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BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN & THE E STREET BAND - BORN TO RUN - THE 30TH ANNIVERSARY EDITION - A COMMENT submitted by HB
I'm gonna have to ask a favor of you right from the start here; I need you to focus, cause I am going to be all over the place and I need one of us to watch the road, OK? Thanks.... OK, where was I......? Ha, see, already you forgot..... It's alright...... [[Ralph sings: It's okay..... Ooh, It's alright to have a good time, it's alright, yeah, it's alright....]] Ok, lock the doors, babydoll, cause here we go....
In 1975, a Jersey kid from right down the road from where I am sitting in 2005, had recorded two masterful records [yes, Records] that had attracted a legion of loyal fans and a legion of loyal music writers, but not a legion of record sales.... He had recorded those first two albums in Blauvelt, New York, the next town over from my beloved Nyack [Ralph [[polar bear]], the Hudson River, you know, you know, I Know that You know] and was One of Us..... Whatever that meant or encompassed, he was Us: from the dirty, rotten jobs to the poor, little houses to the struggling new families we all had in our early twenties to the just-out-of-our-teens feeling of still dreamin', still hopeful, still believing in the power of music and the night and a young girls ability to make us make magic or a fool of ourselves... Me and my friends talked Springsteen all the time in 1975; his mechanic even got parts for his Corvette from my auto parts store.... And there were these records that were our little secret.... But, apparently, despite the praise [I have seen the future of Rock and Roll and it's name is Bruce Springsteen-Jon Landau in Rolling Stone] and despite the diehard relationship between the early Bruce and Anyone who ever saw him live...... Columbia Records was considering dropping him, pulling the plug, ending it all, killing the dream.... There was alot of pressure, not just from the company, but from Bruce himself who always wanted it ALL, he said it many times in his introduction to Growin Up; he wanted to be a star, he wanted people to hear his music, he wanted to make an album that would last forever, a cinematic triumph on vinyl that would document his life and our life and the lives of all of those that struggled straddling that New York/New Jersey border while at the same time straddling that border between youth and the rest of their lives....
After recording the song Born To Run with the band that included David Sancious and Ernest "Boom" Carter in Blauvelt, newly on board manager, producer, fan and friend Jon Landau moved the carnival into a better sounding studio in New York City and Bruce made some fine tunings to an already good band, they were on the road to making, what I feel, is the greatest rock and roll album of All Time [you gotta hear it like Muhammad Ali is saying it....]
Bruce has said, "As a songwriter I always felt one of my jobs was to face the questions that evolve out of my music and search for the answers as best as I could find. For me, the primary questions I'd be writing about for the rest of my work life first took form in the songs on Born to Run... It was the album where I left behind my adolescent definitions of love and freedom....... Born To Run was the dividing line......" It was the dividing line and the dividing Time for alot of things; the Vietnam War was ending, the gas crisis and punk and disco were looming on the horizon, cd's and cable and MTV and computers and all of the stuff that are commonplace here in the 21st Century were just ideas and still up the road and around the corner... Bruce had been doing legendary, magical live shows, but the limitations of a band and the road were just not giving him the range of sounds to reach the potentials of the new songs that he heard in his head and was writing more and more on the piano... "We stripped down the songs and streamlined the arrangements. We developed a more direct sound with cleaner lines..." It was music that was written and conceived as a studio production for the first time in his life and career.... And it was Magical....
I can remember the first time I heard Born To Run, the song - I will never forget it; I felt like I had taken the best drug in the world - I was joyful, excited, energetic.... and then I played it again and again.... And here, right here, right now, I hafta talk about the elephant in the corner, you know, the one right over there that everybody sees and nobody ever wants to talk about....? Those that Loved Bruce and had seen him live would, just like I've been doing here, rave, froth at the mouth and basically turn into screaming Beatles fans trying to tell their friends about him.... Then he was the first Non-President on the cover of Time and Newsweek on the same day.... Columbia and his manager were just doing their jobs, but it made other people nuts with The Hype - some DJ's that later became his biggest fans admitted that at first they wouldn't play him because of all the promo pressure that was being laid down.... I have friends that to this day have never seen him yet still think that he was made out to be too big a deal and that can and did cause backlash and rebound and whatever, whatever..... I don't care about that anymore cause he has made it and made it big and proven that it was all real and all true and yet, at the same time, it made Bruce uncomfortable, especially when they played in London in 1975....
And that brings us to the best part of this package; the two DVD movies that are included in the package... I mean, ok, the album has been digitally remastered; I could care less; I have had Born To Run on record [twice] on eight track, on cassette, and on cd twice] so another BIGGER BETTER version just means I have to buy it one more time..... But I did.... because thru all of the years Bruce has been very secretive with live shows and videos of the shows because he always wanted things to be up to his high standards of quality.... So, with the exception of a couple of VH1 shows and the remarkable Live in NYC, we had very little to SEE.... He didn't release a single until his fourth album and didn't do a video until his sixth.... So, after the Rising Tour, Bruce became interested in checking out some of the footage that they had shot in the early days, hoping to grab bits and pieces that he could use.... To his surprise an entire concert from London emerged, in good shape, with the 24 track sound track recording intact.... He had shown up at The Hammersmith Odean not realizing what the record company and management had been doing and went nuts, stomping around, ripping promo flyers down and going into an "I'm an artist" routine... He was just realizing that this is exactly what He had bargained for and let Himself in for and that he needed to learn more about His Real Job and real fast.... He remembers "thinking that we hadn't played that well..." He was wrong.... and he saw it when he reviewed the tapes 30 years later and saw that he and the band had flat out gone for broke... It is a magical concert and reminded me that besides Bruce's voice and stage presence in those days [the rasta cap, the beard, the earrings], that the damn E Street Band with newly added thunderous drummer Mighty Max Weinberg, groundbreaking pianist Roy Bittan [he also played integral parts on many of Bob Seger's records], Garry W Tallent on bass, Danny Federici on organ and Miami Steve, Little Stephen [The Sopranos] Van Zandt on guitars and The Big Man, the Biggest of them all [Able to leap tall buildings in a single bound] Clarence Clemons on the sax that changed Rock and Roll; that these guys were one of the greatest bands ever put together..... It is a delight, a revelation, a sixteen song voyage into the music that influenced a generation of British and American musicians and songwriters.... Ask the Boomtown Rats, Ask Mark Knopfler and Dire Straits; ask me.... Well, ok, don't ask me, cause I will never stop, and I will never shutup because this is what it Was and Is all about when it comes to the magic of rock and roll and music and cinema and drama and spirituality and romance and despair and passion and being young and in love and having the feeling that "roll down the window and let the wind blow back your hair, the night's bustin open and these two lanes can take us anywhere............" was a line You could written from your own days and nights in your Twenties.....
There is also included a ninety minute documentary film about the making of the original album with scenes of Bruce now and then commenting on the songs and album from their creation to the end of the recording sessions.... There is some more great concert footage from that time that is just so wonderful to finally get to see and have it right there in front of me like I had always remembered it to be in my fading old-man's brain....
If you know Bruce Springsteen's music only from his hits or have never really wrapped yourself in his lyrics or spent a whole evening listening to a whole album or even if you are a fan from the start that has everything he has ever done and has seen him twenty times....... Whichever you are, you need to see and hear this package; it is dynamite and dynamic and any of the glittering, gushing, mushy, hypey stuff I could throw out here; it is, it really Is and now we got it, we got it, we got it and they can never take it away from us.... Do yourself a favor, you deserve it: you work hard and you live hard and it's been such a damn struggle just to survive and to keep those dreams always out in front of you and just keep all four wheels on the road and and and [are you watching the road? are you focusing like I asked you to? Dammit, somebody has to, I'm busy here....] Listen..... I've never lied to you before, at least not that you know of.... unless, of course, you were married to me and then..... well, that's another story for another time.... THIS story is about the Magic in the Night and a Fear So Real and the Things That Tear You Apart and the Dreams That Keep You Alive and last but not least...... Rosalita....
Sing along, go ahead.... You'll love yourself in the morning.....
..
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