Performed largely on an acoustic guitar with the occasional support of an Appalachian mountain fiddle and pedal steel guitar, "The Ghost Of Tom Joad" is part folk album, part protest record. On the title track, a man sits by a campfire under a bridge, not far from the endless railroad tracks. He is waiting on the ghost of Tom Joad, the hero of John Steinbeck's "Grapes of Wrath". But hopes of salvation in the mid-1990s aren't really much more palpable that ghosts, and you understand that the man sitting and praying by the fire will wait a long time before his deliverance comes.
Now Tom said "Mom, wherever there's a cop beatin' a guy
Wherever a hungry newborn baby cries
Where there's a fight 'gainst the blood and hatred in the air
Look for me Mom I'll be there
Wherever there's somebody fightin' for a place to stand
Or decent job or a helpin' hand
Wherever somebody's strugglin' to be free
Look in their eyes Mom you'll see me".
Springsteen’s heroes and heroines face terror and survive it, face delight and die by its hand, and then watch as the process is reversed, understanding finally that they are paying the price of romanticizing their own fear.
One soft infested summer Me and Terry became friends Trying in vain to breathe The fire we was born in... Remember all the movies, Terry We’d go see Trying to learn to walk like the heroes We thought we had to be Well after all this time To find we’re just like all the rest Stranded in the park And forced to confess to Hiding on the backstreets Hiding on the backstreets Where we swore forever friends....
"Dancing in the Dark" is a 1984 song. Adding up-tempo synthesizer riffs and some syncopation to his sound for the first time, it became Bruce´s biggest hit and was the lead-off track on the album "Born in the U.S.A.". Echoing the music video, the song's outro would be extended while Springsteen searched the front rows of the audience for a (usually cute young) woman to pull up onstage and dance with. This became quite the prize for the female faithful, and considerable jostling for position with stage security and each other could take place. Once up, some fans danced well, others wanted hugs more than steps, and some just froze.
With "The Rising" Springsteen wades into the wreckage and pain of September 11th attack and emerges bearing fifteen songs that genuflect with enormous grace before the sorrows that drift in its wake. Not every song on the album was written in the wake of September 11th: "Waitin' on a Sunny Day", for example, with its big, meaty riff and strutting lyrics.
Without you I'm workin' with the rain fallin' down Half a party in a one dog town I need you to chase the blues away Without you I'm a drummer girl that can't keep a beat And ice cream truck on a deserted street I hope that you're coming to stay...
Supposedly born of the sad ashes of the Sept. 11 tragedy, there's a sense of joy that resonates from the music on "The Rising," and hope from Bruce Springsteen's lyrics. Bruce Springsteen has gathered many a superlative over the years. His most resonant works stand as milestones in the lives of millions of fans. Even for him, though, "The Rising", with its bold thematic concentration and penetrating emotional focus, is a singular triumph. "Mary's Place" has an especially retro Springsteen sound, similar to what he and the E Street Band were doing in the 1970s.
My heart's dark but it's risin' I'm pullin' all the faith I can see From that black hole on the horizon I hear your voice calling me
Let it rain, let it rain, let it rain Let it rain, let it rain, let it rain, let it rain Meet me at Mary's place, we're gonna have a party!!!
Springsteen recorded "Nebraska" in a studio with the E Street Band. However, he and the producers and engineers working with him felt that a raw, haunted folk essence present on the home tapes was lacking in the band treatments, and so they ultimately decided to release the demo version as the final album. Complications with mastering of the tapes ensued because of low recording volume. But the problem was overcome with sophisticated noise reduction techniques. The tender and reflective "Mansion On The Hill" lulls the listener into a comfortable position with it's tale of childhood dreams and soft, compassionate vocals.
At night my daddy'd take me and we'd ride through the streets of a town so silent and still Park on a back road along the highway side Look up at that mansion on the hill
"Incident on 57th Street," is a virtual mini-opera about Johnny, a "romantic young boy" torn between Jane and the bright knives out on the street. Springsteen never resolves the conflict (if he ever does his music will probably become less interesting). Instead he milks it for all it's worth, wrapping up all the song's movements and juxtapositions with his unabashedly melodramatic and loonily sotted Sloppy Joe voice.
Spanish Johnny drove in from the underworld last night With bruised arms and broken rhythm in a beat-up old BuickBut dressed just like dynamite He tried sellin' his heart to the hard girls over on Easy Street But they sighed
"Johnny it falls apart so easy and you know hearts these days are cheap"
Among the best songs in every recognized history music list, a brilliant heart-rending masterpiece.
But I remember us riding in my brother's car Her body tan and wet down at the reservoir At night on them banks I'd lie awake And pull her close just to feel each breath she'd take
Recorded during the "Darkness" studio sessions, but then not used for the album, released fot the first official time on the 18 tracks cd. It is a new acoustic version, a long-time favourite.
Johnny works in a factory and billy works downtown Terry works in a rock’n’roll band Looking for that million-dollar sound Me I don’t do nothing much, I spend a lot of time alone...
"Magic" is, in one way, the most openly nostalgic record Springsteen has ever made. The arrangements, the performances and Brendan O’Brien’s wall-of-surf production are mined with echoes and near-direct quotes of classic records, including Springsteen’s: the early-Sixties beach-radio bounce of “Girls in Their Summer Clothes" is an amazing track.
For his fourth record, Bruce Springsteen cut off his beard -- and also shaved the shaggy romantic epics of "Born to Run". What emerged were ten taut rock songs about people crushed by family, by lust, by living in this world every day. The awesome title track is a a brilliant close.
Some folks are born into a good life,
Other folks get it anyway, anyhow,
I lost my money and I lost my wife,
Them things don't seem to matter much to me now...
With its roller-rink keyboards, trash-can drums and generally festive air, "Born in the U.S.A." is Springsteen at his most joyous and radio-friendly. Spinning off hit singles such as this catchy "I'm going down".
I pull you close but when we kiss I can feel a doubt I remember back when we started My kisses used to turn you inside out I used to drive you to work in the morning Friday night I'd drive you all around You used to love to drive me wild But lately girl you get your kicks from just driving me down, down, down down...
It was recorded with Springsteen supplying almost all of the instrumentation, with bass and background vocals from "Other Band" member Tommy Simms. Additional saxophone and vocal parts by Ornette Coleman and "Little" Jimmy Scott were recorded but never used. Released in early 1994 as the main single from the film's original soundtrack, it became a huge success for Springsteen all over Europe and North America.
"Kitty's Back" was written as a jazz tune, and contains an open-ended middle where the E Street Band is allowed to improvise. On the album "The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle", keyboardist David Sancious performs an organ solo. In concert, each musician was allowed several minutes of jamming time (the Hammersmith Odeon London '75 live album contains a 17-minute rendition).
Catlong sighs holding Kitty's black tooth She left to marry some top cat, ain't it the cold truth And there hasn't been a tally since Sally left the alley Since Kitty left with Big Pretty things have got pretty thin It's tight on this fence since them young dudes are musclin' in...
Written in a small house in Long Branch, New Jersey in early 1974, the song was Bruce Springsteen's last-ditch effort to make it big. The prior year, Springsteen had released two albums to critical acclaim but with little commercial success. The lyrics to the song are appropriately epic for his last-ditch, all-or-nothing shot at the stars, yet they remain rooted in the universal desperation of adolescence:
We gotta get out while we're young,
'cause tramps like us, baby we were born to run
Written in the first person, the song is a love letter to a girl named Wendy
Wendy let me in I wanna be your friend
I wanna guard your dreams and visions...;
I wanna die with you Wendy on the streets tonight
in an everlasting kiss!
Bruce Springsteen's "experimental" period in the early nineties when he decided to record and tour with musicians other than his long-time rearguard The E St. Band is widely considered to be his least fruitful and least appealing. In 1992 he decided to simultaneously release two single albums, "Human Touch" and "Lucky Town". The storming opener in "Lucky Town" is "Better Days", it commented on and deflated the commercial success with which Springsteen clearly felt uncomfortable.
Well my soul checked out missing as I sat listening To the hours and minutes tickin away Yeah, just sittin around waitin for my life to begin While it was all just slippin away. Im tired of waitin for tomorrow to come...
"Thunder Road" is the opening track from his 1975 breakthrough album "Born to Run", one of the cornerstones of the classic rock pantheon, and The Boss's traditional set-closer for several years. With 'Thunder Road', first line is 'The screen door slams' – that's the opening to a novel, an incredible first line. You've immediately got him, standing at the end of the garden path, and she's come out, and the door shuts behind her. Lyrically, that is the perfect opening to a song.
The screen door slams Mary's dress waves Like a vision she dances across the porch As the radio plays Roy Orbison singing for the lonely Hey that's me and I want you only Don't turn me home again...
"Tunnel of love" is the most intelligently arranged album Springsteen has made, it consists mostly of his own tracks, sparingly overdubbed; he uses the members of the E Street Band when they fit. It is an album about loneliness and solitude in the midst of what promised to be bliss. "Brilliant Disguise" is one of Springsteen's later masterpieces, a dark, bitter tale of supposed infidelity set to one of his best tunes.
For his fourth record, "Darkness on the Edge of Town", Bruce Springsteen cut off his beard, and also shaved the shaggy romantic epics of "Born to Run". What emerged were ten taut rock songs about people crushed by family, by lust, by living in this world every day. "Badlands" tells the story of an individual that can't seem to get a break in life. Life for him is difficult and hard to understand at times. He is no longer pleased with the status quo and vows to take control and make changes in his life for the better. The narrator realizes that nobody is simply going to give him anything and he must take charge of his future.
... Baby, I got my facts learned real good, right now - Poor man wanna be rich, rich man wanna be king And a king ain't satisfied till he rules everything I wanna go out tonight, I wanna find out what I got
"Born in the U.S.A," Bruce Springsteen's seventh album, has a rowdy, indomitable spirit. Though the characters are dying of longing for some sort of payoff from the American dream, Springsteen's exuberant voice and the swell of the music clues you that they haven't given up. He writes a heartbreaking message called "Bobby Jean.
"Maybe you'll be out there on that road somewhere. . . in some motel room there'll be a radio playing and you'll hear me sing this son Well, if you do, you'll know I'm thinking of you and all the miles in between"
But he gives the song a wall of sound with a soaring saxophone solo. That's classic Springsteen: the lyrics may put a lump in your throat, but the music says, Walk tall or don't walk at all.
