AMEN ! INCIDENT seguing into ROSALITA still works 40+ years later.....I mean, the punch-line of a great short story about a youngster making his first break: "Well, tell him this is his last chance to get his daughter in a fine romance Because a record company, Rosie, just gave me a big advance And my tires were slashed and I almost crashed, but the Lord had mercy And my machine, she's a dud, out stuck in the mud somewhere in the swamps of Jersey" Am I the only one who hears ROSALITA as a major influence to Billy Joel's SCENES FROM AN ITALIAN RESTAURANT ? I regret going backwards, but have only this hour discovered this thread..... All the best, GT
AGREED and perfectly stated. Although, I might not place BTR in top 5 Rock albums of all-time, it's truly a leader.....
I would have to disagree there. Meeting is an absolutely essential prelude to Jungleland. It’s the protagonist ruminating about what’s to come...the calm before the storm. It sets the table perfectly for the climax of the album. The genius in BTR is that it is a masterfully sequenced suite of songs. I believe it would be a substantially lesser album without it.
"Meeting Across the River" is all at once the weakest track on the album, yet still an essential part of it. Of course, "weakest" is a relative term and doesn't necessarily mean weak - it's just that everything else is so stellar. It's a bit of a breather in a very intense side, a story that at least might have a happy ending, though it doesn't look very likely. Even as much as it feels like an afterthought compared to the other songs, I still can't really imagine the album without it. "Backstreets" is my favorite Springsteen song, and reminds me a great deal of some people I grew up with (and most of whom are still back in my hometown as far as I know). It can make me cry if I'm in the wrong (or is it right?) frame of mind when it plays. "Thunder Road" is a close second. But there's not a wasted note on the album!
In my heart, NIGHT is a standout embedded into a collection of 9 standouts..... Another observation, without Clarence's (RIP) influence musically and visually in the cover photo, BTR would lose the key ingredient that made it a top-tier release.... Taking a vacation day today. BTR, Darkness on the Edge of Town, & The Promise are loaded into my cd changer.......
Rosalita and Scenes are twins to me. Heard both around the same time and TBH prefer Scenes but the songs share a heritage in a wonderful way.
The place where a million dreams where made. Completely blows my mind. The greatest art often does seem to crawl out of the smallest/loneliest places. As for Meeting, its a weak track by itself, but I think it came closest to duplicating the way he would set the mood live by monologue over sparse chords before unleashing a storm. The way he sings "just don't smile" kills me. Speaking of chords, I have always been interested in how Roy learns Bruce's tunes, especially these, since most of the album was written on piano. Are the beautiful chord voicings we hear in Thunder, Meeting, and Jungleland all from Bruce, or has Roy dressed them up somehow? Can Bruce pull them off on solo piano as well ? Would love to know more on how they collaborate, and who is responsible for what, if anyone knows.
Can't really comment on how Bruce and Roy work together, other than it seems to work really well. What I do know is that Bruce wrote BTR on a small spinet piano inside that house. Apparently Bruce and the entire band signed the piano sometime around 1975. Years later, the tenant of the house unwittingly put the old beat up piano out at the curb, the trashmen picked it up, and its in a landfill somewhere. Ugh.
Indeed. Although I no longer have any of my original pre-recorded cassettes, I seem to recall my Born to Run cassette featured a slightly altered track list with perhaps She's the One on Side A and maybe Night or Backstreets on Side B. My memory on this point may be faulty (that happens more and more these days) but does anyone still have one of those unusually sequenced cassettes?
WOW ! Plus, you gotta wonder how the neighbors coped/didn't cope with all the energy, activity, & decibels....
Have to go with “Tenth Avenue Freezeout”. It just doesn’t fit with the others and it has that stiff R&B sound.
I think that Springsteen handled the piano really well in 2005, when he played it every night on tour. He's definitely better than both Bob Dylan and Neil Young
Bruce is a really good multi instrumentalist. Guitar, keyboards, bass, harp, and supposedly, he’s a decent drummer (although I’ve never seen first hand evidence).
I honestly don't think I could pick a weakest track off this album .... Like a rock wall, every rock has its place in holding the wall together.
I've come to believe that "Meeting Across the River" is one of the highlights of his career. It's a vastly under-rated gem of a song, short and to the point--it packs an emotional punch and has aged better than most songs on the album.
Yes. Springsteen actually plays the piano quite often since '99. Either in big stadiums on tour with ESB or in smaller venues when he's touring solo. And the occasional TV show and on his Broadway thing of course He is definitely not famous for being a piano player. Question; when was the last time he played piano with other muscians backing him? My examples were all solo piano. IIRC, on the 1973 bonus songs from the Hammersmith '75 DVD he is playing piano with the band
The Wild, the Innocent &the E Street Shuffle is only a curio in the sense that it's the only album of his that can't be compared to anything else in his canon. And, in my opinion, it's the only Springsteen album that comes close to capturing his live sound. On some days this is my second favorite Bruce album---after Darkness. On other days--and in the summer--it's my favorite.
In my opinion, Bruce--though no concert pianist--has composed some of his greatest songs on piano. I believe most of Born to Run --with the exception of the title track--was composed on an old upright at a bungalow in Belmar, NJ, blocks from the ocean.... I also think Bruce is a good bassist. His two turns at it on Greetings are memorable. He also plays most of the bass on Lucky Town.
I think BTR is Springsteen's masterpiece. But to me, if there's one song on there that's aged worse than the others it's "Jungleland." It's more like one of those romantic street operas songs from the second album than it is like the other stuff on Born to Run, but I think it's kind of a bit of an overwrought, second tier version of those -- the ballet being fought in the alley, the kids flashing guitars like switchblades -- I dunno, where the romantic fantasy of "Incident on 57th St" or "NYC Serenade" holds up OK for me, there are parts of "Jungleland" that feel like juvenalia written by a guy at home in his room who isn't really writing about a life he knows or maybe not even emotions he knows, and overwrites a self conscious poetic fantasy version of something as a result.
Yes, but that "stiff" R&B was a key component of his sound at the time. And this is an important song in his career.
I couldn't agree more. Yes, it's something that is derivative of his old sound--anyone who's heard the copyright demos is familiar with it-- and with it's inclusion on BtR, I think he finally got "that" out of his system. I think his knowledge of NYC gangs and street life came from the movies--especially West Side Story. But like "Tenth Avenue Freezeout", it's a key track in the Springsteen story--and a perennial Clarence showstopper, so we're in the minority.
It's certainly very West Side Story and a suburban kid fantasy of urban life (and for the record, I love West Side Story, including the Jerome Robbins choreography, even if I also completely understand what Pauline Kael hated about the Robert Wise movie). In fact the whole "Meeting Across the River" and "Jungleland" section of the album, listening back to it now, has a strong feeling of musical theater to my ears. I think Roy Bittan had been working in some Broadway pits at the time, right? I think sonically of like Paul Schaffer in The Magic Show pit band (I saw that show). Or street kid theater representations like Elizabeth Swados' Runaways. The Springsteen stuff isn't so much musically like Swados, but that theatrical, musical theater dream of street life vibe.
