The other day, ahead of the release of his new album Western Stars, The Guardian ran this piece ranking all Springsteen's albums.
First thing to say is that, much as I love Springsteen, I think there are absolute stinkers on pretty much all his albums. Great as Darkness On The Edge Of Town is, for example, it contains the almost unlistenable Streets Of Fire, and the not much better Something In The Night.
I'd have Devils and Dust and Magic higher on my list, Born To Run would be ahead of Born In The USA on the strength of Thunder Road and the title track alone, and I'd have The Wild, The Innocent and the E Street Shuffle at No1, even though it's hardly one of his more typical albums. But yes, I'd have to have Darkness... very high on the list too.
But I'm glad the writer put Tunnel Of Love well up there. Springsteen rarely seems to play much from it these days, presumably because it was born out of the break-up of his first marriage, but I love it. Subtle country and Orbison influences, and some great songs, not least Brilliant Disguise.
I haven't listened to it much for a few years, mainly because I went on a press trip to Croatia during which the driver of the minibus played it on a continuous loop for five days. You can have too much of a good thing, as it turns out.
Showing posts with label Bruce Springsteen. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Bruce Springsteen. Show all posts
Tuesday, 4 June 2019
Tuesday, 29 January 2019
Blinded By The Light review
This looks interesting – I've read articles by Sarfraz Manzoor about his love of Springsteen in the past, and they've always struck a chord, if you'll excuse the pun. I'll look forward to seeing it.
Saturday, 26 May 2018
Nebraska
Pitchfork publish regular reviews of what they consider significant albums of the past, and last week it was the turn of Springsteen's Nebraska.
At the time it came out in 1982, I would have been absolutely oblivious to it, but I did buy it not long after I got into Springsteen, around 1987. By that time, the muted initial response it had received had begun to dissipate, and various other artists had started to imitate its ultra-stripped-down approach. To be honest, that became a bit annoying – recording everything acoustically on a cassette player doesn't automatically confer integrity, depth and meaning on an album.
But for Nebraska, it was undoubtedly the right decision. Even though the recordings are so homepsun that at times you can hear Springsteen's chair creaking, the effect isn't to create an intimacy with the listener, but rather, as the article says, to isolate the artist from his subjects, allowing him to observe and report dispassionately.
Songs such as Highway Patrolman and Atlantic City are like short stories (the former was the inspiration for the film The Indian Runner), but in many of the songs here, what's not said is as important as what is. You don't know exactly what it is that the protagonist of Atlantic City has agreed to do, just that he's desperate and willing to try anything.
I like the more obviously personal Used Cars a lot, as well as the yin and yang of State Trooper and Open All Night, with the latter offering one of the album's few glimmers of light. The article highlights the echoey, early rockabilly sound, and they're right – it's far closer to that in spirit than to folk music, for all that it's acoustic.
I go back and listen to it every now and then, and there's no doubt that it's one of Springsteen's most important albums.
At the time it came out in 1982, I would have been absolutely oblivious to it, but I did buy it not long after I got into Springsteen, around 1987. By that time, the muted initial response it had received had begun to dissipate, and various other artists had started to imitate its ultra-stripped-down approach. To be honest, that became a bit annoying – recording everything acoustically on a cassette player doesn't automatically confer integrity, depth and meaning on an album.
But for Nebraska, it was undoubtedly the right decision. Even though the recordings are so homepsun that at times you can hear Springsteen's chair creaking, the effect isn't to create an intimacy with the listener, but rather, as the article says, to isolate the artist from his subjects, allowing him to observe and report dispassionately.
Songs such as Highway Patrolman and Atlantic City are like short stories (the former was the inspiration for the film The Indian Runner), but in many of the songs here, what's not said is as important as what is. You don't know exactly what it is that the protagonist of Atlantic City has agreed to do, just that he's desperate and willing to try anything.
I like the more obviously personal Used Cars a lot, as well as the yin and yang of State Trooper and Open All Night, with the latter offering one of the album's few glimmers of light. The article highlights the echoey, early rockabilly sound, and they're right – it's far closer to that in spirit than to folk music, for all that it's acoustic.
I go back and listen to it every now and then, and there's no doubt that it's one of Springsteen's most important albums.
Tuesday, 7 June 2016
Bruce Springsteen - Ricoh Arena, Coventry, 3.6.16
It's been 28 years since I last saw
Springsteen live. I'm a fan, although I've not been that keen on some of
his more recent albums, and far too often I've seen that he's touring and
thought "there'll be plenty of time to catch up with him". This year,
I decided time might be running out.
Coventry's appalling traffic meant that, although the start of the show had been delayed 20 minutes, we missed the first song, For You, performed solo. Eccentric choice, really, an album track from his debut way back in 1973, but then that's what you get with Bruce - shows tend to wander whichever way the fancy takes him, with the help of a few requests from the audience. He doesn't avoid crowd-pleasers for the sake of it, it's just that, for a superstar, he's had few actual hits, so there’s less commercial indication of what those crowd-pleasers might be. When I saw him in Sheffield all those years ago, I don’t remember being too disappointed that he left out Thunder Road and Rosalita, and slowed Born To Run down to an acoustic ramble, because there was always something else you didn’t expect just around the corner.
This jaunt had been billed, in the States, as The River Tour, with the entirety of that 1980 double album being performed. I can't say it's a favourite of mine, but here things were scaled back. It, along with Darkness On The Edge Of Town and Born In The USA, were well represented, but he left enough room to pull plenty of surprises.
One of the things I love is that he's so good at investing new meaning and spirit into songs that, on record, you're really not that bothered about. So, Sherry Darling became the perfect party singalong on a balmy night, and Crush On You, the slightest song on the original album, was a thoroughly raucous, garage-band stomp. No Surrender, all shiny 80s production on record, rose above its sometimes corny lyrics (the last verse is great, though) to become genuinely moving, and Drive All Night sounded better than it ever has before. Hungry Heart and Two Hearts were in there too, of course, with Steve Van Zandt joining Bruce on vocals for the latter, as ever – hard not to picture him with Silvio Dante’s alarming bouffant hair, if you’re a Sopranos fan like me, but he remains a great sideman, as does Nils Lofrgen.
It wasn’t all good-time rock n’ roll, either – Murder Incorporated, Death To My Hometown and Youngstown (from the underrated Ghost of Tom Joad album), crackled with as much anger as energy, and The River itself, perhaps his best song of broken and misplaced dreams, was delivered with a heartbreaking intensity.
That carried over into the second half of the evening. The Promised Land, Badlands and Born In The USA (not played that often these days) were positively spat out, and there was a searing version of Because The Night, with Lofgren’s guitar work outstanding. The lengthy between-song chats seem to be a thing of the
past, although there was as much bonhomie and good-natured showmanship as ever,
and there were fewer cover versions, too, just the Isley Brothers’ Shout, mid-50s
rockabilly number Seven Nights To Rock, and Creedence’s Travelin’ Band (a
fixture on the original River tour, I seem to remember from my old Teardrops On
The City bootleg).
He saved his anthem, Born To Run, and his best pop song, Dancing In The Dark, for the encores, plus Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out, as a tribute to the late Clarence Clemons. Jake Clemons, given the near-impossible task of replacing the Big Man on saxophone, managed to do just that throughout the evening.
That, all three hours and more of it, would have been enough on its own, for all that some personal favourites were missing – I can’t think of anyone else who I’d put up with the vagaries of stadium acoustics and visuals for. But then he was back, centre stage, on his own, with guitar and harmonica and the song that, for me, remains his finest moment. Thunder Road was delivered with the same fragility and uncertainty that marks the version on the live box set, and I don't mind admitting choking back a few tears. Next time he's over here, I'll be there.
Coventry's appalling traffic meant that, although the start of the show had been delayed 20 minutes, we missed the first song, For You, performed solo. Eccentric choice, really, an album track from his debut way back in 1973, but then that's what you get with Bruce - shows tend to wander whichever way the fancy takes him, with the help of a few requests from the audience. He doesn't avoid crowd-pleasers for the sake of it, it's just that, for a superstar, he's had few actual hits, so there’s less commercial indication of what those crowd-pleasers might be. When I saw him in Sheffield all those years ago, I don’t remember being too disappointed that he left out Thunder Road and Rosalita, and slowed Born To Run down to an acoustic ramble, because there was always something else you didn’t expect just around the corner.
This jaunt had been billed, in the States, as The River Tour, with the entirety of that 1980 double album being performed. I can't say it's a favourite of mine, but here things were scaled back. It, along with Darkness On The Edge Of Town and Born In The USA, were well represented, but he left enough room to pull plenty of surprises.
One of the things I love is that he's so good at investing new meaning and spirit into songs that, on record, you're really not that bothered about. So, Sherry Darling became the perfect party singalong on a balmy night, and Crush On You, the slightest song on the original album, was a thoroughly raucous, garage-band stomp. No Surrender, all shiny 80s production on record, rose above its sometimes corny lyrics (the last verse is great, though) to become genuinely moving, and Drive All Night sounded better than it ever has before. Hungry Heart and Two Hearts were in there too, of course, with Steve Van Zandt joining Bruce on vocals for the latter, as ever – hard not to picture him with Silvio Dante’s alarming bouffant hair, if you’re a Sopranos fan like me, but he remains a great sideman, as does Nils Lofrgen.
It wasn’t all good-time rock n’ roll, either – Murder Incorporated, Death To My Hometown and Youngstown (from the underrated Ghost of Tom Joad album), crackled with as much anger as energy, and The River itself, perhaps his best song of broken and misplaced dreams, was delivered with a heartbreaking intensity.
That carried over into the second half of the evening. The Promised Land, Badlands and Born In The USA (not played that often these days) were positively spat out, and there was a searing version of Because The Night, with Lofgren’s guitar work outstanding.
He saved his anthem, Born To Run, and his best pop song, Dancing In The Dark, for the encores, plus Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out, as a tribute to the late Clarence Clemons. Jake Clemons, given the near-impossible task of replacing the Big Man on saxophone, managed to do just that throughout the evening.
That, all three hours and more of it, would have been enough on its own, for all that some personal favourites were missing – I can’t think of anyone else who I’d put up with the vagaries of stadium acoustics and visuals for. But then he was back, centre stage, on his own, with guitar and harmonica and the song that, for me, remains his finest moment. Thunder Road was delivered with the same fragility and uncertainty that marks the version on the live box set, and I don't mind admitting choking back a few tears. Next time he's over here, I'll be there.
Monday, 11 April 2016
Cars and Girls
I've got a confession to make. I don't like Prefab Sprout. An awful lot of poets do, it seems, but I was never a fan. The only song of theirs that I do always enjoy hearing is Cars and Girls, which is a little odd in that it takes a bit of a pop at the (perceived) worldview of Bruce Springsteen, of whom I am a big fan. But still, I like it. Good tune, and good lyrics, which actually end by conceding that there's room for Springsteen's seemingly hopelessly romantic view of things too.
But this article, which I came across last week, makes some excellent points about Bruce's 'cars and girls' songs. Perhaps, in his first three albums, they were at times simplistic, but certainly from Darkness At The Edge Of Town onwards, they're anything but. Far from conferring freedom on the protagonist of the song, they often end up trapping them ever more hopelessly in their circumstances.
Anyway, it's got me listening to Springsteen's albums from the beginning again, and that's never a bad thing.
But this article, which I came across last week, makes some excellent points about Bruce's 'cars and girls' songs. Perhaps, in his first three albums, they were at times simplistic, but certainly from Darkness At The Edge Of Town onwards, they're anything but. Far from conferring freedom on the protagonist of the song, they often end up trapping them ever more hopelessly in their circumstances.
Anyway, it's got me listening to Springsteen's albums from the beginning again, and that's never a bad thing.
Thursday, 23 January 2014
Don't get me wrong
Several initially unconnected trains of thought have come together this week, and now I'm going to subject you to my efforts to string them together.
I tend to like poetry that leaves itself open to the reader's own imagination*. I don't mean deliberately ambiguous or obscure, or so vague as to defy any attempt to impose meaning, but poetry that doesn't set out to shepherd the reader down one particular route. It isn't the old mainstream/alternative divide, I don't think, because looking down my bookshelves I can find good examples of this in both camps.
So, I also like it when, in a review, say, my own poetry gets read in a way that hadn't occurred to me, or that at least hadn't been the initial driving force behind the poem. This happened recently with Roy Marshall's review of The Elephant Tests in Hinterland - his reading of a couple of the poems makes more sense, now, than what I had assumed would be the 'obvious' reading.
I was thinking about this at Monday's Shindig, and afterwards. I enjoy hearing poetry read or recited a lot (at least, when it's being read by the poets themselves), but do I like to be able to read the poems later too, if at all possible, because there are always going to be nuances that you miss (my hearing isn't the greatest, either, which doesn't help).
Then yesterday, I started thinking about pop songs that, even after years, continue to be misinterpreted, no matter how often journalists or their writers point out the 'real' meaning. I don't mean misheard lyrics, but things like Ronald Reagan's attempt to co-opt Springsteen's Born In The USA as a patriotic flag-waver, rather than the outburst of disappointment and disgust that it is, or the way that Every Breath You Take is trotted out as the sort of romantic 'our tune' that gets played at weddings, rather than the stalker-ish creepfest that it is. In both those cases, and several more, the song's huge commercial popularity probably depended to a great deal on being misunderstood, although neither make any particular effort to hide their true 'meaning'.
So I started wondering a couple of things.
1 Whether there are any poems that have become popular in a similar way (in as much as poems ever become popular these days)?
2 Why there's the difference between poets and songwriters in this respect. The former generally say they want their work to remain open to the reader's interpretation, while the latter are more prone to pointing out the real 'meaning', yet the latter seem to get misinterpreted more often (partly, of course, because most of us don't sit down to read song lyrics very often).
* There are exceptions. Some of my favourite RS Thomas poems (and there are few poets I like better) seem to me to do an awful lot of telling, rather than showing. By rights, I oughtn't to like them, but I do.
I tend to like poetry that leaves itself open to the reader's own imagination*. I don't mean deliberately ambiguous or obscure, or so vague as to defy any attempt to impose meaning, but poetry that doesn't set out to shepherd the reader down one particular route. It isn't the old mainstream/alternative divide, I don't think, because looking down my bookshelves I can find good examples of this in both camps.
So, I also like it when, in a review, say, my own poetry gets read in a way that hadn't occurred to me, or that at least hadn't been the initial driving force behind the poem. This happened recently with Roy Marshall's review of The Elephant Tests in Hinterland - his reading of a couple of the poems makes more sense, now, than what I had assumed would be the 'obvious' reading.
I was thinking about this at Monday's Shindig, and afterwards. I enjoy hearing poetry read or recited a lot (at least, when it's being read by the poets themselves), but do I like to be able to read the poems later too, if at all possible, because there are always going to be nuances that you miss (my hearing isn't the greatest, either, which doesn't help).
Then yesterday, I started thinking about pop songs that, even after years, continue to be misinterpreted, no matter how often journalists or their writers point out the 'real' meaning. I don't mean misheard lyrics, but things like Ronald Reagan's attempt to co-opt Springsteen's Born In The USA as a patriotic flag-waver, rather than the outburst of disappointment and disgust that it is, or the way that Every Breath You Take is trotted out as the sort of romantic 'our tune' that gets played at weddings, rather than the stalker-ish creepfest that it is. In both those cases, and several more, the song's huge commercial popularity probably depended to a great deal on being misunderstood, although neither make any particular effort to hide their true 'meaning'.
So I started wondering a couple of things.
1 Whether there are any poems that have become popular in a similar way (in as much as poems ever become popular these days)?
2 Why there's the difference between poets and songwriters in this respect. The former generally say they want their work to remain open to the reader's interpretation, while the latter are more prone to pointing out the real 'meaning', yet the latter seem to get misinterpreted more often (partly, of course, because most of us don't sit down to read song lyrics very often).
* There are exceptions. Some of my favourite RS Thomas poems (and there are few poets I like better) seem to me to do an awful lot of telling, rather than showing. By rights, I oughtn't to like them, but I do.
Wednesday, 23 February 2011
The Springsteen connection
Reading this blog post about Ryan Van Winkle last week, I was interested to see that he's clearly a Bruce Springsteen fan (if you follow the links, you'll see he's also a huge fan of the late, great Warren Zevon).
Just a day or two earlier, I'd noticed that Birmingham poet Joel Lane also has a mild Springsteen fixation. In his (excellent) latest collection, The Autumn Myth, there's a poem that references him, and his previous book of poetry was even called Trouble In The Heartland, which all those Bruce fans out there will recognise as a line from his song Badlands.
Two things intrigue me. One is that, not so long ago, admitting to liking New Jersey's favourite son was very definitely a totally uncool thing to do. Maybe it still is, but in that case it's nice to see these two poets caring not a fig for cultural fashion.
Secondly, both seem to centre their references on Springsteen's 1978 album Darkness On The Edge Of Town (of course, that's based on a very limited reading of both). It was a stripped-down, raw-edged record, in which the romance of the early albums was largely abandoned in favour of gritty realism. Perhaps it's the economic climate we're living in that makes it a touchstone again - perhaps it's just coincidence.
Anyway, I'm happy to admit to being a long-time Springsteen fan, although I do think his output has been extremely uneven over the years. Darkness... would probably be my second-favourite of his albums - my number one would be his (largely uncharacteristic) second album, The Wild, The Innocent And The E Street Shuffle, which above all sounds like a band having a lot of fun.
Just a day or two earlier, I'd noticed that Birmingham poet Joel Lane also has a mild Springsteen fixation. In his (excellent) latest collection, The Autumn Myth, there's a poem that references him, and his previous book of poetry was even called Trouble In The Heartland, which all those Bruce fans out there will recognise as a line from his song Badlands.
Two things intrigue me. One is that, not so long ago, admitting to liking New Jersey's favourite son was very definitely a totally uncool thing to do. Maybe it still is, but in that case it's nice to see these two poets caring not a fig for cultural fashion.
Secondly, both seem to centre their references on Springsteen's 1978 album Darkness On The Edge Of Town (of course, that's based on a very limited reading of both). It was a stripped-down, raw-edged record, in which the romance of the early albums was largely abandoned in favour of gritty realism. Perhaps it's the economic climate we're living in that makes it a touchstone again - perhaps it's just coincidence.
Anyway, I'm happy to admit to being a long-time Springsteen fan, although I do think his output has been extremely uneven over the years. Darkness... would probably be my second-favourite of his albums - my number one would be his (largely uncharacteristic) second album, The Wild, The Innocent And The E Street Shuffle, which above all sounds like a band having a lot of fun.
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