Backstreets

Backstreets first appeared on the BORN TO RUN album, and has had 3 live versions officially released (one from 1975, one from 1978, and one from 2000). It's a classic. The lyrics are rich with fabulous imagery, not all of which I understand, but all of which I relish. The song is in my top 10, and I bet it's up there for a lot of people as well. The lyrics have an interesting reference to "dancing in the dark," 9 years before a song by that name would appear on the BORN IN THE USA album. I wonder how it made Springsteen junkies feel in 1984 when they heard of a song called Dancing in the Dark and perhaps thought it would be another gut-wrenching epic like the song the phrase came from, only to find out that DITD is a bouncy, poppy 80s radio hit.

This song has been performed live 404 times. It was played frequently on every tour from BORN TO RUN to TUNNEL OF LOVE, and then except for one appearance at a bar in 1995 (when the E Street Band got together to record the Murder Incorporated music video), wasn't seen again until the Reunion tour in 1999, where it's been in regular rotation on every E Street Band tour since. I think I've seen this song live 3 times out of 11 shows. Glad I got it at my first concert, and that I didn't have to wait a few shows in to hear it. I'm not a big fan of a liberty he took with it on the Tunnel tour. On the chorus, he refrains from hitting the classic high notes on the "Hiding on the backstreets" lines, and takes a lower note while letting Patti hit the high melody notes. It seemed like a forced opportunity to give his mistress more to do on stage. I don't think female backup vocals should be on this song anyway - glad he skipped it on the HT/LT tour.

Here's one of the best bootleg versions I have, from a show in Boston in August 1999.



Here's a nice version with just him and a piano, from the DEVILS AND DUST tour:


And finally, here's me performing it, live from July 8, 2000:

Back in Your Arms

Back in Your Arms was written, presumably, in the mid-90s for possible inclusion on the GREATEST HITS album (he had brought the E Street Band back together to do a few "new" songs for the album), but it remained unreleased until 1998, when it was on the TRACKS boxset. It's your usual soulful song - the kind of song that is so predictable musically, that if I were to have gotten that idea for a song, I probably wouldn't finish it. It's nice, but not one of my favorites. I can take or leave it. I know a couple people who saw it live once.

BIYA had its live debut on 8/4/99 on the Reunion tour. It has only been played live 18 times, with 5 plays on the Reunion tour, 3 on the Rising tour, once on the Magic tour, twice on the Working on a Dream tour, and a surprising 7 times on his solo DEVILS AND DUST tour.

From the Blood Brothers DVD, which documented the ESB's 1995 reunion in the studio:



From the DnD tour:

Atlantic City

Atlantic City appeared on his 1982 NEBRASKA album. After a year or so on the road with the E Street Band to promote THE RIVER, he recorded the next album at home on his $1000 4-track. (I recently recorded the entire NEBRASKA album at home on my 16-track. It's the circle of life, Simba.)

Obviously, there was no NEBRASKA tour, so it got its debut on the BORN IN THE USA tour. That tour was unique because when you think about it, it was promoting two new albums: BitUSA and NEBRASKA. This song has become a classic of his, so much so that it appeared on the Greatest Hits album and has been played live many times, on every tour except the TUNNEL OF LOVE tour in 88. It was on the setlist for the Atlanta show on June 4, 2000, but not played. Either Trapped or Darlington County was played in its place. Got to see it live in Charleston in August 2008, thanks to an audience sign request. I've loved every version I've heard. I'll let it speak for itself. Gonna throw a lot of YouTubes at you here.

Live from the HUMAN TOUCH/LUCKY TOWN tour in 1993, with the "other band."



With the Sessions Band in 2006:



With the E Street Band in 1985, in wonderful professionally shot footage:



And finally, here's me doing it.

American Skin (41 Shots)

I saw the first ever performance of American Skin (41 Shots) in Atlanta on June 4, 2000. This is a song about how we as Americans are inadvertently trained and conditioned to have false/blind fear, and that the pressures of day-to-day life might cause us to shoot before asking questions. Sometimes literally. Springsteen uses the Amadou Diallo case as an example. (Diallo was shot 41 times by NYC police, who wrongly suspected he had a gun, when he was just reaching for his wallet.) The song is in the same key and has the same tempo/feel of My Hometown from BORN IN THE USA, and indeed when the song began on 6/4/00, I may have thought it was MH for a second or two. The phrase "41 shots" is repeated so many times that you can get it stuck in your head after just one listen. Obviously, I really like the song. Very haunting and catchy, and has sentimental value. I learned it on the guitar as soon as possible, which was more difficult in those days. YouTube didn't exist and from my dial-up connection, one mp3 took about 45 minutes to download. Not to mention I knew nothing about where to find downloadable bootlegs.

Despite never being released on any album and having only one live performance, word about the song travelled to NYC, where Springsteen was getting ready to do 10 nights at Madison Square Garden right after the Atlanta show. Just like the telephone game where the original message gets distorted by the end, the song got grossly misinterpreted. Most of the NYC cops, and even fans, didn't take too kindly to the song because they thought it was an anti-cop song in bad taste. Some security guys walked out, some turned their back on Springsteen for that song, and when one of my bosses at the restaurant I work at saw the song at Giants Stadium on THE RISING tour, he stormed out to the concession stand until the song was over to go do some shots (hopefully not 41). But anyone who pays attention to the song and the words knows that it's very sympathetic to cops and the human condition.

Below is a performance from one of the final New York shows in June/July 2000, which appeared on the LIVE IN NEW YORK CITY CD/DVD. Springsteen looks surprisingly young to my eyes, looking back on it. And to think I thought he looked and sounded very old at the time. He's 61 now, but was a spring chicken at 50 in the vid.



And here's audio of me performing the song, live on July 8, 2000 - just a month and 4 days after its world premiere, and probably just a week or so after the performance you saw above.

American Land

American Land was released in 2006 on the WE SHALL OVERCOME: AMERICAN LAND EDITION. I didn't get that version, as I already had the regular WSO album, and didn't want to buy mostly the same thing a second time. So, I still have never heard the studio version of American Land. A live version was released on the LIVE IN DUBLIN album, which featured songs taken from Bruce Springsteen and the Sessions Band's couple of nights in Dublin. The song carried over to the next two E Street Band tours, where it was played just about every night, as either the last song or very close to the end of the show. The lyrics alone are worth reading. You can find them here. They are phenomenal - probably the best lyrics of the songs I've gone through so far. They are so good that I thought this song was a cover, and didn't realize until I did research for this post that it was a Springsteen original.

On the LIVE IN DUBLIN album, he actually sounds Irish. I wonder if he was trying to do an Irish accent. The brilliant thing is with the vowels he uses on a lot of these lines, you can't help but sound Irish when you speak or sing it. It's the most apparent on the lines "I docked at Ellis Island in a city of light and spires, She met me in the valley of red-hot steel and fire"

I got to see this song live 3 times. Twice in 2008 and once in 2009 (he never came in or near Atlanta on the 2006 tour). The first time I saw it, the lyrics were scrolling on the big screens like a teleprompter, so even audience members who had never heard the song can sing along. It's been the same arrangement all the time, so any one I post will be good. Here's the one from the Hyde Park performance in June 2009. I still need to watch my Blu-Ray of this show.

All the Way Home

All the Way Home was written in the early 90s, but Southside Johnny ended up using it. Springsteen revisited the song in 2005, changed the arrangement drastically, and put it out on his DEVILS AND DUST album. It's a cool throwaway. Never seen it live, and wouldn't be too brokenhearted if I don't, but it's a nice song. It was performed 5 times on the Human Touch/Lucky Town tour (in the old arrangement), then 18 times on the Devils tour, then 3 times on the We Shall Overcome tour. The line "crashing like a drunk on a barroom floor" was used in My Beautiful Reward, a song that did appear on 1992's LUCKY TOWN album, and - I presume - was written at the same time. The most interesting part for me is the opening lines "I know what it's like to have failed, babe, with the whole world lookin' on." With the time this was released (a few months after Springsteen's Vote For Change tour didn't do any good because we got 4 more years of Bush anyway), you'd think those lines were a reference to the 2004 election results. But no, that line was part of the song's original incarnation in 1992.

Below are videos of Southside Johnny's version, followed by a live performance by Springsteen and the Sessions Band on the 2006 We Shall Overcome tour.

All That Heaven Will Allow

All That Heaven Will Allow is track #3 on Springsteen's TUNNEL OF LOVE album. Released in 1987, the Tunnel album (and tour) showed a grown-up Springsteen, singing about things like marriage, divorce, kids, etc. He sounded like he had stopped running and did some surrendering along the way. I enjoy the album and this song, even if it is "mature" Bruce. The Tunnel tour was a bit of an oddity - it was a rapid departure from the tours that came before and the ones that would come after. Really, there's been no other tour like it. For the first time ever, the traditional stage setup had been altered. Piano-player Roy Bittan and organist Danny Federici had swapped places on stage. Saxophonist Clarence Clemons was on the opposite side as well. This might not seem like much but psychologically, it was a jarring adjustment for the relocated band members. Also, a 5 or 6 piece horn section toured with them, and provided some strong backup vocals as well. The setlists on this tour were by far the most static of any tour before or since. I have been known to attend multiple shows on one tour because you never know what you're going to get, but if I was old enough to see a show on the Tunnel tour, it would not have been necessary to see more than one. In addition to the songs staying the same, the band wore the same outfit every night, and there was pre-written bits of dialogue and speeches written by Bruce that were repeated verbatim night to night. It was the most choreographed E Street Band show ever. I have a soundboard bootleg from this tour, but honestly, haven't gotten around to listening to it except for the couple of tracks I've put up here so far.

The Tunnel album was recorded with the E Street Band, but for the first time ever, not all of them were together. They all came in and laid down their parts individually. It was very piecemeal. This was the last tour before Bruce would fire them and hire a new band. I am slightly fascinated with the tour for all the reasons I mentioned above, but it really did seem like Bruce had one foot out the door.

If you have 11 1/2 minutes to spare, below is a performance of ATHWA from the 1988 Tunnel tour. It's made me want to finally put this show on CDs and listen to it.



The song has only been played about 14 times since the Tunnel tour. It didn't reappear in a setlist until 8 years later, for one show only on his solo acoustic tour in support of the GHOST OF TOM JOAD album. It got 8 plays in 2005, on his solo tour in support of the DEVILS AND DUST album. Below is a performance from that tour.



I have recorded the entire NEBRASKA album on my 16-track. I think TUNNEL OF LOVE will be the next one I do.