Bruce Springsteen's The Promise is extraordinary (Photo: EPA)
What an utterly extraordinary thing Bruce Springsteen’s The Promise is. Out today, it comprises 21 recordings of unreleased songs and radically different versions from his prolific 1977-78 sessions that ultimately led to the creation of Darkness On The Edge Of Town.
Just think about that: a treasure trove of new material from one of the all time great artists right bang in his moment, in the glory of his youth, creative juices at full flow. How unlikely? It would be comparable to discovering The Beatles had recorded and abandoned an entire double album of material between Revolver and Sgt. Pepper.
In fact, despite their fascinating three volume double album Anthology set, there was nothing really new and unheard from the Fab Four, certainly nothing of the standard of their official releases. And that is the way box sets of out-takes usually are. Because, for the most part, artists put out their best work at the time, and the stuff that is endlessly trawled from the vaults is really only of historical interest to the obsessive collector. Dylan’s very good Bootleg series occasionally turns up a real gem (Series of Dreams and Blind Willie McTell for example), because he has a curious inability to separate his own wheat from his chaff, but no one will ever persuade me that the demo versions of songs from Blood On The Tracks (as much as I love to hear them) are the equal to the classic album.
Springsteen’s recording in ‘77 and ‘78 was different, however, because he was consciously trying to move from one artistic point to another, writing and rewriting and recording and discarding, so that a different sort of album emerges from the cast offs, with more of the upbeat swagger of the earlier Born To Run, and rich in the musical references of 50s and 60s rock and roll that he was exploring. It is not a better record than Darkness, but it is a different one. Springsteen was working towards the goal of creating a long playing album which would form his great (indeed his only) statement for that period, so he was essentially forced to boil down a huge amount of work to his most essential songs. The title track, The Promise, is a song that was supplanted by his masterpiece Racing In The Streets (also included here in an extraordinary epic rock version), but The Promise stands up in its own right as a song about dreaming and escape with driving as a metaphor, referring back to his earlier classic Thunder Road and forward to the darker, more downbeat perspective of Darkness.
Darkness On The Edge Of Town has always been my favourite Springsteen CD. It hit me at the right moment, with the right hard edge. Its sensibility (as Springsteen acknowledges in his liner notes) was grittier than his more aspirational early recordings, connecting to the harder economic mood and music of the time, culling his work to something both richer and tougher, “songs that still form the philosophical core of what we do today,” as he writes. As a young 17-year-old punk it opened up streams of American music that I was in danger of setting myself against.
Candy’s Room was amongst my favourite tracks, a dark tale of a young man’s love for a prostitute, driven by a racing hi-hat that contrasted with the low, almost spoken vocal, until it explodes into full E Street Band roar as Springsteen declares “what she wants is me.” On The Promise, Candy reappears in an earlier version, Candy’s Boy, a country lament for the same prostitute. It’s not a better song, but it’s beautiful, fascinating, and I feel like I am meeting an old love again, in new circumstances.
Box sets of out-takes may be on the increase, but ‘The Promise’ is a real rarity. As recording technology has got so much cheaper and more portable, musicians constantly record every new idea and cast off song, with the result that the wealth of out-takes available for future release is ever growing. When someone dies (as we are about to find out with Michael Jackson) there is frequently enough material leftover to sustain new releases for a decade. But (and it’s a big but) with albums in decline as a commercial proposition, everything is about the individual track, released through a whole range of outlets (from CD extras to iTunes exclusives) so there is no pressing reason for someone to go through the kind of private artistic journey Springsteen underwent on the way to Darkness. If it’s worth hearing, you’ll probably hear it at the time. Besides, how many artists are working at such a high level that their leftovers are a match for their official releases? The Promise is an exceedingly rare opportunity to hear new work from an all time great in his prime. I wonder if we will ever hear its like again?
11.15.2010
Bruce Springsteen Promised the greatest
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