Pokin' That Dog With A Stick: Nebraska (1982)

Tonight!

(1982) Darkness on the Edge of Bruce.

Bryan: Here's Bruce's first solo record, released 35 years ago today. (Not that we planned that timing!) It didn't start out that way - Bruce intended the tunes he recorded at home (on a newly purchased and state-of-the-art-of-home-recording-in-the-early-80s Tascam Teak s144 4 track) to be fleshed out by the E Street Band as per normal, but as Bruce wrote in his 1998 book Songs: "I went into the studio, brought in the band, rerecorded, remixed, and succeeded in making the whole thing worse." He tossed the "spooky acoustic demos" cassette to Toby Scott and said "Maybe we should just use these."

Bruce's decision was based mainly on the inability of the studio to reproduce the "sunken beatbox sound" of the home recording, which came from when the Panasonic boom box he'd used as a mix down deck fell into the river and later came back to life, but the demos now sounded... well, muddier. It was, in Bruce's mind, the key component to the album's sound.
 
And it's tough to argue with that decision, given the results. (Hell, Asbury Park sounds much closer to "muddy" in my own estimation than Nebraska.) With me again is the only other man to make the Kessel run in less than twelve parsecs, Mr. Bryant Burnette. Bryant!

Bryant: The hour: six-and-a-half. The man: writing about Bruce Springsteen. The location: Needstogotobedsville, USA, right outside of Sleepwhendeadsburg. Oddly enough, I feel in a river, but have come back alive so I could … uh, make spooky blog-post comments? Nah, that really doesn’t work, does it? Well, anyways, regardless of all that, the point where we are chronologically feels to me like about the right time for Springsteen to try something different. A solo album from him at this time certainly qualified as different. 

Bryan: Even if the E Street Band didn’t make the final cut, they recorded most of Born in the USA while trying, so hey, for that alone, probably the most productive sessions of their career, even if they didn’t make the then-current album. According to Max Weinberg, a full-on E-Street Band electric Nebraska album exists somewhere in the vault. I imagine it’s only a matter of time before the 6-album with DVDs release of it. (Maybe by the time we’re done getting through the catalog it’ll be out there.) 

Bryant: God almighty. I better start saving money now. Because I will have that.

“Nebraska”

Bryan: 5/5 I'm not the hugest fan of folk. That said, having come of age in an era where almost any stretch of Americana seen from a moving car or bus window was accompanied by this song or something almost exactly like it, I came to appreciate it (the genre) as killer (no pun intended) mood music at the very least. Occasionally some couplet or musical phrasing will make me perk up and say oh that was cool, but for the most part, I appreciate it almost exclusively as mood music. The exception is pretty much Nebraska, which hits me like some dark offspring of John Steinbeck or Jim Thompson, a murdering ghost of the Dust Bowl/ Appalachia sort of thing.

Bryant: 4.75/5 You can probably guess just from that first score that this album is doing to do quite well with me. You're not wrong. If people who were Springsteen fans at the time heard “Nebraska” and just rolled their eyes and went and bought a Jackson Browne album or something, I don’t guess I could blame them too much. I mean, let's face it: there's not much in Bruce’s catalog up to that point that prepares one for this song. “Wreck on the Highway,” sure, but that's at least got a positive message, so you can connect it to Bruce's other, sprier songs. But it's a long way from “Promised Land” to Charles Starkweather asking for Caril Fugate to sit on his lap when the electric chair is activated. No doubt about it: that takes a leap of faith on the listener's part. 

I wonder how it would have been for me if I'd been listening in 1982 when the album came out; and I don't really know for sure. All I know is that the first time I heard the album, it blew me away. I already had a solid Bob Dylan fandom under my belt, so I wasn't much challenged by guy-with-a-guitar-and-harmonica music. That helped. But it struck me then and now as quintessentially BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN (capitalized to emphasize the _________ as opposed to merely the man), due to the sheer talent and the passion for storytelling. Make me a song this great, and I don't care what style it's in. I don't care what the instruments you use (if any) are; I don't care what it's about. I'm with you, Boss.

Bryan: I know that within the country/ folk tradition there are songs galore about killers, but setting the tale of Starkweather to the “This Land Is Your Land” melody? And starting the album with it? Pretty badass. While we're here, Springsteen's famous quip about Reagan's referencing "Born in the USA" during his re-election campaign in '84 (“Which album's his favorite? I don't think it's Nebraska”) always makes me imagine Reagan (or maybe Phil Hartman as Reagan) responding with “'From the town of Lincoln, Nebraska with a sawed off .410 on my lap / Through to the badlands of Wyoming I killed everything in my path.' Yes, Mr. Springsteen, Nancy and I drop a needle on "Nebraska" whenever we want to 'get dark.'”

“Atlantic City”

Bryant: 7/5 Better than perfection. Perfection wishes it was this good.

Bryan: 5/5 I like it a little less than that, but not by much. Not my absolute favorite of his songs but arguably his most quintessential. That mandolin that comes into the mix as the song goes on is pretty sweet. Sounds ghostly, or like it's coming up from underwater somehow. What drowned river bard, its hour come round at last, slouches towards Atlantic City to be born?

“Mansion on the Hill” 

Bryant: 2.5/5 Nothing wrong with it at all, but it's one of the lesser songs on the album, in my opinion.

Bryan: 5/5 I’m surprised this one doesn’t rate higher with you! I love this one. There’s a version of this from that Nebraska cover album that came out a ways back that I’ve always liked. I have a distinct memory of my then-girlfriend's housemate at Vassar (which can accurately be described as several mansions on the hill) playing it a few times in their dorm. 

Bryant: I don't think I'd ever even heard of that Badlands album. I'll have to check it out.

Bryan: Surprisingly, I don't think Johnny Cash is at his best with “I'm on Fire”. Figured that would be a slam dunk.

“Johnny 99” 

Bryant: 4.5/5  Think a guy with a guitar that isn't even plugged in can't rock your face so hard your ear hairs fall out? Bull SHIT. Here's my proof.

Bryan: 5/5 These first 4 tunes are about as perfect an album opener as you can get. The Live 75-85 version was my first introduction to this, and I think I may like that one a tad more.

“Highway Patrolman” 

Bryant: 4.75/5 I was tempted to go the full 5 on this one. It occurs to me listening to this one that while Frankie may be no good, he -- I'm assuming, granted -- is under no pretensions that he's anything more than what he is. The narrator, on the other hand, seems to be routinely abusing his position so as to keep Frankie out of the trouble he's earned. So who's the real villain of this one?

Bryan: 4/5 I'd forgotten that Sean Penn's movie The Indian Runner was based on “Highway Patrolman.” I tried watching a little of it last night, but the circumstances of my life these days are alas mutually exclusive to watching things like The Indian Runner. That's a film best suited for a bachelor, in his 20s, with a bong, I think. Or medication. Not necessarily a dis - I'd say the same thing for Blow-Up, and that's one of my favorite films.

Bryant: I've never seen that, but I knew it was based on one of the songs from Nebraska. Of all the albums, it's that one that has generated a movie adaptation!

“State Trooper”

Bryant: 4.25/5 It's slower than “Johnny 99,” but seemingly comes from the same sort of punk-rock attitude. That barbaric yawp he unleashes toward the end is nerve-wracking. This brings up something that seems worth discussing: the production. What's he using that causes those echoes? All I know is, this album sounds like gold-covered dynamite.

Bryan: 4.5/5 I'm assuming it's a mix between that Echoplex pedal and the Panasonic boom box that drowned and came back to life: “The remnants of river muck that brought out the desolation,” as it’s put in the Carlin book.

Bryant: So in other words, this is a little bit like Cthulhu Unplugged. Okay, I can dig that.

Bryan: Here's a pretty great version from the '84 tour. I assume that's Roy or Danny doing the cool keyboard sounds. To echo one of your comments from another album, I wish it was sometimes clearer which of those two was doing what, as I hate to attribute the wrong part. Whoever it is, though, totally synched-up on this one.

“Used Cars”

Bryan: 4/5 "Now the neighbours come from near and far / As we pull up in our brand new used car / I wish he'd just hit the gas and let out a cry / And tell them all they can kiss our asses goodbye."

Bryant: 4.75/5 Oh, you can kind of imagine this getting revamped and fitting quite well on Born to Run, can't you? My mind can almost make that happen. But I don't need it; this version is great on its own.

“Open All Night”

Bryant: 4.5/5  Not quite as hard a rocker as “Cadillac Ranch,” but it's close. I wonder if he's ever done this with the band?  I bet it slays.

Bryan: 5/5 Hell yeah he has - here's a relatively recent one and here's the one from the Stand Up For Heroes benefit. (I hope I synched that up right.) Kind of a bad recording, but admirable energy from the E Street fellas. And this version with the E Street/ Pete Seeger superband is pretty sweet, too. This is kind of an odd choice for a song for Nebraska, eh? It's totally made for the big band swing version.

“My Father's House”

Bryan: 3.5/5 I mean, it’s a brilliant tune and all, but maybe it’s a bit too much after all the rest. I might’ve cut this one, actually and just got to “Reason to Believe” a little faster. But, maybe not. Probably not, actually - the album would seem incomplete without it, or any of these songs, really.

Bryant: 4.25/5 Heartbreaking. I can see how this sort of thing isn't everybody's cup of tea; I mean, if you're only into Bruce for the “Rosalita”s and “Thunder Road”s, I get it. But I feel bad for those fans; they're missing out.

“Reason to Believe”

Bryant: 5/5 That's a hell of a closer. And imagine! Not even the best song on the album! 

Bryan: 4/5 Couldn’t agree more. I scored it a little less only to keep consistency with some of my other scores, but I love this tune and I think it's the perfect ending to the record.

FINAL THOUGHTS

Bryan: 45 total 4.5 avg. It's the sort of thing that is great all on its own but even better when you consider it as the interlude between The River and Born in the USA - sort of the troubled dreams of a rest between those two mega-journeys. I hadn't listened to Nebraska this much in such a small period of time since the late 80s. If indeed I ever did cluster-listen to Nebraska back then - it wasn't my favorite when I was in my Bruce Phase One fandom. Which was not a fault of the album, just my mindset at the time: nothing country or folk could penetrate my sphere of musical appreciation. That Nebraska even got in there is thanks only to Bruce.

Bryant: 46.25 total, 4.63 average, which means that I am indeed saying this album is superior to both Born to Run and Darkness on the Edge of Town. Not by much; all three are indispensable. But if I have to pick a winner among them, here's mine.

PERSONNEL

Just Bruce – vocals, guitar, harmonica, mandolin, glockenspiel, tambourine, organ, synthesizer, production

FURTHER READING

Deliver Me From Nowhere (2005) by Tennessee Jones. I've never read it, but I'd like to: a collection of short fiction inspired by Nebraska.

My Brain Takes a Vacation To Give My Heart More Room: The River (1980)

Tonight!

(1980)

"Rock and roll has always been this joy, this certain happiness that is in its way the most beautiful thing in life. But rock is also about hardness and coldness and being alone ... I finally got to the place where I realized life had paradoxes, a lot of them, and you've got to live with them."

Bryan: With me as always is Bryant – hello, Bryant.

Bryant: I haven’t been fired and replaced with a robot yet?!? Surprising, but I appreciate the magnanimity!

Bryan: My magnanimity is second only to my modesty. It's common enough to see The River listed alongside Tusk, The Wall, Tommy, Physical Graffiti as one of the great all-time double albums in rock. I’m not sure if it tops my own personal list – you’ve got to get up pretty early to knock The White Album off its perch and I probably prefer at least a couple of the just-mentioned to The River – but what say you?

Bryant: I’m not terribly knowledgeable about Fleetwood Mac or The Who, but yeah, The Wall and the White Album both would get the nod over this for me.  Not that it need be a competition. If it WAS, Dylan’s Blonde On Blonde might be my personal pick. The River is awfully good, though; you’re probably nuts if you don’t love all of these.

Bryan: Agreed. I noticed you deliberately did not italicize the White Album, which is undoubtedly correct, as it's only the colloquial name for The Beatles (1968). But, if anyone out there feels more comfortable italicizing it, don't let us stop you.

Bryant: We’ve got a double-album-length post on our docket here, so let’s get it going, eh?

DISC ONE

"The Ties That Bind"

Bryan: 3/5 I know this was meant to be the title track until he changed the title, but it’s not my idea of a great album opener. It's fine and all, just not a huge fan. The ai-yi-yi-yi chorus seems a misstep. I like "oh-oh-oh" ending, though. Brief as it is. Ai-yi-yi, oh-oh-oh, whatever it takes. 

Bryant: 2.5/5 The thing I would say right off the bat about this album is that it feels very much like a conscious effort NOT to swing for the fences. It's almost as if Bruce realized -- possibly correctly -- that there was really no topping Born to Run and Darkness on the Edge of Town. Those albums seem like the logical outcome of his talent applied to his artistic trajectory. Where do you go from there? You kinda have to go someplace else. The River is several someplace-elses all at once, and one of those places is "fun-time rock-'n'-roll-land." Some of it sounds a bit shallow and unessential to my ears, but that's only in comparison to stuff like "Badlands," and THAT ain't no insult at all. So know that what I'm saying is, a 2.5, for me, is an awfully good song. "The Ties That Bind" is an awfully good song.

Bryan: Several someplace-elses at once with one of them fun rock-n-roll-land should be printed on the back of this thing. That’s it exactly.

"Sherry Darling" 

Bryant:  3.25/5  One of the most fun songs on this album, so therefore one of the most fun songs he ever wrote. I feel bad for that poor mother in the back seat, though.

Bryan: 3.75/5 One two three four! I like the chorus and the lyrics, but the arrangement is kind of blah and the sax/ piano reminds me of end credits to a variety show or something. (Note – repeat listenings over the past several weeks have greatly enhanced my enjoyment of this one. Catch me on another day and I’ll give this one a 4 or even a 4.1 Try and stop me, world!) Here's Southside Johnny and Asbury Jukes doing a very, uhh, loose take on it.

"Jackson Cage"

Bryan: 3/5 Not a bad version of this sort of tune in Springsteen's catalog but not one of my faves. It’d fit pretty well on Lucky Town, though – should’ve saved it for that one and picked one of the River outtakes from Tracks to take its place. ("Loose Ends" maybe? Would that alter the mood-to-ratio of The River? For the better, I say.) 

Bryant: 2.75/5 This is one that I always kind of forget about, but when I listen to it, it always sounds better than I'd remembered. I can hear this one reworked a bit and fitting really well on either of the two preceding albums. 

"Two Hearts" 

Bryant: 2/5  Not bad, but it doesn't do a whole lot for me. 

Bryan: 3.5/5 I could see Tom Petty having a big hit with this. (Incidentally, I'd never heard the Precious Metal version, nor even of that band) He did his job (catchy little rock number expressing something everyone can relate to – certainly never an unremarkable feat) but not a particular fave.   

"Independence Day"

Bryan: 5/5 One of my favorite representations of this sort of song in Bruce's catalog. That "Papa go to bed now" reminds me of some of the anecdotes from various Bruce bios of Doug Springsteen sitting in the kitchen of Bruce’s childhood home with the lights off and his cigarettes, staring at the wall, until someone could get him to go to bed.

Bryant: 5/5  I honestly don't know if this song had ever fully clicked for me until this listen. I never disliked it, but I don't think I ever really paid attention to it. If you DO pay attention to it, boy does it pack a wallop, especially following those first four goof-offs. But for me, I think that's a lot of what makes The River -- and, later, Born in the USA -- work: that mix of happiness and sadness. Both feed off each other; this is the work of a man who's come to realize that any normal life is going to have heaping helpings of both.  The Bruce of the first four albums maybe hadn't quite figured that out; he was first getting it on Darkness, I think, but even then, the shock of it seemed so fresh that it came roaring out of him primally, vitally, as though he were convinced he could still change it if only he railed against it strongly enough.  By The River, there's more of an acceptance.  The characters -- which I think they mostly are (as opposed to manifestations of himself in a literal sense) -- of songs like "Independence Day" know there's no going back.  This is simply what life is.

Bryan: That mix of happiness and sadness, highs and lows, absolutely. Whatever its cause – chemical imbalance, unresolved issues from his upbringing, or just a sensitive eye for detail in not-always-so-sensitive circumstances, an expression of the eternal yin and yang of life - it defines so much of the pre-90s Bruce catalog.

And speaking of:

"Hungry Heart"

Bryant: 6.5/5  The happiest sad song ever recorded?  The saddest happy song ever recorded?  It's one or the other.  I got no words for how much I love this song.  That's alright.  Bruce has got 'em for me.

Bryan: 6.5/5 I added a half-point to my original score of 6 following your lead here. It certainly deserves it. I mean, what more can be said? Those first few couplets (“Got a wife and kids in Baltimore, Jack / I went out for a ride and I never went back. Like a river that don’t know where it’s flowing / I took a wrong turn and I just kept going”) flow so nicely into the chorus, where Bruce is almost in relationship/entropy-Yoda mode, dispensing hard-won wisdom that doesn’t exactly comfort, but certainly makes you nod your head in understanding. Just perfect. Instantly catapulted Bruce to a whole new level of songwriters. I’ve been singing this around the house so much (also "Glory Days") I'm starting to worry Dawn'll get the wrong idea. I think I'll always prefer the studio version, which I think is perfect, but there are some exceptional live ones out there, most especially this one. Crank that!

"Out in the Street"

Bryant: 2.25/5  I don't dislike this one, but boy does it sound insignificant coming after "Hungry Heart." There are great live versions, of course, but what Bruce song is that not true of? Other, of course, than "Mary Queen of Arkansas"?

Bryan: 2.25/5 Meh. Too much with the drag racing, sometimes, with Bruce. I haven’t thought of The Heavenly Kid in years, but as a result of all this drag racing stuff I keep thinking about it. That was not an expected side effect of this project.

"Crush On You"

Bryan: 3.25/5 "My brain takes a vacation just to give my heart more room." Uncomplicated but fun. Would've been ideal for Kiss - hell, it even sounds like one of Gene's numbers.

Bryant: 3/5  I was so glad to see your comment about this sounding like a Gene Simmons song that I nearly shouted out loud. I've been saying that for years! And we're both right. This makes a certain amount of sense to me. They're from the same area and the same era, and Kiss was all about rock and roll basics, which is what a lot of The River is about. But vocally, I swear to God, I think Bruce was consciously doing a Gene here.

Bryan: I imagine he was going for the Stones, but the idea of his channeling Gene is too good to let that get in the way of anything.

"You Can Look (But You Better Not Touch)"

Bryant: 3/5  Whereas, this, I hear this as more of a Peter song. Or maybe Paul. Paul would've had a blast with it, probably -- imagine the five-minute innuendo-laden rant he'd deliver beforehand!

Bryan: 3/5 Absolutely. My score for this one has bounced around like a pinball over all these listenings, but I think it’s settled into a solid 3.

"I Wanna Marry You"

Bryan: (3.5) Another one I wish he could’ve gotten to the Beach Boys for their particular harmony blend, though. Could’ve been one of their all-time big hits, actually. I wish I hadn’t thought of it, because now everytime I hear it I hear what might have been and it’s too bad.

Bryant: 3.25/5  This makes me think of a single mom I worked with at one point in time.  Some other world, some other me ... hmm.  Thoughts, thoughts, boy; I got plenty of thoughts.  And if they were a song, they might sound a little bit like this.

"The River"

Bryant: 5/5  I get hammered by this one just about every time. The kind of characters Bruce was singing about on his first few albums wouldn't even have realized that such a sentence as "Then I got Mary pregnant, and man, that was all she wrote" was even possible, much less the kicker about not even having a wedding dress or a walk down the aisle. When you're dreaming of such things as a younger person, they seem like givens; it isn't "if it happens," it's "when it happens." So finding out that it's far from given is a hell of a shock.  And, so far as I can tell, it remains so for the rest of your days. 

Bryan: 3.75/5 Hear, hear. I know it's practically heresy, but I've just never been as moved by this one as everyone else. I appreciate what you’re saying, and I know there’s an autobiographical element with Springsteen's sister and her husband and the whole escape-surroundings-directive and all. And I do very much appreciate the poetry and sensitivity of it, but it's just never one I’m dying to hear or feel any catharsis from doing so. Musically, tho, I like the way it builds and different voices and instruments join in, like tributaries rejoining the main, sad stream.

It's weird - if "The River" was just a random b-side, would I rate it higher? Probably. Why is that?

DISC TWO

"Point Blank"

Bryant: 3.25/5  I fancy I hear the beginnings of Tunnel of Love on this song. Add some synth, and it's not far off.

Bryan: 3/5 Now that you point it out, I agree completely. Here's one I originally scored much higher, but repeat listenings kind of kept kicking it down. It’s not bad, but it’s no:

"Cadillac Ranch"

Bryan: 4.75/5 Pretty cheeky starting the 2nd album off with "Point Blank" and not this one. It works, I guess - Springsteen / Landau/ Van Zandt clearly had a good grasp on album side order and how to distribute/ scatter the tunes. A signpost, if not the connecting hub, to a little further down the road to "Darlington County."

Bryant: 5/5  I'm giving this one the full five. I saw Springsteen in Birmingham in 2002 (I think), and he played this. The roof of the auditorium was blown off and landed two counties over, mysteriously still in one piece. Work crews were eventually able to fix it back in place, but it was touch and go, apparently.

Bryan: I realize it’s almost certainly me reading into things but here’s another one I just see casting a spotlight across King’s unconscious. It’s not a great story, but I can’t help wonder if some of the ideas/ energy in this song ended up in stuff like “You Know They Got a Hell of a Band.” Like you’ve said elsewhere, knowing King has been a huge Springsteen fan since the early days – and a general rags to riches trajectory and political sensibility - makes it tempting to find parallels.

Speaking of, I think the Wiggles re-arranged this and slowed it down as "Dorothy the Dinosaur." 

There's some amazingly fun choreography going on in this 7-minute long version from Paris 1985. That hyperlink should be cued up to it but apologies if it not - it's at/around the 3:20 mark. 

"I'm a Rocker"

Bryan: 4.25/5 I’m a sucker for songs like this. On the face of it, a ridiculous statement, even more absurdly put across. And yet, it's actually truth, like hey that’s my job, folks. And this is how it sounds! It always amuses me. It'd be fun to do a blog of all the songs named "I'm a Rocker." I can only think of the Judas Priest and Thin Lizzy ones, aside from this, but I bet there are plenty more. Way more if we expand it to any song that has as its title a pronoun-subject/verb-rock-any-tense. ("We Rock," "I Wanna Rock," "Let's Get Rocked," etc. Hell this should be an entire blog of its own, not just a post: Songs About Rockin'. An inexhaustible mine.)

Bryant: 2.5/5  Absolutely, including the paragon of the subgenre, Falco’s "Rock Me Amadeus." I leave it to you to decide whether I’m serious about that. Back to the Boss, this has always been one of the album's lesser songs, in my eyes. It's fine, though, just not one I gravitate to.

Bryan: I like Bruce's clowning around at the beginning of this version from 2002. Another of those songs he wrote in the 70s that he never seemed to play back then but started popping up in the 21st century.

"Fade Away"

Bryan: 4.25/5 Showcases the Bruce/ Van Zandt unique vocal alchemy pretty well.

Bryant: Honestly, what could some other man do to a woman that Bruce couldn't?  I'm offended by the very notion on his behalf.  Oh yeah, I gotta score this, don't I?  3/5  I like it, but it's not on my list of essentials.

Bryan: That outro is so good, though! In the eternal game of redistributing Bruce’s songs to other artists, Noel Gallagher would’ve (maybe still would – his voice is holding up all right) done well with this one. (And maybe he did, kind of, at the end of "Sad Song?" Noel was all about studying the songwriting greats, so it would only make sense if a lot of Bruce-homework got into some of that homework along with everyone else.)

"Stolen Car"

Bryant: 3.75/5  Hey, looky there; Nebraska was just born! Brutally sad, but usefully so.

Bryan: 4/5 Another pained lament, and some of his simplest, most direct lyrics of love gone to ruin but the bodies still live. A sad one. Great tune but not my favorite sort of thing. It'd be perfect for the right sequence of a film, though. My points here are what I think the song is worth; my own personal level of enjoyment would be more a 4.

"Ramrod"

Bryan: 3.5/5 I mean, nothing special I guess, just traditional rock and roll. I've got zero problems with that. Weird they chose "Fade Away" as the 2nd single from this record and not this one or "I'm a Rocker." Now: picture this (once again) done by the Beach Boys with Mike Love singing - same song, same approach. What would your rating be? (Mine'd drop considerably.) The power of Bruce! But also, equally, of the E Street Band. This isn't a dis to the BBs, just properly evaluating the value these guys brought to the rock and roll game. Here's a version from The River tour that rocks.

Bryant: 2/5  It absolutely rocks, but this is my least favorite song on the album.  I never skip it or anything, but I'm kind of glad when it's over.

"The Price You Pay"

Bryant: 3/5  Another one that is part of the Nebraska origin story.  I'd love to hear it done in that vein, but it works really well here, too, obviously. [Say, I think you forgot to score this one!]

Bryan: [Jostles himself awake. 3 is about right.]

"Drive All Night"

Bryan: 2/5 I only really like the sax solo. Don't like the "heart and soul" anguish or whatever he's doing round the 6 minute mark. Or much else. The lyrics are good - it's not a bad exploration of this emotion/ type of song. It works better as accompaniment for something in a movie maybe. I can totally understand why anyone would dig it, but for the same vibe I'd rather just listen to "Backstreets."

Bryant: 3/5  I like it quite a bit more than you do, but I totally agree that he needed to go in a different direction with some of it. It still works for me as a whole, though.

"Wreck on the Highway"

Bryan: 4/5 Love this one. For me, this is the pointer-of-the-way to not just Nebraska but to all the country-Bruce to follow, almost as much as if it were a sneak preview of the 80s. "Bruce Springsteen Will Return In..." Perfect end to the record.

Bryant: 3.75/5 Definitely great, but not a personal favorite for me. I agree that it's a wonderful album-closer, though. I wonder if people took it that way when it came out?  I bet a few fans were a little worried about the direction it was pointing.

FINAL THOUGHTS

Bryan: Total 74.25 Avg: 3.71 In many ways the pivotal album of the catalog, the one that harnessed the momentum and careful step-by-step placement of the first four and set the stage for everything that came after.

Bryant: Total 67.75 total, 3.39 average  I'm a good bit lower than you on this one.  Don't get me wrong, though; I love it. Sure, it's not "as good" as the previous two albums; but I don't think it was designed to be. I think it was designed NOT to be. Either way, it's crammed full of great songs.

~

THE RIVER

was produced by Jon Landau, Steven Van Zandt, and Bruce Springsteen

and featured

Bruce Springsteen – lead vocals, lead guitar, harmonica

Roy Bittan – piano, backing vocals

Clarence Clemons – saxophone, backing vocals

Danny Federici – organ, glockenspiel

Garry Tallent – bass guitar

Steve Van Zandt – rhythm guitar, backing vocals

Max Weinberg – drums

Flo and Eddie – backing vocals on "Hungry Heart"

You’re Born With Nothing and Better Off That Way: Darkness on the Edge of Town (1978)

Tonight!

(1978)

"Musically austere, lyrics stripped down to sepia portraiture, Darkness on the Edge of Town sets out to describe the underbelly of America's everything-all-the-time culture. The backdrops shift from song to song, moving from Asbury Park to the Dakotas to the Freehold of the 1950s to the Southwest to the industrial flats to the highway and beyond. But the real setting is that same forgotten America that (photographer Robert Frank) had captured in the backwaters of the nation's cities, towns, and wilderness (in his book The Americans). The personal twists into the political, and the sociocultural springs from the tangled roots of individual lives. 'The guy at the end of Darkness,' said Bruce, 'has reached a point where you just have to strip yourself of everything to get yourself together." 

- Bruce, Peter Ames Carlin 

Bryan: Despite the tremendous reception to Born To Run, the relationship between Bruce Springsteen and Mike Appel deteriorated rapidly once Bruce took a closer look at the contract he’d signed. Things ended up in court when Appel wrote to Springsteen saying that he would not allow Jon Landau (who had slowly replaced Appel as Bruce’s manager and guru/head apostle) to produce the next album, citing a particular paragraph from their original agreement. Bruce responded by suing Appel, Appel countersued, and the result of it all was that Springsteen was enjoined from any further recording with Columbia Records until everything was resolved. By the time Springsteen and Appel reached a settlement, it was May 1977. The band got on with recording the new album, and Darkness on the Edge of Town was released in June 1978, three full years since Born to Run."

Bryant, you old rascal! Here we are again.

Bryant: The backstory of this album’s recording is fascinating. It’s easy to fall into thinking about Darkness as merely a follow-up to Born to Run, because in some ways they do sound like a two-album sequence. But Darkness is more than that, and knowing the story behind makes it ever so much richer an experience.

Bryan: Absolutely. When Bruce saw the cover and sleeve photography (by Frank Stefanko) he said, "'That's the guy in the songs.' I wanted the part of me that's still that guy to be on the cover. Frank stripped away all your celebrity and left you with your essence. That's what that record was about."

Photographer Ron Akiyama, who shot quite a few of the Darkness tours, agrees. "It was quite a kick to shoot Bruce at that time, and to watch him make the change from a kid to an adult and make the leap from small concerts to arenas. He changed his look drastically. He went from a scruffy Jersey guy who looked like he fixed cars to a guy who’d play in a suit. He cropped his haircut, shaved, and put on a Wall Street shirt. It was nothing like the 'tramps like us' look. He was telling the audience: 'This is what I am now.'"

Akiyama flanked by the Boss and Max Weinberg, 1978.

Bryant: The album kicks off with: 

"Badlands"

Bryant: Alright, maybe you were wondering how I felt about the whole exceeding-"maximum"-points thing. And here's what I'll tell you about that: I feel A-OK with it. BUT...I refuse to allow myself to use it willy-nilly. Oh, the temptation has been there, no doubt.  But I've been keeping it in my back pocket specifically waiting for this song to roll around. (Might be that I'm holding the 6 in reserve, too.  We'll see.  That's a guarantease!) 

A few things about that. 

#1, the only way to listen to this is with the volume cranked, preferably to a level that makes you fear you are going to blow out the speakers on your leased vehicle. 

#2, Clarence Clemons, once again striding across the musical landscape like Cthulhu awoken and exercising his right to drive humankind mad, in this instance through the sheer awesomeness of rock. 

#3, I have a great memory of this song being played in an American Studies class I took. It was a survey class in which we went through several decades of post-WWII American pop culture. It was an early-morning class, and each morning for the five-to-ten minutes or so that led up to the beginning of class, the professor would blast music that represented the theme of the upcoming lecture. Well, one morning, the song under consideration was "Badlands." Rarely has it seemed as great as it seemed then. It was a large class, with maybe a hundred or so people, and often it was kind of boisterous prior to the lecture beginning. On this particular morning -- and it wasn't alone in that regard (Gil Scott-Heron's "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised" had a similar effect) - you could tell that the song just HAD people. Nobody much was talking, and when it got to the midpoint section where the instruments mostly drop out and everyone is just sort of humming while Max drums, I looked around and saw dozens of people nodding their heads, or tapping their hands, or tapping their feet. My memory is shit, but I ain't NEVER gonna forget that.

Oh, and #4, this is Bruce's best song, in my opinion. 7/5

Bryan: I can easily picture this scene you describe. Nice! Even during my years in the anti-Boss wilderness I always maintained this was a kickass tune. I think about the years I wasted convincing myself I no longer liked Springsteen despite having been a super-fan for so many years. Phases of growth! 6/5

This version, while we’re here, is pretty bad-ass. Listen to that crowd when Clarence comes in! Nice. And Bruce really attacks that guitar and the vocals.  This performance showcases everything about the band and Bruce as a performer/ songwriter that is awesome and absolutely zero that is not awesome. 

Bryant: I don't think I'd ever seen that before. Beyond awesome. Why can't I be Clarence? Is this really too much to ask from life?!? To transform me into a strapping young black man who has great red suits and can play the saxophone as though he were imbued with the powers of Odin? Fuck, I guess it must be. Ah, well, maybe when I wake up tomorrow.

"Adam Raised a Cain" 

Bryan: From the Carlin book: "Coaching mixer Chuck Plotkin on how the song should sound: "Bruce described a movie scene showing two young lovers sharing a picnic in a sunlit park. The sun would be shining, the grass would be emerald, the ducks paddled across the pond before them. The camera would zoom out to reveal, just behind them, a human corpse in the bushes behind them, Aieee! 'This song,' he told Plotkin, 'is the dead body.'"

Bryant: Reading the lyrics to "Adam Raised a Cain," and knowing thanks to the autobiography his relationship with his father, that seems like even better a song than I thought.

Bryan: 4.3/5 My first impression of all pre-Born in the USA Bruce (with the exception of "Hungry Heart," which I'm sure I probably heard on the radio but have no clear memory of it) is filtered through that Live ’75 to ’85 from 1986. Which I got for Christmas that year and pretty much dominated my landscape until Hysteria came out at the end of the following summer. As a result, it’s rare when I like the studio version of one of those tunes more than that Live Set – memories of an impressionable age being what they are – but this is one of those occasions.

Bryant: 4.5/5 I think this and about half the rest of this album need to appear in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, and I will not accept no for an answer. You mentioned in relation to a different song on another album -- which, weirdly, may not have come up yet in the actual blog post (hey, vertigo!) - that it sounded like a Gene Simmons Kiss song. This one sounds like that to me, but I don't think even they could have made it rock as much as these E Street fellows do. I know at least one massive Bruce fan who isn't fond of this song, and that makes sense, because it is kind of an outlier in his discography. I love it, though.

Bryan: Picturing Kiss do "Adam Raised a Cain" is fun. "Raised a Cain" takes on a whoole new Gene-and-Paul-ified meaning .I never understood why Bruce was singing "Rye-sed a Cain." He’s somewhat inconsistent with his affectations. ("Whyyyvin'" at the girls," from Pink Cadillac, or "thank" and "pank" for "think" and "pink" from the same song.) I guess it’s only when the mood strikes him or when he thinks the situation calls for it. Sort of like DeNiro’s accent in Cape Fear.

"Something in the Night"

Bryant: 3.25/5  Nothing wrong with it, but it doesn't move me the way a lot of the others do. 

Bryan: 3/5 I like some of the lyrics for their despair and all, but not my favorite example of this sort of tune and the music, while certainly sway-worthy, doesn't really excite me.

"Candy's Room"

Bryant: 4.25/5  Another one for Guardians, which is a silly lens to look at this album through, but hey, it's what I've got.  Is this Max Weinberg's finest hour?  Either way, this song rocks, and it rocks HARD.

Bryan: 4/5 Guardians and Darkness really do go well together. This one used to strike me more as a musical breath between the two tracks around it, even if I like it technically more than either. It feels unfinished to me. The evolution of the song is interesting, though – it’s definitely the best version of all the "Candy's" versions he worked on. I guess we’ll get to that when we get to The Promise, though. I agree, though – it rocks, and it rocks hard, whatever else one has to say about it.

"Racing in the Street"

Bryan: 2.5/5 I like this one fine, but it seems like the wrong musical mood for the story to me. If this was the only such tale in the catalog, I'd look at it differently, but in all honesty I can live without it.

Bryant: 4.75/5  Hmm...! I'm a much bigger fan of this one than you are. I really respond to the lyrics, especially the last verse or two, which wreck me.

Bryan: "She sits on the porch of her daddy's house but all her pretty dreams are torn / She stares off alone into the night with the eyes of one who hates for just being born. / For all the shut down strangers and hot rod angels rumbling through this promised land. / Tonight my baby and me we're gonna ride to the sea and wash these sins off our hands."

Pretty wreckworthy for sure. If it was just the lyrics, I’d go higher, but this is one where the lyrics and music don’t match up for me.

It’s hard not to see this, too: "Some guys they just give up living/And start dying little by little, piece by piece/Some guys come home from work and wash up/And go racin' in the street" as more or less epitaph-level Springsteen.

"The Promised Land"

Bryan: 3.75/5 Musically, I find this one kind of boring (although I like the solos), but lyrically/ emotionally, they hit it out of the park here.

Bryant: 4.25/5 Bruce's vocals seem mildly strained here, but otherwise, this one works for me big-time. 

Bryan: That chorus really gets stuck in your head.

"Factory"

Bryant: 2.25/5 It's not bad, but it's another one that seems to just sort of stop. I think this song points the way toward Nebraska in some ways, and I'd be curious to hear a stripped-down version of it in that mode.

Bryan: 3/5 Me too. I looked around for one, but if it’s out there, I couldn’t find it.

"Streets of Fire"

Bryan: 3/5 I like it a lot more after repeated listenings, but it’s still not one I really love or would reach for.

Bryant: 4/5  Here's another one I like way more than you do. Nothing wrong with that!  We're "arguing" over how much we like songs we like.  As spats go, that's pretty damn civil.  We should be in Congress.

Bryan: For many non-Bruce reasons, as well! 

"Prove It All Night"

Bryan: 4.35/5 How can you go wrong with this chorus? I’m always impressed with Bruce’s seemingly limitless ability to just go off in the corner and write a quick hit single (or hit-sounding single, at least – I guess it wasn’t quite a “hit” at the time of release) as the situation demanded. We’ve talked about it before, but it’s a fascinating process, this tension between a hitmakers' sensibility and an artist wanting to explore his own thing/ indulge other impulses. It’s as potent a creative fuel as inner conflict. When this tension lessens due to changed circumstances, sometimes the creative fuel burns lower. Ditto for when depressive types like Bruce go into therapy. The old paradox: the better-balanced you are and better-rewarded you become for what you do, the harder it becomes to do it.

Anyway, I love the out-of-nowhere blistering guitar solo, too - reminds me of one of those uber-70s keyboard solos that suddenly cuts in to an otherwise traditional 4/4 rocker. 

Bryant: 4.75/5  Very nearly flawless, in my opinion. Not quiiiiiite there, but close. Here's an epically awesome version that YouTube suggested for me while I watching a thing about "The Mist." YouTube knows me pretty well, I am sad to say. 

Bryan: They know us all far too well, verdammt. That is a great version for sure.

"Darkness on the Edge of Town"

Bryan: 4.25/5 This one could have been a great U2 track. Maybe it still will someday. Either way it's a classic, even if I like the lyrics/ mood a little bit more than anything going on musically. 

Bryant: 5/5 I don't really know what that titular darkness on the edge of town is, but somehow, I know exactly what it is. I will restrain myself from bloviating on the subject, but know this: I could. Oh, sure. Instead I'll just say that that moment when Max kicks the drums in is about as big a fist-pump moment as I know of in music. 

FINAL

 

THOUGHTS 

Bryan: Total: 38.15 Avg: 3.82 Not my favorite Bruce overall, but my favorite thus far.  

Bryant: Overall 44 total, 4.4/5 average Which means that, in a shocking turn of events, this album has edged out Born to Run in my estimation! I might consider changing my score on "Badlands" to prevent that, but then again, listening to them back-to-back like this, I think I do prefer this one by a hair. 

Bryan: Me, too. It’s such a great collection of tunes. Bruce and the gang’s determination to make the album work as a whole and excise such great material (as found on The Promise) is frustrating on one hand, but the end result of Darkness is hard to argue with. Whatever collection of emotion and perspective and rock and roll they wanted to convey, they sure did.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAID

"Ideas, characters and phrases jump from song to song like threads in a tapestry, and everything's one long interrelationship. Now that it can be heard, the E Street Band is clearly one of the finest rock and roll groups ever assembled. Max Weinberg's drumming has enormous size, a heartbeat with the same kind of space it occupies onstage, bassist Garry Tallent and guitarist Steve Van Zandt are a perfect rhythm section, capable of both power and groove. Pianist Roy Bittan is as virtuosic as on Born to Run, and saxophonist Clarence Clemons, though he has fewer solos, evokes more than ever the spirit of King Curtis. But the revelation is organist Danny Federici, who barely appeared on the last L.P. Federici's style is utterly singular, focusing on wailing, trebly chords that sing (and in the marvelous solo at the end of 'Racing in the Street,' truly cry).

Yet the dominant instrumental focus is Bruce Springsteen's guitar. Like his songwriting and singing, Springsteen's guitar playing gains much of its distinctiveness through pastiche. more than ever, Springsteen's voice is personal, intimate and revealing, bigger and less elusive. It's the possibility hinted at on Born to Run's 'Backstreets' and in the postverbal wail at the end of 'Jungleland.'"

- Dave Marsh, Rolling Stone (later author of that one Bruce book)

SINGLES

  

PERSONNEL

Bruce Springsteen – lead vocals, lead guitar, harmonica
Roy Bittan – piano, backing vocals
Clarence Clemons – saxophone, backing vocals
Danny Federici – organ, glockenspiel
Garry Tallent – bass guitar
Steve Van Zandt – rhythm guitar, backing vocals
Max Weinberg – drums

Next: The River. See you then.