Tonight's entry: |
(1975) |
"Born to Run
established a sound and identity powerful enough to permanently alter the
perceptions of those who heard it, whether they liked what they heard or
not." - Peter Ames Carlin, Bruce
Bryan: Variations
of "Here is the album that finally justified all the hype about Bruce
Springsteen" appear in practically every review of Born to Run. (Many by critics who had added considerably to said hype in the first place.) It's difficult to
disagree. The album is self-conscious attempt to establish a dividing line for his career and
evolution as an artist. Here's another quote from the Carlin book: "Whenever Bruce listened
to the first two albums, all he heard were things he wished he'd done
differently. The overstuffed lyrics, the stilted sound, the distance between
what he needed to say and what came out of the speakers. In a country awash in
irony and disbelief, he needed to create a work that reestablished rock'n'roll
as a cultural force with the power to inspire and even create change in your
life, in your town, in the world around you."
As always, I’m joined by Bryant, who appears as a
hologram that only I can see or hear.
Bryant: My advice as a hologram is that, if my mobile emitter gives out, just paste of photos of a double-thumbs-up, and that’ll adequately represent my stance for this album.
Bryant: My advice as a hologram is that, if my mobile emitter gives out, just paste of photos of a double-thumbs-up, and that’ll adequately represent my stance for this album.
Bryan: Mine too. Why bury the lede? This album's awesome, and every song pretty much rocks.
Taking a slightly different approach here, as we kinda reviewed these two at a time in our original back-and-forth, so that's how we'll divy them up here. Also, previously I'd been providing a link for each song, but I got to thinking - if we go through the whole catalog, and that's the plan, that's an awful lot of links to videos that will undoubtedly "die" sooner or later. Such is the nature of youtube. I like the idea of saving any interested parties a step and I'd be glad to if I could be assured the link would always be there. Since I cannot, I'll save the links for alternate versions or live performances that come up in the discussion.
Taking a slightly different approach here, as we kinda reviewed these two at a time in our original back-and-forth, so that's how we'll divy them up here. Also, previously I'd been providing a link for each song, but I got to thinking - if we go through the whole catalog, and that's the plan, that's an awful lot of links to videos that will undoubtedly "die" sooner or later. Such is the nature of youtube. I like the idea of saving any interested parties a step and I'd be glad to if I could be assured the link would always be there. Since I cannot, I'll save the links for alternate versions or live performances that come up in the discussion.
One! Two! Three! Four!
"Thunder
Road"
"Tenth Avenue
Freeze Out"
Bryan: 4/5 and 4.5/5 Both tunes are faves from the '75 to '85 Live, so it's always been a little
disorienting hearing the studio versions. To this day, actually, which is kind of funny - I must have listened to that Live set everyday for months after getting it for Christmas in 1986, so it got good imprinting time on the young McBrains.
Bryant:
"Thunder Road" - 4.5/5
"It's a town fulla losers ... I'm pullin' outta here to
win" I mean, that kinda sums up
this entire era, doesn't it? Not solely;
it's got plenty of help from other songs in Bruce’s songbook. Obviously, I think "Thunder Road" is great
stuff. The only thing that keep me from
scoring it higher is that I wish Bruce's vocals were a little more
full-throated. But that's okay. He's saving 'em up. We'll get there. "Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out" - 4.75/5 Tempted to go the full 5 here; not gonna, but
tempted. This is the sound of a whole
bunch of people having fun together in a big room, flying birds at all the
people they got away from in order to be there. So, obviously, it's a metaphor for the pilgrims sailing to the New
World. Or something like that. Either way, great - GREAT - playing from
the band, and I love Bruce's vocals here.
Bryan: Everytime I hear the "Tenth Avenue" horns now, I think of
the Van Zandt anecdote from Bruce and elsewhere, where Steve dropped in the studio to say hi to his old
pals and they couldn’t get the horns right, so, after offering his blunt
opinion to an already-exasperated Bruce, who admonished him to "fix it, then!" he
re-arranged them on the spot and got it right.
Welcome back, Miami Steve. |
Bryant: I
always forget that Steve was sort of unceremoniously shown the door right at
the beginning of the E Street Band. No
fault of Bruce’s apart from not putting his foot down, but he wasn’t the first
young artist to get pushed around in that way, and wouldn’t be the last,
either. I can’t help but wonder what Van
Zandt might have added to those first two albums. That’s life for you, though; what-ifs
rattling around in a dusty sack.
"Night"
"Backstreets"
Bryan: 4.75/5 and 4.75/5 Love these. The only thing that
prevents me from giving them scores of 5 apiece is because like you, I’m
saving ‘em up. But let's not kid ourselves - this is vital stuff from the band.
I can see some of Bruce's grumpiness re: the mix in "Backstreets,"
but it has a lot of parts to juggle. Great live version here.
Bryant: "Night" - 4.25/5 I love this one, but it has no personal
connection for me, which is why I'm scoring it a little bit lower than some of
the others. But can I imagine a person
loving it so much that it damn near makes 'em lose their mind when it
begins? I sure can. "Backstreets" - 5/5 Boy, it really is a muddy mix, isn't it? (Or if not the mix, per se, something in the
recording.) Doesn't matter a bit to
me. This is about as good as music
gets. Hey, remember when I hinted that
Bruce was saving his most full-throated vocals? Well, they show up toward the end of this. And how. I should probably have something else to say, but I'm inferior to the
task; this song is too good for me to explain.
Bryan: My sister and her husband used to have a beagle who would
howl along with any ambulance or police siren that went by their house –
actually, not just those, he’d join in with any full-throated howling in
general. I imagine more than a few beagles out there join in with
Bruce when this stuff at the end is cranking on the stereo.
"Born to
Run"
Bryan: 5/5 "The highway's jammed with broken heroes on a
last chance power drive." At some point during the writing of The Stand,
King had this album cranked. Probably at all points. That line always makes me
think of it, though. Has anyone ever mashed up images from The Stand
mini-series to this tune? I wish I was in junior high with such time / energy
on my hands.
Bryan: I deduct a minor point for the "Together, Wendy, we
can..." only because I always think it sounds, I don't know, Meatloaf-ish/
too-close-to-musical-theater to explicitly name the girl addressed by these
universally-accessible lyrics, but then I happily give it back because I'm not
some kind of oblivious jerk. Usually.
Bryant: 5/5 Is this the greatest
end-of-side-1 to beginning-of-side-2 combination in recording history? "Backstreets"
followed by "Born to Run." Damn; for the
win, as they say. If it isn't THE best,
it's got to be on the shortlist. It's one of those songs that has earned - and will likely permanently retain - true-classic status. And sometimes, when they get canonized like that, you
wonder if a song is really that good. In this case, it's absolutely that good. It's
the sound of moving into the future, but with an eye toward bringing all the
good things about the past along with you; it's not an abandonment of the past,
it's a rescuing of it. Evolution through nostalgia. Genius.
Bryan: I dated a girl my senior year in high school who hated
Springsteen so much (specifically this song, whose lyrics she always mocked) that I
downplayed how huge a fan I was to the point where I pretended to agree with
her. This was a horrible betrayal of The Boss, and at the time I felt kind of terrible about
it. Later, in the 90s and 00s when I wasn't listening to Bruce so much, I didn't feel terrible about it. I wondered if perhaps she'd been right and I was just young and dumb.
Now that I'm older and wiser, though, I'm back to feeling terrible.
Bryant: I would imagine that a great many breakups with
favorite bands/musicians has been prompted by romance (would-be or otherwise). Probably
also a lot of music has been discovered in that process. And we know how much
music has been GENERATED by that process. Bottom line: I think Bruce would
forgive you.
"She's the
One"
Bryan: 5/5 I love "On the Dark Side" by John Cafferty and the Beaver Brown Band as much as the next guy, but it's obvious in retrospect how much of a
general lift of the mood/ riff of "She's the One" it is. Growing up in RI the Beaver Brown Band were hometown heroes and there was always talk of how
they'd have made it big if it weren't for the perception of being Springsteen
and the E Street Band, Jr. I get it, but then there's the fact that their
signature tune apparently is just
"She's the One" jr. I don't say this to be cruel, only sheesh,
people. Anyway, just amazing. One of my favorite tracks.
Bryant: 4.25/5 Here's another one that I just don't have the personal connection with,
for whatever reason. It's never occurred
to me before that "On the Dark Side" is a bit of a lift of this one,
but yeah, for sure.
"Meeting
Across the River"
Bryan: 2.25/5 I see what he's chasing, but I don't think this
one really goes anywhere. It's more about fitting this mood onto the record /
taking a musical and emotional breath between "She's the One" and
"Jungleland."
Bryant: 2.25/5 I'm gonna just copy your score on this one. I thought about deviating by a quarter in
either direction and couldn't decide which direction to go, which tells me to
just stay right here. Anyways, yeah,
it's fine. Good song, evocative and
well-played. Only on an album like this
would it feel like a loser. Not even
then, really.
"Jungleland"
Bryan: 5/5 Like I said up there, it's rare when someone can
earn the rapturous praise Spingsteen earned with every show and every record
and then self-consciously sit down to live up to it and not just do so, but
instantly surpass and forever encapsulate the image going forward. And the
trick was - it wasn't image, it was just his getting clearer and clearer on mission statement. As perfect a side closer as the title track is a side opener. We talked about the Bruce movie - they should just
make a movie based on this song. (I bet that's what The Heavenly Kid set out to
be, then they got sidetracked.)
Bryant: 5/5 If Clarence had never done a thing else in his life, he'd have ascended
into the pantheon just for the mid-song sax solo in this one, which is
rapturous. I can't imagine what it must
have been like to be in the room when that happened. Amazingly, the rest of the song is almost as
good. So yeah, 5/5 for sure. Oh, and a line from this song actually
appears as an epigraph in The Stand
(the first one in the book, in fact), so the loose King connection rolls on!
Bryan: What is this riff anyway – "Sweet Jane?" It comes in most prominently around the 2 minute mark. How does he get away with this stuff? I’m thinking of the Peter Gunn riff for "Pink Cadillac" and a couple of other high-profile-swipes-in-plain-sight. I shouldn't say swipes, more like strong nods.
Bryan: What is this riff anyway – "Sweet Jane?" It comes in most prominently around the 2 minute mark. How does he get away with this stuff? I’m thinking of the Peter Gunn riff for "Pink Cadillac" and a couple of other high-profile-swipes-in-plain-sight. I shouldn't say swipes, more like strong nods.
Bryant: I don’t fully hear that as a lift of "Sweet Jane." I do hear a similarity,
but I also hear differences. I don’t
have the musical vocabulary to describe what I mean, alas! But hey, if you steal, steal from the best.
FINAL
THOUGHTS
Bryan: Total 35.25 Avg 4.41 Best album in the discography?Not for me, but had the band broken up after the first three albums, this would be one epic curtain call.
Bryant: Total 35 Avg 4.35 I'm
surprised to find that I'm ever so slightly lower than you on this one, but
it's pretty close. Bottom line for me,
it’s one of THE all-time great rock albums.
WHAT THE CRITICS
SAID
"The stories
Springsteen is telling are nothing new, though no one has ever told them better
or made them matter more. Their familiar romance is half their power: The
promise and the threat of the night; the lure of the road; the quest for a
chance worth taking and the lust to pay its price; girls glimpsed once at 80
miles an hour and never forgotten; the city streets as the last, permanent
American frontier. We know the story: one thousand and one American nights, one
long night of fear and love.
What is new is the
majesty Springsteen and his band have brought to this story. Springsteen's
singing, his words and the band's music have turned the dreams and failures two
generations have dropped along the road into an epic — an epic that began when
that car went over the cliff in Rebel
Without a Cause. One feels that all it ever meant, all it ever had to say,
is on this album, brought forth with a determination one would have thought was
burnt out years ago. One feels that the music Springsteen has made from this
long story has outstripped the story; that it is, in all its fire, a demand for
something new."
– Griel Marcus, Rolling Stone
– Griel Marcus, Rolling Stone
PERSONNEL
Roy Bittan –
piano, Fender Rhodes, organ, harpsichord, glockenspiel, background vocals on
all tracks except "Born to Run"
Big Man –
saxophones, tambourine, background vocals
Danny Federici –
organ and glockenspiel on "Born to Run"
Garry W. Tallent –
bass guitar
The Incomparable Max Weinberg –
drums on all tracks except "Born to Run"
Ernest "Boom" Carter – drums on "Born to Run"
Ernest "Boom" Carter – drums on "Born to Run"
David Sancious –
piano, organ on "Born to Run"
PUB QUIZ
Robert DeNiro was a big fan of Bruce and the E Street Band and has seen them live innumerable times since the early 70s. On the Born to Run tour, Bruce began the encore portion of the show by asking the crowd "Are you talkin'... to me?" several times.
See you next Saturday for Darkness on the Edge of Town.