Throughout this process, I have consistently interpreted the prompts to better suit my writing style. In this instance, I don’t need to. This is fairly straightforward in terms of my favorite Bruce live album. There aren’t nearly as many Bruce live albums as there are bootlegs. I am, however, not including bootlegs. The “favorite bootleg” is a category all its own. Thus, this will be an official released album – not DVDs, unless there was an audio version released in support. This significantly narrows the options.
It is important to point out that Bruce live is not Bruce on the album. My buddy Erik and I talk often how we enjoy the way in which Bruce interprets his songs live. We’ve heard full band songs played solo and acoustic. We’ve heard songs from Nebraska played with the full band. This drastically changes the songs. We’ve heard lyrics that are moderately different from the album, and arrangements that completely alter the song’s sonic qualities. We talk often about how we’re not getting the same show, and how this has ruined other concerts for us. When we go to concerts that aren’t Bruce, and we hear a set list that is exactly the same as was played the night before, played exactly as the songs appear on the album, right down to the (seemingly) improvised call outs, it makes us long for a Bruce concert, with the improvisation, the audible set list changes, and the camaraderie of a Springsteen show.
The one thing that is important to note is that Bruce Springsteen and the members of the E Street Band are good friends. This is evident when they are playing. They work well as a unit, and they seem like a group of friends playing together. Bruce, as the lead singer of the E Street Band is the focal point of the show. If you watch Max Weinberg during a live show, he is not bobbing his head, closing his eyes, or getting lost in his own drumming. Max is keyed in on Bruce, watching his every movement, following him across the stage, and seeing as his gesticulations, which are often signals to his band members, call for specific drumming. It’s a finely tuned machine, and it is a group of old friends who love playing music together. It makes for what my friend Ryan texted to me in the midst of his first Springsteen show: “this is unreal. It’s like one big party. I’ve never been to a concert like this before” – everyone in the audience automatically becomes a member of the audience. There is a sense of unity in a Springsteen crowd – war stories traded, high fives with strangers when a deep cut is played. It is an experience far different than popping in an album alone in your room or car.
For the first 13 years of his career with the E Street Band, Bruce did not release a live album. There were certainly some memorable shows. He did a few shows in mid-august of 1975 at the Bottom Line in New York City* which were legendary for their intensity in a small club. As his legend and library of songs grew, Bruce began playing three-hour shows with regularity, with no opening act. In fact, you can always spot the newbie who asks “who is opening?” at a Bruce show. Bruce always hated opening for others, so he has never asked anyone else to open for him. Plus, it allows him to go on at his own pace, and play as long as he likes. As evidenced by his show lengths on the Wrecking Ball tour, he has no problem, at the ripe old age of 63, of playing for three and a half hours.
*-The Bottom Line is now a NYU student services building. Damn you, alma mater of mine.
In order to capture the experience of a live Springsteen show, Springsteen and Landau decided to release a massive, sprawling live album, covering performances between 1975-1985 called, appropriately enough, “Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band: Live 1975-1985.” It was spot on. A few deep cuts, plenty of hits, some lyric changes, some key changes and tempo shifts that give a different weight and experience to the songs – it spans 3 CDs, though, more importantly, 5 LPs (10 sides!) at the time of its release.
This began the infatuation with Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, and their live albums. But it is not my favorite Bruce live album. There is also the 4 song EP “Chimes of Freedom,” so named for the Bob Dylan song Bruce covers in support of the Amnesty International tour he did in 1988. There’s the MTV Plugged album, which was the “Bruce Springsteen and the Other Band” album – this was without the vast majority of the E Street Band, which he disbanded after the Tunnel of Love Express tour in 1988-1989. There’s the Live in Dublin album, from the Bruce Springsteen and the Sessions band tour in support of the Seeger Sessions album. Bruce also released Live at the Hammersmith Odeon in 1975. None of these are my favorite. Two aren’t even with the E Street Band!
Instead, my favorite is Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band: Live in New York. This album made me yearn for Springsteen’s live performances. I bought the two CD album and DVD on the same day. I had heard some of the songs off of it. I spent the fall of 2004 and spring of 2005 playing tracks from that album to my residents when I was an RA at NYU. Mostly, I played “10th Avenue Freeze-Out” – which, on the album is a 16 minute long song, replete with a preacher revival version of an E Street Band introduction, a song check to “It’s Alright To Have A Good Time”. Between the second chorus and the third verse, Bruce wanders off into a version of the formation of the E Street Band which has him meeting a gypsy woman who reads his fortune (Madame Marie?) and tells him to form a band. He introduces the group, culminating with Clarence “Big Man” Clemons, as he leaps back into the song. It is easily my favorite version of the song. I’ve memorized every single part of the Gypsy woman story (she promises him that, at the river of life, there is cold beer at a reasonable price, and pizza for everybody, punctuated by the declaration that “There’re no fucking cell phones, neither!”) and still get chills when Bruce sings “I’m gonna sit back right easy and laugh when Scooter and the Big Man bust this city in half” accented by grasping each others’ hands. It was perfect choreography, a great story, and an electric song.
Other great songs off of that album are the versions of Born to Run, Atlantic City, Mansion on the Hill, Johnny 99, and Youngstown. One of the two tracks I was introduced to that have stuck with me was “Land of Hope and Dreams” – given new life as a track on Wrecking Ball (and is the theme for the 2012 baseball playoffs – way better than “This is Our Country” by John Mellencamp!) about this great patchwork quilt that is American society. The other was one of the most important and well written socially conscious songs I’ve heard.
American Skin (41 Shots) is a great song about a terrible tragedy. Written about the Amadou Diallo shooting in New York City, Bruce has regularly maintained that the song is anti-Tragedy. Bruce touched off a firestorm among police officers who interpreted the song as an attack on their service in the line of duty. He was referred to as a “flaming faggot” by the head of the New York Policeman’s Benevolent Association in response to the song, saying “I’d like to see who is going to work security as his events in New York.” But the lyrics aren’t so simple as to place all the blame on Police. It is very understanding of the burdens and stresses of police.
The verses are written from the perspective of the populace – the mother of Mr. Diallo, kneeling over her son’s body in their own vestibule, the victim of a misunderstanding, the mother of a Russian immigrant who warns her son to be polite to authority, to keep his hands visible at all times when an officer stops him, and to never run from the police for fear of his death, and from the soul of the citizens, wondering how we got to a place where we do not trust those who are tasked with protecting us.
The choruses are the inner thoughts of the police officers as they respond to situations where they do not know the outcomes – they ask “is it a gun, is it a knife, is it a wallet? This is your life. It ain’t no secret…. No secret my friend – you could get killed just for livin’ in your American Skin.” What it is saying is, as an American, we have no skin. We have no color, no religion. We are a people of many skins. Some skins are the uniforms we wear to work. The skin of the citizen and the skin of the police are often times at odds. We don’t trust one another, the officer worried about getting home to his family, the citizen worried about surviving when the officers speak to them – it’s a self-fulfilling, self-perpetuating cycle of violence, fear, and mistrust. And this is where we are in this country as citizens and those tasked with maintaining law and order.
Live in New York became a benchmark – an album that gave us everything that Live 1975-1985 gave us, but it gave us what Bruce would become in the 2000s – an overt political activist. He stumped for John Kerry and Barack Obama (and went 1-1 in those contests), and came out in support of many liberal/progressive causes. American Skin (41 Shots) is a song that launched Bruce into the new millennium. He released The Rising and Devils and Dust, two very political albums, followed later by the Seeger Sessions, which was a pet project of his, and then finally “Magic” – a scathing album about the Bush administration, and “Working on a Dream” – an album about the Obama candidacy and election, ultimately playing at Barack Obama’s inauguration, with Pete Seeger, on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. Just as Nebraska deepened Bruce’s storytelling, Live 1975-1985 created in Bruce the need to tell a political tale with his songwriting, to stand for what he believes in. This is the new Bruce Springsteen – progressive firebrand, American patriot, and liberal stalwart. He understands and respects the Republicans, but he just disagrees with their opinion. He has a seat on board his train for everyone who is willing to take part in the American experience. After all, this train, of which Bruce speaks, carries saints, sinners, losers, winners, whores, gamblers, and lost souls.
In the end the train headed to the land of Hope and Dreams does one thing: rewards faith. For me, I heard Live in New York in 2003, and then waited 18 months to see Bruce live in concert – a shortened set at the Vote for Change tour in 2004 in Cleveland at the Gund Arena. Turns out, my faith was rewarded with everything I’d waited for. It was my land of hope and dreams.
Tomorrow’s Post: Favorite Bruce Era
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