In my Milestones and Gravestones series I cover monumental episodes in the evolution of rock, good and bad, but I also want to occasionally shine a light on the quieter moments in rock’n’roll history that still deserve the stage, even if they may seem trivial and dismissible at first glance.
The release of Bruce Springsteen’s debut album, “Greetings from Asbury Park, NJ” is just such a moment in time. The album whole-heartedly epitomizes the drive, the heart and the reality of what rock should be all about.
Sit back, cradle your beer and let me tell you all about it, kids… If you have the album, put it on and get in the groove.
Bruce grew up in Jersey, playing clubs for nothing and paying his dues with bands that sucked, but he still refused to give up his dream. After treading up and down every mile of the Jersey Boardwalk, playing in every conceivable constellation of no-name local guys and dreaming of being the main attraction at Asbury Park, he decided to go solo and headed for The City (there is only one “The City” – so you figure it out). He spent a year as a street troubadour of sorts, scaling down his music, stripping it raw of everything but his voice and his guitar, refining the message in his lyrics and the intensity of the musical textures – and slowly he started making a name for himself on the underground scene. Bruce frequently went to Richmond, Virginia and become something of a cult figure there. He was inappropriately dubbed “the new Dylan” since people were sick and tired of the whiney dude by this time and needed a new working class hero. Maybe it was the “lone guy with his guitar” that fooled them. Maybe it was the seemingly random, raw and evocative street poems he rambled on about in his songs. Maybe it was the fact that any bum on a street corner looks like Dylan in his prime. Who knows? It happened. (And why is it that “working class heroes” never held a real job to begin with? Wait, maybe that is why they’re heroes?)
"His countryside's burnin' with wolfman fairies dressed in drag for homicide
The hit and run, plead sanctuary, 'neath a holy stone they hide
They're breakin' beams and crosses with a spastic's reelin' perfection
nuns run bald through Vatican halls pregnant, pleadin' immaculate conception"
- from “Lost in the Flood”
Bruce, in all his humble underground success, had a manager – Mike Apple. In 1972, Mr. Apple pulled a lot of strings, using up old favors owed and putting all his eggs in one basket, and finally managed to land Bruce with a private audition gig at Columbia Records in front of the legendary talent scout, John Hammond, who coincidentally (?) had also signed Bob Dylan a decade earlier.
It was a done deal. Bruce was signed on the spot and given an advance to record the album.
This is where things that make ripples in rock’n’roll to this day happened and decided the future of the 24 year old Bruce. This is where things didn’t go according to the Grand Plan of the label executives, and thank God for that.
See, Columbia figured Bruce was another Dylan, literally. They thought he wanted to be another glorified troubadour and left him to his own devices in the studio. Meanwhile, Bruce had bigger plans. He was a rocker and wanted to say something in a big way. He hunted down Jersey people who he had enjoyed playing with over the years and put together a rag-tag outfit of ex-footballers gone sax, crazy ass drummers, horn players, pianists, background singers and so on. The E-Street Band was born. He could only afford all those people by moving to a smaller studio, sacrificing a fat production to be able to squeeze in all his arrangements on the album instead.
Bruce had never recorded anything professionally before; nor had he ever really heard his own voice on tape. He got incredibly nervous in the studio, especially with a whole band of more experienced musicians perched on his shoulders. This was back in the day when artists recorded things live, with everybody there playing all at the same time. Bruce had just a week to finish the album and he had to get going, but still he kept freezing up. One of the guys in the band suggested they turn off the lights, and there, in the heart of darkness, magic happened. Bruce sat facing the wall in the dark, singing his soul out on songs he had played for so many years on sidewalk corners in the rain, in smokey bars with no people, and in the privacy of his own company. All these honest, battle scarred street tunes that had graced the working class of the East Coast for so many years now made it onto tape, inscribed into the scrolls of rock’n’roll history forever. All right there, in the blackened studio…
“I stood stone-like at midnight suspended in my masquerade
I combed my hair till it was just right and commanded the night brigade”
- From “Growing Up”
The album starts out with “Blinded by the Light”, a tongue-twisting celebration to rock and life. Whereas later Springsteen releases have taken on darker themes and more heavily criticize the world around him, “Greetings from Asbury Park, NJ” shows a lighter side, showcasing a young artist ready to just fucking fly after having paid all his dues. “Been there, done that, wrecked that shit to hell and back – now watch me give it back!” That kind of thing. It’s exultant and triumphant, even in all its nonsense rhyming silly lyrics that would make Dr. Seuss slide off his chair with glee. “Blinded by the Light” is the perfect opener as it encompasses the spirit of the album perfectly. The song was later covered by Manfred Mann and made into a popular radio hit, if yet miles away from the splendor of the original.
Then follows forgotten classics like the rebellious joy of “Growing Up” about the years after school up until then, the soft acoustic “Mary Queen of Arkansas” with its typical Springsteenish tribute theme, and the stream of consciousness ramblings of “Does this Bus Stop at 82nd Street?” that proves great songs don’t need choruses to stick in your mind.
And then magic wraps you up in a soft blanket as “Lost in the Flood” comes on. It is such a beautiful song. Such an overlooked classic. It is easy to picture Bruce there in the dark studio; eyes closed, pianist in the opposite corner smoking a cigarette with the ash growing longer and longer… All the rest of the band lining the walls, not daring to breathe… And so the drums and bass kick in, not much – just to accentuate the soft piano… The lyrics, dealing with the broken soul of a man who went to war and returned to nothing, grow progressively more passionate throughout the song, carried by the intensity of Springsteen’s voice. The Hammond organ solo just soars gently in the background as the song abruptly fades out, leaving you to hang.
But it leads into the best song on the album, “The Angel”. Another song which leaves you all alone with Bruce’s voice and the quiet velvet touch of the piano at the corner of your senses. A biker and his woman. Who would have thought that could be such poetry?
"The interstate's choked with nomadic hordes
in Volkswagen vans with full running boards dragging great anchors
Followin' dead-end signs into the sores
The angel rides by humpin' his hunk metal whore"
- from “The Angel”
Drummer Vini “Mad Dog” Lopez was probably Bruce’s best pick for this recording as he really added an energetic upbeat temp to these songs, further removing them from the “troubadour stigma” Springsteen wanted to shake once and for all. This is very apparent in the brutal but evocative image of a lost loved one in the song “For You”. Great rhythms accompany Bruce’s passionately backhanded tribute to a woman who may, or may not, have committed suicide.
“Spirit in the Night” is a loving look at getting drunk with your friends and ending up in all sorts of trouble during and after the fact. We have all been there; we have all done things we fondly remember and bitterly regret while drunk or stoned off our faces. It’s all perfectly captured in this almost jazzy and saucy tune. The sax of Clarence Clemons adds that feverish party pulse to the background singers’ enthusiastic whoppie-doo- whopping.
The album closes with “It’s Hard to be a Saint in the City”, telling the story of a kid who grows up on the streets of New York, trying to stay on the right path, but inevitably gets lured onto more crooked paths by the shadows of the concrete jungle.
At first glance, many people (read: critics) have been prone to compare Bruce’s lyrics to those of Dylan’s, and maybe even to the work of All-American poet and folk hero Walt Whitman. But, in my opinion, there is a huge difference between the three and they deserve no comparisons.
Bob Dylan takes people on a highly cynical journey of his own soul, making the listener go, “I wish I could express my thoughts and feelings like that”.
Walt Whitman was a “People’s Poet” who spoke for the people about everybody belonging together and about the freedom only true brotherhood can bring, making people go, “Yeah! You tell’em Walt!”
Bruce spoke to the people. He was one of them. Right down there in the working class world. No big promises, no empty sayings… Just another guy recapping the world his listeners grew up in from his perspective - adding stories, anecdotes and characters everybody could relate to. He’s saying, “Dude, this could be your story”, and the listener goes ”Yeah, man, actually that is my story”.
And that, my friend, is why this album is such an important milestone in rock:
It is honest, real, and rebellious with absolutely no false pretenses or fake smile excuses. It is a man’s dream, realized on vinyl, to present to you his own world and all the people in it. In these times where honest rock, consistent themes, and passionate lyrics straight from the heart all sell cheap on eBay it is important we remember how good music can be. How much it can say. How much it can mean. Both for the people playing it and for us listening to it.
Bruce went against the very wishes of his new record company and took a huge chance with his first record, doing it all his way, knowing that it could be the end of his career. This was back in the day when artists had integrity. When they actually played their own music the way they wanted to. No matter how much money you dangled in front of them.
And the album…? It didn’t sell shit. 25,000 copies, and never even made it onto the Billboard Top 200. It wasn’t until “Born to Run” was successfully launched on the world that all previous releases were dragged into the charts with it. For the first year or two Columbia stubbornly persisted in trying to market Springsteen as the lone troubadour, with the obligatory Dylan attachments, and people just didn’t get it until he went all out with all guns blazing two albums later.
To this day, Bruce still sticks to his guns, and as we all know, he is now right where he started – same music, same integrity – only at the top of the game instead. Of course he has had his ink blobs in his record – “Human Touch”, “Lucky Town”, and some songs off “Born in the USA” come to my mind – but as a whole he has kept his musical career on track with dedication and humility, taking the occasional step back to reflect more solemnly on acoustic albums like “Nebraska” and “The Ghost of Tom Joad”.
Rock is real, and nobody made it more so than Bruce in the beginning of his career. It’s nice to see that he is still maintaining that integrity to this day.
“Well, my feet they finally took root in the earth but I got me a nice little place in the stars
And I swear I found the key to the universe in the engine of an old parked car”
- from “Growing Up”
Milestone in Rock:
"Greetings from Asbury Park, NJ"
