It’s pretty wild that one of his most beloved songs doesn’t really have a chorus. Hooks galore, but no chorus.
so i'm curious about opinions on bruce's alternative timelines. is anyone set in how they would map it out? i change it quite a bit but at the moment i'm working on one that maps out around 1970 - 1988, an album pretty much every year (and a couple in some cases), while still retaining the themes he likes each album to have (rather than just a great collection of songs). after that it gets tricky because there's so few outtakes that we've heard from the last 25 years but i've still settled on some ways to improve human touch and the rising. the most difficult part has been the pre-73 steel mill / bruce springsteen band stuff, there's a ton of it but mainly just live performances rather than recordings. it's astonishing just how much there is from those twenty years though, and still a ton we haven't heard. the guy could have put three or four great albums out for every one he released.
These are my alternate 1975 and 78 albums. "Wings for Wheels" is an earlier version of "Thunder Road" and the "Born to Run" recording is an alternate from the bootleg comp War and Roses that has female backing vocals on the chorus. The rest are outtakes from that same comp or from Tracks. This version of "Drive All Night" was recorded in '77, it's from One Way Street: The Lost Masters Vol. 2 and "No Sins Forgiven" is a title that I made up for an instrumental from that same compilation that's titled "Fast Song #1 (instrumental)" on there and would eventually become "Candy's Room." The rest are basically from Tracks or The Promise.
I'd never seen this version of "E Street Shuffle" backed by The Roots before and it's so much fun! The story behind it is great too:
ran through the first four albums yesterday for the first time in a while. about as strong as a four album run gets. going to attempt to tackle the river today. a real test of my stamina.
wiki says they sped up the recording of his vocal to get a higher pitch and less gruffness after being influenced by brian wilson i don’t listen to springsteen to hear someone trying to be brian wilson
I stand by my un-researched take in that Brian Wilson was also chasing a Spector/girl-group sound filtered through his own genius.
got through nebraska today darkness on the edge of town > born to run > nebraska > wild innocent e street shuffle > greetings > the river
i mean, it was pretty off the cuff, but it also stands up with how I've felt about the albums in the past.
The Wild, The Innocent and the E Street Shuffle = Born to Run Darkness on the Edge of Town The River Nebraska Greetings from Asbury Park, NJ