Growin' Up With Bruce Springsteen

For the Boss's 75th birthday, here are some thoughts on growing up with his music, and a few more words I’ve written about him in various places over the last few years.

Photo: Eric Meola

Growin’ Up

How Bruce Springsteen is tied to my birthday with three landmark compilations spread over three decades. (Originally published on my former website on November 14, 2021.)

The cover may be a little worse for wear, but the contents of my old box set are still in great condition.

I turned 16 on November 14, 1986. By then, I’d been a fan of Bruce Springsteen for at least five years or so. The first song I remember hearing of his on our local rock station - WQDR, of course - was “Born To Run.” It wasn’t unlike those big Phil Spector productions of girl groups I’d heard over the years by the likes of the Ronettes and the Crystals, though I didn’t consciously make the connection at the time. I was also exposed to “Thunder Road,” “Jungleland,” “She’s the One,” and “Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out,” all from the Born to Run album, which ended up being the first record of his I owned.

QDR gave me an education on The Boss before I ever bought anything of his, however: “Badlands,” “Spirit in the Night” (which I at first thought was Van Morrison), “Rosalita (Come Out Tonight),” “Cadillac Ranch,” “Hungry Heart,” and “Growin’ Up” all came roaring out of the speakers in my early teenage bedroom. On the fledgling MTV, I got to see him performing live, and the first “video” I remember seeing of him was the live performance of “Rosalita,” (recorded July 8th, 1978 at the Memorial Coliseum in Phoenix, AZ.) and his boundless energy was infectious.

I also heard Nebraska, which I promptly bought on cassette (to this day, I believe it’s the best way to listen to it since that’s the way it was recorded anyway).

Then came Born in the USA.

That landmark album was released the year I turned 14. I picked it up from my local record store in Oxford, NC, Main Street Music. Most of it was classic Bruce, although its first single, “Dancing in the Dark,” was atypical of Bruce’s sound, awash in synths while Max Weinberg’s drumming resembled that of a loud, insistent drum machine.

Live/1975-85

BITUSA became one of the albums that defined the decade, a watershed moment for Springsteen, and radio played no less than half the album in heavy rotation for the next couple of years. He and the E Street Band hit the road in support of it and that led up to the release of Live/1975-1985 on November 10, 1986.

It wasn’t my first “box set” - that distinction went to the previous year’s Bob Dylan compilation, Biograph, also on Columbia - but it helped mark the beginning of the box set era. Every veteran artist of consequence suddenly had their catalogs pillaged for previously unreleased material of varying quality, or in the worst-case scenarios, labels would just re-package already released albums bundled together as a box set for unwitting consumers. At their best, however, as in the case of Dylan, Springsteen, the Allman Brothers Band, and others, these sets contained revelatory material that enhanced their respective bodies of work.

Live/1975-1985 was the first of its kind in that it contained all previously unreleased live material from performances covered in the decade indicated in the title. I remember being initially disappointed, however, that his epic version of “Santa Claus is Coming to Town” - that I’d heard on WQDR every Christmas for several years before they switched to country in the late summer of 1984 - was not included.

What was included, however, was an astounding array of live performances that I listened to over and over for much of the winter and into early spring the following year. That following year, 1985, was also the year of USA for Africa, the album and collective organized by Quincy Jones, Lionel Richie, Michael Omartian, and Michael Jackson, which spawned the “We Are the World” benefit single. The album that was compiled and released in April also included “Trapped,” Springsteen and the E Street Band’s version of the Jimmy Cliff song that was performed on August 6, 1984, at the Meadowlands Arena in East Rutherford, NJ.

Of course, “Trapped” was not included on Live/1975-1985 either, even though the box set’s versions of “Nebraska” and “No Surrender” were taken from the same show.

Nevertheless, the box set compiled a decade of incredible performances from the Meadowlands to Nassau Coliseum, from Giants Stadium to the Roxy. The entire set totaled 40 songs on 5 LPs (the version I had). It timed out at a little over three and a half hours, roughly the length of an average Springsteen concert. All of his albums up to and including Born in the USA were represented. Of all the material, naturally, it’s the ‘70s era that’s most compelling.

The set kicks off with an astonishing acoustic version of “Thunder Road” taken from an October 1975 performance at the Roxy (the version above was taken from the same year in London). The rest of the set more or less lives up to the promise of this first impression. We also get a scorchingly sensual take on the hit he gave the Pointer Sisters.

In fact, the only time Live/1975-1985 falters is on the overblown, melodramatic take on “Cover Me,” the point of I’m still trying to figure out 35 years later.

The set closes on a subtle, perfect note with a truly definitive take on Tom Waits’ “Jersey Girl” appropriately recorded at the Meadowlands in July of 1981.

Tracks

Years went by and Bruce temporarily benched the E Street Band in favor of going it alone with varying degrees of success. Although I loved 1987’s Tunnel of Love, and 1992’s double-shot of Human Touch and Lucky Town, I was less impressed (at first) with ‘95’s The Ghost of Tom Joad, as it was a bit too bleak (and this came from someone who loved and adored Nebraska as a teen - go figure). I eventually warmed up to it, although it pales next to Nebraska and 2005’s remarkable Devils and Dust.

In 1998, however, the rumors that had been circulating for years finally came to fruition: Bruce would be releasing a box set of b-sides and previously unreleased but highly bootlegged and sought-after songs from his lengthy and impressive canon. No doubt inspired by Bob Dylan’s Bootleg Series that kicked off in 1991, Tracks totaled four and a half hours over four discs (and again, interestingly, released on November 10th, within a week of my 28th birthday).

One of my two copies of ‘Tracks.’ Bought another one since a couple of CDs in the first set got scratched from too many nights of drunken handling.

The most revelatory songs for me on Tracks were the outtakes from what became Nebraska and Born in the USA, especially the title track from the latter, which musically finally matched the anger and disillusionment of the lyrics.

It also included “The Wish,” a song that reflected the relationship between my mom and me, even down to the kitchen setting in the last verse, as that’s the place we’d all convene to sing, dance, and listen to old favorites, and new songs alike, of everyone from Merle Haggard to Otis Redding, Bob Dylan to Emmylou Harris, Willie Nelson to O.C. Smith.

Also included were now-classic b-sides including “Pink Cadillac” and “Stand On It” which had been covered by everyone from Natalie Cole to country singer Mel McDaniel, respectively.

The Essential

Five years later, almost to the day, on November 11, 2003 (just shy of my 33rd birthday, for those keeping count), The Boss’s turn on Sony BMG’s The Essential series was released, which included, naturally, all the essential tracks, but also a bonus disc of b-sides, soundtrack entries, and various odds-and-ends including (finally), “Trapped” as well as a song he’d given to Dave Edmunds (and also recorded by the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band), “From Small Things (Big Things One Day Come).”

Springsteen rebooted the E Street Band for The Rising in 2003 as well and embarked on another world tour, where I finally got to catch him in Raleigh at PNC Arena’s first show. It was well worth the wait and the hype. It indeed was just like church, only fun and much more celebratory.

As he counts 75 years around the sun today, it’s quite amazing that Springsteen has played such a large part in my growin’ up as well. So here’s to The Boss and may we both celebrate a few more years - and adventures - on this big old rock.

…And here are some words I wrote for others about the Boss in the last few years…

Albumism: Bruce Springsteen’s Devils & Dust Turns 15 | Anniversary Retrospective

Americana UK: Bruce Springsteen - Western Stars

No Depression: With E Street Band, Springsteen Puts Love and Rock into Letter to You

PopMatters: Bruce Springsteen Goes Soul Searching on Only The Strong Survive

…and some more recent ones from the Mixtape:

'Born in the U.S.A.' at 40

Bruce Springsteen - 'Human Touch' / 'Lucky Town'