Like many of us, Bruce Springsteen saw to some housekeeping during the pandemic. Unlike many of us, this led to Bruce stumbling upon seven albums he’d recorded between 1983 and 2010 that for one reason or another, he never got around to releasing. In chronological order, the albums are: LA Garage Sessions (1983), Streets of Philadelphia Sessions (1993-94), Somewhere North of Nashville (1995), Inyo (1996-97), Perfect World (mid-1990s to 2000s), Faithless (2005), Twilight Hours (2010). And since they’ve been “found,” Tracks II: The Lost Albums by Bruce Springsteen is finally coming out on Friday to stream or purchase as a limited edition box set. The Sunday Times just spoke with The Boss about everything from politics, to songwriting, to the curious choice of recording seven albums without releasing them until decades later:
‘We all have something eating at us’: Yet you sense, in those small moments when he falls into silence, an inner bleakness he cannot escape, albeit one encased in stoicism. “Yeah, because the artists we love are the artists with something eating at them,” he says, when I put this to him. “Dylan, Sinatra, Hank Williams … What’s bothering these guys? It piques our curiosity because we all have something eating at us, and it feeds into the songwriting. You create a character, you get the detail, you find the part of you in that person … That’s how you breathe life on to the page and into the music.”
To release, or not to release: “I release very carefully. I think about the continuity of the conversation with my audience. The Philadelphia Sessions might not have come out because I had already written three albums about relationships — and a fourth one, particularly as dark as this one, wouldn’t translate. I might have thought other albums were too experimental, too off to the left or the right.
Immigrant stories are human stories: “It started from living in California, being surrounded by Mexican culture, and feeling that this was the future of the United States: multiculturalism,” Springsteen says of Inyo. … “I didn’t have any political point I was trying to make — I was simply trying to make effective character stories. But the subject has come to the fore now.” Whenever immigration debates rage, the stories of the people involved tend to get lost. “That’s all we’ve seen recently, and it’s been disgusting and dehumanising for so many folks who live here in the country,” Springsteen says of the migration crackdown in America. “With these songs, empathy is my intent. I’m trying to get you to walk in somebody else’s shoes.”
America is in her Tragedy Era: “It’s an American tragedy,” he says of the political climate. “We’re living through a terrible moment in history, where Congress has neutered itself and the boundaries that once curtailed this type of leadership have disintegrated.” People generally vote with their wallets, I suggest, which is likely to reduce popular appeal for Trump if global tariffs and tougher immigration laws send inflation surging. “Yes, and the pure incompetence of [the administration] may carry the seeds of its own destruction. But I don’t know what’s going to happen. I haven’t lived through a time like this in my entire life and I’m 75 years old.”
Notes on songwriting: Does the well ever run dry? “All the time. And if that happens I’m just living life, because you don’t know what is nurturing itself in your subconscious until it arrives into awareness. When I’m not writing I’m relatively confident that my inner life is continuing, that something will come … although no artist knows if they’ll ever write a good song again.” Therein lies the torture. “You’ve got to live with that. It’s part of the job.”
“Because you don’t know what is nurturing itself in your subconscious until it arrives into awareness.” I love this! And I’ve definitely told variations of this to myself over the years, in moments of trying to justify my laziness dormant periods. The entire profile is really thoughtful and worth a read in full. Bruce plays it off like it’s no big deal, but it is pretty remarkable that he’s been sitting on seven completed albums for decades. Can you imagine how hard that’s been for his business managers?!
Anyway, no break for The Boss! There’s the Jeremy Allen White-starring biopic, which we got the first trailer for last week. I suppose seven new albums will fill the void until the film’s October release. Plus Bruce and The E Street Band are still on the European leg of their Land of Hope and Dreams Tour. Bruce made the first shows in Manchester, England extra memorable by reading a dried out mango of a president for filth from the stage, a move that earned him praise from Joan Baez to Eddie Vedder. In this article, his description of Congress as having neutered themselves is especially bang on. Keep preaching, Boss!
photos credit: Mike Gray/Avalon, IMAGO/Kevin Estrada/Avalon, Getty