Bruce Springsteen: Greatest Hits

Bruce Springsteen, like Bob Dylan and Van Morrison, isn't your "greatest hits" kinda guy, is he? Like those two, he is not particularly known for hit singles and many of his best album tracks are lengthy numbers. 

I am sure there are many Bruce aficionados/obsessives just like me who would have chosen tracks such as Racing In The Street, The Promised Land, Rosalita (Come Out Tonight), Incident On 57th Street, Blinded By The Light, Lost In the Flood, Sandy (4th Of July, Asbury Park), Jungleland,  Backstreets, Cadillac Ranch, The Price You Pay, Sherry Darling, Point Blank, No Surrender, Highway Patrolman.....I could type on endlessly and none of them are on here. 

What we get on here are actually a few of my least favourite Boss numbers!

So, I'm not quite sure who this collection is intended to appeal to. I will add my song-by-song comments, however.

First, a brief diversion - a little intro to "me 'n' Bruce" -

On Friday September 29, 1978, aged nineteen, I went round to my friend's parents' house. We were going to see UK reggae band Steel Pulse at Friars Club in Aylesbury. Getting ready in his bedroom, he said that before we went out I should listen to his latest reason for enthusiasm. Expecting some roots reggae or angry punk, I did as I was told and sat down, shut up and listened. 

The track he played me was Thunder Road. He handed me the now-iconic white gatefold sleeve in order to read the lyrics. He was right to have sat me down, knowing the impact this song would have. It is corny and indulgent to say that it "changed my life", but certainly it kicked off an obsession with Springsteen and his music that lasted for the next fifteen years or so, before I started to view him a bit more objectively. 

Since then I went on to see him him eighteen times in concert, including being in the fifth row at Stafford's Bingley Hall on May 20, 1981 for what is, along with The Clash at Friars Aylesbury in December 1978, the best live gig of my life. These days, I have a far more relaxed attitude to Springsteen's music and find that I only listen to his music once or twice a year. I still get all his albums upon release, however, but there is no longer an obsession. 

Looking back, though, you simply couldn't beat that early excitement of 1978-1983, buying Born To Run, Darkness, The Wild, The Innocent, Greetings and Nebraska. Discovering just what wonderful albums they were. Walking back from my girlfriend's house in the early hours of the morning, singing Incident On 57th Street to myself from beginning to end. Wonderful memories that haven't faded at all. It all went too mainstream with the overrated (for me) Born In the USA, but man, those early recordings...

So back to this collection - I'll show a little faith, 'cos there's magic in the night......

No introduction needed. It's Born To Run. The session drummer Ernest "Boom" Carter's rattling drum introduction sends us speeding down the freeway in search of a “runaway American dream” with the vivacious Wendy in the passenger seat. The youthful optimism of Born To Run lives forever. We will always know that love is wild and love is real. 

Thunder Road is a strong candidate for Bruce Springsteen’s most iconic song of all time (yes, that includes Born To Run). This five minute slice of sweeping hymnal majesty sees killer lyrics meshing with a huge piano, harmonica and saxophone backing, and, (for one of the only times in rock music), a glockenspiel, a sound that just blows one away. “It’s a town full of losers and we’re pulling out of here to win”. Indeed.

Max Weinberg's drum roll introduces Badlands, a searing tub thumper of a Springsteen anthem. Full of lyrics concerning the everyday struggle of the ordinary man over a strangely uplifting musical backing - great guitar riffs, pounding drums and, of course, Clarence Clemons' soaring mid-song saxophone solo - Springsteen opens his soul and makes his sentiments clear - "I wanna spit in the face of those Badlands". In many ways he still saw himself as a struggler - banned from recording for three years due to a protracted lawsuit, he was certainly not yet the superstar he became. At this point he didn't know whether he would make it into a career that would last a lifetime or not. So, Badlands was, at the time, not the rant of a comfortable multi-millionaire. 

The River is one of Bruce's perennial crowd favourites. Like Hungry Heart, perversely, I have never particularly gone for it. Mind you, it is chock full of typical Bruce imagery as he muses on the pitfalls of marrying far too early. Best wait a while and take up with that single mum (from I Wanna Marry You), Bruce.

A first big hit single for Bruce here in Hungry Heart, we saw the first signs of his moving from being a cult artist to generating some mainstream followers. I wasn't happy with that at all. Neither have I ever been a particular fan of the song, for some reason, in spite of its shimmering, Spectoresque sound. 

Atlantic City is an intrinsically sombre number set in the New Jersey coastal gambling location of Atlantic City. Full of crime-ridden, seedy atmosphere, it also contains memorable lines such as "everything dies, baby that's a fact, but maybe everything that dies someday comes back -put your make-up on, fix your hair up pretty and meet me tonight in Atlantic City". This is romance, Springsteen style. The song is one that lends itself to a full band backing and has often been played that way in concert, to great effect.

I remember trying to convince my new girlfriend at the time in 1984 that Springsteen was a genius and his songs carried such emotion and meaning. Intrigued, her ears pricked up when she heard Dancing In The Dark on the radio a few days later and she said that try as she might, she just couldn't hear what I was talking about. I have to say I know what she meant. Anyway, the song is poppy and easy to sing to at a live show but it's too synthy for me. It's just not what Bruce is, to me, at least. 

I didn't go for the single cover pic of Bruce jumping up in the air in carefree fashion either. I expected him to be more brooding and serious, like on the front of the Darkness On the Edge Of Town album.  

The bombastic, anthemic, but often totally misunderstood Born In The USA is up next. The bottleneck blues original would have put the song's point over far more convincingly and with no ambiguity, in my opinion. However, there is no doubting the sheer power of the sorry tale of a Vietnam veteran and something that often not noted is Roy Bittan's slight South-East Asian inflections of the accompanying piano. A lot of people try make something out of the fact that a young Springsteen wilfully dodged the draft, trying to make out that he is some sort of hypocrite singing about the plight of the vets. Bollocks. Anyone with half a brain would have dodged the draft. I know I would.

With My Hometown, the album ends on a sombre note with this meaningful slow number about growing up, having a family and social unrest issues. It is, with Downbound Train, the Born In The USA album's most hard-hitting and bleak song. As often with Bruce, though, there's always a bit of redemption at the end as the narrator drives his own son around and  tells him "son, take a good look around - this is your hometown", just as his own father had done with him...

Well, more thirty-something retrospective musing here about getting old and missing those Glory Days something Springsteen loved to do on the Born In The USA album. It is a somewhat embarrassing lament for days gone by that were probably never as glorious as the protagonist makes them sound (admittedly, that is the whole point of the song), it is a suitably and gloriously catchy, singalong number with some fine characterisation but, guess what? You got it - it's a fan favourite that doesn't particularly float my boat, just like Dancing In The Dark.  

Brilliant Disguise was the first single from the album and, despite its country feel, it is still instantly recognisable as Springsteen. It was also covered by Elvis Costello on the extended edition of his 1995 Kojak Variety album of covers. The song suited him too. 

Both from 1992, and recorded without the E St. Band, Human Touch is an over-long, dense and sombre rock number while Better Days ups the tempo on a catchy, singalong rocker. I much prefer the latter. 

The bleak, haunting and terribly sad Streets Of Philadelphia caught a lot of people by surprise by its sensitivity. It was written for the movie Philadelphia, about the AIDS epidemic. Why shouldn't Springsteen write a sensitive, aware song? He is after all, a sensitive, aware man. That fact he is not gay doesn't matter at all. 

The collection ends with what completists like myself were looking for - new, previously unreleased tracks. 

Firstly, we get the often blatantly sexual and slowly sensual Secret Garden - "she'll let you in her mouth", says Bruce, quietly. It's strange when he gets sexually graphic, isn't it? Like imagining your mum and dad at it. Disconcerting.

Murder Incorporated is a big, chunky, riffy rocker that dated from 1982 and should 100% have been on the Born In The USA album, possibly at the expense of uninspiring chuggers like Cover Me or I'm Goin' Down. 

Blood Brothers was from 1996. I have never been a fan of either versions of the song, particularly. It appears in acoustic and rock forms. It is the softer, more evocative acoustic one that appears here. Its sentiments are about Bruce's relationship with the E St. Band. 

We end this so-so collection with an absolute Bruce classic, one that possibly gets in to my all-time top five of his songs in This Hard Land. It is a melodic, slightly country-ish rocker with some atmospheric lyrics about guys trying to eke out a living on an unforgiving land. It is packed full of imagery and contains one of his finest ever openings in -

"Hey there mister can you tell me what happened to the seeds I’ve sown
Can you give me a reason, sir, as to why they’ve never grown
They’ve just blown around from town to town
Back out on these fields
Where they fall from my hand
Back into the dirt of this hard land"

Love it. 

The album was, at least, bookended by two of the most quintessential Springsteen songs. Other than that, I don't it feel totally represents what he is about. Harsh? Maybe.

Then again, mister, I guess there just a meanness in this world....