On May 1, 1973, Bruce Springsteen took the stage of the Ahmanson Theatre in Los Angeles. Columbia Records was hosting a “Week to Remember Showcase.” And Springsteen was one of Columbia Records’ newest artists at the time.
Now, Springsteen is making available videos of the performance. Below is his performance of one of my favorite Springsteen tracks, “Thundercrack.” Check it out.
Bruce Springsteen’s face appears on the overwhelming majority of the covers of his twenty-five regular and live albums. But his album Western Stars may be his most unusual album cover of a long career.
One writer who discussed Springsteen’s past covers once noted that “more than anything, Springsteen’s biggest problem is that he’s a little too in love with his own face.” NPR, meanwhile, once labeled his album covers “ugly.”
While you might have to squint to see him on some albums, like Live in Dublin and Springsteen on Broadway, Springsteen appears on the cover of every one of his albums since his 1972 debut Greetings from Asbury Park, NJ in some form. One might discount the choice for that first album as being before a vision of a career of album covers.
The two major exceptions prior to Western Stars, then, to Springsteen album covers are 1982’s Nebraska and 1995’s The Ghost of Tom Joad. The latter features a painting by Eric Dinyer. Dinyer may have have done the painting of a homeless man on the sidewalk before approached about the album (although some may have speculated the painting was meant to represent Springsteen). And now Western Stars, Springsteen’s first album with an animal on the cover.
Much has been written about he lush arrangements on Western Stars and the fact that Springsteen has noted the influence of 1970s California pop and songwriters like Jimmy Webb and Burt Bacharach. So it is worth asking why would Springsteen’s most operatic album be grouped with his two most instrumentally stark albums?
Maybe it is mere coincidence that Springsteen chose to omit his face from Western Stars and those other albums. But an artistic genius like Springsteen more likely thinks these things through. One things that connects the albums is that they all technically are solo outings without the E Street Band. But Springsteen has used his likeness on other albums without the band.
Although Western Stars differs in sound from the sparse instrumentation of Nebraska and the less melodic The Ghost of Tom Joad, the three albums are really about the same things. These albums rely heavily on characters facing hard times and/or personal crises.
It is true that different characters — and even Western characters — appear on other Springsteen albums (“Outlaw Pete,” “Reno,” etc.). But these three albums represent a complete immersion into telling the stories of struggling people, largely against the backdrop of the Western United States. That does not mean the albums are not as personal as songs that might seem more in the voice of the rock singer, like “Born to Run.” Springsteen is still here. But he is taking us somewhere into the souls of other people, teaching us empathy as we go.
Ann Powers at NPR wrote one of the most insightful articles about the new album. In the article, she argues that Springsteen’s songs on Western Stars connect to questions from popular culture in the 1960s and 1970s as in the movie Easy Rider, “Who gets hurt when people, especially men, try to be free?” She recounts how Springsteen uses characters in unstable professions to delve into the problems of modern masculinity: “The men who populate Western Stars have sought freedom and know its edges in an unfree world.”
Western Stars opens with a traveling hitchhiker narrator in the first song and then goes into another song about a traveler, “The Wayfarer.” Another song is in the voice of a stuntman (“Drive Fast (The Stuntman),” another in the voice of a songwriter (“Somewhere North of Nashville”), a crane operator (“Tucson Train”), someone who worked in movies (“Western Star”) and so on.
One may wonder too why Springsteen, who has been prone to comment on current events with his albums, appears to leave politics alone on this album. Whereas Magic reflected on the Bush years and Working on a Dream was a commentary on the Obama election, one may only speculate where Trump is in all of this. One explanation is that Springsteen has been working on this album for a long time. But another explanation is that there is some politics here, with Springsteen mining the minds of Americans feeling excluded from the American Dream.
As for more about the album, songs like “There Goes My Miracle” immediately grabbed me as if I had heard the song my entire life. “Tucson Train” is the most joyous on the album. And the lyrics to songs like “Western Stars” and “Chasin’ Wild Horses” are gut-punchers. For more about the album, Backstreetshas an insightful review.
So, returning to our original question, why is Springsteen absent from the cover of Western Stars? It is a good question that makes one delve into the questions Springsteen ponders on this album about the West and displaced men. Discuss among yourselves.
In the new song from Bruce Springsteen’s upcoming album Western Stars, the singer is waiting for his lover on the “Tucson Train.” The song further showcases the 70s singer-songwriter sound of the new album.
In “Tucson Train,” the singer has left behind the “pills and the rain” of San Francisco, out to find a new life in Tucson. And now he is waiting for his love to follow him there and arrive on the train.
Although he keeps repeating that she’s coming on the train, a listener might wonder whether it is wishful thinking based on some of the other lyrics. In recounting his past life, he says “seemed all our our love was in vain.” And he adds, “We fought til nothin’ remained.”
He finds relief in hard work and the “hard sun” of Arizona. Now, he explains, ” I’ll wait all God’s creation / Just to show her a man can change/ Now my baby’s coming in on the Tucson train.”
The music sounds more hopeful than despairing. My bet is that she is on that train.
The album Western Stars hits the Internet on June 14, 2019.
Speaking of trains, check out this post on one of Springsteen’s all-time great songs that uses train imagery. What do you think of Springsteen’s new song? Leave your two cents in the comments.
For anyone who found Bruce Springsteen’s music as a young person, you will relate to the upcoming movie, Blinded by the Light (2019). Not only does the movie include Springsteen’s music, but the music plays a major role in the main character’s life.
Blinded by the Light follows a British-Pakistani youth, played by Viveik Kalra, finding his way in 1987 England. One day, he discovers the music of Bruce Springsteen. And it changes his life.
Blinded by the Light is based on Sarfraz Manzoor’s memoir, Greetings from Bury Park. Manzoor also co-wrote the screenplay for the movie, which is directed by Bend It Like Beckham director Gurinder Chadha.
If the rest of the movie makes me smile as much as the trailer, I think I’m going to love Blinded by the Light. Check out the trailer below.
Blinded by the Light hits theaters on August 14, 2019. For an early review out of Sundance, check out this one on Collider.
What do you think of the trailer for Blinded by the Light? Leave your two cents in the comments.
Bruce Springsteen has released a video for his new single, “Hello Sunshine.” The track will appear on his forthcoming album, Western Stars.
Springsteen has explained that the new solo album features “character driven songs and sweeping, cinematic orchestral arrangements.” And according to the singer-songwriter’s website, the new album contains a “sweeping range of American themes, of highways and desert spaces, of isolation and community and the permanence of home and hope.”
Earlier, Springsteen told Variety that this new record is influenced by 1970s pop music out of Southern California. He listed artists like Burt Bacharach, Jimmy Webb, and Glen Campbell. While one usually does not think of those artists in the same breath as Springsteen, one can hear the influence in the orchestration of the first single, “Hello Sunshine.”
In the new song, the singer asks, “Hello Sunshine won’t you stay?” And while the inquiry may remind one of Springsteen’s “Waitin’ on a Sunny Day,” the new song is not a rousing anthem. Instead, it is a contemplative piano-driven meditation of someone alone on the move. It could be the same subject as the voice in “Born to Run,” only older, slower, and maybe a little wiser.
