Sometimes you just have to give the people what they want. A little over a year ago
featured here with an excellent essay on George Harrison and the Struggle for Creative Freedom which was very well received (and deservedly so). And so today he is back with a sort of spiritual sequel to that piece which delves into the career and creativity of Bruce Springsteen.A friend of mine back at university was a fanatical Bruce fan, so reading this while dipping into The Boss’ back catalogue brought back lots of pleasant memories. This is the power of music, and Phil is able to tap into and capture this energy perfectly.
Enjoy.
TJB.
[Oh, be sure to check out our latest Symposium. You’ll regret missing it!]
Now on with today’s essay…
It may be hard to envisage but there was a time when Bruce Springsteen couldn’t sell records for love nor money.
His first 2 albums, Greetings From Asbury Park, N.J. and The Wild, The Innocent & the E-Street Shuffle failed to make an impact with radio stations and sales suffered as a result.
Though some of his early acoustic songs sound like a pastiche of Bob Dylan, he and his backing group, The E Street Band, were an electrifying live act who were developing their own style of rock n’ roll around catchy songs such as Blinded by the Light, Growin’ Up, Spirit in the Night and Rosalita (Come Out Tonight), all of which they still occasionally play live.
Springsteen’s record label, Columbia, were mainly at fault for the failing records. Relations with Columbia had been deteriorating ever since the two men who brought Springsteen into the company, John Hammond and Clive Davis, left for different reasons, and there was no longer anyone fighting his corner. Springsteen said that they felt ‘orphaned’.
There’s an excruciating scene in the Coen brothers’ movie Inside Llewyn Davis, where the eponymous main character, a struggling folk singer in early Sixties New York, travels to Chicago to audition for producer Bud Grossman, only to be told: “I don’t see a lot of money here.”
Springsteen went through a similar experience with Columbia’s head of A&R, Charles Koppelman. After listening to side one of The Wild…, he advised Springsteen that ‘the musicianship wasn’t up to snuff’ and recommended getting it re-recorded by professional musicians. When Springsteen refused, he said that the record would receive little promotion and he and his band would most likely disappear as a result.
As Springsteen reveals in his autobiography Born to Run:
‘When we toured to promote The Wild, the Innocent, few even knew it had been released. I hit one Texas radio station where I was told a representative from my record company had visited and, while promoting several new Columbia recordings, literally told them to remove mine from airplay, adding “The songs are too long.” This was a new twist. My own record company trying to get my records off the radio. It was only the beginning.’
The situation was desperate. Bruce needed some luck. And he got it from a couple of key people at his recent gigs.
The son of Irwin Siegelstein, the new head of Columbia records, was in attendance at one of Bruce’s college gigs. He showed his father an interview in the college newspaper where Bruce complained about the record company’s behaviour. Siegelstein then arranged dinner with Springsteen, asking how he could put things right.
Around the same time (May 9th, 1974 to be exact) after Springsteen opened for Bonnie Raitt, a rock journalist for the Real Paper gave a quote that would go down in music history. The journalist was Jon Landau and the quote was: ‘I have seen rock and roll’s future, and its name is Bruce Springsteen.’
Columbia then took the opportunity to run full-page ads based around Landau’s quote in music publications such as Rolling Stone. Irwin Siegelstein put his (well, the company’s) money where his mouth was and subsequently spent $50,000 on the promotions.
‘What a difference a day makes,’ writes Springsteen in Born to Run. ‘The record company was back in our corner and record sales picked up for my two albums as we continued to tour, wrecking the house night after night.’
What Springsteen doesn’t mention in his book are his thoughts about the pressure he was under because of the promotion of that quote. In a 1975 interview with NME, he said: ‘It [Landau’s article] was a really nice piece and it meant a lot to me, but it was like they took it all out of context and blew it up, and who’s gonna swallow that? Who’s gonna believe that? It’s going to piss people off, man. It pisses me off… So like [when touring] I’m always 10 points down, ‘cos not only have you got to play but you got to blow this bullshit out of people’s minds first.’
But Springsteen had even more than touring on his mind. His contract with Columbia was for 3 albums. It was time to fulfil that commitment.
He writes: ‘The question was, beyond critics and my small cult following, could I stir interest in that larger audience that lay at the end of the radio dial? Cult artists don’t last on Columbia records. We miss this one, our contract’s up and in all probability we’ll be sent back to the minors deep in the South Jersey pines. I had to make a record that was the embodiment of what I’d been slowly promising I could do. It had to be something epic and extraordinary, something that hadn’t quite been heard before.’
The first song to be written for the album turned out to be the title track, Born to Run. The song itself took him 6 months to write. The production of the album was similarly difficult and drawn out. Production started in January 1974, but it took until August to just record the title track, and by January 1975, no further tracks had been completed. The pressure was on as their next tour, based around the album, was scheduled to start on 20th July.
Jon Landau, the journalist who had helped turn Springsteen’s fortunes around with his famous Real Paper quote, but who had also criticised the production of The Wild earlier in the same publication, and had previous experience producing rock albums, was hired as the producer in February to help give Springsteen some much-needed direction.
Faulty equipment had been a regular problem during the recording sessions, so production was moved to the Record Plant in Manhattan, a much more professional environment for these professional musicians.
Possibly still affected by that earlier meeting with Charles Koppelman, who criticised the musicianship of the band, and knowing what was at stake if they failed, Springsteen had become a perfectionist during the course of recording their new album.
Landau said of the experience of working with Springsteen: “He’d spend four hours on one line. He’d say ‘Hang on, guys. I wanna check a line’, and four hours later he’d be sitting there trying to make the most minute changes in one verse.”
Springsteen’s desire for multiple takes continued to slow the sessions down. He apparently took 13 hours just to record his guitar parts for opening track Thunder Road, while Saxophonist Clarence Clemons took 16 hours to record his 2 ½ minute solo in Jungleland until Springsteen was satisfied with the result.
Looking back on the experience, Springsteen said: “[The sessions] turned into something that was wrecking me, just pounding me into the ground.” Organist Danny Federici said: “[we] ate, drank and slept [that album]”. Most of the work was carried out between 3pm and 6am the following day.
Despite all this, they managed to record and mix the album, completing it just as the tour started on 20th July. Mastering was carried out while the band were on tour.
But Springsteen still didn’t feel comfortable with the album being released, even though the title track had already been doing the rounds on radio as early as the previous November. He even threw the first version he heard of the completed album into a hotel swimming pool in frustration, thinking he’d possibly blown it. Multiple versions were sent to him while on tour, all of which were rejected.
Even when listening to what became the final, released version in August, Springsteen writes: ‘All I could hear was what I perceived as the record’s flaws…Jon tried to patiently explain to me that “art” often works in mysterious ways. What makes something great may also be one of its weaknesses, just like in people. I let it go.’
Born to Run was critically acclaimed on release, and it gave Springsteen the mainstream success that he, and the record company, had been yearning, going on to sell 7 million copies in the US alone. It’s generally viewed as the greatest of Springsteen’s 21 studio albums, and Rolling Stone recently ranked it 21 in its list of the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time.
I recently read the book Slow Productivity by Cal Newport, based around 3 key principles:
Do Fewer Things
Work at a Natural Pace
Obsess Over Quality
Springsteen’s focus and dedication to producing the best album he possibly could, spending time putting the need for quality above the pressure to get the record completed, paid dividends.
He would have been tinkering with the album forever, though, had there not been one important factor in place – an immovable deadline. Because of the looming tour date, after which they would be unable to be involved in the album production, the band ended up working on different aspects of multiple songs ‘in a three-day 72-hour sprint, working in three studios simultaneously’, as Springsteen wrote in Born to Run, all while they were rehearing for the tour. It’s been said that perfectionism is the enemy of progress, and one of the greatest antidotes to that is a deadline, even one far into the future.
There’s one final, crucial aspect to Springsteen’s experience that hasn’t yet been mentioned – the fact that he didn’t have a Plan B.
As he writes in Born to Run when reminiscing about his original troubles with Columbia: ‘The basic drift was these guys thought we were just going to go away, return to our day jobs, go back to school, disappear into the swamps of Jersey. They didn’t understand they were dealing with men without homes, lives, any practicable skills or talents that could bring a reliable paycheck in the straight world. We had nowhere to go…and we loved music! This was going to be it. There was no going back.’
Backup plans can make us feel an imaginary sense of comfort, relieving the pressure that we need to achieve our best work during difficult times. Without any, Springsteen and his band forced themselves to live an uncomfortable few years to generate a more comfortable future that would be filled with opportunity.
It took a group of strong men to get through those early tumultuous years and make it to the other side in such a cutthroat industry, but, to quote the title of Springsteen’s latest album, Only the Strong Survive.
Love this, love The Boss! The book is a treasure, this article is spot on!
Great biography with a lot of good take aways, thank you so much!