Album Review and Reflection
3 ½ stars
By Anthony Kuzminski
So now that you’ve seen Springsteen’s Super Bowl Half Time performance it’s awoken your inner rock star and you want to revisit some of his music. Where to start? Well, Best Buy has his 3-disc Essential collection this week for $12 ($2 more than the Wal-Mart collection and it’s 20+ more songs) and you may want to grab one of his newer albums, but if you’re willing to be adventurous and fork over a little more money, my vote would be for Tracks, his box set consisting of 66 unreleased recordings and b-sides. One can determine an artist’s worth in not what makes their studio records, but what doesn’t make them. If one is fortunate enough they will have enough grade-A material to make one or two extra albums, but Bruce Springsteen recorded something in the range of two-hundred songs between 1977 and 1984 alone. This collection captures his career through his 1995 release The Ghost of Tom Joad and among it are some of the finest rock n’ roll compositions of the last thirty-years. So the next time you complain about how artists don’t make music like they used to, pull out Tracks and give it a more studied listen as I guarantee you will find songs more infectious than half of Born in the U.S.A. and just as intense as anything found on Darkness on the Edge of Town. If that weren’t enough, you’ll find yourself questioning many of the decisions on The River, which has a dozen-plus outtakes here that on their own would make a five-star record. As an added bonus, we get a deeper look at some of his outtakes from the 1990’s for Human Touch and while many of the sets weaker songs are found here, you will be surprised to find quite a few diamonds in the rough.The album starts off with four songs for Springsteen’s audition tape for the legendary John Hammond (who also signed Bob Dylan) in 1972. Springsteen has a large amount of unreleased songs from this era which were publishing demos but at the time of the box sets release, these songs were still being fought over in a court of law (it was settled in December 1998 in Springsteen’s favor), so instead of a slew of publishing demos we get a few acoustic numbers and some more exquisite flair that pre-dates Born To Run including “Santa Ana”, the acoustic-accordion “Bishop Dance”, the rollicking bar busting “Seaside Bar Song” and the romantic character study “Zero and Blind Terry” which would not have been out of place on his second record. There’s even his early nearly nine-minute show stopper, “Thundercrack” which before “Rosalita” was the song they used to tear the walls down with. One of the bigger surprises was the lack of Darkness outtakes on the box, but we later learned that Springsteen only considered “completed masters” of songs that were recorded specifically for albums for this release. Therefore, soundtrack work, aborted albums and incomplete takes of songs were put to the side. In my estimation the Darkness outtakes are too few. I understand him not wanting to include “Because the Night” (which had entire verses missing), but I was floored to not see “Fire” included which I always assumed was a finished take. Despite this, the six songs they included from these sessions are pure gold. The getaway exuberance of “Rendezvous” is luminous, “Give The Girl A Kiss” is pure 60’s pop, “Heart of Stone” was given to Southside Johnny but is rightfully represented here and “Don’t Look Back” was dropped from the record at the eleventh hour, but closes out disc one with a bang.
The second disc covers mostly outtakes from The River and what a treasure chest of gems this is. If there was any one disc from the box set deserving of a standalone release, this would be it. The road house rockers and exuberant anthems housed here stand head and shoulders next to anything Springsteen has ever done. If a box set of outtakes had been released in the aftermath of Born in the U.S.A. these songs would have been steeped into the consciousness of anyone who had ever heard of Bruce Springsteen. The garage rockers “Where The Bands Are” is a hybrid 60’s Who meets the 70’s Clash while “Loose Ends”{Video Link} is often deemed Springsteen’s greatest outtakes while “I Wanna Be With You” houses such an infectious chorus it makes you want to fall in love upon one listen. The paranoia blitz of “Roulette” attacks you with fervent zeal while “Dollhouse”, “Livin’ on the Edge of The World” and “Ricky Wants a Man of Her Own” finds the E Street Band awash with frenzied performances led by band leader Steve Van Zandt. Van Zandt has gone on record how every song on this disc was a lost argument for him. As phenomenal as The River is, it’s staggering to imagine a handful of these cuts on the released record in place of lesser fare like “Crush on You” and “I Wanna Marry You”. There’s also the yearning b-side “Be True” and a cathedral collapsing rocker “Take ‘Em As They Come”. If that wasn’t enough, it houses an alternate version of “Stolen Car” with piano and mandolin that supersedes the album cut. Closing out the disc is the only Nebraska outtake, a stripped down version of “Born in the U.S.A.” as it originally appeared on that legendary demo tape. It’s evocative and good enough to have made the record, but its rightful place is here on the box set because if not, Springsteen may never have attempted it with the E Street Band. Lastly, two U.S.A. b-sides, “Johnny Bye Bye” and “Shut Out The Light” are featured. “Light” was the b-side of the single for “Born in the U.S.A.” and one listen to it and one wonders why it didn’t make the album. The visceral lyric telling of a Vietnam vet returning is equally invigorating and illuminating as its A-side. However, Springsteen felt he already had one Vietnam song on the record and this one was better suited for B-side status. I wish Springsteen would have attempted this on later works where larger incidents and themes would drown out certain records; however, “Shut Out The Light” may be the best song on the box set.
The third disc focuses on the Born in the U.S.A. sessions and while there is still a load of treasures abound, it’s not of the same caliber of The River material. The A-grade material is as poetic as it is thundering; “This Hard Land”, “Frankie”, “Pink Cadillac”. However, some of the other songs are still good, but lack the sonic punch needed to take them over the top, including “Cynthia” and “My Love Won’t Let You Down” (which was reworked in a more aggressive guitar attack on the 1999 tour). The rest of the material are songs that were destined for nothing more than B-sides; “Lion’s Den”, “Car Wash”, “TV Movie” (with the saxophone excised from the bootleg, a blunder if you ask me), “Stand On It” and “Man At The Top”. Most surprising was the songs that were left off this collection, “County Fair”, “None But The Brave” (both would appear on Essential in 2003), “Drop Down and Cover Me” and “Protection”. The biggest difference between the U.S.A. and The River sessions is that based on what was released on Tracks it appears Springsteen largely made the right decision when compiling U.S.A. (“Murder Incorporated”-released on Greatest Hits three-years earlier- and “This Hard Land” aside) . Five leftovers from Tunnel of Love close out the disc and all are nice additions to Springsteen’s catalog, with “The Wish” (written about his mother) being the best of the bunch.
Disc four is largely songs from the very early 1990’s recorded for Human Touch. Surprisingly, while there are some throwaways here (“Trouble In Paradise” and “Leavin’ Train”) and some rather experimental fare (“Goin’ Cali” and “When The Lights Go Out”), overall, the songs are much stronger than anyone could imagine. How songs like “Sad Eyes” and “Seven Angels” didn’t make the final cut, but songs like “Real Man” and “Cross My Heart” did, we’ll never know. “Over The Rise” and “Loose Change” {Video Link} are restrained and reserved, and that’s exactly how they should be. Only one outtake from Lucky Town is here, “Happy” {Video Link} written in the weeks after his daughter was born, it is as revealing and as gleaming as anything on this box set. “Back In Your Arms” {Live Video Link} was recorded for the 1995 Greatest Hits and how this did not become a single is beyond me. If Springsteen ever had the chance to have a number-one single, this was it. He reached back to his soul influences and delivered a song that may be among his greatest. “Brothers Under The Bridge” closes the box set out, the lone outtake from The Ghost of Tom Joad and it’s better than almost anything on that record.
Tracks is a long overdue set of outtakes from Springsteen and while it’s not perfect and some eras are underrepresented, it’s still a rather astonishing collection of outtakes. I’m not sure if it’s on the same level of some of Dylan’s outtake sets, but its damn close. Bruce Springsteen has one of the most celebrated careers based around the art form of the album, however, one listen to Tracks and you soon realize that if you only know the studio album, you’re barely scratching the surface.
Anthony Kuzminski is a Chicago based writer and Special Features Editor for the antiMusic Network and his daily writings can be read at The Screen Door and can be contacted at thescreendoor AT gmail DOT com.
Charlie Rose special on Tracks from December 1998
