The Letter From Bruce Has Arrived!

Original released on CD Columbia 19439811582

(US 2020, October 23)

"Letter to You" comes quickly on the heels of "Western Stars", a long-gestating 2019 immersion into the lush, progressive country vistas of the early 1970s, but in a sense, it's a true sequel to Bruce Springsteen's 2016 memoir "Born to Run" and its 2017 stage companion "Springsteen on Broadway". It's an album where Springsteen reckons with the weight of the past, how its ghosts are still readily apparent in the present, an album where the veteran singer/songwriter is keenly aware he has more road in his rearview mirror than he does on the highway ahead of him. Springsteen does find himself drawn to the good old days, reviving three unrecorded songs from the days separating the split of his first band the Castiles and his contract with CBS, adding them to a clutch of new songs where Bruce ponders what it means to be the "Last Man Standing," surrounded by the spirits of old friends who may no longer be alive but are still a palpable psychic presence. To help him navigate the distance separating then and now, Springsteen brings the E Street Band into the studio for the first time since 2009's "Working on a Dream", but the difference with "Letter to You" is that the group cut the album live in the studio. It may seem like a subtle distinction, but having the E Street Band offer empathic, effortless support lends a dose of magic to the proceedings, offering unspoken connections between those wordy, windy early works, the cascading thunder of "Darkness on the Edge of Town", and the naked sentiment of the aging songwriter. "Letter to You" often does sound like vintage E Street Band but there are notable differences in terms of attack: They're playing not out of a sense of hunger, but communion. This shared warmth carries "Letter to You" through the moments where the younger Bruce is perhaps a bit too precious and the older Springsteen is a bit too clear, turning a record that's a meditation on mortality into a celebration of what it means to be alive in the moment. (Stephen Erlewine in AllMusic)

BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN: "Tunnel Of Love"

Original released on LP Columbia OC 40999

(US 1987, October 5)

Just as he had followed his 1980 commercial breakthrough "The River" with the challenging "Nebraska", Bruce Springsteen followed the most popular album of his career, "Born in the U.S.A.", with another low-key, anguished effort, "Tunnel of Love". Especially in their sound, several of the songs, "Cautious Man" and "Two Faces," for example, could have fit seamlessly onto "Nebraska", though the arrangements overall were not as stripped-down and acoustic as on the earlier album. While "Nebraska" was filled with songs of economic desperation, however, "Tunnel of Love", as its title suggested, was an album of romantic exploration. But the lovers were just as desperate in their way as "Nebraska"'s small-time criminals. In song after song, Springsteen questioned the trust and honesty on both sides in a romantic relationship, specifically a married relationship. Since Springsteen sounded more autobiographical than ever before ("Ain't Got You" referred to his popular success, while "Walk Like a Man" seemed another explicit message to his father), it was hard not to wonder about the state of his own two-and-a-half-year marriage, and it wasn't surprising when that marriage collapsed the following year. "Tunnel of Love" was not the album that the ten million fans who had bought "Born in the U.S.A." as of 1987 were waiting for, and though it topped the charts, sold three million copies, and spawned three Top 40 hits, much of this was on career momentum. Springsteen was as much at a crossroads with his audience as he seemed to be in his work and in his personal life, though this was not immediately apparent. (William Ruhlmann in AllMusic)

A Letter From The Boss

The letter from Bruce will arrive on October the 23th.

The BOSS Debut Album

Original released on LP Columbia KC 31903

(US 1973, January 5)

Bruce Springsteen's debut album found him squarely in the tradition of Bob Dylan: folk-based tunes arranged for an electric band featuring piano and organ (plus, in Springsteen's case, 1950s-style rock & roll tenor saxophone breaks), topped by acoustic guitar and a husky voice singing lyrics full of elaborate, even exaggerated imagery. But where Dylan had taken a world-weary, cynical tone, Springsteen was exuberant. His street scenes could be haunted and tragic, as they were in "Lost in the Flood," but they were still imbued with romanticism and a youthful energy. "Asbury Park" painted a portrait of teenagers cocksure of themselves, yet bowled over by their discovery of the world. It was saved from pretentiousness (if not preciousness) by its sense of humor and by the careful eye for detail that kept even the most high-flown language rooted. Like the lyrics, the arrangements were busy, but the melodies were well developed and the rhythms, pushed by drummer Vincent Lopez, were breakneck. (William Ruhlmann in AllMusic)

BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN: "Born In The U.S.A."

Original released on LP Columbia QC 38653
(US 1984, June 4)

Bruce Springsteen had become increasingly downcast as a songwriter during his recording career, and his pessimism bottomed out with "Nebraska". But "Born in the U.S.A.", his popular triumph, which threw off seven Top Ten hits and became one of the best-selling albums of all time, trafficked in much the same struggle, albeit set to galloping rhythms and set off by chiming guitars. That the witless wonders of the Reagan regime attempted to co-opt the title track as an election-year campaign song wasn't so surprising: the verses described the disenfranchisement of a lower-class Vietnam vet, and the chorus was intended to be angry, but it came off as anthemic. Then, too, Springsteen had softened his message with nostalgia and sentimentality, and those are always crowd-pleasers. "Glory Days" may have employed Springsteen's trademark disaffection, yet it came across as a couch potato's drunken lament. But more than anything else, "Born in the U.S.A." marked the first time that Springsteen's characters really seemed to relish the fight and to have something to fight for. They were not defeated ("No Surrender"), and they had friendship ("Bobby Jean") and family ("My Hometown") to defend. The restless hero of "Dancing in the Dark" even pledged himself in the face of futility, and for Springsteen, that was a step. The "romantic young boys" of his first two albums, chastened by "the working life" encountered on his third, fourth, and fifth albums and having faced the despair of his sixth, were still alive on this, his seventh, with their sense of humor and their determination intact. "Born in the U.S.A." was their apotheosis, the place where they renewed their commitment and where Springsteen remembered that he was a rock & roll star, which is how a vastly increased public was happy to treat him. (William Ruhlmann in AllMusic)

BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN: "Nebraska"

Original released on LP Columbia QC 38358

(US 1982, September 20)

There is an adage in the record business that a recording artist's demos of new songs often come off better than the more polished versions later worked up in a studio. But Bruce Springsteen was the first person to act on that theory, when he opted to release the demo versions of his latest songs, recorded with only acoustic or electric guitar, harmonica, and vocals, as his sixth album, "Nebraska". It was really the content that dictated the approach, however. "Nebraska"'s ten songs marked a departure for Springsteen, even as they took him farther down a road he'd already been traveling. Gradually, his songs became darker and more pessimistic, and those on "Nebraska" marked a new low. They also found him branching out into better developed stories. The title track was a first-person account of the killing spree of mass murderer Charlie Starkweather. (It can't have been coincidental that the same story was told in director Terrence Malick's 1973 film "Badlands", also used as a Springsteen song title.) That song set the tone for a series of portraits of small-time criminals, desperate people, and those who loved them. Just as the recordings were unpolished, the songs themselves didn't seem quite finished; sometimes the same line turned up in two songs. But that only served to unify the album. Within the difficult times, however, there was hope, especially as the album went on. "Open All Night" was a Chuck Berry-style rocker, and the album closed with "Reason to Believe," a song whose hard-luck verses were belied by the chorus - even if the singer couldn't understand what it was, "people find some reason to believe." Still, "Nebraska" was one of the most challenging albums ever released by a major star on a major record label. (William Ruhlmann in AllMusic)

BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN: "Darkness On The Edge Of Town"

Original released on LP Columbia JC 35318

(US 1978, June 2)

Coming three years, and one extended court battle, after the commercial breakthrough of "Born to Run", "Darkness on the Edge of Town" was highly anticipated. Some attributed the album's embattled tone to Springsteen's legal troubles, but it carried on from "Born to Run", in which Springsteen had first begun to view his colorful cast of characters as "losers." On "Darkness", he began to see them as the working class. But Springsteen's characters, some of whom he inhabited and sang for in the first person, had little and were in danger of losing even that. Their only hope for redemption lay in working harder - «You gotta live it everyday,» he sang in "Badlands," but you also, as another song noted, have to "Prove It All Night." And their only escape lay in driving. Springsteen presented these hard truths in hard rock settings, the tracks paced by powerful drumming and searing guitar solos. Though not as heavily produced as "Born to Run", "Darkness" was given a full-bodied sound, with prominent keyboards and double-tracked vocals. Springsteen's stories were becoming less heroic, but his musical style remained grand. Yet the sound, and the conviction in his singing, added weight to songs like "Racing in the Street" and the title track, transforming the pathetic into the tragic. But despite the rock & roll fervor, "Darkness on the Edge of Town" was no easy listen, and it served notice that Springsteen was already willing to risk his popularity for his principles. Indeed, "Darkness" was not as big a seller as "Born to Run". And it presaged even starker efforts, such as "Nebraska" and "The Ghost of Tom Joad". (William Ruhlmann in AllMusic)

BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN: "Born To Run"

Original released on LP Columbia JC 33795

(US 1975, August 25)

Bruce Springsteen's make-or-break third album represented a sonic leap from his first two, which had been made for modest sums at a suburban studio; "Born to Run" was cut on a superstar budget, mostly at the Record Plant in New York. Springsteen's backup band had changed, with his two virtuoso players, keyboardist David Sancious and drummer Vini Lopez, replaced by the professional but less flashy Roy Bittan and Max Weinberg. The result was a full, highly produced sound that contained elements of Phil Spector's melodramatic work of the 1960s. Layers of guitar, layers of echo on the vocals, lots of keyboards, thunderous drums - "Born to Run" had a big sound, and Springsteen wrote big songs to match it. The overall theme of the album was similar to that of the E Street Shuffle; Springsteen was describing, and saying farewell to, a romanticized teenage street life. But where he had been affectionate, even humorous before, he was becoming increasingly bitter. If Springsteen had celebrated his dead-end kids on his first album and viewed them nostalgically on his second, on his third he seemed to despise their failure, perhaps because he was beginning to fear he was trapped himself. Nevertheless, he now felt removed, composing an updated West Side Story with spectacular music that owed more to Bernstein than to Berry. To call "Born to Run" overblown is to miss the point; Springsteen's precise intention is to blow things up, both in the sense of expanding them to gargantuan size and of exploding them. If "The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle" was an accidental miracle, "Born to Run" was an intentional masterpiece. It declared its own greatness with songs and a sound that lived up to Springsteen's promise, and though some thought it took itself too seriously, many found that exalting. (William Ruhlmann in AllMusic)

A loosely operatic tale of life on the streets of New Jersey...... and one of the very best LPs of the album rock era. Bruce Springsteen had before and would continue to build his legacy on Dylan-esque tales of human folly and frustration, but they were never as well realised anywhere else as on "Born to Run". Of great assistance to Springsteen's epic songwriting is that the E-Street Band were in the form of their careers at the very same time, creating a perfect storm of well woven lyrics and stunning musical proficiency. The album's title track will continue to resurface as long as audio and visual entertainment exists, but the real jaw-dropper here is the closing 'Jungleland', with its incredible Clarence Clemons sax solo and anguished Bruce vocals bringing the blue collar theatrics to a fitting conclusion. It took Britain a few years to 'get' Bruce Springsteen. The late and lamented Roger Scott was playing him on London's Capital Radio, but almost nobody else. I bought "The River" largely on the strength of a five star review in Record Mirror, and decided to work backwards, going next to "Darkness" and then this. At that point, like most people I only knew the title track. I was blown away. I think it's a sign of a great album when different songs take it in turn to be your favourite - the barnstorming opener "Thunder Road", the epic "Jungleland" and the desperate last chance story of "Meeting Across the River." I guess most people who only own one Springsteen album have either "Born in the USA"; or one of the hits compilations; but it really, truly, ought to be this one. (in AllMusic)

The BOSS Is Back Again!

Original released on CD Columbia 19075941972

(US 2019, June 14)

"Western Stars" is a title that suggests wide-open, cinematic vistas, music made for the outer reaches of a widescreen. Such sweeping ambition isn't necessarily alien to Bruce Springsteen, a rocker who designed his self-styled 1975 breakthrough as a larger-than-life hybrid of AM pop and FM album rock profundity - a daring fusion that eventually favored the latter, perhaps because it was easier for the E-Street Band to fill arenas with cranked amps and big riffs. "Western Stars" contains none of that rabble rousing. Springsteen plays and writes with a gentle touch on this 2019 album, his empathy evident in his series of story songs and character portraits and in his embrace of another aspect of AM radio that he previously avoided: orchestrated arrangements so rich and enveloping they can sound softly trippy. Taking his cues from the lush hits Jimmy Webb wrote for Glen Campbell, Springsteen never opts for music that is as opulently ornate as his inspirations. His words are a little too direct, for one, a combination of cannily sturdy clichés tempered by startling turns of phrase that pulls songs into perspective. The clichés are intentional. All of its allusions to the culture of the '60s and early '70s - the swirling strings, the songs of wanderlust, the wink to Leiber & Stoller in the title of "Sleepy Joe's Café," a nod to Danny O'Keefe's "Good Time Charlie's Got the Blues" on "Hello Sunshine" - conjure a collective memory of a time when hippie ideals faded in the dawn of the '70s. This isn't a piece of nostalgia on Springsteen's part, though. These references deepen a collection of songs that are sweet, sad, and searching, songs that feel finely etched on their own terms but gather a deep, lasting resonance when collected on this enchanting album. (Stephen Erlewine in AllMusic)

"You Never Can Tell" By BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN

"Pretty Woman" By BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN & JOHN FOGERTY

THE BOSS Second Album

Original released on LP Columbia PC 32432

(US 1973, September 11)

Bruce Springsteen expanded the folk-rock approach of his debut album, "Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J.", to strains of jazz, among other styles, on its ambitious follow-up, released only eight months later. His chief musical lieutenant was keyboard player David Sancious, who lived on the E Street that gave the album and Springsteen's backup group its name. With his help, Springsteen created a street-life mosaic of suburban society that owed much in its outlook to Van Morrison's romanticization of Belfast in "Astral Weeks". Though Springsteen expressed endless affection and much nostalgia, his message was clear: this was a goodbye-to-all-that from a man who was moving on. "The Wild, The Innocent & the E Street Shuffle" represented an astonishing advance even from the remarkable promise of "Greetings"; the unbanded three-song second side in particular was a flawless piece of music. Musically and lyrically, Springsteen had brought an unruly muse under control and used it to make a mature statement that synthesized popular musical styles into complicated, well-executed arrangements and absorbing suites; it evoked a world precisely even as that world seemed to disappear. Following the personnel changes in the E Street Band in 1974, there is a conventional wisdom that this album is marred by production lapses and performance problems, specifically the drumming of Vini Lopez. None of that is true. Lopez's busy Keith Moon style is appropriate to the arrangements in a way his replacement, Max Weinberg, never could have been. The production is fine. And the album's songs contain the best realization of Springsteen's poetic vision, which soon enough would be tarnished by disillusionment. He would later make different albums, but he never made a better one. The truth is, "The Wild, The Innocent & the E Street Shuffle" is one of the greatest albums in the history of rock & roll. (William Ruhlmann in AllMusic)

BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN: "The River"

 Original released on Double LP Columbia PC2 36854

(US 1980, October 10)

After taking his early urban folk tales of cars and girls as far as he could on "Born to Run", Bruce Springsteen took a long, hard look at the lives of those same Jersey street kids a few years down the line, now saddled with adult responsibilities and realizing that the American Dream was increasingly out of their grasp, on 1978's "Darkness on the Edge of Town", an album that dramatically broadened Springsteen's musical range and lyrical scope. With 1980's "The River", Springsteen sought to expand on those themes while also offering more of the tough, bar-band rock that was his trademark (and often conspicuous in its absence on "Darkness"), and by the time it was released it had swelled into Springsteen's first two-LP set. "The River" was Springsteen's most ambitious work to date, even as the music sounded leaner and more strongly rooted in rock & roll tradition than anything on "Darkness" or "Born to Run", and though the album wasn't the least bit short on good times, the fun in songs like "Two Hearts," "Out in the Street," and "Cadillac Ranch" is rarely without some weightier subtext.

As the romantic rush of "Two Hearts" fades into the final break with family on "Independence Day" and the sentimentality of "I Wanna Marry You" is followed by the grim truths of the title tune, nothing is easy or without consequence in Springsteen's world, and the album's themes of youthful ideals buckling under the weight of crushing reality are neatly summed up as Springsteen asks the essential question of his career, "Is a dream a lie if it don't come true?" Like many double albums, "The River" doesn't always balance well, and while the first half is consistently strong, part two is full of songs that work individually but don't cohere into a satisfying whole (and "Wreck on the Highway" is beautiful but fails to resolve the album's essential themes). But if the sequencing is somewhat flawed, Springsteen rises to his own challenges as a songwriter, penning a set of tunes that are heartfelt and literate but unpretentious while rocking hard, and the E Street Band were never used to better advantage, capturing the taut, swaggering force of their live shows in the studio with superb accuracy (and if the very '80s snare crack dates this album, Neil Dorfsman's engineering makes this one of Springsteen's best-sounding works). "The River" wasn't Springsteen's first attempt to make a truly adult rock & roll album, but it's certainly a major step forward from "Darkness on the Edge of Town", and he rarely made an album as compelling as this, or one that rewards repeat listening as well. (Mark Deming in AllMusic)

WALLPAPER: "Bruce Springsteen"

WALLPAPER: "Born To Run"

OBAMA PRESIDENT!

When Mr. George Bush was re-elected, many of you, American people, sent letters to us, Europeans, saying sorry for that. I, myself, received some of those letters. Well, it seems that those shameless times are over now. So it's time that we give also our hopes to America in this election day. Congratulations!

AND YOU "CAN DO IT"!

In this same day, forty years ago, Richard Nixon became also the President of the USA (the 37th). The ceremony was disturbed by young people crying slogans against the Vietnam War.