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.

All or Nothin' At All

Not to be confused with the Frank Sinatra song of the same name, All or Nothin' At All comes from Springsteen's 1992 HUMAN TOUCH album. It's one of his generic rockers, but a guilty pleasure of mine, and one of my favorites from the album. It deserves more play, in my opinion, and hopefully will get more. It was even a rarity on the tour to promote the album it came from. It's only been played live a total of 7 times - 6 of which come from the Human Touch/Lucky Town tour. It was unexpectedly played on September 12, 2009 in Tampa, FLA, in response to a sign request. It was its first live airing in 17 years - and the rest of that Tampa setlist ain't too shabby either. You can look at it here.

Below is an alternate version of the song, followed by the live version from Tampa in 2009.

All I'm Thinkin' About

From 2005's DEVILS AND DUST album, All I'm Thinkin' About might be the catchiest song on that record. He sings the whole song in a strange dinky falsetto voice. His success with the vocal on the studio version is hit and miss, but the song is very cool. It has always reminded me of I'm Goin' Down from BORN IN THE USA. Both songs are simplistic, catchy, and feature the title phrase sung quite repetitively in the chorus. Have Max give it the classic E Street back beat, have Bruce sing it in full voice, and this song would have fit right in on BitUSA. It's unfortunate that it hasn't been played since the D&D tour. I had the good fortune to see it played live on his stop in Atlanta in July 2005. He said "Sometimes I don't have the voice for this next song. If I don't have it, I'll just stop and do something else." After a quick test (he sang the first line a few feet away from the microphone), he went for it and it was a great performance.

Ain't Got You

Ain't Got You is the opening track on the TUNNEL OF LOVE album (released in 1987). It's a song about a person who has all the riches, wealth, fame, and other material possessions you could possibly want and more, but feels incomplete because he "ain't got you." By '87, Bruce Springsteen probably had all that stuff, but by then his marriage to Julianne Phillips was on the rocks. Reportedly, it was obvious to anyone who saw a show on the Tunnel of Love tour in 1988 that something was going on between Bruce and Patti Scialfa, his new band member/backup singer. She and Nils Lofgren joined the E Street Band on the Born in the USA tour, and I hear things got very hot during the Tunnel tour. One wonders if he's singing about Patti in Ain't Got You. I'm sure at the time, if I had seen a show, I'd be disgusted with Bruce and maybe lose a little respect for him. But knowing what I know now in 2010 - after Bruce and Patti have enjoyed 20+ years of marriage and raised 3 children - the split with Julianne was inevitable and Patti was a much better match for the Boss. In any case, TOL has been nicknamed The Divorce Album, and signified a maturation and acknowledgment of mortality for Springsteen. For the first time, the songs were beginning to touch on what happens when the dreams either don't come to fruition or go sour. Bruce himself stated that he'd spent his whole career putting people in cars. Now it was time to figure out where they all end up. Another departure from the norm was the way the album was recorded. All members of the late 80s incarnation of the E Street Band played on the album, but they all came in separately and recorded their parts. All other albums before this were pretty much recorded live in the studio.

So, how do I feel about Ain't Got You? I love the song. Makes a great album opener, concert opener (for me, I mean. Bruce has never opened with this song.), and seque-way song into something else. I played it a lot in my live shows in 2000, then it popped up once in 2002 as the opener to a show I played in California, then found its way into the setlist for Schroederfest 2004. Nothing since then I don't think. Springsteen's live history with the song was it was played extensively on the TOL tour as a medley sequeing into She's the One. It then stayed on the shelf until the Devils and Dust tour in 2005, played on electric. It has had no live plays since then.

It had a slightly different arrangement on the Tunnel tour, which you'll hear below. I like the way he tailored it to better fit in with She's the One, and I wish I knew who was doing that masterful guitar work.



Here's me playing a faithful-to-the-original version, taken from a show I played on July 8, 2000. The reason it ends so abruptly is because it goes right into a song I wrote called Your Time.

Adam Raised a Cain

A fan favorite, Adam Raised a Cain comes from the 1978 DARKNESS ON THE EDGE OF TOWN album. The lyrics suggest one of the many songs Springsteen wrote about his "daddy issues." For some reason, the lyric that sticks with me the most is: "Daddy worked his whole life for nothing but the pain
Now he walks these empty rooms looking for something to blame
You inherit the sins, you inherit the flames"

[Tangent: in his acceptance speech at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1999, he thanked his father for all the great song inspiration. He said something like "if things always went great between us, I would have written nothing but happy songs all the time. I did that in the early 90s and it didn't work out so well."]

This song has been played on most tours since it was written. It was surprisingly absent from the River and Born in the USA tours, but was a major staple on the Tunnel of Love tour's setlists. It has been played a good amount of times on every tour since. It even got the bluegrass treatment in a fantastic version on the We Shall Overcome tour. Of the 10 different versions residing in my iTunes (notice I'm not posting any officially released versions on this blog - not sure about the rules regarding that so I'm being safe and not even going there), below are my favorite two.

A fantastic solo acoustic version from the Human Touch/Lucky Town tour in 1993:



A faithful-to-the-original version from one of the Boston shows on the Reunion tour in August 1999:

Across the Border

Across the Border is from his 1995 THE GHOST OF TOM JOAD album. It's one of the more listenable songs on the record. It seems to tell the story from an immigrant's point of view of how things will be and what they will do once they get across the border. Springsteen wrote the DEVILS AND DUST album a decade later, and had a song on there called Matamoros Banks, which Bruce told us was a sequel to Across the Border. In that song, we find the hero's lifeless corpse floating down the Rio Grande. But until then, we have the cinematic optimism of Across the Border. This song was obviously played for most if not all shows on his solo acoustic Ghost of Tom Joad tour, then it was soundchecked a few times on the Reunion tour, but never got any play in the shows. It was played 6 times on the Rising tour, 5 times on the Devils and Dust tour, and has had no play since then. Below is a beautiful version from the Rising tour, with the E Street Band and Emmylou Harris sharing the vocal. Listening to this version makes you think of how at home the song would have been on the We Shall Overcome tour.

A Night with the Jersey Devil

A Night with the Jersey Devil was a surprise Halloween gift from Bruce Springsteen. On October 31, 2008, this brand-new song accompanied by a video popped up on his website, accompanied by a handwritten letter that said:

Dear Friends and Fans,
if you grew up in central or south Jersey, you grew up with the "Jersey Devil."
Here's a little musical Halloween treat. Have fun!
- Bruce Springsteen

The song has a repetitive gritty bluesy riff, with a lot of harmonica. Springsteen sings the whole song through a bullet mic, a trend which seemed to start in 2005 on the Devils and Dust tour with the sickest, most twisted version of Reason to Believe you'll ever hear. (I'm a big fan of the D&D version of RTB, by the way.) He sounds like he's screaming up from hell when he uses the bullet mic. At the time this song surfaced, we already knew he had an album coming up in early 2009. We assumed Jersey Devil would be on it (it wasn't), and I for one assumed - and was afraid - that the whole album would be in this style. It's cool when used sparingly, but I don't want to hear a whole show/album like that.

The song is a nice listen once in a while (so much so that I tacked it on to the end of the CD I made for myself when the WORKING ON A DREAM album leaked), and the video is appropriately unsettling, but I'm glad Bruce doesn't cram this genre down our throats. Apparently the Jersey Devil is a long-time local ghost story. Wikipedia sheds some light on the subject here.

A Good Man Is Hard to Find (Pittsburgh)

A Good Man Is Hard to Find (Pittsburgh) was written in the late 70s or early 80s, around the time of the songs that would end up on THE RIVER. It was left off that album, and remained unreleased until the TRACKS box set came out in 1998. It's track 2 on disc 2 of TRACKS - by far my favorite disc. The song tells the story of a woman who has lost her husband. Reportedly the husband died in Vietnam (which would explain the Saigon line). The reference to the "meanness in this world" would later show up on the title track on NEBRASKA.

The song has only been played live once, on the Devils and Dust tour in St. Paul on May 10, 2005, as a dedication to a local police officer who had recently been killed in the line of duty. Here's a link to the audio.



The harmonica abruptly stops because Springsteen realizes he has the wrong key harmonica in his holder, so he whistles instead. I can't relate to that problem - I do the harmonica switches by myself, and I always check before the song anyway to see if it's the right one and in tune. Springsteen's stage crew must have assumed he'd need a D harp, since the studio version is in D. This live performance is in C.

My opinion of the song? It's pleasant enough, but not one of my favorites. It's in the unfortunate position of being in between 2 fantastic songs on TRACKS (Restless Nights comes before it and Roulette follows it - how could he leave those two off an album?). In my research for this post, I read the lyrics for the first time ever and can appreciate it more now. It's been on my list of songs to cover on my YouTube page. I think it would sound unique with just autoharp and harmonica. Only question is if it should be in the key of C or D.

57 Channels (And Nothin' On)

57 Channels (And Nothin' On) appeared on the HUMAN TOUCH album, released in 1992. It came out the same day as LUCKY TOWN, HT's sister album and the better one, in my opinion. I still think he should have just taken the best songs from both albums and made one really strong single album. If he had done that, 57 Channels - at least this version - would not be one of my choices to grace the single album. The song made its debut in a solo acoustic version played in his legendary solo benefit shows in November of 1990. It's a fun, inspired 12-bar blues version which is more suited to the clever lyrics. Listen to it below:



Unfortunately, what we ended up with on the album can barely pass as melody or music. It sounds like background music you'd hear in a club. Underscored with a repetitive electric bassline and a steady quarter beat on a bass drum, with occasional sounds from keyboards and guitars, he "sings" the whole thing in a low monotone and effectively kills the song, much like he kills the TV in the last verse. The live version from the Human Touch/Lucky Town tour is slightly more fun to listen to, but you can only go so far with polishing a turd until you realize it's still a turd. As far as I know, 57 Channels hasn't been played live since the 92-93 tour with The Other Band.

In 2005, on his solo tour in support of the DEVILS AND DUST album, Springsteen famously revisited the original version of Real World, another song that was bastardized on HUMAN TOUCH. When the song received a thunderously warm reception, he admitted "I guess I kinda fucked that one up when I put it on the record." I hope one day he comes back to the early promise of 57 Channels (And Nothin' On) and makes the same admission.

4th of July, Asbury Park (Sandy)

4th of July, Asbury Park (Sandy) was released on his second album, 1973’s THE WILD, THE INNOCENT, AND THE E STREET SHUFFLE. I quite like the song. Got some extra special significance after Danny Federici passed away. Am listening to the Magic Tour Highlights version released exclusively on iTunes right now. It’s taken from what would be Danny’s last show of his life. I’m not even a minute in and the performance is so full of emotion already. The first time it was played on the Reunion Tour was the second to last night of a 15-night stand in New Jersey (that was a lot of numbers in one sentence – hope you’re still with me). It was the closing number. I read some fan reviews of that night and the hardcore fans said it was hilarious to see people leaving when Land of Hope and Dreams started – with them assuming the show was over. And then, they bust out Sandy. And the impatient people missed it. Goes to show you never know what the Boss has up his sleeve.

There are 2 different versions of the last verse. On the album version, he sings about a waitress he was seeing. In the live version released on LIVE 1975-85, he sings about angels riding down from heaven on Harleys. Personally, I prefer the Harley verse, but I always tend to steer toward how the artist does it live over their studio performance. Reportedly, Springsteen bounces back-and-forth between the waitress verse and the Harley verse, but seems to do the former more often. The Magic Tour Highlights version has the waitress verse. A soundboard bootleg I have from the Devils and Dust tour also has the waitress verse.

This song was played on their first show after Danny Federici’s passing. Roy Bittan plays the accordion, which was Danny’s role in the song. Bruce says to Roy before the song “You better get this one right – somebody’s watching.”

Here’s a live performance of the song, performed by me on July 7th, 2000.



And here’s my YouTube performance of it, from July 4, 2008.

First post

Hello!

I’ve decided to start another blog. Don’t worry – I’m not abandoning At The Skithouse. I’ve just decided to make blogs where I do a breakdown of my favorite musicians’ songs – every officially released one from A to Z, and talk about them. I hope you’ll join in with comments. I’m starting with Bruce Springsteen, and it’s starting off on quite a bang with his masterpiece 4th of July, Asbury Park (Sandy).