Bruce Springsteen - The Wild, The Innocent & The E Street Shuffle

Released - September 1973

Genre - Rock

Producer - Mike Appel & Jim Cretecos

Selected Personnel - Bruce Springsteen (Vocals/Guitar/Harmonica/Mandolin/Percussion); Clarence Clemons (Saxophone); David Sancious (Piano/Organ/Keyboards); Danny Federici (Accordion/Piano/Organ); Garry Tallent (Bass); Vini Lopez (Drums)
Standout Track - Rosalita (Come Out Tonight)

Considering the extent to which he's become one of my latest musical heroes, I came to the Boss astoundingly late in my musical odyssey. Of course, being one of the ultimate icons of true rock & roll, he's a figure I've been aware of for years (in fact, if I trace it back, I think my very earliest awareness of him would be watching Fierce Creatures, the semi-sequel to A Fish Called Wanda, when I was about twelve, in which Kevin Kline tries to drive more customers into a failing zoo by claiming they own Bruce Springsteen's tortoise), but it took me a long time to find time to actually listen to his work, and be swept up by it. I think actually that my long-standing love of, and obsession with, Tom Waits, was a barrier for some time - I knew Springsteen had covered Waits's eternally beautiful ballad "Jersey Girl" and brought it to critical acclaim, and had read in several places that in many ways Waits was the West Coast's answer to Springsteen - a similar troubadour-type figure of a singer-songwriter romanticising down-and-outs and ordinary life, but whereas Waits did it via deliberately outmoded, backwards-looking jazz and later by twisted, bizarre mutant blues, Springsteen did it via fairly generic arena rock. To my mind, for years it seemed that Springsteen was simply a more unimaginative and generic figure than Waits, exploring the same ideas in less musically inventive ways. Ultimately, that's true. But what I didn't appreciate at the time was first just how good Springsteen was, and continues to be, at writing monstrously catchy, memorable, cool and downright incredible rock music. Ambitious or groundbreaking it may not be, but his music is always enormously listenable and fun and anthemic. Secondly, it's easy to assume that just because music is fairly generic it robs it of value, and actually a lot of the power of Springsteen comes from  its relative simplicity - his work is a million miles from the avant-garde rumblings of Tom Waits, but what comes through the simple band arrangements is a true purity of spirit and a touching honesty and power that comes from its unaffectedness. I finally came round to giving Springsteen my attention last September, when my brother urged me to listen to The Ghost Of Tom Joad, his mid-90s acoustic folk album, a weird starting point by any stretch of the imagination. I dutifully obeyed and soon found myself obsessed by the Boss, devoting much of the last year to learning more about his work, and ended up seeing him live at Wembley earlier this year, an event which now ranks as one of the best live gigs I've seen despite how recently he had captured my imagination.

I came to The Wild, The Innocnt & The E Street Shuffle fairly late, having already become familiar with his other albums to have taken on classic status like Born To Run or Born In The U.S.A. Again, it took the recommendation of my brother (a big Springsteen fan, though I think I've since outstripped him in terms of my knowledge of the guy's work) to bother giving it a listen, as he insisted it was the best party album Springsteen had ever released, or perhaps that anyone had. That's ultimately the best summing-up of this album it's possible to give. There is barely a song here that couldn't fail to ignite any party with a fire and an energy, and it's the first album to really give a glimpse of the incredible heights Springsteen would achieve over the coming decades. In 1973, Springsteen had achieved a bit of local acclaim on the Jersey shore in a number of local bands like Earth and Steel Mill, which channelled a kind of raw rock-and-roll energy and power unseen in any local artist up until that point. But the music industry was yet to pay any attention to him. Eventually, John Hammond succeeded in getting him signed to Colombia Records by touting as the "next Bob Dylan" (who Hammond had also championed way back in the early 60s). Ultimately, it's that attempt to force Springsteen into a particular bracket that hampers his debut album, Greetings From Asbury Park, N.J. While Springsteen is a great storyteller, he is no great poet and his lyrics are powerful in their unaffected simplicity rather than in their rich imagery or language in the vein of Dylan. So, to listen to an album where he tries his hardest to write imaginative poetry to be set to fairly unimginative folk rock accompaniments is a fairly tedious experience. A couple of songs, like "Spirit In The Night" and "Blinded By The Light" gave a glimpse of where Springsteen's real talent lay - in writing genuinely exciting rock music for a band to have fun with. In later years he would get to try again at the folk troubadour thing with much more success having abandoned the whole "new Dylan" ambitions, but for the time being he shifted his focus onto becoming a full-blown rockstar rather than the poetic voice of his generation.

The Wild, The Innocent & The E Street Shuffle, then, puts the focus onto the full band rather than on Springsteen as a figure in isolation. The first iteration of what would come to be called the E Street Band and would become his closest musical cohorts over the coming decades, propel this music which utilises them not just as marginalised session men but as the driving force of the music itself. Whether it's in David Sancious' and Danny Federici's piano and organ parts grounding "Incident On 57th Street" or Clarence Clemons's scene-stealing saxophone turns on "Rosalita (Come Out Tonight)," Springsteen himself is the anchor here for an impeccable full-band rock record rather than being the sole figure of any note. As mentioned above, the spirit here, in general, is one of delirious fun and effortless cool, as befits a truly well-integrated band setup. "The E Street Shuffle" itself resembles a sped-up and more spirited version of "Blinded By The Light" and establishes the party mood in fine form, although some of the energy is drained by the next track, the fairly limp "4th Of July, Asbury Park (Sandy)." Again, the tender love song is another form he would go on to do much better later, but here it struggles to convince and it takes something as incendiary as "Kitty's Back" to win back the listener's attention. It's a truly pyrotechnic and relentless piece of rock, showcasing what is really the only full-blown guitar solo in Springsteen's entire discography and what would be one of the most exciting, compulsive sing-along climaxes ever were it not for the presence of "Rosalita" on the same song. "Wild Billy's Circus Story" is another dip in energy for a piece of slow, meditative storytelling that's again a little unconvincing.

The album's second side is just a succession of one unbeatably brilliant track after another. "Incident On 57th Street" is another mid-tempo song but is rousing enough to keep up the momentum. From its piano-based intro to its chanted finale accompanied by Springsteen's fiery guitar licks, it's a truly affecting piece of music that segues perfectly into one of the most enjoyable songs in all rock music. "Rosalita (Come Out Tonight)" is a breakneck party anthem giving room for Sancious, Federici and Clemons to really let rip while also boasting one of the catchiest, most deliriously joyful choruses of all time. There's also a gloriously cathartic brag from Springsteen as he exults at suddenly being on a journey to rock and roll stardom after struggling to achieve anything as a teenager, joyfully crying "So your daddy says he knows that I don't have any money, well tell him this is his last chance to get his daughter in a fine romance, 'cos the record company, Rosie, just gave me a big advance!" Finally, as the thoughtful, reflective comedown from the dizzy highs of "Rosalita," there's the elegiac beauty of "New York City Serenade," which really demonstrates how good he could be at writing a tender ballad when he put a bit more effort into it than he did with "4th Of July, Asbury Park." David Sancious's lengthy piano introduction is a masterful showcase of his talent, managing classical grandiosity and bluesy frills before Springsteen's own achingly beautiful acoustic guitar kicks in with the main melody and he starts singing a tenderly observed tribute to the lives of down-and-outs in the city. There's a kind of late-night bluesiness and weariness to the song and it makes for the ultimate slow, resigned fading into nothing after the delirious extremes of the music that's led up to it.

With only two duff songs out of seven, it's a remarkably consistent album for such a young and inexperienced artist who only earlier the same year had released an album that felt so muddy and confused in terms of what it was trying to do. Here, Springsteen was in his element and succeeded in delivering music that, in the wake of his later success, would come to be remembered as eternal rock classics. Though it was given a fair amount of critical acclaim, it failed to sell well (its songs, with only a couple of exceptions, are too lengthy for mainstream radio airplay, or to sell well as singles), and Colombia were on the point of dropping Springsteen as he didn't seem to have succeeded in capitalising on the potential Hammond had spotted in him. He needed to write one true hit song in order to prove himself and to really make his name. That song would come a couple of years later and would cement him as one of the true greats, but for those who actually heard this earlier album, it was obvious already how significant he would become.

Track Listing:

All songs written by Bruce Springsteen.

1. The E Street Shuffle

2. 4th Of July, Asbury Park (Sandy)

3. Kitty's Back

4. Wild Billy's Circus Story

5. Incident On 57th Street

6. Rosalita (Come Out Tonight)

7. New York City Serenade