In last week's Friday Bruce Fix, I featured a clip of a young, complete unknown singer/songwriter named Bruce Springsteen in an appearance at Max's Kansas City in New York. I also mentioned that earlier that year, a day after meeting Bruce, John Hammond had Bruce come in to record some demos. Based on those early acoustic demos and solo performances, Columbia saw an opportunity to market Bruce as the next Bob Dylan.
What they didn't understand was that Bruce really wasn't an acoustic act. Sure he could do that, and do it well, but there was so much more to him. He had been playing in rock bands for about eight years to that point. This "next Bob Dylan" thing was a bit of a challenge for Bruce to overcome and he really had to fight to record fuller band arrangements of some of those demoed songs during the recording sessions for 'Greetings From Asbury Park'.
In early 1972, before the fateful meeting with John Hammond, Bruce was mostly playing with the Bruce Springsteen Band, which included the nucleus of the E Street Band, most notably Clarence Clemons and Steve Van Zandt. This was a big band with a big, bluesy sound. Oblivious to this, Columbia went about promoting their next Bob Dylan.
They might have taken a different approach or been very confused if they had heard this week's recordings, instead of or in addition to last week's performance, or the demo recording session the next day. There doesn't seem to be any video of the Bruce Springsteen Band around, although there is some decent audio.
The first clip is from one of the final Bruce Springsteen Band gigs at The Back Door in Richmond, Virginia, in February of 1972. It is an original composition called 'Cowboys of the Sea', which is one of the songs that Bruce recorded acoustically for the Columbia demos, just three months later.
On July 23, 1971, The Bruce Springsteen Band played an outdoor concert in Damrosch Park at the Lincoln Center in New York City. This is primarily 'CC Rider', but it also morphs into 'Down The Road A Piece', at least lyrically. It features some searing guitar leads from a 21 year old Bruce who was building a reputation as a long haired Jersey Shore guitar hero. Had Columbia heard these recordings, the words "Bob Dylan" would not likely have come to mind. So, if you hadn't heard acoustic Bruce, would you have signed this guy?
Happy Friday!
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