Published on Apr 11, 2005
For his second LP — and second album of 1973 — Bruce
Springsteen met the challenge of taking his music to the next
level. Already evident was the evolutionary process that would
continue through every album to come. Ever-restless and endlessly
ambitious as an artist, Springsteen threw everything but the
kitchen sink into this album and came out with, at an absolute
minimum, an action-packed live show, an anthem for his followers to
sing along to, and a memorable name for his increasingly tight
backing band.
If on
Greetings From Asbury Park Springsteen sounded like a folk
singer with a band behind him, a la Bob Dylan 1965, on
The Wild, The Innocent & The E Street Shuffle he sounds
like a supercharged rhythm and blues frontman with the charisma to
electrify thousands at a time (the phrase “Van Morrison in
hyperdrive” comes to mind…). The newly christened E Street
Band is fully integrated in this set of songs, and slams them home
with giddy authority.
The difference is evident right away as the band launches into
the classic white soul of “The E Street Shuffle,” fueled by David
Sancious’s dated but delicious clavinet (shades of Stevie Wonder)
and Clarence Clemons’ sassy sax work. The slow-building ballad that
follows — “4th of July, Asbury Park (Sandy)” — is where you can
see a bigger change, though. On
Greetings, Springsteen’s characters were all young and wild
and living for the moment. “Sandy” looks beyond the horizon of
tonight into the future, recognizes the way life’s changes often
part young lovers, and brings that realization to bear in a sweet,
prematurely nostalgic song that’s part romantic plea and part
artful goodbye. You can almost hear the transition from teenager to
young man happen between verses.
The rest of the album is more or less a joyride through a
musical funhouse that blends r&b, roots-rock and white soul
into a frothy, exuberant punch. “Kitty’s Back” starts out very Van
Morrison and accelerates into a full-on jam, a musical adventure
anchored in a solid r&b groove. “Wild Billy’s Circus Story” is
one of Springsteen’s early experiments, a cut that opens up in
Dixieland with accordion and tuba leading the way, and later on
finds Springsteen playing mandolin and trying on the country-blues
singing style he would use again on
Nebraska and
Ghost Of Tom Joad.
The biggest advance, though, is that Springsteen has reined in
his initial tendency to overwrite. These songs are full of
evocative images and details, but don’t feel nearly as crowded or
overeager as the material on
Greetings. It’s almost as though the more energy he invested
in the music, the tighter his lyrics became.
Starting out side two of the original album structure, “Incident
on 57th Street” feels like an early blueprint for the
Born To Run album that would follow 18 months later. Opening
with solo piano, Bruce and the band do a steady build through
another narrative of Spanish Johnny, Janey and the rest of the
street rats searching for love, a thrill, a purpose, a way out. “We
may find it out on the street tonight baby / Or we may walk until
the daylight maybe,” sings Bruce, and you can feel a chorus of
“tramps like us” hiding right around the corner as Sancious and
Danny Federici’s terrific piano and organ work lights the way. The
song breaks down and then builds to a brilliant climax featuring a
guitar solo from Springsteen, a gospel chorus and a final breakdown
back to the piano coda…
…that kicks right into one of the highlights of
Springsteen’s four-decade run. “Rosalita (Come Out Tonight)” is a
7:05 rumbling, tumbling, tempo-shifting, tongue-twisting,
break-it-down-and-fire-it-up-again rock and roll thrill ride. It’s
impossible to capture in mere words the sheer volume of energy and
exuberance this one unloads through your speakers. If you aren’t on
your feet by the finish, I can’t help you, and neither can
Bruce.
If “Incident” feels like a blueprint for what was coming next,
the closer “New York City Serenade” feels like the model home
itself. Springsteen takes chance after chance with this song,
throwing in an extended piano intro, strings, melodramatic vocals,
sharp, unexpected tempo shifts and a stunningly expansive
arrangement. The oversized soundscape and musical palette he uses
here points inevitably toward the pinnacle he would reach on the
next album with “Jungleland,” of almost operatic rock and roll,
amped-up soul music with the sweep and ambition of a million-dollar
Broadway finale.
The Wild, The Innocent & The E Street Shuffle is an
album that leaves you drained at the end, spent and smiling, much
like the live shows that Springsteen and the E Streeters put on in
the wake of its release. One of those shows would change the lives
of at least two men who participated: Springsteen himself, and his
future manager/producer Jon Landau, the noted young music critic
who, after catching a show at the Harvard Square Theater, famously
wrote “I saw rock and roll future and its name is Bruce
Springsteen.”
That’s the kind of ecstatic reaction this music inspired in
Bruce’s early followers. For better or worse, that core audience
was about to get much bigger. This wouldn’t be the album that broke
Springsteen, but it surely primed the pump, and stands as one of
his very best.