![]() His mother took out a loan to buy him a better guitar and he never, despite plenty of indications that he should have at least thought about it, looked back. It didn’t take, but when The Beatles played the same TV show in 1964, Springsteen was lost forever. His father suffered from his own demons, exacerbated by drinking, so Springsteen turned his love on his mother, who rented a guitar for her young lad after he saw Elvis on The Ed Sullivan Show when he was still only about 7. Later on, as things got more serious for The Boss, he would sing in ‘Badlands’ that “it ain’t no sin to be glad your alive.” He has made many, many great records, and he’s still making them, but he never made one that sang more about the joy of living than this the joy of living, the dream of freedom.Īs everybody knows, Springsteen came from a working class background in New Jersey. Of all the records that beckon you into this golden Avalon of the heart and mind, there are few, if any, that do it with such a joie de vivre grin on its face as the second Bruce Springsteen album, The Wild, The Innocent, & The E Street Shuffle. To never grow up, to stay in a gang with your friends, to be constantly on the move from place to place, to live a life devoted to the arts, to never sit at a desk unless you choose to, to never even consider purchasing an alarm clock: Who wouldn’t want that? Eternal youth, free booze, and constant favours from whatever sexual partner(s) is/are of interest to you are all part of it, sure, but what really interested me was the promise of freedom. I’m talking here about the glorious dream that rock n’ roll sells you. The circus dream stayed with me, to be replaced, in time, by the dream of being in a rock n’ roll band. Or, failing that, become some sort of cowboy/pirate hybrid. He’s melodramatic, his juxtapositions cut like switchblades, he’s ragged around the edges, but his shoes are highly polished, marking him as a rock n’ roll force to be reckoned with.When I was a young lad I wanted to run away with the circus. Just listen to Bruce in a nearly hushed voice sing, “those romantic young boys,”. And finally, Springsteen seems to have literally stepped out of the contemporary novels we were reading, where he created bigger than life characters out of mere nobodies, emphasizing the fact that we should take nothing for granted, that each breath is to be savored, remembered, watched over, and nourished. and this instantly allowed him to become the voice of American youth, at a time when we needed it most. On second look, there’s even more success with “The Wild The Innocent” due to the savvy razor edged wordplay that is far more complex and encompassing than one would ever expect from a man of his young years. The most obvious reason for the success of both of these albums is that Bruce is speaking from the heart, from what he knows and understands, from dreams he’s kept tucked in his back pocket, and a vision that will lead him full throttle into our hearts. ![]() Yet though it all Bruce and his band never lose a single spark, rocking back and delivering the likes of which I have never heard. On “The Wide The Innocent,” Springsteen takes a massive step forward, presenting a collection of songs that are longer, more ambitious, and darkly romantic, in a way that “Greetings” was not. “Greetings” was both a romantic and artistic success, yet delightfully disjointed, and manic, with Bruce playing and singing to the high heavens for no other reason than to make a joyful noise. If you even remotely considered “Greetings From Asbury Park” to be Springsteen’s “Bringing It All Back Home,” you knew you were in for the time of your life with the release of “The Wild The Innocent & The E Street Shuffle.” ![]() Louis Lahav, EngineerĪ1 The E Street Shuffle recorded June 28 and Sept 22, 1973Ī2 4th Of July, Asbury Park (Sandy) recorded August 9, 1973, lead vocal overdubbed with new final verse September 23, 1973Ī3 Kitty's Back recorded JJuly 11, 24, with final overdubs September 23, 1973Ī4 "Circus Song" recorded June 25, 26 completed June 28, 1973, song title changed to "Wild Billy's Circus Story" for album release.ī1 Incident on 57th Street recorded September 22 and 23, 1973ī2 Rosalita (Come Out Tonight) recorded Septem(piano seguay into "Rosalita" by David Sancious)ī3 New York City Serenade recorded June 28, 1973, completed with overdubs of piano, mellotron (listed as strings), background vocals, conga on Aug 7 and Sept 13, 1973 Recorded at 914 Sound Studios, Blauvelt, New York. At that time the "KC" prefix was replaced by the "PC" prefix. The "KC" cat# prefix was used for prints from the release in November 1973 until July 1975, when the album was re-released around the time of "Born To Run" and Springsteen's major breakthrough.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |