This week's Bruce Fix features two songs that were written more than 30 years apart, yet seem strangely joined at the hips. In both, the family guy in Bruce Springsteen writes about family and the relationships within. Not surprisingly, the early one is written from the perspective of a son, while the later one is seen through the father's eyes.
First up is 'Family Song', also known as 'California', or 'California, You're A Woman'. It was written in 1971, and two versions were recorded in 1972, but it was never officially released.
33 years later, on the Devils and Dust CD, Bruce released a very different family song called 'Long Time Comin'', which was probably written in or around 1996. I'll let Bruce handle the intro.
One of Bruce Springsteen’s long time Asbury Park buddies is Southside Johnny. I know, weird first name, and for that matter, a weird second name too. Johnny's real name is John Lyon, not to be confused with John Lydon, aka Johnny Rotten. He acquired the Southside nickname due to his love of the blues and R&B music that came out of Chicago's South Side. In some circles, Johnny is considered the godfather of the New Jersey sound, and Jon Bon Jovi has cited Southside as the reason he became a singer.
Bruce wrote the following for the liner notes to Johnny's 1976 debut album 'I Don't Want To Go Home'. "Southside Johnny... One of the weirdest guys I ever saw. He used to dress just like my old man. He was definitely comin' in from the outside. First time I saw him he was playin' bass behind one of the early legends in Asbury, a guy named Sonny Kenn. Johnny was terrible. This was a person that could not play bass. But he could sing and play harp and he knew a lot about the blues. Once I talked to him, I realized he wasn't as weird as he looked... he was weirder, and his general conversation consisted of insulting everyone within 50 feet. But he was the only white kid on the Jersey shore that you could stand to hear sing straight R&B five sets a night."
In August of ’78, Bruce and Southside happened to both be touring and playing the same night in Cleveland. Southside, who may have a weird name but is no idiot, delayed the start time of his much smaller gig in a much smaller venue (The Agora Ballroom) so that anyone who wanted to witness both gigs, or even perform in both, would have a chance to do so. Bruce, Clarence and Steve were all on stage for this song, called “The Fever”, a song Bruce had written in 1971, but had never officially released. He gave it to Southside to include on his first album, and Johnny basically built a career on this Bruce throwaway. No idiot that Southside Johnny.
Here’s a bonus track from that same night, a Steve Van Zandt composition and the title track from Johnny's first album “I Don’t Want to go Home”. Steve’s writing and arranging were critical to Southside’s success on his first three albums, and was a key factor in creating that Stax influenced New Jersey R&B sound. Note the horn section, which was referred to as the “Miami Horns” after Miami Steve Van Zandt, before he morphed into Little Steven. That horn section, led by Richie “La Bamba” Rosenberg on trombone, is an early version of the same horn section you see in the Max Weinberg and the Tonight Show Band, on NBC's Tonight Show with Conan O’Brien.
If you want to get into Southside Johnny, check out his “Hearts of Stone” album, which Rolling Stone named one of their top albums of 1978, and also one of the Top 100 Albums of the 70s and 80s. Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes were probably one of the best bar bands you could ever see. They had that same commitment to their music and work ethic as their buddy Bruce, and seeing them in their prime was always a party.
Feel free to watch 'The Fever' over and over. It's that good. Happy Friday!
Harry Chapin died July 16, 1981, 28 years ago yesterday, in a fiery car crash on the Long Island Expressway. The official cause of death was cardiac arrest, though it was unclear whether his heart failed him before or after the crash. Whichever happened first, it led to the other.
In life, Harry's heart along with his passion for living and giving, motivated him to do something to make a difference in his world. Harry earned a substantial amount of money over his career and gave much of it away, with an emphasis on causes related to battling hunger in America. It was estimated he donated a third of the proceeds from his paid concerts to charitable causes. The following two paragraphs are directly from Wikipedia.
One report quotes his widow saying soon after his death — "only with slight exaggeration" — that "Harry was supporting 17 relatives, 14 associations, seven foundations and 82 charities. Harry wasn't interested in saving money. He always said, 'Money is for people,' so he gave it away." Despite his success as a musician, he left little money and it was difficult to maintain the causes for which he raised more than $3 million in the last six years of his life. The Harry Chapin Foundation was the result.
Chapin was interred in the Huntington Rural Cemetery, Huntington, New York. His epitaph is taken from his song "I Wonder What Would Happen to this World." It is:
Oh if a man tried
To take his time on Earth
And prove before he died
What one man's life could be worth
I wonder what would happen
to this world
This week's first clip features a very fine solo acoustic performance by Bruce Springsteen at the Carnegie Hall Tribute show in December of 1987 honoring Harry Chapin's life, and includes a great little story about how Bruce met and got to know Harry.
Harry's big hit was 'Cats in the Cradle', a song based on a poem his wife Sandy wrote about her first husband's relationship with his father. The birth of his son Josh inspired Harry to turn Sandy's poem into a song, and it became his only #1 hit.
This week's Friday Bruce Fix features Bruce Springsteen showing us his folksy, rootsy roots, along with social and political commentary and a little protest thrown in for good measure. These clips feature songs written by some of Bruce's key influences, Bob Dylan, John Fogerty and Woody Guthrie.
We lead off today with a double shot. This clip is from Chateau de Vincennes in Paris, France at the SOS Racism Concert, which was broadcast on French television in June of 1988. Bruce performed just 4 songs, all acoustically. These are the final two songs in the mini-set.
As the 'Born in the USA' tour wound down in late 1985, after being on the road for about a year and a half, Bruce and the band rolled into LA for their final stop. The final night of the tour was filmed and this next clip was from late in the show, sandwiched between 'Rosalita' and 'Born to Run'.
In 1940, Woody Guthrie wrote 'This Land is Your Land' as a response to Irving Berlin's 'God Bless America'. Woody felt that the America he knew was a lot different from the one Irving wrote about. Woody's America was suffering from Dust Bowl conditions and the Great Depression, while emigrant and blue collar workers battled racism and classism as they roamed around looking for work. Woody's lyrics addressed liberty, individual rights and property ownership.
I suspect that a song like this has been a source of inspiration for Bruce in taking up the cause in fighting for the disadvantaged and for what he believes is right. His spoken intro provides some insight into how Bruce interprets Woody's lyrics.
I'm a bit surprised to find myself doing this, but this week's Bruce Fix will be a little light on Bruce, and will shine a little light on Michael Jackson, who you are all well aware (unless you've been locked up in isolation for the last week or so) left this world recently. Bruce and Michael probably couldn't have been more different, yet I'm sure when Bruce reads this he'll approve of this nod to Michael. And hey, one day when Bruce punches the clock for the last time, I hope the guy doing the Monday Michael Mashup (no one's doing it yet, but now that I've put it out there, it's just a matter of time....) will repay the respect we show today.
Bruce and Michael were both peaking in popularity around the same time in the early to mid 80s. If I remember correctly, 'Thriller' and 'Born in the USA' each spawned seven Top 10 singles. I wanted Bruce to release 'Bobby Jean' which I felt would have gone Top 10, thus besting Michael and 'Billie Jean'. I'm sure he regrets ignoring my advice.
In August of 1984, Rolling Stone wrote a pair of stories titled 'On The Road, The Jacksons, Springsteen' contrasting the tours each was in the midst of at that time. The Jacksons' tour was a complex and costly undertaking, surrounded by fan hysteria, media frenzy, security and controversy. Bruce's tour started out in arenas and would move to stadium venues later in the tour, but was always much less of a spectacle and simply the hardest working rock and roll band that could ever roll through your hometown.
In a subsequent full length Rolling Stone Interview by Kurt Loder on December 6, 1984, Bruce spoke presciently of the kind of fame that Elvis had, and that Michael was having. He pointed out the incredible pressure and isolation that such fame requires, and the pain that results. It was a price Bruce refused to pay, and he continued to live as normal a life as possible, going wherever he wanted, doing whatever he wanted to do. Instead of putting up barriers, and hiding behind layers of security, Bruce kept trying to tear down walls. The following is a direct quote from Bruce in that interview.
"The biggest gift your fans can give you is just treatin' you like a human being, because anything else dehumanizes you. And that's one of the things that has shortened the life spans, both physically and creatively, of some of the best rock and roll musicians - that cruel isolation. If the price of fame is that you have to be isolated from the people you write for, then that's too fuckin' high a price to pay."
Take Michael's fame/isolation problem and then add in the fact that Michael started out so young, and was a major celebrity before he could ever figure out how to just be a normal, happy kid, the poor guy never had much of a chance at developing the skills he was going to need to handle the challenges he'd later face.
Todays first clip features a little Bruce and a little Michael. My guess is that they first met at the recording of 'We Are The World'. In the Kurt Loder interview, Bruce also said that he had attended one of the Jacksons' performances on that same tour in 1984. and he was very complimentary about Michael. I doubt that they interacted much beyond these two events. Michael co-wrote this song with Lionel Ritchie and I believe played a pretty significant role in making this happen. It is but one example of his charitable work.
Alright, I can't resist having a little fun, after all that serious stuff above. Talk about a career defining piece of work for Andre-Phillipe Gagnon.
I stumbled upon this next clip while searching for the first clip. I didn't even know that the Jacksons had recorded an audio a cappella version of 'I'll Be There'. There really isn't much to say beyond the obvious, that for all his tragic flaws, Michael was immensely talented. Above all, I'll remember the young Michael's singing. It is pretty remarkable, how anyone so young could be so good.
Finally, it's not quite Friday without a Bruce Fix, so with a nod to our American Bruce Fixees and the 4th of July, here is a rare solo piano version of 'Independence Day', from 1978's 'Darkness on the Edge of Town' tour, a full two years before Bruce would release 'Independence Day' on 'The River'. The song actually has nothing to do with the 4th of July, and everything to do with Bruce's relationship with his father.
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