Published on Apr 8, 2005
In the beginning, there was Bruce, and it was good. Not as good
as it would get, mind you — but, good.
The king of the Jersey shore street rats started out with more
talent than vision, more enthusiasm than discipline. His
roadhouse-rocking, stadium-touring, cause-embracing days were still
far in the future; when this album came out he was just a skinny
kid with an infectious grin and enough nervous energy to fill
notebook after notebook with his rambling, often epic street
poetry. The resulting debut is packed full of moments — some good,
some great and some awkwardly overreaching. He would learn from
them all.
Greetings explodes with artistic ambition, the young
songwriter’s stories tumbling out in a nervous avalanche of
characters, images and scenes. He writes about what he knew at the
time — street scenes that superimposed a kind of
West Side Story urban drama on the decaying Jersey scene he
grew up in. The density of the resulting wordplay is both the most
remarkable element and the biggest barrier here — you’ve got to
wonder how he got through some of these songs live without a
teleprompter!
Several tunes here — particularly the exuberant minor-key
anthems “Blinded By The Light” and “Spirit In The Night” — reflect
Springsteen’s infusion of driving rhythm and blues stylings with
the vision of charismatic figures as diverse as Elvis and Woody
Guthrie. This was a young man who longed to speak to and for an
audience, at first just to excite them, then later also to inspire
them.
The autobiographical “Growin’ Up” is memorable both for the
astuteness of the observations Springsteen — only 22 at the time
— brings to looking back on his teenage years, and for sparkling
lines like “And I swear I found the key to the universe in the
engine of an old parked car.” Its blood brother is the equally
enthusiastic “Does This Bus Stop At 82nd Street?”, a rumbling,
tumbling travelogue full of jam-packed lines like: “Wizard imps and
sweat sock pimps, interstellar mongrel nymphs / Rex said that lady
left him limp. Love’s like that (it is).”
The proceedings turn suddenly serious with “Mary Queen Of
Arkansas,” which hints at
Nebraska,
The Ghost of Tom Joad and related later work in the
Guthriesue desperation of its narrative, set to raw acoustic strums
and harmonica. The edgier, intense “Lost In The Flood” introduces
Springsteen’s flair for narrative drama, which would be refined in
later songs like “Jungleland” and “Racing In The Streets.”
Springsteen — never the world’s smoothest vocalist — is at his
most unschooled here, still learning how to harness the limited
range and rough edges of his voice to advantage, and the
arrangements have a giddy sloppiness that ultimately wears out its
welcome (this was the infancy of the unit that would become the
renowned E Street Band, not yet named such, but represented here by
long-time members Clarence Clemons and Garry Tallent, as well as
short-timers David Sancious and Vini Lopez).
That said, there are some great songs hiding in the weeds of the
jumbled vision and overheated wordplay that characterize this
album. The exhilaration of a raw young talent grasping for
greatness surges through these tunes, and the undercurrent of
longing for purpose found in them would in time personify the arc
of his artistic career. It was good, and great would come along
soon enough.