Your Friday Bruce Fix

Bruce Springsteen, No Need, Backstreets

After covering other ground for a couple of weeks, Your Friday Bruce Fix returns with more matched pairs of songs, matched for the identical or nearly identical lyrics that appear in two different songs.  Thanks to suggestions from Friday Bruce Fix readers, we have another three pairs to work though.  Are there more?  Let me know if you think of any!

Today's pair, as you may have surmised from the title are 'No Need' and 'Backstreets'.

No Need

"In the deep heart of the night
When you finally let loose of everything"

Backstreets

"In the deep heart of the night when you let loose of everything"

'No Need' is believed to have been recorded around May/June of 1972, just before the official recording sessions for 'Greetings From Asbury Park', and after the John Hammond demo sessions in early May.  Bruce is on piano for this one.

'Backstreets' normally needs no introduction.  This particular version is not the one we're all so familiar with from the 'Born to Run' album.  This one is known as "Outtake Version #2" and features lots of strings, several different lyrics and some very different wailing.  Bruce picked the right version to release, but this is a great song no matter which version or live performance you prefer.

Happy Friday!

Bruce Springsteen, Tokyo, And The Band Played, Two Hearts In True Waltz Time

One of the remarkable things confirmed by the release of the Darkness box set was the fact that Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band recorded around 70 songs during the extensive sessions that ultimately yielded the 'Darkness on the Edge of Town' album. That's a pretty staggering number of songs to write, let alone record in such a short period, yet this wasn't the first time that the Bruce Springsteen song writing machine cranked out so many so songs so quickly.

Back in 1972, about 5 years earlier, Bruce recorded another 70 or so songs as demos from which he'd eventually pull enough material to release his first album 'Greetings From Asbury Park'.  Most of the songs seem to have been recorded between May and August of 1972.  All but one were solo recordings with Bruce on either acoustic guitar or piano. 

This week's Friday Bruce Fix leads off with a solo piano tune from those sessions called 'Tokyo'.

Following those solo recordings, Bruce went back into the studio to record band versions of the songs that would end up being released on 'Greetings from Asbury Park'.  While on tour in support of that album, Bruce would play some of those demo songs, including 'Tokyo' which by then had morphed into a version that became known as 'And the Band Played'.  Here is a recording from April of 1973.

'Two Hearts in True Waltz Time' was recorded in the demo sessions, and again as a solo number for the Greetings album, but ultimately it didn't make the final cut.  It clearly didn't fit musically with the rest of the songs on Greetings.  Listening to some of these early recordings, Greetings could have been a very different album, just as Darkness might have been.

Happy Friday!

Bruce Springsteen, The Price You Pay

Earlier this week, on Wednesday, in one of my daily Twitter Tweets, I Tweeted "So let the games start, you better run you little wild heart".  Very quickly, a few of my Twitter followers Tweeted back and reTweeted, all commenting how much they love Bruce Springsteen's 'The Price You Pay'.  I have to admit that it caught me a bit off guard.  I think I had forgotten what a great song this is, especially lyrically.  I promise I won't write "Twitter" or any other iterations of the word (Twitterations?  oops, I did it again...) for the rest of this week's fix.

It's such a great song, I'm going to give it to you three ways.  First, a very fine studio outtake from The River recording sessions.  It's almost exactly the same as the official album version, with the main exception being a different third verse, which in this case begins with "Some say forget the past".

This next rendition comes from the night The River tour hit Stockholm in 1981.  This one is noteworthy for the harmonica intro, the sparse arrangement, the slower tempo, Bruce's superb vocal, and of course all those nice Swedish people in the audience.  Again, Bruce goes with the alternate third verse. 

I'll close our 'The Price You Pay' festival with another live version, a mere 28 years later in Philadelphia, PA on the 'Working On A Dream' tour.  I like the harmony vocal contributions from Stevie Van Zandt, who was featured prominently on many of the recordings from 'The River' sessions.  Here, Bruce goes back to the official third verse.

Happy Friday!

Bruce Springsteen, Steel Mill, The Train Song, Goin' Back To Georgia

Do you remember where you were on February 22nd, 1970?  Perhaps some of you may not have even been born by then, while others may have been indulging in too many illegal substances in 1970 to have retained any memories from all those years ago.  I can't be any more certain about where I was than to say that I was likely in school and likely not liking it.

What I can tell you with some certainly is that on February 22nd, 1970, Bruce Springsteen was in the Pacific Recording Studio in San Mateo, CA, along with his band, Steel Mill.  The band had played at Bill Graham's Fillmore West, Graham wanted to record the band and offered to sign Steel Mill to his just formed Fillmore Records.

Steel Mill consisted of Bruce, Danny Federici, Vini "Mad Dog" Lopez and Vinnie Roslin.  To this day, I believe Steel Mill holds the record for the most Vini/Vinnies in one band, both in absolute terms and also expressed as a percentage of the total number of band members.  ("Man, you should've seen us back then, we were half Vini/Vinnie in those days....").

Steel Mill turned down Bill Graham's offer, returned to the east coast, and Vinnie Roslin left the band.  When no suitable Vini/Vinnie could be found, he was replaced by Steve Van Zandt.  I suppose Steve could have changed his name to Vinnie, but he didn't capitalize on that glorious opportunity, and Steel Mill was never quite as Vini/Vinnie again, and Steve never became Vinnie Van Zandt (nor Miami Vinnie, or Little Vincent).

Today's first clip features one of the three songs recorded on that early 1970 day in San Mateo.  It is called 'The Train Song', also known as "Long Time Riding'.

That nice little country rock tune was rather uncharacteristic of Steel Mill, which Bruce has referred to as "a Humble Pie type band". Have a listen to this tune called 'Goin' Back to Georgia'. Hard to believe it's the same band.

Happy Friday!

Bruce Springsteen, Remember When The Music, Harry Chapin, Cats In The Cradle, Mail Order Annie

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.

Here's Harry at his story-telling best.

Thanks Harry. Happy Friday.