During a 1978 Darkness On The Edge Of Town Tour stop in LA Bruce reacted to a billboard advertising his latest album by saying that it was “the ugliest thing I’ve seen in my life.” That night Bruce and the E Street Band climbed the billboard and vandalized it.
Bruce Springsteen - Badlands (Live In Phoenix ‘78) [The Promise] (by GneggEntertainment)
ALWAYS RELEVANT
Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band-“Something in the Night”
Whoever decided that it was inherently uncool to love Bruce Springsteen needs to be strapped behind the wheel of a fast American car (though a Nissan also works according to the independent study I’m conducting) at 1 in the morning with Darkness on the Edge of Town being the only music option and 128 decibels being the only acceptable volume.
What I’m trying to say here is that I fucking love Bruce Springsteen.
Did you hear somebody say that it is inherently uncool to love Bruce Springsteen? I didn’t hear anybody say that it is inherently uncool to love Bruce Springsteen.
In fact, I heard that it is inherently cool to fucking love Bruce Springsteen.
For those of you interested—here’s my question and Bruce’s response!
Our Sarah got to meet Bruce at the Sirius XM Radio event last night, and asked him a kick-ass question…
(Who else thought of Christopher Moltisanti from The Sopranos when he started talking about “the arc” of an album?)
(Source: delivermefromnowhere)
In the end, of course, it doesn’t matter what The Promise means to Bruce Springsteen — doesn’t matter beyond trivia. Like all great songs, all great art, it only matters what it means to the person who accepts it. Springsteen did not put The Promise on Darkness, though for a while he played it at clubs. Then he stopped doing that too. By the time he released it in 1999 on 18 Tracks — the first version I first heard — it was a different song, more wistful, less bitter, more sad, less rebellious, all piano. And now, more than 30 years later, Bruce Springsteen releases an album of those songs that he recorded and left by the side of the road while making Darkness. There is the bar song “Rendezvous” and his raw version of “Because The Night” and the upbeat (if disturbing) “Fire” and a remarkable rock version of “Racing In The Streets” that sounds like it belongs on Born To Run (In this version, the car is a Ford, with a 383 — probably a Mercury Marauder Engine from the late 1950s). Springsteen is 61 now and he writes now that these songs are like old friends."
Joe Posnanski, “America’s best baseball writer”, has written a fabulous piece on his blog about what The Promise and Darkness on the Edge of Town mean to him. It’s a really moving and heartwarming personal post, and it’s one of the best things I have ever read about Bruce’s music and the way it touches so many different people’s lives. Don’t miss it.
“Lean”, “angry” and “relentless” are the words Springsteen now uses to describe the feelings and sounds he was trying to capture in the follow-up to Born to Run, the hit album that landed him on the cover of Time and Newsweek and led some to write him off as just another victim of record-company excess. Delayed by a bitter legal battle over his management contract, he finally presented the public with a version of Darkness from which all traces of joy and release had been purged, replaced by a sense of desperation. The claustrophobia of ordinary lives trapped by work and family ties provided his metaphor.
Another great review of The Promise/Darkness on the Edge of Town remaster box set.
As Bruce Springsteen prepared to release the lavish boxed set The Promise: The Darkness on the Edge of Town Story , he sat down with Rolling Stone senior writer Brian Hiatt to look back on the personal trials and artistic struggles that led to his hardest-rocking record ever. To read the full Q&A, check out the new issue of Rolling Stone, on stands and in our online archives on Friday. In the meantime, check out these exclusive audio clips, in which Springsteen opens up on his relationship with his father, his life as “an alienated person by nature” and more.
Click here to listen (or link above to be redirected to the Rolling Stone audio archive)
I became a Bruce Springsteen fan in 1978. One of my all time life regrets/wishes was to see A Darkness show. Even though going then wasn’t a real possibility because I wasn’t aware of the concerts until it was too late. Come Tuesday when the box set The Promise: The Darkness on the Edge of Town Story is released a little of that wish may come true.
My college roommates and I were a bit fanatical way back when. Kind of like those movies where the stalkers keep the closet full of pictures:
I promise we were harmless though.
Our room decor wasn’t much better:
(and no I don’t know what happened to the L.A. Sports Arena poster. Evidently it is a little valuable)
Here we are thinking we were quite savvy to put up those Rolling Stone covers like that. (I’m on the left)
(I think that is Bruce Kool-Aid that we’re drinking.)
So, yes I’m a little excited about the box set release. No one wails like Bruce.
I’ll be on that hill with everything I got
Lives on the line where dreams are found and lost
I’ll be there on time and I’ll pay the cost
For wanting things that can only be found
In the darkness on the edge of town
Thanks for sharing kathy7!
