Part One: 1972–1978

I) 1–17. Songs demoed in 1972, but not recorded for Greetings:

 

1. IF I WAS THE PRIEST

Known studio/demo recordings: Mike Appel’s Office, New York April 1972; ‘John Hammond session’, CBS Studios, New York 3/5/72; Pocketful of Tunes Studio, New York May–June 1972. [BTF]

 

Remarkably, given the plethora of archival releases in recent years, ‘If I Was The Priest’ still remains unreleased by Sony. Reportedly performed at The Student Prince in the fall of 1971, it is the song that opened the door to a new world of singer-songwriting for the young Jersey devil. As one of the songs that convinced John Hammond Senior the boy deserved a record contract, and as the one track demoed in 1972 which directly led to a pre-fame cover version – by The Hollies’ Allan Clarke – one might have expected its official appearance before now. As it is, its only quasi-legal release was on the Before The Fame 2-CD set which Springsteen went to such trouble to put out of circulation.

 

2. SOUTHERN SON

Known studio/demo recordings: ‘John Hammond session’, CBS Studios, New York 3/5/72; Pocketful of Tunes Studio, New York May–June 1972. [BTF]

 

This weird little ballad about a displaced child of the Union remains one of just two tracks Springsteen played to Hammond at his May 3 CBS audition that were not worthy of consideration for his debut album. One of that small body of ‘cowboy’ songs he wrote during or shortly after his trip to California, there isn’t a great deal separating the Laurel Canyon demo from the Hammond demo. It was the former which first passed into collector circles, via the so-called London publishing demo.

 

3. RANDOLPH STREET

Known studio/demo recordings: Jim Cretecos apartment, New York April 1972. [BTF/PS]

One of half a dozen songs Springsteen recorded at the apartment of Jim Cretecos, Appel’s partner, in the weeks before he made a proper demo tape with John Hammond, ‘Randolph Street’ was not a song anyone else was likely to cover. [See discussion in main text p. 4]

 

4. BABY DOLL

5. BORDER GUARD

6. WAR NURSE*

7. JESSE*

8. HOLLYWOOD KIDS

Known studio/demo recordings: Jim Cretecos apartment, New York April 1972. [BTF], * also [PS]

 

These five songs – not one of which reappeared post-Hammond, even as a publishing demo – fully testify to the then-output of this prodigious son, though such fecundity came at a price: quality control. ‘Baby Doll’, the oldest of these songs, was the one which failed to impress Appel at their November 1971 meeting. It may not be as bad as Appel has suggested, but nor is it ‘Pinball Wizard’ (baby doll is playing at being deaf and dumb). The messianic ‘Jesse’ is half a good idea (‘Oh Jesse, he says you wear a cross ’round your neck and come on with nails in your hands’), but at no point does Springsteen figure out what sets the lad apart from other false prophets. Similar flaws impair Springsteen’s paeans to the Border Guard, the War Nurse and the Hollywood Kids. One somehow doubts Cretecos thought this home-tape would yield its own payday twenty years down the line, when any scraps could be served up as ‘lost songs’ of The Boss.

 

9. PRODIGAL SON

Known studio/demo recordings: Jim Cretecos apartment, New York April 1972. [BTF/PS]

 

Long-rumoured to be an important early song, ‘Prodigal Son’ was one of the major finds among the pre-Hammond tapes served up on the 2-CD set of the same name in 1994, before the injunctions started a-flyin’. It would be superseded by ‘Lost In The Flood’ when it came time to get serious.

 

10. FAMILY SONG

11. CAMILLA HORN

12. ELOISE

13. MARIE

Known studio/demo recordings: Pocketful of Tunes Studio, New York April–May 1972. [BTF/PS]

The least consequential song from another batch of demos turns out to be the most intriguing. ‘Eloise’, or the extant one-minute snatch which provides the gist of another girl-name song, is not only sufficient to reveal another lyric about an all-seeing woman whose power ‘late in the night . . . comes over me’, but also the melodic template for what will become ‘Growin’ Up’. Of the other three songs cut here, Springsteen and/or Appel evidently rated ‘Marie’ the highest, as only this cut made the London publishing demo. [See discussion of ‘Family Song’ in main text p. 42]

 

14. SHE’S LEAVING

15. THE SONG (I HEARD THE WORD)

Known studio/demo recordings: Pocketful of Tunes Studio, New York May–June 1972.

 

Two more songs which feature on the London publishing demo, making them well known to the bossman’s collecting fraternity. More surprisingly, neither appeared at the Greetings sessions, even though ‘The Song’ was included in a list of possible album tracks that summer, under its alternative title, ‘I Heard The Word’. ‘She’s Leaving’, one suspects, was already too old, having in a previous life been part of the Bruce Springsteen Band repertoire. As such, it represents an important bridge between the big fish in a little pond that was Asbury Park Bruce and the CBS Recording Artiste he was by the time he demoed it in New York.

 

16. HENRY BOY

17. NO NEED

Known studio/demo recordings: Pocketful of Tunes Studio, New York June–July 1972.

 

This pair probably constitute the last tracks recorded at the little demo-studio in New York Appel and Cretecos had been using in the lead-up to inking the CBS deal, and the release of funds that brought. Both made it onto the London tape, but not to the Greetings sessions, though ‘Henry Boy’ – another refugee from the rhyming dictionary with its ‘trip for dippers . . . get[ting] clipped by rippers’ &c. – did appear on the same provisional first album check-list as ‘The Song’; and was certainly performed at Max’s that August (a crude video recording exists).

 

II) 18–28. Songs both demoed & recorded for Greetings June 1972:

18. COWBOYS OF THE SEA

Known studio/demo recordings: ‘John Hammond session’, CBS Studios, New York 3/5/72; Pocketful of Tunes Studio, New York May–June 1972; 914 Sound Studios, Blauvelt NY June 1972. [BTF]

 

The one Bruce Springsteen Band-era track Springsteen cut at the first set of Greetings sessions in June, ‘Cowboys of the Sea’ circulates only as a solo performance from 914. However, as the one song that already had a full band arrangement (with the same rhythm section that whip up a storm on a February 1972 Richmond show), it seems probable a full band version was attempted at these sessions, though neither it nor the extant solo outtake feature in the Sony logs.

 

19. ARABIAN NIGHTS

Known studio/demo recordings: Mike Appel’s Office, New York April 1972; ‘John Hammond session’, CBS Studios, New York 3/5/72; 914 Sound Studios, Blauvelt NY 7/6/72 + 27/6/72. [BTF]

 

One of seven ‘new’ songs Springsteen presented to Cretecos and Appel at their Valentine’s Day 1972 meeting, ‘Arabian Nights’ was also one of three tracks he recorded for Appel in April, presumably to give him something to hawk around the labels. By now, the shoreline kid is running riot with that rhyming dictionary. One of ten tracks included on the version of Greetings delivered to CBS in August 1972, only to be told to try again.

 

20. MARY QUEEN OF ARKANSAS

Known studio/demo recordings: ‘John Hammond session’, CBS Studios, New York 3/5/72 [TR]; 914 Sound Studios, Blauvelt NY 26–27/6/72. [GR]

First documented performance: Max’s Kansas City, New York 31/1/73.

 

If the main mystery remains what did the songwriter ever see in ‘Mary . . .’, a more minor mystery is what prompted a song on that perennial theme, the love of an aristocrat for an acrobat. A song he has consistently championed, ‘Mary . . .’ would feature live and in regular acoustic radio sets through March 1974.

 

21. GROWIN’ UP

Known studio/demo recordings: ‘John Hammond session’, CBS Studios, New York 3/5/72 [TR]; 914 Sound Studios, Blauvelt NY 7/6/72 + 27/6/72. [GR]

First documented performance: The Main Point, Bryn Mawr PA 31/10/73.

 

Springsteen evidently turned up at his make-or-break May 3 session with the legendary John Hammond Snr. quite prepared to play songs he’d barely finished. ‘Growin’ Up’ was one such. Never demoed for Laurel Canyon, he pulled it out mid-session, to Hammond’s discernible delight. Applying metaphorical Band-Aids to the psychological scars from twenty-plus years on the boredwalk, Springsteen had finally learnt to laugh at the past. As a welcome by-product he unveiled a genuine lyrical gift right from that dazzlingly Dylanesque opening, ‘I stood stone-like at midnight/ Suspended in my masquerade’. Recorded at the first Greetings session in early June – almost certainly in the same acoustic guise as the other three tracks cut that day – it received an electric rearrangement later in June, when prototypical E Street elements were finally to hand.

 

22. DOES THIS BUS STOP AT 82ND STREET?

Known studio/demo recordings: ‘John Hammond session’, CBS Studios, New York 3/5/72 [TR]; 914 Sound Studios, Blauvelt NY 26-27/6/72 + 12/7/72. [GR]

First documented performance: Max’s Kansas City, New York 31/1/73.

 

Though demoed for Hammond in acoustic guise, having been largely composed on a bus-ride back to Jersey one afternoon, ‘Does This Bus Stop’ should have stood as fair warning that this was someone itching to rock out. Even the faux-rock arrangement made to suffice on Greetings is the barest of prototypes for the gung-ho live versions which would prove such a highlight at the 1973–74 shows, the Big Man stamping his presence on a song he shoulda got his mitts on when they were rolling studio tape.

 

23. IT’S HARD TO BE A SAINT IN THE CITY

Known studio/demo recordings: ‘John Hammond session’, CBS Studios, New York 3/5/72 [TR]; ?Pocketful of Tunes Studio, New York June 1972; 914 Sound Studios, Blauvelt NY 26–27/6/72 + 26/10/72. [GR]

First documented performance: My Father’s Place, Roslyn NY 31/7/73.

 

The song that seems to have sold both Appel and Hammond on Springsteen’s talent, ‘Saint In The City’ was played at both the February 14 and May 2 ‘auditions’, for which no tapes exist. A blast of bravado from a scuffling songwriter with little to lose, the song flew off the page, one of those ‘fifteen-minute blasts’ he talked about. Though soon revamped in an electric guise, solo versions produced by Hammond in May and Appel in June are extant (in the former’s case, on the official Tracks boxed set). The superior solo take on the Appel tape is generally considered a publishing demo. However, it is probably a Greetings outtake (as suggested on Unsurpassed Masters 4) from the June 26 session, one of three acoustic tracks cut that day.

 

24. THE ANGEL

Known studio/demo recordings: ‘John Hammond session’, CBS Studios, New York 3/5/72; 914 Sound Studios, Blauvelt NY 26–27/6/72; 29/6/72 + 26/10/72. [GR]

First documented E Street performance: HSBC Arena, Buffalo NY 22/11/09.

 

‘The Angel’ demands our attention based largely on the power of some patchy poetry (‘The interstate’s choked with nomadic hordes’ – natch) and a grand solo piano performance. Yet it seemed to hold Hammond; and after it was cut at 914 in June (with an overdubbed bass from Richard Davis), it featured on all the various provisional track-listings for Greetings.

 

25. JAZZ MUSICIAN

Known studio/demo recordings: ‘John Hammond session’, CBS Studios, New York 3/5/72; Pocketful of Tunes Studio, New York May–June 1972; 914 Sound Studios, Blauvelt NY 27/6/72. [BTF/PS]

 

One of three songs bumped from Greetings when Springsteen went back in and cut ‘Blinded By The Light’ and ‘Spirit In The Night’, ‘Jazz Musician’ was probably one thesaurus-swallowing song too many. Which isn’t to say it doesn’t have its moments. One couplet was so memorable it made it all the way to ‘Tenth Avenue Freeze Out’: ‘Oh, now the Park is dark, but the sidewalk’s bright/ And alive with the light of the living.’

 

26. TWO HEARTS IN TRUE WALTZ TIME

Known studio/demo recordings: ‘John Hammond session’, CBS Studios, New York 3/5/72; 914 Sound Studios, Blauvelt NY 27/6/72 + 29/6/72. [BTF]

 

With such a great title, it is something of a disappointment to hear the resultant song, which reads more like the first draft of a potentially good idea (Springsteen evidently felt the same way – a song of the same name reappears on a winter 1974 list of possible songs for ‘Album #3’). Yet ‘Two Hearts’ was seriously considered for Greetings, appearing on an August short-list.

 

27. STREET QUEEN

Known studio/demo recordings: ‘John Hammond session’, CBS Studios, New York 3/5/72; 914 Sound Studios, Blauvelt NY 7/6/72.

 

Before he had heard a note of Robert Johnson, Springsteen has taken the motif of ‘Terraplane Blues’ and written a song about a girl made of car parts (or vice versa). A deliciously raunchy early song that was cut the first day of sessions for Greetings, using an electric piano, and was never heard of again, only seeing out her days as opening track on the London publishing demo.

 

28. LADY AND THE DOCTOR

Known studio/demo recordings: Mike Appel’s Office, New York April 1972; 914 Sound Studios, Blauvelt NY 7/6/72 + 27/6/72. [BTF/PS]

 

Another song about two ill-suited lovers from different social strata, a theme to which Springsteen showed an abiding attachment, ‘The Lady and the Doctor’ in all likelihood was cut for Greetings in both solo and band guises. If so, the latter remains uncirculated. [See discussion in main text p. 43]

 

III) 29–35. Other songs recorded for Greetings from Asbury Park:

29. VISITATION AT FORT HORN

Known studio/demo recordings: 914 Sound Studios, Blauvelt NY 27/6/72. [BTF/PS]

 

Known for many years in collecting circles under the anomalous title ‘American Song’, ‘Visitation at Fort Horn’ was supposedly cut from the album at the last minute. It certainly appears on all three ‘provisional’ track listings for Greetings, including the one delivered to CBS in August 1972. What undoubtedly did for it, at least in part, was its near eight-minute length (though the album would still only have clocked in at forty-five minutes). [See discussion in main text pp. 46–7]

 

30. LOST IN THE FLOOD

Known studio/demo recordings: 914 Sound Studios, Blauvelt NY 27/6/72. [GR]

First documented performance: New Gymnasium, Richmond VA 14/2/73 [Berkeley CA 2/3/73].

 

If Springsteen happily revealed his blasphemies to Hammond in the form of ‘If I Was The Priest’, he was just warming up. By the time of the first ‘band’ sessions for Greetings he had written this amalgam of irreligious and Dylanesque imagery. ‘Lost in the Flood’ may well be the great ‘lost’ song on a debut record teeming-with-ideas. ‘Lost’ in the sense that it never really retained any solid hold on the live set, and great, because it is.

Note: The ‘sound effects’ on the album version were apparently overdubbed by Van Zandt.

 

31. FOR YOU

Known studio/demo recordings: 914 Sound Studios, Blauvelt NY 27/6/72 + 26/10/72. [GR]

First documented performance: New Gymnasium, Richmond VA 14/2/73 [Washington 6/12/73].

 

Though ‘For You’ seems to have only ever been recorded as a band performance at the album sessions, it was consistently performed through 1975 solo at the piano. Only in 1978 was it given the full E Street Band treatment, with a frenetic, hell-for-leather rendition from the Roxy later being issued on the first tie-in single from 1986’s Live 1975-85, ‘War’, where its still-raw emotions cast in high relief its more bellicose A-side.

 

32. THE CHOSEN

Known studio/demo recordings: 914 Sound Studios, Blauvelt NY 11/9/72

 

The biggest mystery thrown up by the Sony Greetings session-logs is a song recorded at the penultimate session, listed as ‘The Chosen’, probably the same song he discusses with Paul Nelson in December for a piece that never ran: ‘I tried to get [the song] on, I fought like a mother, but it came out like nine minutes something. But we had a steel player on it and we had Clarence, who played a great solo.’ The mention of Clarence dates this track to the last two sessions, i.e. September 11 or October 26, but Springsteen claims he can’t remember its title. The one line he does mention, ‘Blow the whistle from the mountaintop’, doesn’t fit any known song of the period. Another possible title for this song could be ‘Let The Words’, a title on a provisional sequence compiled after the September 11 session.

 

33. SONG TO THE ORPHANS

Known studio/demo recordings: 914 Sound Studios, Blauvelt NY 19–20/2/73 [PS]

First documented performance: Max’s Kansas City, New York 31/1/73.

 

Perhaps ‘The Chosen’ is not so much a lost song as an alternate title for something definitely written at this point. ‘The Chosen’ would actually be an apposite title for this important song, which Springsteen was still performing in the winter of 1973 (when he also cut the solo demo that features on the London publishing demo). Surprisingly, given its omission from the voluminous Tracks, the song was revived at a solo show in November 2005, Bruce doing a creditable job of the words but rather steamrollering a once-distinctive tune.

 

34. BLINDED BY THE LIGHT

Known studio/demo recordings: 914 Sound Studios, Blauvelt NY 11/9/72. [GR]

First documented performance: New Gymnasium, Richmond VA 14/2/73 [Berkeley CA 2/3/73].

 

According to Springsteen in Songs, both ‘Blinded By The Light’ and ‘Spirit In The Night’ were written to order – after Clive Davis told him there was nothing on the provisional album which could garner radio play. But that isn’t quite what he said at the time. To Paul Nelson, he implied ‘Blinded’ was first attempted in the same style as the other tracks, but ‘wasn’t really an acoustic song’.

 

35. SPIRIT IN THE NIGHT

Known studio/demo recordings: 914 Sound Studios, Blauvelt NY 11/9/72 + 26/10/72. [GR]

First documented performance: Max’s Kansas City, New York 31/1/73.

 

The ‘other’ song written in response to Clive Davis’s request for some ‘single’ material, ‘Spirit In The Night’ was issued on single hard on the heels of ‘Blinded By The Light’ in 1973, without result. By then, ‘Spirit In The Night’ was already a live staple, and remains the best-known song on Greetings.

 

IV) 36–51. Songs demoed and/or performed January–June 1973:

36. BISHOP DANCED

First documented performance: Max’s Kansas City, New York 31/1/73. [TR]

Thanks to the magic of bootlegging, specifically classic late-seventies vinyl boot Fire On The Fingertips, ‘Bishop Danced’ enjoyed favour among Bruce collectors long before its appearance on Tracks (1998). Many listeners to that set would have been familiar with the version chosen, which – despite its erroneous date attribution – was the self-same January 1973 Max’s version broadcast by the King Biscuit Radio Hour, and released by an English bootlegger five years later (where it was given the title, ‘Mama Knows ‘Rithmetic’).

 

37. THUNDERCRACK

Known studio/demo recordings: 914 Sound Studios, Blauvelt NY 22/6/73; 7 + 9/8/73. [TR]*

First documented performance: Max’s Kansas City, New York 31/1/73.

 

‘The song ‘Thundercrack’ was something that we wrote as the showstopper . . . That was ‘Rosalita’’s predecessor . . . It was one of the few songs that actually was finished when I went and found it [for Tracks] . . . It was probably 80% done – we had to shape it a little bit, but I wanted to get that on . . . I found a version which was actually pretty good, called up Vini Lopez and I said, ‘Vini, I have some singing for you to do.’ - Bruce Springsteen, 1999.

‘Thundercrack’ was another early cut which first found a wide(r) audience in bootleg form, initially on The Jersey Devil (from a Main Point, April 1973 radio broadcast), and then on Fire On The Fingertips, from Max’s. The latter supposedly came from an English publishing acetate compiled by someone at Laurel Canyon, who one must suppose had access to the June studio outtake, but presumably thought it wasn’t up to snuff, so included the live version instead. Its release on Tracks only served to prove the compiler of the publishing acetate had been right all along.

 

38. SAGA OF THE ARCHITECT ANGEL

Known studio/demo recordings: 914 Sound Studios, Blauvelt NY 29–30/1/73.

First documented performance: Max’s Kansas City, New York 31/1/73.

39. JANEY NEEDS A SHOOTER

Known studio/demo recordings: 914 Sound Studios, Blauvelt NY 29–30/1/73.

 

Not only were these two titles recorded at the same demo session/s, but they both seem to have survived as song-ideas long after other discards from this prolific period fell by the wayside. In the case of ‘Architect Angel’ – which he claimed he ‘wrote for John Wayne’, the night he debuted it – the title appears on provisional lists for The Wild, the Innocent, Born to Run and Darkness on the Edge of Town. Not that there is any evidence to suggest it was recorded for any of these, unless the demo version cut in January 1973 was meant to suffice for the second album. (It already had a past, deriving melodically from a 1971 Bruce Springsteen Band song, ‘Talkin’ About My Baby’.) When it comes to ‘Janey Needs A Shooter’, two terrific performances from 1979 demonstrate that the basic idea – girls like sex, too – survived the dramatic transition in Springsteen’s songwriting from The Wild, the Innocent to Darkness essentially intact. [See discussion in main text pp. 67–8]

 

40. BALLAD OF A SELF-LOADING PISTOL

41. WINTER SONG

42. I MET HER IN A TOURIST TRAP IN TIGUARA [UNCIRCULATED]

Known studio/demo recordings: 914 Sound Studios, Blauvelt NY 29–30/1/73.

 

The three other songs demoed across the same two days at the end of January 1973, presumably with a view to inclusion on the second album. (Otherwise, why lodge copies with CBS?) Of the trio, ‘I Met Her In A Tourist Trap in Tiguara’ remains uncirculated. The other two tracks surfaced in the early nineties as part of Yellow Dog’s Unsurpassed Masters series, though ‘Ballad of a Self-Loading Pistol’ had been rumoured to exist since the late seventies, having apparently been pressed to acetate by Laurel Canyon. Whether the story in ‘Winter Song’ of a visit to a ‘Pennsylvania mountain’ brothel has some basis in reality I leave to more intrepid investigators, but Winter is not the last lady of the night to trade swords for candy in a Springsteen song.

 

43. TOKYO (AND THEN THE BAND PLAYED)

Known studio/demo recordings: ?914 Sound Studios, Blauvelt NY 19–20/2/73. [BTF]

First documented performance: The Main Point, Bryn Mawr PA 24/4/73.

44. VIBES MAN

Known studio/demo recordings: ?914 Sound Studios, Blauvelt NY 19–20/2/73.

 

Extant Laurel Canyon demos of ‘Tokyo’ and ‘Vibes Man’ have been consistently dated to 1972 in Springsteen tapeographies. But this presents problems. One, there is documentary evidence Springsteen cut further demos on 19–20 February 1973 (presumably at 914). The only demos that could fit such a timeline are ‘Song To The Orphans’ (which otherwise dates from summer 1972, alongside ‘Henry Boy’ and ‘The Song’), ‘Vibes Man’ and/or ‘Tokyo’. (‘Tokyo’ made its live debut in April, but is not on live tapes from February, while ‘Vibes Man’ became the coda to a song also debuted in April 1973, ‘New York City Song’.)

The main argument against 1972, though, is stylistic. ‘Tokyo’ and ‘Vibes Man’ lend themselves to the E Street Band – unlike ‘Henry Boy’, ‘The Song’, ‘Southern Son’ &c. As Springsteen himself said, ‘When I went on the road . . . I began to just write with the band in mind, with the idea of mixing those two things.’ That ‘Tokyo’ was written ‘with the band in mind’ was demonstrated by its evolution into ‘And Then The Band Played’, a jazzier hybrid which survived in the live set till June 1974. And yet, the solo demo of ‘Tokyo’ remains the only known studio recording of the song.

 

45. NEW YORK CITY SONG

Known studio/demo recordings: 914 Sound Studios, Blauvelt NY 20 or 22/6/73.

First documented performance: The Main Point, Bryn Mawr PA 24/4/73.

as NEW YORK CITY SERENADE

Known studio/demo recordings: 914 Sound Studios, Blauvelt NY 28/6/73; 7/8/73. [WI]

First documented performance: Max’s Kansas City, New York 18/7/73.

 

To portray ‘New York City Song’ as an early version of ‘New York City Serenade’ is to do a gross disservice to the former song. In fact, Springsteen not only consistently performed ‘New York City Song’ at the spring shows (and an atmospheric acoustic version for WGOE in May), but also recorded this original song at the first sessions for his second album. Though not in general circulation, Brucebase describes it as ‘piano based with sparse band backing’.

But when they resumed work on The Wild, the Innocent on June 28, David Sancious was on board and ready and willing to offer arrangement suggestions, presumably the by-product of rehearsals for a jazzed-up ‘Vibes Man’ – though he would coyly insist, ‘I don’t think they constituted the arrangement.’ ‘New York City Serenade’ would receive another test run three weeks later at a residency at Max’s, acquiring a West Side Story-esque piano introduction as Sancious began to encourage a more grandiose Bruce to emerge from his chrysalis.

Note: The original, slightly longer mix of the album version would anticipate the calamitous 914 Born To Run sessions, featuring strings, group vocals and congas.

 

46. WILD BILLY’S CIRCUS STORY

Known studio/demo recordings: 914 Sound Studios, Blauvelt NY 14/5/73; 25–26 + 28/6/73. [WI]

First documented performance: Max’s Kansas City, New York 31/1/73.

 

According to Brucebase, this song was recorded for Greetings in its ‘Circus Song’ guise. In fact, that version was recorded for the second album, on May 14, when they cut eight takes of what is essentially the same beast, save for a later-deleted section at song’s end where Springsteen riffs on the liars’ response to Billy’s circus: ‘Hear the liars, they’re outside crying . . . they’re inside sighing . . . listening to the barkers . . . watching the centre ring . . . up on the trapeze . . . feel their fire . . . they’re all scared of dying’. He returned to Wild Billy at the sessions proper in late June; and this time ‘the circus boss leans over and whispers into the little boy’s ear . . . All aboard, Nebraska’s our next stop’.

 

47. FEVER

Known studio/demo recordings: 914 Sound Studios, Blauvelt NY 16/5/73. [18TR]

First documented performance: Liberty Hall, Houston TX 10/3/74.

 

Though it took Springsteen a quarter-century to finally release the legendary ‘Fever’, it is hard to imagine he had many serious fans who had not already found a way to get hold of this outta-nowhere classic, cut one afternoon in May 1973 – supposedly in a single take (marked on the box ‘demo’). Talking about the song the following March, Springsteen claimed, ‘We did it when we were recording the second album . . . as a demo tape for . . . I don’t know what for.’ Originally called ‘(I Got The) Fever For The Girl’, the song nudges eight minutes in its original ‘sneaky mother’ guise, and would have been almost impossible to edit down to single-length, relying as it does on the whole slow-burn arrangement for its smoky power.

 

48. SECRET TO THE BLUES

First documented performance: Coliseum, Richmond VA 31/5/73.

49. YOU MEAN SO MUCH TO ME BABY

Known studio/demo recordings: WGOE-FM, Richmond VA 31/5/73.

First documented performance: My Father’s Place, Roslyn NY 31/7/73.

 

By the end of May 1973, Springsteen had stockpiled an impressive array of songs for his next album. And yet still he revived two r&b-infused throwbacks he was happy to play live, but was never gonna allow to impact on the serious statements of Album #2. Like ‘Fever’, ‘Secret To The Blues’ and ‘You Mean So Much To Me Baby’ had their antecedents in the Bruce Springsteen Band. In fact, ‘Secret To The Blues’, a song that lasted only a matter of weeks in the live set, was a version of a 1971 favourite, ‘The Band’s Just Boppin’ The Blues’. Offering the sage advice to ‘sit back and hang loose/ ‘Cause that’s the secret of the blues’, it was more throwaway than throwback.

‘You Mean So Much To Me Baby’, which had a lot more going for it, survived in the live set as long as Mad Dog. Only marginally rearranged from its summer 1971 guise – when it had a full girl-chorus and gratuitous guitar workout – the song first pops up in an acoustic session for WGOE, a Richmond, Va. radio station that had been championing his work since the Steel Mill days, perhaps as a nod to some old fans. Subsequent live versions hint at a direction he may well have gone in had Sancious stayed on board.

 

50. ROSALITA

Known studio/demo recordings: 914 Sound Studios, Blauvelt NY 23/9/73. [WI]

First documented performance: New Gymnasium, Richmond VA 14/2/73 [Philadelphia PA 6/6/73].

 

Beginning life as more shaggy dog story-in-song than show-stopper, ‘Rosalita’ would prove the hardiest of the ‘Mad Dog’-era E Street songs, surviving through the Born In The USA tour as the one sop to former glories. By then it was the dying embers of a song which, back in the day, made sparks fly every night. First performed in February 1973, it featured a story about how he was coached by various fellow vagrants he met in jail, when arrested for loitering during the five years he spent hitchhiking around the country from the age of eight! [see p. 64] But by the time the song reappeared in the live set in early June, at arena shows with Chicago, it had been stripped for action. Lyrically all but finished, this live version confirms the link with the Rosalie in ‘Tokyo’, referring to her ‘sweet samurai tongue’.

 

51. HEY SANTA ANA

Known studio/demo recordings: 914 Sound Studios, Blauvelt NY 22, 26 + 28/6/73; 1/7/73. [TR]

First documented performance: The Main Point, Bryn Mawr PA 24/4/73.

 

Once again Springsteen’s fascination with Wild West mythology gets the better of him, as he finally constructs a New Mexico mini-movie worthy of the theme. However, ‘Hey Santa Ana’ would suffer the same fate as that other ‘how the West was lost’ travelogue recorded for The Wild, the Innocent, ‘Evacuation of the West’. Back in June, Springsteen presumably planned a more pan-American statement than the album he eventually released. [See discussion in main text p. 69]

 

V) 52–60. Other songs recorded for The Wild, the Innocent, July–September 1973:

52. PHANTOMS (OVER THE HILLS OF ST GEORGE)

Known studio/demo recordings: 914 Sound Studios, Blauvelt NY 22, 26 + 28/6/73; 1/7/73.

First documented performance: Broome County Veterans Memorial Arena, Binghampton NY 13/6/73.

 

Another legendary song that finally made its way into general circulation with bootleg label E Street Records’ riposte to Tracks, the 3-CD Deep Down In The Vaults, ‘Phantoms’, as long rumoured, turned out to be a prototype for ‘Zero and Blind Terry’ (musically they are all but identical – even down to the ‘oh-ho-ho’ backing vocals). According to the Sony logs, though, he continued working on ‘Phantoms’ on July 1, despite cutting ‘Zero and Blind Terry’ at the June 28 session. The song was performed live in June, suggesting he genuinely rated this song about an outlaw who learnt the hard way, ‘To be free is to be lonely’.

 

53. ZERO AND BLIND TERRY

Known studio/demo recordings: 914 Sound Studios, Blauvelt NY 28/6/73; 7/8/73. [TR]

First documented performance: Max’s Kansas City, New York 18/7/73.

 

This song was worked on at two separate sessions for The Wild, the Innocent, five weeks apart, throwing up the intriguing possibility that the earlier version was quite different from the released take. Or not. According to the Tracks session data, the version on the 1998 set comes from the June 28 session. This is confirmed by the logs, which show that the June 28 version was referenced on November 5, 1997. But this does not explain the overdubs on the version used on Tracks. Sancious’s piano was certainly not recorded on June 28, nor presumably were the acoustic guitar and backing vocals found on that Tracks mix (the basic track was sent out as a publishing demo in its raw original mix – before a flute was removed from the backing). The vocals were also probably overdubbed in August. There are slight lyrical changes to the final verse as performed at Max’s in mid-July, which fails to specify whether Zero and Blind Terry got away. In all likelihood it was the June 28 basic track that was overdubbed on August 7.

 

54. E STREET SHUFFLE

Known studio/demo recordings: 914 Sound Studios, Blauvelt NY 28/6/73. [WI]

First documented performance: The Spectrum, Philadelphia PA 6/6/73 [The Main Point, Bryn Mawr PA 31/10/73].

 

According to Brucebase, this was a song ‘Bruce hadn’t even rehearsed . . . until David [Sancious] joined’. In fact, it was one of two songs preserved from the June 6 Spectrum show. Likewise, an early set of lyrics, reproduced in Songs, rather suggests it was a song Springsteen had been playing with for a while before Sancious joined the band and solidified his intention, which was ‘to describe a neighbourhood, a way of life . . . the dance you did every day and every night to get by’. However, there was as yet no E Street Band to attach said shuffle to.

 

55. SEASIDE BAR SONG

Known studio/demo recordings: 914 Sound Studios, Blauvelt, NY 22, 26 + 28/6/73; 1/7/73; 24/7/73. [TR]

First documented performance: Veterans Memorial Arena, Binghamton NY 13/6/73.

 

This flippant little funster was repeatedly logged on the studio reels as ‘Johnny & The Hurricanes Song’. The message of the song proved ultimately an enduring one (as did the image, ‘The highway is alive tonight!’), even if the song itself did not even make the ten-song shortlist for Album #2. Only when the reformed E Street Band began taking Tracks on the road would Springsteen decide he did like to be beside the seaside bar.

 

56. EVACUATION OF THE WEST

Known studio/demo recordings: 914 Sound Studios, Blauvelt NY 22 + 28/6/73. [BTF/PS]

 

One wonders whether Springsteen was a little miffed when this terrific track popped up on Prodigal Son in the mid-nineties, after being rumoured for over a decade. Another of those songs transferred in early November 1997 during the track-selection stage for Tracks, ‘Evacuation of the West’ – or, as it was sometimes called, ‘No More Kings In Texas’ – was a type of song that, like the cowboy subject matter, had its day before Springsteen started his second album selection process.

 

57. KITTY’S BACK

Known studio/demo recordings: 914 Sound Studios, Blauvelt NY 28/6/73; 24/7/73; 23/9/73. [WI]

First documented performance: University of Massachusetts, Amherst MA 25/11/73 [Washington 6/12/73].

 

Still a feature of the live set in summer 1978, long after David Sancious had carved a career of his own, ‘Kitty’s Back’ really should have been put to bed the day David gave Bruce notice. One of the songs on The Wild, the Innocent stamped and franked by Sancious, ‘Kitty’s Back’ was, by Sancious’s own admission, a track where they already ‘had the basic thing. [But] I did the organ solo, electric piano.’ And gave it life.

 

58. FOURTH OF JULY, ASBURY PARK (SANDY)

Known studio/demo recordings: 914 Sound Studios Blauvelt, NY 9/8/73; 23/9/73. [WI]

First documented performance: Max’s Kansas City, New York 18/7/73.

 

‘Sandy’, as this Springsteen classic is known to all but the most pedantic, was evidently written during the making of the second album. In Songs, he claims he ‘used the boardwalk and the closing down of the town as a metaphor for the end of a summer romance and the changes I was experiencing in my own life’. It certainly has that end-of-season, end–of-pier feel. Bruce was presumably excited by the song, because he seemed anxious to play it, performing it throughout the mid-July Max’s residency (his third) and giving it a radio debut on his end-of-month My Father’s Place broadcast, in what may still be its definitive live incarnation.

 

59. INCIDENT ON 57TH STREET

Known studio/demo recordings: 914 Sound Studios, Blauvelt NY 23/9/73. [WI]

First documented performance: Muther’s Music Emporium, Nashville TN 29/1/74.

 

If ‘Sandy’ opened the door, ‘Incident on 57th Street’ was where Springsteen stepped on through. His early masterpiece, it is the kinda epic song he had spent his youth imagining and the past 18 months working toward. It was also the last song he wrote and recorded for that second album. Presumably it did for ‘Zero and Blind Terry’, being a richer reworking of the ganglands of New York motif. It may also have done for ‘Mad Dog’ Lopez, being a song Springsteen was reluctant to rework live as long as he had a drummer who liked cutting loose.

 

60. FIRE ON THE WING

Known studio/demo recordings: 914 Sound Studios, Blauvelt NY 7/8/73.

 

If ‘The Chosen’ stands as the great lost track from Greetings, ‘Fire On The Wing’, a song recorded at the same session as the likes of ‘Zero and Blind Terry’, ‘Thundercrack’ and ‘New York City Serenade’ is an equally mysterious omission from The Wild, the Innocent. But, unlike ‘The Chosen’, it was not entirely forgotten. When compilation reels were put together for the Tracks project on November 4–5 1997, ‘Fire On The Wing’ was transferred from its 16-track master.

 

VI) 61–68, Songs performed and/or recorded at 914 between March 1974 and February 1975:

 

61. ANGEL’S BLUES (RIDE ON SWEET WILLIAM)

First documented performance: Liberty Hall, Houston TX 10/3/74.

 

When Springsteen debuted ‘Angel’s Blues’ in Houston during a three-night March 1974 residency, it had been six months since he had debuted any new songs. This was a new experience. As he later said, ‘I’ve always [previously] had songs going into the studio.’ Rarely, though, can he have chosen to debut such a half-formed song in concert, even one which in the final spoken section directly anticipates ‘Thunder Road’: ‘She gets in my car and I take her home. She lives on 16th and E Street. [She] steps out of the car and goes up the driveway, into the house and she’s gone . . . But that can’t be the end of this story, ´cause I’m sittin’ in the driveway and the door opens a little bit and she comes out with a suitcase. She’s all packed and she’s gonna come with me.’ Thankfully, the song-exchange process was one at which he had become quite adept. As he informed Musician’s Bill Flanagan, ‘In those [early] days I used to switch and trade [lines] all the time. You could do it with a lot of that stuff.’

 

62. A NIGHT LIKE THIS (ANGEL BABY)

Known studio/demo recordings: 914 Sound Studios, Blauvelt NY 16/10/74.

First documented performance: The Toledo Agora, Toledo OH 2/6/74.

 

When Springsteen sketched out a provisional track-listing for album #3 in the spring of 1974, it seemed destined to include a fair few discards from that difficult second album, including ‘Architect Angel’, ‘Thundercrack’ and ‘Janey Needs A Shooter’. Only two songs on said list would end up performed – ‘Jungleland’ and ‘Angel Baby’, aka ‘A Night Like This’ – and then recorded. In the latter’s case, a single performance, opening song in Toledo in June, gave it a test run some four months before it was attempted in the studio. What begins as another solo barroom-stool reverie is punctuated at various junctures by Big Man sax breaks and, at song’s end, by Federici’s trademark accordion, evocations of the early E Street sound. It is a song with a story to tell, anticipating ‘Lonely Night In The Park’.

 

63. BORN TO RUN

Known studio/demo recordings: 914 Sound Studios, Blauvelt NY 21/5/74; [6/8/74]; 17/3/75. [BTR]

First documented performance: The Bottom Line, New York 13/7/74.

 

Much has been written about the genesis of Springsteen’s first rock anthem of note, ‘Born To Run’, much of it misleading or plain wrong. The first myth to counteract is that the song was always the intended centrepiece of his third album. It was initially intended to be a single, a stand-alone (i.e. non-album) single. Quite why it was not released at the time it was ‘leaked’ to various pro-Springsteen radio stations in early November 1974 has never been satisfactorily explained. Somebody presumably high up at CBS changed their mind. As a result, Springsteen was deprived of what surely would have been a major hit just when he needed it most. He also had an excuse to give it another mixdown, returning it partly to the mire.

 

64. SO YOUNG AND IN LOVE

Known studio/demo recordings: 914 Sound Studios, Blauvelt NY 1/6/74 & ?26/6/74. [TR]

First documented performance: AA Arena, Miami FL 23/11/02.

as A LOVE SO FINE

First documented performance: Kean College, NJ 22/9/74.

 

When Bruce heard ‘So Young And In Love’ on tape for the first time in twenty-plus years, compiling Tracks, he was bowled over – ‘Beautiful ensemble club playing, very exciting. Meant to blow your head off.’ He also seems to have fondly imagined it was an outtake from the Darkness sessions, crediting the song to the Record Plant and engineer Jimmy Iovine, not to 914 and Louis Lahav. The recording date given on Tracks was a clue – 6/1/74 – even if it was patently incorrect (on January 6 the boys were in Boston, recording a live show at Joe’s Place). Lahav was an Israeli, and would have almost certainly used European dating when logging tapes, making 6/1/74 June 1, not January 6 (ditto ‘Jungleland’). Sure enough, the boys were in the studio that week working on ‘Born To Run’, and probably intended ‘So Young And In Love’ to be its B-side. Like ‘Born To Run’, the song was initially cut as a basic instrumental track, with vocals then added to the E Street equation, possibly on June 26, as something marked ‘Bruce Springsteen Voice Track’ was recorded on that date.

By October 1974 he had rewritten the hook, trading one cliché (‘so young and in love’) for another (‘we got a love so fine’), though only after an intermediary live debut took its chorus from ‘A Night like This’. According to Brucebase, Springsteen recorded ‘A Love So Fine’ on October 16. There was a session on that day, though the Sony logs say nothing about ‘A Love So Fine’. However, a two-inch master reel has ‘A Love So Fine’ and ‘Born To Run’ paired, suggesting this might be the master for an aborted ‘Born To Run’ single. To add fuel to this speculative fire, an instrumental backing track of ‘A Love So Fine’ had been in circulation since the late seventies and – surprise, surprise – it is the same backing track as ‘So Young And In Love’ on Tracks. No studio vocal of the ‘A Love So Fine’ version circulates, though there are live versions aplenty through February 1975.

 

65. JUNGLELAND

Known studio/demo recordings: 914 Sound Studios, Blauvelt NY 1/8/74; Record Plant, New York 18, 23 + 25/4/75; 14, 19–20/7/75. [BTR]

 

First documented performance: The Bottom Line, New York 13/7/74.

 

It was during a July 1974 Bottom Line residency that Springsteen finally decided to debut ‘Jungleland’ in the city that birthed it. Thankfully, there is a good-quality raw soundboard of one of these versions, quite probably taped at Springsteen’s behest. The song at this juncture is still very much of a piece with other jazzed-up mini-operas from The Wild, the Innocent, and Sancious is still Bruce’s bag-man. The song resolves itself quite differently, with a coda which holds out the hope that everything may end okay, à la ‘Zero’. It is this version that the E Street Band set out to record two weeks later at 914, even as Sancious and drummer Carter were giving their notice and moving on. This early studio version retained the superior ‘masters of flesh and fantasy’ image. However, he has already starting playing with that final verse, evidently unhappy with it. So the coloured girls are now jungle girls who ‘stand by fire angels fallen in the city’, the Magic Rat reappearing just in time to save ‘her from the edge of an on-coming train’. But the take never quite gels. By the time of the fabled February 1975 Main Point show, the original final verse has been shunted before ‘streets on fire in a real death waltz’. Sadly, he would not keep either the epiphanic chimes or that lovely coda where ‘the animals on the corner sing’, another allusion to ‘Jungleland’s origins in ‘Zero and Blind Terry’. [See discussion in main text pp. 87–8]

 

66. SHE’S THE ONE

Known studio/demo recordings: ?914 Sound Studios, Blauvelt NY 16/10/74; Record Plant, New York ?4–5/75; 24–25/7/75. [BTR]

First documented performance: Avery Fisher Hall, New York 4/10/74.

 

‘She’s The One’ seems to have been a song Springsteen did not resolve to his satisfaction till the very last session for Born To Run, in late July 1975. And yet, it was a song he had been playing nightly since early October 1974 – when he also recorded the original studio version that appeared on the legendary E Ticket vinyl boot. Nor did the arrangement of the song change in any meaningful way in the interim. It stayed a ‘Mona’-esque take on that Bo Diddley beat which was in some quarters single-handedly held responsible for a perceived slide in American morals in the late fifties. It was the lyrics that tortured him, as she had.

 

67. WALKING IN THE STREET (LOVERS IN THE COLD)

Known studio/demo recordings: ?914 Sound Studios, Blauvelt NY August or October 1974.

 

Another ‘lost’ Born To Run song from the 914 sessions that ended up on the first Springsteen studio bootleg, E Ticket, ‘Walking In The Streets’ may have served as a prototype for ‘Thunder Road’, but Springsteen clearly saw it as a song in its own right. Not only did he hunt high and low for a master-tape to include on Tracks, but he rehearsed the song at the Fort Monmouth Post Theater in January 1999, a version he taped for purposes unknown (quite possibly for inclusion on 18 Tracks, alongside the 1999 version of ‘The Promise’ he recorded ten days later at Boxwood Studios). One image transposed from ‘Walking In The Streets’ – ‘Babe, I can’t lay the stars at your feet/ Oh but I think we could take it all, just you and me’ – would survive intact to the live debut of ‘Thunder Road (Wings For Wheels)’ in February 1975. The song itself was bootlegged as ‘Walking In The Street’, its repeated refrain being ‘Walking in the street with love from above’, so God knows what the origin was of ‘Lovers In The Cold’, the title used by a number of bootlegs and discographies.

 

68. THUNDER ROAD (WINGS FOR WHEELS)

Known studio/demo recordings: ?914 Sound Studios, Blauvelt NY October 1974/February 1975; Record Plant, New York 18–19+23/4/75; 15–16/7/75. [BTR]

First documented performance: The Main Point, Bryn Mawr PA 5/2/75.

 

‘Thunder Road’, like the three other Born To Run songs first recorded in 1974, has a protracted history. The opening couplet apparently dates back to a lost 1972 song called ‘Angelina’, one of a number of ladies’ names Springsteen went through before settling on Mary. A solo prototype from fall 1974, ‘Chrissie’s Song’, explicitly names Thunder Road; ‘Leave what you’ve lost, leave what’s grown cold – Thunder Road’, but makes no reference to Glory Road, its original title. By the time something recognisably ‘Thunder Road’-ish made its live debut, on a momentous February night in Bryn Mawr, ‘Chrissie’ had been replaced by ‘Angelina’. The song that night is quite a different beast from the earlier solo take; but we are still some way from the finished song, ‘debuted’ in July at Providence. In particular, he sings, ‘I don’t know but I been told/ There’s something waiting for us down that dirty road/ If we take our chance’, lines absent from all the known studio versions.

 

VII) 69–75. Other songs recorded for Born To Run April–July 1975:

69. BACKSTREETS

Known studio/demo recordings: Record Plant, New York 25/4/75; 19, 23/5/75; 6+18/7/75. [BTR]

First documented performance: Civic Theatre, Akron OH 8/8/75.

 

‘There’s been guys that have worked with me in the band that for one reason or another went their own ways, who I don’t see as much as I used to. But when I see ’em, it’s like they never went away.’ – intro. to live ‘Backstreets’ at the LA Sports Arena, 28/8/81.

 

If, as Springsteen wrote on the original draft of this key song, The Shirelles’ ‘Sha La La (Baby It’s You)’ was a direct inspiration, then the song travelled a long way in a short time. This was a song that came together in the studio by taking ‘a different approach toward some of the lyrics, [so] if you read them on paper sometimes they don’t look that good, but when you hear them, they’ve got the right feel – like some of the sixties songs’. Say, something by The Shirelles crossbred with elements of a prototype ‘She’s The One’.

 

70. LONELY NIGHT IN THE PARK

Known studio/demo recordings: Record Plant, New York 4-5/5/75.

 

‘Lonely Night In The Park’ was one of two Born To Run songs placed on the July 2, 1975 album-sequence, but deleted after Appel made his feelings known. As such, it is slightly surprising it was not one of the songs chosen for Tracks – or indeed, The Essential Bruce Springsteen bonus disc – and had to await Sirius’s 2005 inaugural broadcast of a dedicated Bruce Springsteen digital radio station for fans to evaluate its worth. If it had long been known that the song contained elements of ‘A Night Like This’, its 2005 broadcast revealed this candidate for a breakthrough album still had very much the feel of a demo.

 

71. TENTH AVENUE FREEZE OUT

Known studio/demo recordings: Record Plant, New York 5, 16/5/75; 13/7/75. [BTR]

First documented performance: Palace Theatre, Providence RI 20/7/75.

 

‘There I was in Asbury Park on a dark, rainy night, a hurricane just came in, I’m walking down the street at three in the morning . . . had my jacket bundled up around me . . . Way down the end of the street walking through the monsoon, I seen this big figure . . . dressed in white, walking with a cane, a big guy, walking like there was no rain and the wind wasn’t blowing, just walking like it was a beautiful summer day . . . So I duck into the doorway, I stood in the doorway like this and sure enough I hear them footsteps coming closer and closer . . . and right where I’m standing, he turns and faces off on me. So I did the normal thing: I was cool, I threw all my money on the ground, threw off my jacket . . . All he did was he reached out his arm.’ – intro. to ‘The E Street Shuffle’, 20/07/75.

 

72. LINDA LET ME BE THE ONE

Known studio/demo recordings: Record Plant, New York 8+19/5/75; 29/6/75; 8/7/75. [TR]

 

Like ‘Lonely In The Park’, ‘Linda Let Me Be The One’ made it as far as the July 2 Born To Run sequence, before being removed to make way for the title track. However, the version on Tracks is not the one originally favoured (which was widely bootlegged). Credited to a June 28 session, it actually dates from the following day (there being no June 28 session logged), when Springsteen recorded two different versions of the song, a ‘hard slow version’ and a ‘ballad version’. The familiar bootleg version has a lighter, more melodic feel, though it would have benefited from a vocal overdub (and may have got one. He returned to it ten days later).

 

73. NIGHT

Known studio/demo recordings: Record Plant, New York 10/5/75. [BTR]

First documented performance: The Bottom Line, New York 14/8/75.

 

Very much a lesser light on this star-studded album, the semi-realized status of ‘Night’ perhaps was a large part of its appeal to its author, who cut the song in a single session; a rare event that spring. Listed on a possible album sequence in the late fall of 1974, when almost nothing had been recorded, it was cut the following May in ten takes, of which take eight was marked ‘Great – Hold’. Its slightly throwaway nature also made it a perfect set-opener, a position it held until May 1978, when far stronger songs from the pre-Darkness era were being cast to the wind.

 

74. MEETING ACROSS THE RIVER

Known studio/demo recordings: Record Plant, New York 28/5/75; 18/7/75. [BTR]

First documented performance: University of Iowa, Iowa City IA 26/9/75.

 

According to Appel, the song ‘Meeting Across The River’ (originally known as ‘The Heist’) was a hair’s breadth away from not making the album. And yet, there it is on both the July 2 sequence and the final album. Whoever was unconvinced of the song’s merits, he was right to feel this way. The idea is a strong one – a small-time hoodlum, offered the chance to take part in a heist, imagines telling his baby (and therefore the listener) how everything went to plan – but neither melody nor vocal wholly demand this listener’s attention.

 

75. JANEY NEEDS A SHOOTER MK 2

Known studio/demo recordings: ?914 Studio, Blauvelt NY October 1974/February 1975.

 

According to the Backstreets anthology, ‘Studio records from Born To Run confirm that this song was again recorded by the band and seriously considered for this album. The production notes show that Springsteen’s chord notations included a suggestion that the song adopt a “Spanish style” change after the first chorus.’ The song was also listed on the earliest known sequence for Album #3, in spring 1974. If it was attempted – and there is no mention of it in the Sony logs – a 914 version from 1974 seems the likeliest scenario, especially given its thematic similarities to the later ‘Linda Let Me Be The One’.

 

VIII) 76–85. Songs rehearsed and/or performed 1976-77:

76. FRANKIE

Known studio/demo recordings: Atlantic Studios, New York 3/6/77; 12/7/77.

First documented performance: Michigan State University, East Lansing MI 4/4/76.

 

One of Springsteen’s most important works, and one of only two readily identifiable tracks in a handwritten March 1976 list for ‘Album #4’ – along with ‘Darkness on the Edge of Town’ – ‘Frankie’ would eventually be demoed at the first Darkness . . . sessions in June 1977. That bootlegged version suggests the band were a lot more engaged by the song at this juncture than Springsteen was, with him making no attempt to get the lyrics right. A second attempt at the song on July 12, at a time when Springsteen was applying himself to the best of the songs recorded over the past six weeks, may contain a more committed vocal and realized lyric. It remains uncirculated. [See discussion in main text p. 129]

 

77. SOMETHING IN THE NIGHT

Known studio/demo recordings: Atlantic Studios, New York 1, 14 + 16/6/77. [DA]

First documented performance: Monmouth Arts Center, Red Bank NJ 1/8/76.

 

Like ‘Frankie’, ‘Something In The Night’ was a song Springsteen seemed in an awful hurry to record when he finally entered the studio on 1 June 1977. But unlike ‘Frankie’ it had received a full lyrical workout at the fall 1976 and winter 1977 shows; and when he did demo the song, on the very first night of sessions, he nailed it. Though he returned to it a couple of times (one later take contains a lot of moaning, but merely confirms he caught it early), this was the basic track used on the album, albeit with a vocal overdub. Having already pruned any number of lines from the live version (as well as that eerily evocative horn part he used at the 1976-77 shows when the Miami Horns were in attendance), the 1 June lyric remained the template for the album. [See discussion in main text p. 131]

 

78. RENDEZVOUS

Known studio/demo recordings: Atlantic Studios, New York 1-3, 8, 17/6/77. [TP]*

First documented performance: Monmouth Arts Center, Red Bank NJ 1/8/76.

 

‘Rendezvous’ is the first of a number of great hook-filled pop songs Springsteen would record for Darkness, promptly reject, and finally give away to second parties (in this case, Greg Kihn and Gary US Bonds). But unlike most of its catchy kin it would enjoy a healthy life in the live set, extending all the way from August 1976 through December 1980, when an unexpected one-off River-period performance at the year-end Nassau show was captured on multitrack (and later included on Tracks).

 

79. THE PROMISE

Known studio/demo recordings: Atlantic Studios, New York 30/6/77; 1, 7–8, 13/7/77; 24+30/8/77 [TP]*; Record Plant, New York 28/9/77; 12/1/78; Boxwood, Rumson NJ 9+12/2/99 [18TR].

First documented performance: Monmouth Arts Center, Red Bank NJ 3/8/76.

 

If anybody ever wanted something that they couldn´t have, this is for you.. – intro to ‘The Promise’, Williamsburg MD 16/10/76.

 

The omission of ‘The Promise’ from the album it delineates and defines still stands as one of the great miscalculations of Springsteen’s career. It certainly left a great gaping hole at the heart of the released Darkness. Maybe that was the point. Though no studio recording has yet emerged with the lines he rewrote mid-sessions – ‘Well, my daddy taught me how to walk quiet and how to make my peace with the past/ I learned real good to tighten up inside and I don’t say nothing unless I’m asked’ – a full ‘in studio’ rehearsal featuring the change, allegedly from early 1978, appears on the Thrill Hill Vault DVD. This could be a live mix of the version he recorded on January 12 1978, which was included on the January 16 1978 ‘original’ sequence for Darkness in the all-important last slot. Just eight days later, he was back recording the song solo at the piano, yet he was again dissatisfied with the results, and when the album was re-sequenced in March ‘The Promise’ was discarded. Nonetheless, for the first month of the Darkness tour he encored with a solo rendition of such infernoesque intensity it fanned the uproar to release the song. But not only did he hold back, he dropped the song from the set just before his first FM broadcast of the year, from LA’s Roxy. [See discussion in main text pp. 130–1]

 

80. DON’T LOOK BACK

Known studio/demo recordings: Atlantic Studios, New York 1, 6–8, 17 + 24/6/77; 2+7/7/77 [TR]; Record Plant, New York 28/2/78; 2/3/78.

First documented performance: Sports Arena, Toledo OH 10/3/77.

 

The Darkness sessions’ favourite pop song, ‘Don’t Look Back’ (‘Tonight we’ll even the score and, honey, we won’t look back’) was debuted live in March 1977 with the lyrics still unfinished. Demoed at the first Atlantic session in June, and worked on for the next month, it slotted into the provisional album sequence on 16 January 1978, staying a part of the album even as he tinkered with it through March. Pressed onto an eleven-track final sequence, it was cut from the album when Springsteen decided something had to give if the album’s sonic intensity wasn’t going to be severely compromised by a forty-five minute length. Though not a feature of the 1978 live set, it was probably still a candidate for an ‘album’s worth of pop songs like “Rendezvous”’ in the winter of 1979. Indeed, after offering the song to drummer (and Springsteen acolyte) Bruce Gary for his band The Knack’s 1979 debut album, Get The Knack, it was pulled, in Gary’s words, ‘at the request of Springsteen’s management in order to allow him to release the song first’. Or maybe not. The one track on Tracks not remixed in 1998.

 

81. (I WILL FOREVER BE) CANDY’S BOY

Known studio/demo recordings: Band rehearsal, Holmdel NJ Summer 1976 [THV]; Atlantic Studios, New York 3+6/6/77; 27/6/77; [24/8/77; 2/9/77]. [TP]

 

Another ‘so near, so far’ Darkness candidate, ‘Candy’s Boy’ had a particularly long gestation period, being first rehearsed at the summer 1976 pre-Red Bank rehearsals (a video of this formative version appears on 2010’s Thrill Hill Vault). Perhaps he intended to replace ‘Frankie’ with it, having taken two of her best lines: ‘There’s machines and there’s fire on the outside of town/ Young boys for hire waiting to blow us all down’. If so, he decided it still needed work. Eighteen months’ more work, only to donate its first verse and title to another song – ‘The Fast Song (God’s Angels)’, when at the end of September he went with a reworked ‘Fast Song’ for the album, now called ‘Candy’s Room’. The June 1977 version finally appeared on 2010’s The Promise almost entirely unscathed, suggesting Springsteen now thinks he missed a trick in casting Candy’s original boy-toy aside.

 

82. SAVE MY LOVE

Known studio/demo recordings: Band rehearsal, Holmdel NJ Summer 1976 [THV]; Colt’s Neck NJ 22/7/10. [TP]*

First documented performance: Carousel House, Casino, Asbury Park NJ 7/12/10.

 

The one song from 2010’s The Promise which Springsteen openly admitted was a modern reconstruction of a lost Darkness-era composition, ‘Save My Love’ also crops up in the lavish boxed set as a ‘bonus’ track on the Thrill Hill Vault DVD, from a bare-chested summer 1976 rehearsal. Another simple song of affection, like the contemporaneous ‘Because The Night’, it was never considered for the album, presumably because, ‘It was a love song, and I really felt that I didn’t know how to write them at the time.’

 

83. ACTION IN THE STREETS

First documented performance: Auditorium Theatre, Rochester NY 8/2/77.

 

Another song he rehearsed, and in this case performed, in readiness for the Album #4 sessions, ‘Action In The Streets’ was a singular attempt to convince himself he could still write a song with all the good-times-roll zest of teenage years AM-radio favourites. In concert, with the Miami Horns lending a hand, admonishing his audience to ‘just move your body side to side/ Raise your hand, shout until you’re satisfied/ Oh tonight, there’s action in the street all night’, it works a charm. For such a dark record, it was a non-starter.

 

84. LOVE ON THE WRONG SIDE OF TOWN

85. LITTLE GIRL SO FINE

 

During the long break from the studio, sidekick Miami Steve threw some of his energies into making a second album with Southside Johnny, This Time It’s For Real. Eschewing a plentiful supply of early lost Springsteen songs – with the exception of ‘When You Dance’ – Van Zandt wanted to stick to freshly minted originals, including two which bestow co-composition credits on Springsteen, presumably for lending a lyrical hand. Both titles have the ring of Springsteen, so maybe he came up with the basic ideas. As it is, the ‘Spanish Harlem’-feel of ‘Little Girl So Fine’ skirts the borders of parody. ‘Love On The Wrong Side of Town’ suits the Southside shtick a whole lot better. With a stronger vocal, it might even have been a hit. The absence of either song from any 1976 show or 1977 session rather suggests this was a case of Brill Building Bruce punching in for a day of writing-to-order for a friend.

 

IX) 86–96. Songs ready to be recorded by June 1977:

86. OUTSIDE LOOKING IN

Known studio/demo recordings: Atlantic Studios, New York 1/6/77; Record Plant, New York 27/9/77. [TP]

First documented performance: Carousel House, Casino, Asbury Park NJ 7/12/10.

 

‘Outside Looking In’ would be one of twenty ‘new songs’ Springsteen was looking to demo in that first week at Atlantic Studios in June 1977. Listed as ‘Outside Movin’ In’ in the song-list he brought to the sessions (reproduced in the 2010 Darkness boxed-set), it was recorded on that first evening in rough ’n’ ready form and then put aside after producer and artist realized just how many songs they already had, from which they were expected to compile a ten-track album. However, it turns out the song was only awaiting an oil-change to its lyrics, which had altered quite dramatically by September. It is the latter version that serves as the basic track for the 2010 official release, an authentic but previously uncirculated 1977 recording.

 

87. BECAUSE THE NIGHT

Known studio/demo recordings: Atlantic Studios, New York 1/6/77; 1/7/77; Record Plant, New York 27/9/77. [TP]*

First documented performance: Music Hall, Boston MA 30/5/78.

 

According to latter-day Springsteen, ‘I knew [all along] that I wasn’t gonna finish [“Because The Night”] - because it was a[nother] love song.’ It was really a song from the Album That Never Was, the one he came into the studio in early June 1977 to record, but by mid-July had abandoned in favour of an album he had barely begun to sketch out. Listed on one song-list as ‘The Night Belongs To Lovers’, and then as ‘Because The Night (Belongs To Lovers)’, it finally got there by the time he recorded a new version at the end of September (which was later broadcast on Sirius’s E Street Radio). Whether this take was specifically a demo for Patti Smith is unclear. But from here on it became Patti’s song.

 

88. BREAKAWAY

Known studio/demo recordings: Atlantic Studios, New York 1/6/77. [TP]*

 

‘Breakaway’, a song Springsteen cut on that auspicious first night and never returned to, ticks every box in the Darkness motif department. Actually, it covers the waterfront rather too well. Co-opting Sonny from ‘The Promise’, ‘Janey’ from her own song, and Bobby from ‘Something In The Night’, Springsteen gives them all a good reason to, as it were, break away. He even reveals the underlying moral to the whole shebang: ’Now the promises and the lies they demand it/ Let the hearts that have been broken stand as the price you pay’. The song did not circulate prior to its inclusion on The Promise, but he has clearly added a modern vocal, as well as (presumably) horns and backing singers. I guess that’s the price you have to pay to break away.

 

89. I WANNA BE WITH YOU

Known studio/demo recordings: Atlantic Studios, New York 1/6/77; 1/7/77; Record Plant, New York 12/9/77; Power Station, New York 31/5/79; 21/6/79; 24/9/79. [TR]

First documented performance: Forum, Milan, Italy 20/4/99.

 

I had some lofty ideas about using my own music to give people something to think about. – Bruce Springsteen, 1997.

 

Those ‘lofty ideas’ undoubtedly did for ‘I Wanna Be With You’, one of those great throwaway songs too in the moment to make it through the quagmire of the Springsteen selection process. Yet it provided a magical moment the minute they rolled tape on 1 June, 1977, and two years of frustration poured on to tape, even if this joyous jaunt failed to figure in a single provisional Darkness sequence. By the time he got around to re-recording it in the summer of 1979, the intensity of that original 1977 version – a match for anything on Darkness – had set sail on its own sea-cruise. The 1979 version sounds like a Springsteen tribute band covering a lost classic. Weinberg, in particular, phoned in the kinda contribution that could give click tracks a bad name. Remarkably, twenty years later, it rediscovered its former frenetic self at a number of the Tracks tour gigs.

 

90. OUR LOVE’S GONNA LAST FOREVER

Known studio/demo recordings: Atlantic Studios, New York 1/6/77.

 

Widely assumed to be an early version of the Record Plant Darkness outtake, ‘Someday (We’ll Be Together)’ (because of a single line of lyric, ‘This love will last forever’), ‘Our Love’s Gonna Last Forever’ was another song cut that first evening, only to be sidelined for good. A digital dub of the ‘Atlantic Demo Tape’ cassette reproduced in The Promise book would solve this minor mystery, but until then it gets its own number.

Note: This could a well be an otherwise-unrecorded song on a contemporary handwritten song-list, ‘So Kiss Me Tonight’.

 

91. DARKNESS ON THE EDGE OF TOWN

Known studio/demo recordings: Atlantic Studios, New York 6, 8–9, 20+23/6/77; Record Plant, New York

8-10/3/78. [DA]

First documented performance: Shea’s Buffalo Theatre, Buffalo NY 23/5/78.

 

Events often beat the humanity out of people until they just lose it all. ‘Darkness On The Edge of Town’ was about people holding on to that humanity. I started writing it right after Born To Run. – Bruce Springsteen, 1978.

 

Though the title track of Springsteen’s fourth album is listed on that ‘Atlantic Demo Tape’, according to the Sony logs it was not cut until June 6. Documented evidence does, however, support his contention that he ‘started writing it right after Born To Run’. It was listed on both the earliest known track-listing for Album #4, from February/March 1976 (see Backstreets #57), and another 15-track list from that spring, reproduced in The Promise set (where it is presciently listed first). Its inclusion so early in the process might lead one to think he intended to keep it from the outset. In fact, although he spent a great deal of time on it during that first month at Atlantic, it was not even on the eight-track album they mocked up in the fall (called Badlands), or the 16 January 1978 sequence that almost got the green light. Only on March 8, with another deadline past and gone, did Springsteen begin work on the ‘Sonny’ version, cutting a number of takes over the next three days.

 

92. RACING IN THE STREET

Known studio/demo recordings: Atlantic Studios, New York 2/7/77; Atlantic or Record Plant, New York 1–4, 10, 12, 29–30/8/77; Record Plant, New York 28-30/11/77; 6+9/12/77; [21–23/3/78]. [DA]; [TP]*

First documented performance: Shea’s Buffalo Theatre, Buffalo NY 23/5/78.

 

A circulating piano/vocal version (probably from July 2) represents a somewhat more distinct alternative than the one included on The Promise. This heartfelt performance omits the final verse, presumably because it has not yet been written. Instead, we get a lengthy coda which references one of the song’s working titles, ‘Dying In The Street’: ‘Yes, come on out now little one, and we’ll go dying in the street [x2]/ Look at me, it’s true, baby, what else can we do/ Racing in the street [x6]’. As for the version on The Promise, it was a tad optimistic to think the latter could be improved by a partial 2010 vocal overdub – especially with the ‘correct’ vocal in general circulation on the Lost Masters series of bootleg CDs.

 

93. INDEPENDENCE DAY

Known studio/demo recordings: Atlantic or Record Plant, NY 15/8/77; Record Plant, New York 26–27/9/77; Record Plant, New York 4+7/11/77; 9/12/77; Power Station, New York 29/5/79; 11/10/79; 24–25/4/80. [RI]

First documented performance: The Roxy, Los Angeles 7/7/78.

 

The fate of the ‘finished’ Darkness version of this song remains one of the great mysteries of Springsteen-collecting. Despite six bootleg CDs’ worth of outtakes and three CDs of official takes out in the world, no such fish has ever come up for air. For a while it was even thought this might be the version on The River, but studio logs show he worked on the song as much in 1979-80. Collectors have had to be content with a ‘guide vocal’ version from Darkness, presumably recorded in August 1977, to convey a sense of how it sounded at this stage. Even that ‘first’ Atlantic August recording represented a belated entry for this important song, as if he were holding it back. He confirmed as much the night he first performed it, identifying it as part of a group of songs, along with ‘Darkness On The Edge of Town’ and ‘The Promise’, dating back to 1976.

 

94. HEARTS OF STONE

Known studio/demo recordings: Record Plant, New York 14/10/77. [TR]

 

One of just four tracks on Tracks from the Darkness sessions, ‘Hearts of Stone’ had initially been donated to the needy (Southside Johnny) back in 1977, appearing as the title track on the third of his r&b volumes. Rather than waste a perfectly decent E Street Band performance, Southside just dubbed a new vocal and some requisite horns onto the Record Plant backing track. A straightforward ‘It Ain’t Me Babe’ rewrite (with one self-conscious nod, ‘I’m not alone’), the song gave Clarence a rare chance to let rip at these sessions. But it was never gonna be a contender for such a heavyweight opus.

 

95. BRING ON THE NIGHT

Known studio/demo recordings: Atlantic Studios, New York ?June 1977.

 

A song for which there appears to be a circulating Darkness outtake – a muffled rehearsal take – yet no reference thereto in Sony’s session-logs. As such, the attribution to Record Plant seems unlikely. The song is listed in the May 1977 list of ‘New Songs’, making it a pre-Atlantic composition, so if it was cut a June session seems likelier. Just to sprinkle more confusion, the recent Godfather boxed set of Darkness outtakes claims the song was included on a production tape dated 12 August, 1977. There is such a production tape, but again no mention of ‘Bring On The Night’ on the tape-box.

 

96. THE FAST SONG (GOD’S ANGELS)

Known studio/demo recordings: Atlantic Studios, New York 6, 9–10, 13–14, 20, 24/6/77; [24/8/77; 1–2/9/77].

as CANDY’S ROOM

Known studio/demo recordings: Record Plant, New York 27/9/77; 12/12/77; 3–5/3/78. [DA]

First documented performance: Shea’s Buffalo Theatre, Buffalo NY 23/5/78.

 

I suspect ‘The Fast Song’s original title was probably ‘God’s Angels’ (which was listed among the ‘New Songs’). The reference to God’s angels comes early – ‘I wish God’s angels would tear this town down/ And blow it into the sea, Man, that’s alright with me’. Perhaps it was always intended as a companion piece to ‘Candy’s Boy’. It would be helpful to know when the cassette inlay card for the Atlantic Demo Tape in the Darkness notebook was written, because on there it was already called ‘The Fast Song (Candy’s Room)’. As to dating the great change into ‘Candy’s Room’, it was on September 27 that the title ‘New Fast Song’ appeared for the first time. Over the next two days this song was worked on extensively, the results featuring in the January 16 sequence. However, he would spend a further three days in early March 1978 working through some seventy-nine ‘takes’ – surely a series of vocal overdubs – to remove any lingering vestige of’God’s Angels’.

 

X) 97–107. Other songs recorded at Atlantic Studios, NY 1 June–13 July 1977:

97. CHEAP THRILLS

98. JON’S JAM (IT’S A SHAME)

Known studio/demo recordings [#98]: Atlantic Studios, New York 14/6/77. [TP]*

 

By June 14, Bruce and the boys had been hard at it for two weeks, having concentrated on songs rehearsed beforehand. Unfortunately, Springsteen’s muse would not let him be, and every day he seemed to bring a new song he was more anxious to play than songs already tried, tested and true. Neither of the above songs appeared again at the sessions. Nor has any song bearing the titles ‘Cheap Thrills’ or ‘Jon’s Jam’ ever seen the light of day. But one suspects that ‘Jon’s Jam’ is ‘It’s A Shame’, a previously undocumented Darkness outtake that popped up on The Promise, complete with 2010 horn section, because who should be playing drums on this AM-friendly little nipper but Jon Landau. If so, bass duties devolved to road manager Bob Chirmside, suggesting it was cut while they were waiting for the E Streeters to arrive; being something Springsteen wrote at the diner, after eyeing up the waitress and imagining ‘I was born just to be your fool.’

‘Cheap Thrills’ is more of a mystery. The title tallies with no extant Darkness lyric or lost Springsteen song. However, as a summation of theme, it is a perfect description of ‘Darlington County’, a track which would not be properly recorded until 1982 (and not released until 1984). About two hopped-up hotheads who cross the county line in search of fun, only to end up with one of them hauled off to jail (presumably for transporting a minor across state lines with intent), it has long been known that ‘Darlington County’ dates from the Darkness era. Indeed, it is mentioned in the Darkness notebook on a ‘work sheet’ from the first Atlantic sessions, while a dissociated couplet from the same notebook provides a prototype for two lines in the 1982 incarnation: ‘My eyes have seen the glory of the comin’ of the Lord/ He was peelin’ down the alley in a black and yellow Ford’. If ‘Cheap Thrills’ is not this devil in disguise, then we have a mystery to solve. And a tape to excavate.

 

99. DRIVE ALL NIGHT

Known studio/demo recordings: Atlantic Studios, New York 16/6/77; Atlantic or Record Plant, NY 24/8/77; Power Station, New York 24/2/80; 8, 16/3/80; 10/4/80. [RI]

First documented performance: Kiel Opera House, St Louis MO 18/10/80.

 

If, as the studio logs appear to indicate, Springsteen only worked on ‘Drive All Night’ at two Darkness sessions, one in mid-June, the other in late August, he was presumably happy with what he already had. He certainly should have been. The eight-minute Atlantic take, from June, is one of the great E Street Band studio performances – Bruce and Clarence particularly excelling in their respective roles. For once, Bruce lets it all hang out as need eats away at his very soul – ‘Babe, I’d drive all night just to buy you some shoes, and to taste your tender charms’. Not since ‘Fever’ had he written such a song of naked yearning, infusing it with an almost gospel-like fervour by the simple expedient of allowing the band to strike a groove, while he mourned and moaned till the feeling passed. Another, shorter try-out (possibly from August), a simple piano/organ duet, also establishes its mood early. But when Springsteen revisited the song at the 1980 River sessions he was no longer singing (in line one) about losing his money, a possible reference to the lawsuit, but of losing his ‘honey’. The hurt had faded away, and every extra take took it further away from inspiration’s fleet foot.

 

100. ONE WAY STREET

101. FIRE

Known studio/demo recordings: Atlantic Studios, New York 17/6/77. [TP]*

First documented performance [#100]: Carousel House, Casino, Asbury Park NJ 7/12/10.

First documented performance [#101]: Shea’s Buffalo Theatre, Buffalo NY 23/5/78.

 

One session, two lightweight pop songs, both of which would have to wait thirty-three years to see the light of day. ‘One Way Street’ condenses two pop classics – Hank Snow’s ‘Ninety Miles An Hour (Down A Dead-End Street)’ and Lou Reed’s ‘Walk On The Wild Side’ – to form a single clichéd hook, ’We were walking on the wild side/ Running down a one way street’. It should perhaps have stayed where it was, the opener on volume two of Lost Masters, issued as a labour of love by a European bootlegger. That 5:46 take was duly trimmed, given horns and a gravelly vocal by a sixty-year-old singer, before being presented in this spruced-up form on The Promise. But a lesser song it would remain.

The unforgettable ‘Fire’ was also treated to a wholly inferior 2010 vocal for its reincarnation. But this time fans had myriad live versions with which to compare it. Supposedly composed after he was one of 18,850 hardy souls who trekked to the Philadelphia Spectrum on 28 May 1977 to see the shadow man himself, Elvis, ‘Fire’ was recorded just once at these sessions, perhaps as a demo for Elvis (as has been suggested). More likely it was a rockabilly experiment from a man starting to get interested in the genre’s possibilities. The heavy echo certainly suggests a conscious homage to the Sun studio sound; even as the lyric tips its hat to Little Willie John’s ‘Fever’, an Elvis number one. When Elvis upped and died, Springsteen donated the song to Robert Gordon, who had come to local prominence fronting CBGBs favourites the Tuff Darts. His then-girlfriend Lynn Goldsmith suggested Bruce was less than happy with the Pointer Sisters’ success at Gordon’s expense.

 

102. SHERRY DARLING

Known studio/demo recordings: Atlantic Studios, New York 24+27/6/77; 1/7/77; Power Station, New York 25/5/79; 23/2/80; 8/3/80; 12/4/80. [RI]

First documented performance: Civic Center, Charleston WV 4/8/78.

 

A song he produced first on June 24, ‘Sherry Darling’ would be worked on for the next week, but as shadows lengthened it became just another lost summer night. And yet a terrific impromptu duet with Miami Steve at the piano, caught on film by Rebo, shows an abiding affection for the song. Its inclusion at summer 1978 shows also suggests he had started to realize joy and sorrow could be two sides of the same coin. Sure enough, once the decision was made to make The River a double, it was always a candidate for the side designed to represent ‘this joy, this certain happiness that is, in its way, the most beautiful thing in life’.

 

103. STREETS OF FIRE

Known studio/demo recordings: Atlantic Studios, New York 24/6/77; Atlantic or Record Plant, New York 24+30/8/77; Record Plant, New York 6, 12, 29/12/77. [DA]

First documented performance: Shea’s Buffalo Theatre, Buffalo NY 23/5/78.

 

According to Landau, ‘”Streets of Fire” was something that happened in the studio . . . That and ”Badlands” are the two earliest on the record – late June or early July.’ It is certainly the least fully-conceived song on the album. Which doesn’t make the song a total failure. In fact, it sounds like the spark which ignited the process. A miniature noir movie, or indeed a noir trailer, ‘Streets of Fire’ is all sound and fury, thunder and lightning, as Springsteen shapes another rough draft on the spot. He did redub the vocal, though, changing, ‘I’m lyin’ flat out on my back, storm into the darkness,’ into, ‘I’m wandering, a loser down these tracks . . . ‘Cause in the darkness . . .’; even if he stuck to that original backing track like a mountain-goat.

 

104. BADLANDS

Known studio/demo recordings: Atlantic Studios, New York 27+30/6/77; 11+13/7/77; Atlantic or Record Plant, New York 24+30/8/77; Record Plant, New York 12/12/77; 22–23+25/2/78. [DA]

First documented performance: Shea’s Buffalo Theatre, Buffalo NY 23/5/78.

 

‘Badlands’, the second track to have ‘happened in the studio’ that last week of June, would also prove good enough to make the album, but it needed a lot more remedial care than ‘Streets of Fire’. The first studio take, assuming it is the one on Lost Masters Vol. 2, is another Atlantic demo masquerading as a finished take. At some point, probably December 1977, the song finally became a rant against the dying of the light, sung to an unfeeling universe he wants to ‘spit in the face of’.

 

105. SPANISH EYES

Known studio/demo recordings: Atlantic Studios, New York 30/6/77; ?13/7/77. [TP]*

 

One of the better ballads from these sessions, ‘Spanish Eyes’ provides a nice change of pace and a welcome return to the lovelorn lyricist of yore, imploring a resistant señorita to ‘let your doubts slip away ‘neath your sighs/ Let me kiss your Spanish eyes’. Displaying an elephantine memory (and a refusal to discard good couplets), Springsteen reused the opening couplet in 1982 when penning ‘I’m On Fire’. The song was worked on a number of times on June 30. It is also presumably the track listed as ‘New Spanish’ a fortnight later, without latching onto its lyrical key – which is presumably why he grafted a new vocal to the 2010 version.

 

106. COME ON, COME ON (LET’S GO TONIGHT)

Known studio/demo recordings: Atlantic Studios, New York 2+13/7/77; Atlantic or Record Plant, New York 23–24, 30/8/77; Record Plant, New York 8/9/77; 2, 7–8/11/77; 9+29/12/77. [TP]

First documented performance: Carousel House, Casino, Asbury Park NJ 7/12/10.*

as FACTORY.

Known studio/demo recordings: Record Plant, New York 10+14/3/78. [DA]

First documented performance: Municipal Auditorium, Nashville TN 21/7/78.

 

We don’t appear to have a version of ‘Factory’ which sets the ‘Come On’ lyric to the album backing-track, even though Landau told Paul Nelson: ‘“Factory” was just one of those things that happened in the studio . . . It was originally called ‘Come On’, and had . . . a different idea to it. We had a track for it, and he came in and he had this [new] set of words for it.’ This is surprising, considering ‘Come On, Come On’ remained under consideration for the album throughout the whole process. Even the January 2 1978 take, logged as ‘The Factory Song’, seems to have been a version of ‘Come On, Come On’. And yet, ‘Come On, Come On’ was absent from the January 16 sequence. On March 10 it reappeared, again listed as ‘The Factory Song’. By the 14th, he was spending most of the day working on ‘Factory’, at one stage trying it ‘slightly faster, [with] country piano’. But a dirge is what he wanted. And we got.

 

107. TALK TO ME

Known studio/demo recordings: Atlantic Studios, New York 8+13/7/77; Atlantic or Record Plant, New York 5, 9, 24, 26, 30/8/77; Record Plant, New York 14/10/77. [TP]

First documented performance: Carousel House, Casino, Asbury Park NJ 7/12/10.*

 

Another clear case of something which was just ‘too pop’ for the anti-hype album, ‘Talk To Me’ is hardly the usual ‘try it and throw it away’ Atlantic performance. Springsteen returned to the song time after time at these sessions (including another great impromptu version at the piano in the Darkness DVD documentary). The version on The Promise, previously only known as a backing track, appears to have retained its original 1977 vocal, though the horns sound like a later imposition. It had already received the full Jukes treatment on Southside Johnny’s 1978 album, to which it was donated when it became apparent ‘Talk To Me’ was gonna be another silent partner in this one-man anti-pop process. A couple of live performances in 2012 have confirmed ‘Talk To Me’ as another innate crowd-pleaser he had pre-emptively cast aside.

 

XI) 108–113. Songs recorded at Atlantic or Record Plant, New York August 1977:

108. THE WAY

Known studio/demo recordings: Atlantic or Record Plant, New York 5+15/8/77; Record Plant, New York 12/9/77; 10–12/2/78. [TP]

 

After six weeks at Atlantic, Springsteen had some thirty songs, including in prototypical form the bulk of the album he would release the following year, plus another album of pop fare. A two and a half week break enabled everyone to return refocused, determined to complete the ‘eagerly awaited’ album. But when sessions resumed in early August, now alternating between Atlantic and Record Plant, Springsteen preferred bringing in new songs. Though few were the equal of ones already recorded and discarded, ‘The Way’ was very much the exception. Indeed, it made it all the way to the January 16 sequence, sandwiched between ‘Adam Raised A Cain’ and ‘Prove It All Night’. Sung with real passion and purpose, the song has long been a favourite of Springsteen collectors. Springsteen gave the world the loveless ‘Factory’ instead. Having become ambivalent about the song’s qualities – perhaps around take 66 on February 12 1978 – he even rejected it from Tracks. And after initially putting it at the start of the bonus ‘rarities’ disc to a 2-CD Essential Bruce Springsteen, he rejected it a third time. Those outside said circle had to wait until 2010 to enjoy this torch ballad, when it made it to The Promise (albeit as a hidden track).

 

109. AFTER DINNER

Known studio/demo recordings: Atlantic or Record Plant, New York 5, 10–11/8/77.

110. I GOT MY EYE ON YOU

Known studio/demo recordings: Atlantic or Record Plant, New York 15/8/77; 14/9/77.

 

Further evidence that Springsteen could not keep his eye on the prize is provided by the recording history of these two songs – neither of which circulate. They may even be lost classics, though given the twenty-five outtakes released in the last fifteen years on assorted archival sets that seems improbable. Both songs were worked on extensively, in the former’s case for a number of days, albeit as a diversion from the main fare. The latter track also racked up fourteen takes (a ‘Tk14’ is listed on one of the rough mix cassette inlay cards in the Darkness notebook). Recorded on a day when he was concentrating on other songs of known merit, like ‘Independence Day’ and ‘The Way’, back in the day ‘I Got my Eye on You’ was considered good enough to be placed on a comp. reel alongside finished takes of ‘The Way’ and ‘Prove It All Night’ (where it clocks in at 3:45). Twenty years later, a number of mixes were done for the Tracks project. As such, one of the stranger omissions from The Promise.

 

111. CRAZY ROCKER (IT’S ALRIGHT)

Known studio/demo recordings: Atlantic or Record Plant, New York ?9/8/77.

 

Even at this juncture Springsteen liked to spring a new song on the E Streeters, run it down for fun and then just as quickly put it aside. Emerging in the late nineties on the Deep Down In The Vaults 3-CD bootleg, ‘Crazy Rocker’ sounds a lot like it’s the one and only take, as Springsteen calls out key changes and hollers dummy lyrics for all he’s worth. Everyone is having a good time, someone else is paying the bills (for now), so they keep going beyond the five-minute mark. With a little tightening up, they could probably have got a song good enough to redo in 2010. As it is, the song was not even considered worth identifying in the logs, though it is probably the ‘New Rocker’ they attempted (twice!) at the August 9 session. Or the unlisted song on the following reel listed as ‘New Song Rehearsal at Begin[ning] – Last Thing of the Night’, which might explain how it ended up in the Lost and Found.

 

112. GOTTA GET THAT FEELING

Known studio/demo recordings: Atlantic or Record Plant, New York 9, 11–12, 30/8/77. [TP]*

First documented performance: Carousel House, Casino, Asbury Park NJ 7/12/10.

113. THE LITTLE THINGS (MY BABY DOES)

Known studio/demo recordings: Atlantic or Record Plant, New York 15/8/77. [TP]*

 

Of the half a dozen new songs which got try-outs the second week in August, only ‘The Way’ was worked on further at Record Plant. ‘Gotta Get That Feeling’ and ‘The Little Things (My Baby Does)’ represent the two extremes of effort E Streeters expended on essentially diversionary fare. ‘The Little Thing (My Baby Does)’ appears just once in the logs, as a single take. Listed as complete the same day they nailed ‘Independence Day’ and ‘The Way’, it was an attempt to put the sentiments of ‘The Way’ in a more sprightly setting – ‘The way she kisses me tenderly/ The way she gives her love to me’ . ‘Gotta Get That Feeling’, on the other hand, occupied multiple reels of tape over a four-day period and, on the evidence of the two bootlegged versions, one rough as Yogi’s botty, the other in its Sunday best, received a thorough workout before Springsteen said hasta la vista, baby. Its transfer (in Sunday Best guise) to a ‘comp.’ reel at August’s end, along with ‘Racing In The Streets’, led directly to its appearance on The Lost Masters Vol. 2, allowing one to discount another unnecessarily modernized reworking on The Promise.

 

XII) 114–136. Songs recorded at Record Plant, New York September 1977–March 1978:

114. KING’S BIG CHANCE AKA KING’S RANSOM

Known studio/demo recordings: Record Plant, New York 1, 8–9/9/77.

 

115. BLUE MOON

Known studio/demo recordings: Record Plant, New York 9/9/77; 14/10/77.

 

Another week’s break at the start of September saw Springsteen transfer the Darkness sessions definitively to Record Plant, a place where he had worked himself into the ground before. But there was still no end in sight; not even a provisional album sequence. On the first coupla days back, he recorded these two songs, both clearly marked ‘demos’. The first of these, logged under three different names, ‘King’s Rock (King’s Big Chance)’, ‘King’s Ransom’ and ‘The King’s Revenge’, was not heard of again. ‘Blue Moon’ could, of course, be a cover of The Marcels’ doo-wop classic. But the E Street Band almost never warmed up with covers at these sessions (or if they did, tape wasn’t rolling). And, in fact, this ‘Blue Moon’ cropped up again at an October session, along with the cryptic ‘Sax Song’, ‘City At Night’, ‘English Sons’ and the first ‘Bo Do Rocker’.

 

116. PROVE IT ALL NIGHT

Known studio/demo recordings: Record Plant, New York 12, 14-16/9/77. [DA]

First documented performance: Shea’s Buffalo Theatre, Buffalo NY 23/5/78.

 

After weeks of essentially unproductive sessions, Springsteen finally got back on track with this captured-on-tape corker. The first take, recorded on September 12, is presumably the extraordinary performance bootlegged on Lost Masters 3, in which he sings most of the lyrics of ‘Something In The Night’ to a full band arrangement of ‘Prove It All Night’. It seems likely he worked on the lyric between sessions and brought the song to the session on the 14th, essentially finished. But only the first and last takes – both musically realized – are in general circulation, while even the early mixes of the album version have finished lyrics, suggesting that for all the various lyric drafts reproduced in Songs, once it got to the studio it was revved up and ready to go.

 

117. RAMROD

Known studio/demo recordings: Record Plant, New York 12/9/77.

 

At least four takes of ‘Ramrod’ were recorded at the September 12 session, one of which circulates, with what are clearly dummy lyrics set to a loose, frat-rock arrangement. None of the various double entendres drawn from the title itself and found in later versions are in evidence here, though it is clearly logged as ‘Ramrod’, pure and simple (along with the intriguing comment, ‘Bullshit at Head’!). Like that other flirtation with frat-rock, ‘Sherry Darling’, it was a song he would return to on the 1978 tour, before spending many more hours at Power Station ramming it into gear (see #117a at the end of this section).

 

118. SOMEDAY (WE’LL BE TOGETHER)

Known studio/demo recordings: Record Plant, New York 26, 29–30/9/77. [TP]*

 

Listed on all the tape logs – and there are a fair few – as ‘Someday (Tonight)’, this was one of several uncirculated tracks meant to validate the decision to make The Promise a double CD. Without a circulating rough take it is impossible to say just how much work was done on this track in 2010, but the lead vocal and at-times-overpowering Alliance Singers are certainly latter-day incursions. It may well have some relation to the Atlantic demo ‘Our Love Will Last Forever’, but the focus of the released song is their night together, not the expiry date of their romance.

 

119. BREAK OUT

Known studio/demo recordings: Record Plant, New York 26-28/9/77; 4+7/11/77.

120. DOWN BY THE RIVER (SAY SONS)

Known studio/demo recordings: Record Plant, New York ?27/9/77.

 

Long known in collecting circles as ‘All Night Long’, ‘Break Out’ circulates in two forms, both pretty rough, neither hinting at latent greatness. So it is something of a shock to see just how much work was done on the track. And there evidently was a finished take because in November 1997 it was one of the tracks mixed for the Tracks project. ‘Down By The River’ supposedly had the working title ‘Say Sons’ (which may relate to the provisional title, ‘Old Sons’, also logged as ‘New Old Song’, from September 27). The vocals are so buried it is hard to figure out what is going on, but nothing about the track indicates it needs its own monograph. Both tracks first circulated on the ‘Son You May Kiss The Bride’ tape of 1977–79 outtakes, and may well be just rehearsal takes.

 

121. AIN’T GOOD ENOUGH FOR YOU

Known studio/demo recordings: Record Plant, New York ?26/9/77 [TP].

First documented performance: Carousel House, Casino, Asbury Park NJ 7/12/10.

 

Another track known under an entirely different name – ‘What’s The Matter, Little Darling?’ – it appears on The Promise as ‘Ain’t Good Enough For You’. Another song lost in the mists of the tape logs, this one has a firmer audio history. Too firm a history. One cannot easily explain its omission from the logs when at least three versions are in circulation, all evidently finished. Indeed, the Thrill Hill Vault DVD shows him adding a vocal overdub at Record Plant, which rather suggests he thought he had something. The most likely location for the track is on September 26, where a ‘First New Rocker’ is listed. The song itself has a certain charm about it, with a groove enticing enough to be co-opted for ‘This Little Girl’ in 1980 and a sentiment later refined for ‘My Best Was Never Quite Good Enough’. But the lyrics themselves are a disappointingly banal way of saying women nag (a theme found in English song in the early 15th century).

 

122. THE PROMISED LAND

Known studio/demo recordings: Record Plant, New York 30/9/77; 27/10/77; 1,27/12/77. [DA]

First documented performance: Shea’s Buffalo Theatre, Buffalo NY 23/5/78.

 

No outtake version circulates of this song, just an alternate mix, but there are plenty in the vaults. The three takes from September 30 may well feature an early set of lyrics, because it is four weeks before work on the track started in earnest. Twenty takes would be attempted on the 27th October, with take 19 featuring a so-called ‘long ending’. This probably refers to the harmonica coda that reintroduced some much needed tonal colour.

 

123. CITY OF NIGHT

Known studio/demo recordings: Record Plant, New York 14/10/77. [TP]

 

Another ten-day break leads to yet more new songs, Springsteen still failing to put a lid on this sustained jag of songwriting. When he returns, he has another song ‘about’ cars, but this one is a little different. Released in its original form as the ‘closing’ track on The Promise, it should have come directly after ‘Candy’s Boy’.

 

124. THE BALLAD (CASTAWAY)

Known studio/demo recordings: Record Plant 14/10/77.

 

Another song from the ‘Son You May Kiss The Bride’ tape which proves hard to nail down, this particular torch song was unhelpfully named ‘The Ballad’, though collectors have generally preferred ‘Castaway’. ‘Ballad’ precedes ‘City of Night’ at the October 14 session, and what we have is an antecedent not only in proximity, but in tone. With a gorgeous church-organ intro, it soars musically even as the unfinished lyric endeavours to pull it back to earth. Again, we find ourselves on the same backstreet, beneath ‘her’ window: ‘Baby’s got on her new dress tonight/ With her hair piled high she looks so right/ And I will not be denied/ All I want is to be the one to try’.

 

125. ENGLISH SONS (WRONG SIDE OF THE STREET)

Known studio/demo recordings: Record Plant, New York 14/10/77. [TP]*

 

Bootlegged as ‘Endless Night’, and released as ‘Wrong Side of the Street’, this track is clearly marked ‘English Sons’ in the tape logs, one of a handful of new songs Springsteen sought to capture in a single day – October 14. It was quite a day. Springsteen started proceedings with more melancholic fare, ‘The Ballad’ and ‘Taxi Cab’, before giving full E Street workouts to ‘English Sons’ and ‘I’m Going Back’, both recorded with their guts hanging out. There may be more – two tracks at the session are identified simply as ‘New Song’. ‘English Sons’ in its (modern vocal) Promise guise is curtailed just as the Big Man is threatening to cut loose (serving as a metaphor for this whole series of sessions), but the song retains a certain fire of unknown origin.

 

126. GIVE THE GIRL A KISS

Known studio/demo recordings: Record Plant, New York 11/10/77 or 11/11/77. [TR]

First documented performance: Convention Hall, Asbury Park NJ 19/3/99.

 

Like ‘The Promised Land’, ‘Give The Girl A Kiss’ nods vigorously in the general direction of its source, The Shangri-Las’ ‘Give Him A Great Big Kiss’, not just in title, but in the whole sonic sheen; whilst taking much of its energy from the New York Dolls’ reworking of that sixties staple (which he perhaps witnessed first-hand at Max’s). Its inclusion on 1998’s Tracks, though, seemed more about surprising collectors than capturing the essence of these marathon sessions. A song that went unlogged at the time, it became part of a 1993 ‘comp.’ of ‘lost’ songs put together by a Sony engineer, many of which ended up on Tracks. The date given for the track on that comp. is 11/10/77. But there doesn’t appear to be a session on November 10; whereas October 11 was Springsteen’s second day back in the studio. He may then have returned to the track three days later, when an unidentified ‘Sax Song’ vied with ‘Hearts of Stone’, the precursor to ‘Give The Girl A Kiss’ on that 1993 ‘comp.’ reel.

 

127. I’M GOING BACK

Known studio/demo recordings: Record Plant, New York 14 + ?27/10/77.

128. PREACHER’S DAUGHTER.

Known studio/demo recordings: Record Plant, New York 27/10/77.

First documented performance: Special Events Center, Austin TX 7/12/78.

 

Recorded two weeks apart, ‘I’m Going Back’ and ‘Preacher’s Daughter’ were self-conscious attempts to craft songs around the same Bo Diddley beat that informed ‘She’s The One’. Indeed, both are logged as ‘BoDo Rocker’, i.e. Bo Diddley Rocker, with ‘Preacher’s Daughter’ listed as ‘New BoDo Rocker’ on the October 27 reel (it is identified by both titles in an inlay card reproduced in the 2010 Darkness boxed set). However, in terms of importance there is no comparison. ‘I’m Going Back’ is one more ‘break out’ song. Literally. He’s in prison dreaming of his gal and swearing, ‘I’m movin’ out, ah, so don’t book me, Jack/ I’m goin’ back’. Set on BoDo autopilot, for all its sense of fun it seems more suited to soundchecks.

‘Preacher’s Daughter’, on the other hand, should have been released years ago. But, as he later admitted, ‘On Darkness I just didn’t make room for certain things.’ One of those things was an irreverence bordering on blasphemy; another was the love of a good woman, who in this case ‘gives me light and . . . brings me water’. A gloriously good-humoured rewrite of ‘Rosalita’, crossed with the daddy of all Diddley riffs, he gave the barest hint of what he sacrificed when he broke into the opening verse of this lost classic at December 1978 shows, before revisiting a more familiar heartbreaker and soul destroyer, ‘She’s The One’. [See discussion in main text pp. 156–57]

 

129. ICEMAN

Known studio/demo recordings: Record Plant, New York 27/10/77. [TR]

First documented performance: Tower Theater, Philadelphia PA 17/5/05 [solo show].

 

It is hardly surprising that ‘when Bob Benjamin sent [him] a tape with about three songs on it’ in the nineties, Springsteen had clean forgotten he’d ‘even written [‘Iceman’] and . . . had no idea what it was.’ If he’d have been keeping up with his own bootlegs, rather than busting members of an industry which had done so much to engender a deserved reputation for discarding 24-carat classics, he would have known the track from the various vinyl and CD versions of the Son You May Kiss The Bride tape, where it appeared alongside ‘Preacher’s Daughter’. Indeed, one can’t help but wonder if that three-song tape was from the October 27 session and comprised ‘New Ballad’, ‘New Fast Song’ and ‘New BoDo Rocker’. (The ‘New Fast Song’ being his solution to the ‘Candy’s Boy’/ ‘Fast Song’ imbroglio, while ‘New BoDo Rocker’ was ‘Preacher’s Daughter’. ‘New Ballad’ was the chilling ‘Iceman’, a song he cut just this one time.) [See discussion in main text p. 157]

 

130. ADAM RAISED A CAIN

Known studio/demo recordings: Record Plant, New York 9/11/77; 15/12/77; 15–17/2/78. [DA]

First documented performance: Shea’s Buffalo Theatre, Buffalo NY 23/5/78.

 

‘Adam Raised A Cain’ was the second such attempt at these sessions to see his troubled youth through his father’s eyes, as Springsteen starts to become more aware of the forces that brought his parent/s down. He was less aware of the forces that sometimes work against a song’s strengths. ‘Adam Raised A Cain’ suffered at the hands of a Springsteen who, in pushing himself to break through the pain, ended up producing something defiant, but also definitely overwrought.

 

131. I WANNA BE WILD

Known studio/demo recordings: Record Plant, New York 11/11/77.

 

Long known to collectors as ‘Don’t Say No’, this song was logged as ‘I Want To Be Wild’ (aka ‘New Fast Rocker’). It would appear either is correct, as one take has the former chorus, another, the latter. The lyrics, designed to convince some chick how much he needs her – ‘I’ll get down on my knees . . . I’m your captive’ – are so buried in the mix as to render them unimportant. A cassette inlay card in the Darkness notebook shows it was dubbed to a comp. tape of ‘Ruffs’, so it was presumably more than a demo. Just not an album candidate.

 

132. THE BROKENHEARTED

Known studio/demo recordings: Record Plant, New York 29/11/77. [TP]*

First documented performance: Carousel House, Casino, Asbury Park NJ 7/12/10.

 

The version of ‘The Brokenhearted’ on The Promise was entirely new to collectors. That the song was never a serious candidate for the album is clear from the notes attached to its original, November 29 reel: ‘1st Time Demo: Takes 1-3’. How much it was cleaned up in 2010 is less clear. The vocal certainly contains modern elements, with the horn section another obvious addition. Intriguingly, the song was attempted at an early tour rehearsal in May 1978, so maybe he started demoing album #5 before completing album #4.

 

134. TRIANGLE SONG

Known studio/demo recordings: Record Plant, New York 1/12/77.

135. (I LOVE) EVERYTHING ABOUT YOU

Known studio/demo recordings: Record Plant, New York 14/3/78.

136. TRAPPED AGAIN

 

#134 & 135 are both ‘lost’ songs recorded in the final days of Darkness . . ., in the latter’s case the very last sessions. The former stands as another cryptic song-title, the latter sounds like a cover. Neither would be heard of again, though ‘Triangle Song’ would feature on a 1993 ‘comp.’ that would form the starting point for Tracks. Meanwhile, ‘Trapped Again’ was another song donated to Southside Johnny to bulk up the third album he’d completed in the interregnum separating Born to Run from Darkness, though this time the main songsmith was Southside himself, with ‘Bruce & Steve merely adding bits and pieces’. I’m prepared to wager one ‘bit’ Springsteen contributed was that opening couplet: ‘Here I am, baby, right where you found me/ Trying to break these chains that surround me’.

 

XIII) 137–140, 117a. Songs performed, rehearsed or demoed May to December 1978:

137. POINT BLANK

Known studio/demo recordings: Home recording, Holmdel NJ January-May 1979; Power Station, New York 29-30/5/79; 23–25/8/79; 16/2/80. [RI]

First documented performance: The Roxy, Los Angeles 7/7/78.

 

On Darkness . . . I couldn’t understand how you could feel so good and so bad at the same time . . . The song that I wrote right after Darkness . . . was ‘Point Blank’ – which takes that thing to its furthest. – Bruce Springsteen, 1981. [See discussion in main text pp.180–1]

 

138. THE TIES THAT BIND I

First documented performance: Capitol Theatre, Passaic NJ 20/9/78 soundcheck.

138A. THE TIES THAT BIND II

Known studio/demo recordings: ‘Telegraph Hill Studio’ 26/10/78; Telegraph Hill rehearsal, March 1979; Power Station, New York 10–11/4/79; 10/4/80. [RI]

First documented performance: Jadwin Gym, Princeton NJ 1/11/78.

 

By the end of November 1978, Springsteen was regularly performing the three songs that form the core of the double album he would release two years later – ‘Point Blank’, ‘Independence Day’ and ‘The Ties That Bind’. All three songs were also previewed to a wider radio – and, inevitably, bootleg vinyl – audience during west coast live FM broadcasts from the Roxy in LA and The Winterland in San Francisco. He seemed to want people to know he had plenty of new songs ready to record, even if that wasn’t the case. ‘The Ties That Bind’ – in its performance guise – would stay pretty much intact in its passage to Power Station, where a stomping version would be recorded at the second River session in April 1979. But, lyrically, he has entirely reversed the ‘loner’ sentiments of the version soundchecked in September 1978, making his loyal chick complicit in an ‘us against the world’ compact, that ‘long dark highway and a thin white line connecting . . . your heart to mine’.

 

139. TONIGHT

140. I’M GONNA TREAT YOU RIGHT [AKA ‘WILD KISSES’]

Known studio/demo recordings: ‘Telegraph Hill Studio’ 26/10/78.

 

These two songs, rehearsed with the E Street Band the week before they resumed their assault on America’s rock sensibilities in November 1978, were only minor additions to the oeuvre (though a live version of ‘Wild Kisses’ wouldn’t have gone amiss). Another great little pop song, written fifteen years too late, it just needed someone to plug the lyrical gaps. If ‘Tonight’ was more of the same – with a hint of the honkytonk about it – Springsteen knew it wasn’t quite ready for the road ahead.

 

117a. RAMROD

Known studio/demo recordings: Power Station, New York 12/6/79; 27/8/79; 5/9/79; 4+19/4/80. [RI]

First documented performance: Stanley Theatre, Pittsburgh PA 28/12/78.

 

When we left ‘Ramrod’ at the Record Plant sessions, it was still searching for a lyric. And though it was not one of the songs known to have been rehearsed before the last leg of the 1978 tour, it had evidently acquired a set of words by the time it made its live debut in Pittsburgh at the end of December. He chose to make very little of the double-entendre potential of the title phrase, save for a single line in the first River take, ‘Come out little girl and let my ramrod rock’. By the time he has redubbed his vocal, even this has become banality itself, ‘Come Saturday night I let my ramrod rock’. So much for emulating the unselfconscious charm of frat-rock 45s like ‘Double Shot of My Baby’s Love’.