch with him for so many years that some of these were first time listens, having no expectations or just getting an album to hear a particular song.
Both Darkness on the Edge of Town/Born To Run use what critics called the four corners approach to song arrangement on each with rousing openers and maudlin closing tracks on each side of the records. But they are completely different albums, day and night, light and dark, that I just cant choose between or separate because each are compelling listens from start to finish. On different days, I prefer one over the other. This is my current ranking with his cover albums trailing in behind his original material:
21. Only the Strong Survive
20. We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions
19. High Hopes
18. Human Touch
17. The Ghost of Tom Joad
16. Working on a Dream
15. Devils & Dust
14. Letter to You
13. Western Stars
12. Nebraska
11. Wrecking Ball
10. Lucky Town
9. Magic
8. Tunnel of Love
7. The Rising
6. Greetings From Asbury Park, N.J.
5. Born in the USA
4. The Wild the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle
3. The River
2. Born To Run/Darkness on the Edge of Town
1. Darkness on the Edge of Town/Born To Run
What if you had to recommend just one Springsteen album to somebody, what would it be?
P. S. Many thanks to Rob DeMartin for the use of his wonderful photos from last year’s RDS concert. More of Rob’s photography can be explored here: https://www.robdemartin.com/
