#253 - Bruce Springsteen - The River (1980)

MUSIC HISTORY COMPILED BY ADAM BERNARD:

BACKGROUND – BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN

Bruce Springsteen has released 21 studio albums during a career spanning six decades, most of which feature his backing band, the E Street Band. He is an originator of heartland rock, a genre combining mainstream rock music with poetic and socially conscious lyrics that tell a narrative about working-class American life. Nicknamed "The Boss", he is known for his lyrics and energetic concerts, with performances that can last more than four hours. Often described as cinematic in their scope, Springsteen's lyrics frequently explore highly personal themes such as individual commitment, dissatisfaction and dismay with life in a context of everyday situations. Springsteen's themes include social and political commentary and are rooted in the struggles faced by his own family of origin. 

Bruce Frederick Joseph Springsteen was born in Long Branch, New Jersey, on September 23, 1949. He is of Dutch, Irish, and Italian descent. He grew up Catholic in Freehold, New Jersey. His mother was originally from Brooklyn, worked as a legal secretary, and was the main breadwinner in the family. His father, Douglas Frederick "Dutch" Springsteen (1924–1998), worked various jobs such as a bus driver, and had mental health issues throughout his life, which worsened in his later years. Springsteen has two younger sisters. He attended Catholic school, where he was at odds with the nuns and rebelled against the strictures imposed upon him, though some of his later music reflected a Catholic ethos and included Irish-Catholic hymns with a rock music twist. In a 2012 interview, he explained that it was his Catholic upbringing rather than his political ideology that most influenced his music. He said his faith had given him a "very active spiritual life" but joked that this "made it very difficult sexually" and added "once a Catholic, always a Catholic". He grew up hearing fellow New Jersey singer Frank Sinatra on the radio, and became interested in being a musician at the age of seven when he saw Elvis Presley's performances on The Ed Sullivan Show in 1956 and 1957. Soon after, his mother rented him a guitar for $6 a week. In ninth grade, Springsteen began attending the public High School, but did not fit in there either. A former teacher said he was a "loner who wanted nothing more than to play his guitar". In 1964, Springsteen saw the Beatles' televised appearances on The Ed Sullivan Show. and bought his first guitar for $18.95. Thereafter, he started playing for audiences with a band called the Rogues at local venues. Later that year, his mother took out a loan to buy him a $60 Kent guitar, an act he later memorialized in his song "The Wish". He graduated in 1967, but felt so alienated that he skipped his graduation ceremony He briefly attended Ocean County College, but dropped out. Upon being drafted when he was 19, Springsteen failed the physical examination and avoided service in the Vietnam War because the concussion he had suffered in a motorcycle accident two years prior (and his behavior at induction) reportedly made him unacceptable for service. In the late 1960s, Springsteen performed briefly in a power trio known as Earth, playing in clubs in New Jersey, with one major show New York City. From 1969 through early 1971, Springsteen performed with the band Child, which later changed its name to Steel Mill and included Danny Federici, Vini Lopez, Vinnie Roslin, and later Steve Van Zandt and Robbin Thompson. During this time, they performed regularly at venues on the Jersey Shore, especially The Stone Pony.  

As Springsteen sought to shape a unique and genuine musical and lyrical style, he performed with the bands Dr. Zoom & the Sonic Boom from early-to-mid-1971, the Sundance Blues Band in mid-1971, and the Bruce Springsteen Band from mid-1971 to mid-1972. His prolific songwriting ability included, as his future record label would describe it in early publicity campaigns, "more words in some individual songs than other artists had in whole albums". He brought his skills to the attention of several people who went on to prove influential to his career development, including his new managers who in turn brought him to the attention of Columbia Records talent scout John Hammond. Hammond auditioned Springsteen in May 1972. In October 1972, Springsteen formed a new band for the recording of his debut album, Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J. The band eventually became known as the E Street Band, although the name was not used until September 1974. Springsteen acquired the nickname "The Boss" during this period, since he took on the task of collecting his band's nightly pay and distributing it amongst the band. The nickname also reportedly sprang from games of Monopoly that Springsteen would play with other Jersey Shore musicians. Springsteen released his first two albums,Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J. and The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle in 1973 (January and November); but neither earned him a large audience. He then changed his style and achieved worldwide popularity with Born to Run in 1975. This was followed by Darkness on the Edge of Town (1978) and today's album 

After the solo album Nebraska (1982), he reunited with his E Street Band for Born in the U.S.A. (1984), which became his most commercially successful album and one of the best-selling albums of all time. All seven of its singles reached the top 10 of the Billboard Hot 100, including the title track. Springsteen mostly hired session musicians for the recording of his next three albums, Tunnel of Love (1987), Human Touch (1992), and Lucky Town (1992). He reassembled the E Street Band for Greatest Hits (1995), then recorded the acoustic album The Ghost of Tom Joad (1995) and the EP Blood Brothers (1996). Seven years after releasing The Ghost of Tom Joad—the longest gap between any of his studio albums—Springsteen released The Rising in 2002, which he dedicated to the victims of the 9/11 attacks. He released two more folk albums, Devils & Dust (2005) and We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions (2006), followed by two more albums with the E Street Band: Magic (2007) and Working on a Dream (2009). The next two albums, Wrecking Ball (2012) and High Hopes (2014), topped album charts worldwide. From 2017 to 2018, and again in 2021, Springsteen performed the critically acclaimed one-man show Springsteen on Broadway which saw him perform some of his songs and tell stories from his 2016 autobiography; the album version was released in 2018. He then released the solo album Western Stars (2019), the album Letter to You (2020) with the E Street Band, and a solo cover album Only the Strong Survive in 2022. Letter to You reached No. 2 in the U.S. and made Springsteen the first artist to score a top five album across six consecutive decades.

Listed among the album era's most prominent acts, Springsteen has sold more than 71 million albums in the U.S. and over 140 million worldwide, making him one of the best-selling music artists of all time. He has earned numerous awards, including 20 Grammy Awards, two Golden Globes, an Academy Award, and a Special Tony Award. He was inducted into both the Songwriters Hall of Fame and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1999 by Bono, a favor he returned in 2005. He received the Kennedy Center Honors in 2009, and was named MusiCares person of the year in 2013. The Boss was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by President Obama in 2016, and the National Medal of Arts by President earlier in 2023. He ranked 23rd on Rolling Stone's list of the Greatest Artists of All Time, which described him as being "the embodiment of rock & roll" (just ahead of Jerry Lee Lewis, but right behind U2)

By the late 1970s, Springsteen earned a reputation as a songwriter whose material could provide hits for other bands. Manfred Mann's Earth Bandhad achieved a U.S. No. 1 pop hit with a heavily rearranged version of "Blinded by the Light" in early 1977. Patti Smithreached No. 13 with her version of Springsteen's unreleased "Because the Night" with revised lyrics by Smith in 1978. The Pointer Sistershit No. 2 in 1979 with Springsteen's then unreleased "Fire". Between 1976 and 1978, Springsteen provided four compositions to Southside Johnny & the Asbury Jukes, including "The Fever" and "Hearts of Stone", and collaborated on four more with Steven Van Zandt, producer of their first three albums.Widely regarded as one of the greatest songwriters of all time,Springsteen has been called a "rock 'n' roll poet" who "radiates working-class authenticity.

ALBUM BACKGROUND – THE RIVER

Originally, Springsteen intended The River to be a single album, entitled The Ties That Bind. Springsteen had been working with the E Street Band at his home studio, Telegraph Hill Studios (which was actually a barn at his New Jersey property). By early August, there was an initial cut of 10 songs, and Columbia began to believe they might have a new Springsteen record in time for Christmas 1979. Springsteen signed off on The Ties That Bind, and the tapes were sent off for mastering in October. But when they came back, he suddenly canceled the release, and went back to recording. He later said, "The songs lacked the kind of unity and conceptual intensity I liked my music to have." His manager and co-producer, Jon Landau, suggested that maybe this record needed to be a double album, in order to encompass everything Springsteen was trying to achieve. After another seven months, the sessions came to an end. The River was released on October 17, 1980, with 20 of the 50 songs that had been recorded, which spanned a period of almost 2 years. 

The album was Springsteen's first to go number one on the Billboard Top LPs & Tape chart and spent four weeks at the top of the charts. Since its release, The River has been certified quintuple platinum by the RIAA in the U.S., making it one of his best-selling albums, and his highest certified studio release after Born in the U.S.A. and Born to Run. 

The River included several tracks recorded in 1977. "Independence Day", "Point Blank", "The Ties That Bind", "Ramrod", and "Sherry Darling" were held over from his previous album, Darkness on the Edge of Town, and had been featured on the 1978 tour, as had parts of "Drive All Night" as a long interpolation within "Backstreets". 

At a 2009 concert, Bruce Springsteen spoke about the album, saying: "The River was a record that was sort of the gateway to a lot of my future writing.... It was a record made during a recession—hard times in the States. Its title song is a song I wrote for my brother-in-law and sister. My brother-in-law was in the construction industry, lost his job and had to struggle very hard back in the late '70s, like so many people are doing today. It was a record where I first started to tackle men and women and families and marriage. There were certain songs on it that led to complete records later on: 'The River' sort of went to the writing on Nebraska, 'Stolen Car' went to the writing on Tunnel of Love. Originally it was a single record. I handed it in with just one record and I took it back because I didn't feel it was big enough. I wanted to capture the themes I had been writing about on Darkness. I wanted to keep those characters with me and at the same time added music that made our live shows so much fun and joy for our audience. So in the end, we're gonna take you down to The River tonight." 

The album was followed by a lengthy tour of North America and Western Europe during 1980 and 1981.