Bruce Springsteen - The Minstrel of Otheramerica

Born in Freehold, in southern New Jersey, on September 23, 1949, Bruce Springsteen is undoubtedly one of the central figures of rock over the last thirty years, still able, despite his age and his many albums, if not to amaze, then at least to offer music made from the heart, full of substance and sincerity. His figure is atypical both with respect to the tired mythology of the outcast rock 'n roller given over to drink and drugs, and with respect to the musical fashions that have run alongside him over the years: when Nixonian America was succumbing to its own failure and, disillusioned, watched its dreams rot in the Vietnam quagmire and the Watergate scandal, Springsteen resolutely reaffirmed American faith in the possibility of redemption; when the punk and new wave explosion swept the West with its cargo of rage, nihilistic rebellion and self-destructive ardour, Springsteen embodied the moral values born of the pragmatic, Calvinist struggle against the wilderness three centuries earlier; when the world acclaimed him in fervent search of a new leader to make up for the shortcomings of the Reagan era, the rocker withdrew (temporarily, of course) into his own desolate solitude, becoming a mirror of a society in ruins, despite the confident, vaunted success of the powerful. This is the undeniable historical weight that "the Boss" carried for two decades (the '70s and '80s), giving hope to thousands of the disillusioned and continuing to represent a kind of "light that never goes out". Although he has never been directly entangled in politics, his stories, paradigmatic of social dynamics, have always carried a strong collective dimension.

Bruce Springsteen is the most direct heir of that musical lineage which, starting with Woody Guthrie and passing through the rock'n'roll revolt and Dylan-esque protest, tells the story of America (and, through it, a good part of ourselves) with a revealing simplicity, in which the individual embodies society as a whole. His folk soul, seemingly hidden behind the E-Street Band's powerful electrification, emerges clearly in the acoustic interludes he has given us roughly once a decade (Nebraska in the '80s, The Ghost Of Tom Joad in the '90s and the more recent Devils & Dust); yet a closer look at even his most joyful, communal moments reveals that same melancholy gaze on the dust storm sung by Guthrie, surveying the arid river of the present with a critical eye and the will to improve it.

His attention to the problems of the weaker and more marginalized (which earned him the title of "Working-Class Hero") is certainly due in part to his humble origins: his mother, of Italian descent, was a housewife, and his father, fondly recalled years later in the long intro to "The River" on the triple live album Live 1975-1985, was a bus driver. It seems that Elvis Presley's historic appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show convinced him, while still a young boy, to learn to play guitar; for him, the guitar embodies the authentic cry of rebellion of rock's pioneers (Elvis, Jerry Lee Lewis), representing a powerful chance of redemption and escape from poverty. Years later, now that this dream has so magically come true, we find here one of the main themes of his lyrics, that message of hope always underlying his music, that faith tinged with religious devotion in dreams and in their attainability.

Greenwich Village and the "Born to Run" generation

After playing in various bands throughout the Sixties (moving from garage to blues-rock), in 1971 Bruce Springsteen moved to New York, to the legendary Greenwich Village, where, following in the footsteps of Bob Dylan, he tried to make it as a folk singer-songwriter. Destined to become the legitimate successor to that very Dylan who, from then on (aside from the invective of "Hurricane" and the success of "Desire"), would step aside, abdicating a role as generational voice he'd never really wanted anyway, Springsteen still had to develop a style of his own at that point - something that would only happen in full four years later. In 1972 he managed to land an audition at Columbia Records (coincidentally Bob Dylan's label), thanks to the mediation of Laurel Canyon Productions, the management company run by Mike Appel and Jim Cretecos, with whom he'd signed a management deal (one that would later prove to be a source of trouble). That was it - deal done. A $65,000 contract committing him to ten albums was signed shortly after, amid the enthusiasm of the label's A&R man, John Hammond.

Ten months apart, Springsteen's first two records came out: Greetings From Asbury Park and The Wild, The Innocent & The E-Street Shuffle, both released in 1973.

Greetings From Asbury Park is certainly still a raw work, built almost entirely around a set of folk-hearted songs given an electrified treatment. The title is a tribute to the East Coast town where Bruce had moved as a teenager, where rock'n'roll had been banned back in 1956 as "obscene" music. The extremely short recording time (about a week) and a not-yet-full command of his craft kept the album from breaking through, and public reception was fairly poor (25-30,000 copies sold). Even so, some of the elements that would come to define the "Boss"'s future sound are already present: piano and organ soften the rhythm section, providing a base for the saxophone's take-offs. "Blinded By The Light" and "Lost In The Flood" are definitely the best tracks on the record, and the former would become a number-one hit in 1977. Critical reviews were quite flattering, and seemed to hint at the rocker's bright future ahead.

In September 1973 The Wild, The Innocent & The E-Street Shuffle was released, which commercially met the same lukewarm fate as its predecessor. Musically, though, the progress is undeniable: the blend of jazz and pure rock influences further masks the singer-songwriter's folk roots, backed by an E-Street Band whose line-up wasn't yet definitive, featuring Vini Lopez on drums and David Sancious on keyboards (who actually lived on that very E Street which gave the album and the band their name). The street-level world of suburban reality runs through the record from start to finish, and "Rosalita" would go on to become a live showstopper. But the work still wasn't complete: Columbia was already considering dropping him over the two albums' commercial failure; a line-up overhaul and a further, radical sonic leap were needed.

Crucial help came from the then-editor of "Rolling Stone", Jon Landau, who, after witnessing Springsteen perform at the Harvard Square Theatre in Cambridge, Massachusetts, wrote the now-famous words: "I saw rock and roll future and its name is Bruce Springsteen". Columbia was handed on a silver platter the chance to relaunch the rocker, and Landau, so struck was he, became his personal advisor.

In August 1975 came the record that would send Bruce Springsteen into orbit for good: Born To Run. Roy Bittan and Max Weinberg replaced Sancious and Lopez, Clarence Clemons took his place on saxophone, Steve Van Zandt aka Little Steven joined on guitar, Danny Federici on organ and Garry Tallent on bass. This was the definitive, thunderous E-Street Band, surely one of the finest musical machines in history, especially live. The opening piano notes of "Thunder Road" irrevocably draw you into the atmosphere suspended between hope and nostalgia that defines the whole record. “Well I’m no hero/ That’s understood/ All redemption I can offer, girl/ Is beneath this dirty hood” sings the lover of a woman lost in the pain of frustration, inviting her to take his hand and run out toward the Promised Land. Here is a quintessentially Springsteenian trope: the grayness and weariness of everyday life for every outcast of the working class can be redeemed through the possibility of escape, whether real or imagined, toward a better world. This hope feeds above all on those twilight moments usually caught in the evening, in the company of love or on a deserted road wrapped in a darkness pregnant with promise; that's what happens to the protagonist of "Night" who, worn down by the daily grind, holds on, "Till you're out on a midnight run/ Losing your heart to a beautiful one". Or it's what the two friends in "Backstreets" do, searching for a passage that is real only in their minds, having discovered the unattainability of their dreams and the mediocrity of life, yet who, on the edge of dark backstreets, can still, against all odds, believe they might reach freedom.

The title track is the manifesto of this poetics: “Baby this town rips the bone from your back/ It’s a death trap, its a suicide rap/ We gotta get out while we’re young/ ‘Cause tramps like us, baby we were born to run”. The music strikes right at the heart with its fullness, manages to give shape to the dream, and Bruce drives the song forward with real conviction, giving a glimpse of the fiery live performances that would make him famous. The grandiloquent "Jungleland", at nearly ten minutes long, closes the album in fitting fashion, amid fire, sin and hope, once again romanticizing the lives of street-corner teenagers, lost in dreams of love coiled around Clemons's saxophone or lying in the hopeful weeping of Bittan's piano. That was it: Born To Run reached the Top Ten of the charts, and the tour that followed its release took on the shape of a genuine triumphal march, marked by extremely generous show lengths (the record would be set on December 31, 1980, at the Nassau Coliseum in New York, with a staggering 38 songs played over 4 hours!). Bruce Springsteen now saw the doors open to the success he'd dreamed of as a kid, and, living proof of the truth of the American Dream, became the bearer of that message to the idealess younger generations of the time, lost either in punk's fatalistic nihilism or new wave's depressive existentialism.

Light and Shadow

The incredible, resounding success achieved was, however, followed by a dark period spent dealing with lawyers, which would delay the release of the next record. Mike Appel, irritated by Jon Landau's growing influence over Springsteen's artistic choices, filed a lawsuit that brought all further artistic activity to a halt. Meanwhile, the rocker wrote numerous songs for the new album (some of which were given away, like the well-known "Because The Night", handed to Patti Smith), while some members of the E-Street Band took session-musician work. The dispute was settled in 1977 with a decent settlement for Appel and Landau's official appointment as Springsteen's manager; work resumed, and Darkness On The Edge Of Town was released in June 1978. It's immediately clear that the mood here is different from that of Born To Run: while the latter at times indulged in overblown sonic flourishes and vocal mannerisms, immersed as it was in the whirlwind of adolescent emotions, Darkness On The Edge Of Town marks the rocker's definitive coming-of-age as a songwriter; we see, in rapid succession, unflinching portraits of domestic frustration, adult unhappiness, hidden unresolved fears. Hope, still alive despite everything, seems to have grown more distant, as if filtered through a vision that makes the factory the epicenter of all human misery. "Badlands" opens with that enthusiastic rage and inextinguishable craving for freedom we've come to know so well; the title of this track has nothing to do with Terrence Malick's 1973 film of the same name (which would instead influence the eponymous opening track of Nebraska years later). "Something In The Night" sinks into an abyss of despair ("When we found the things we loved/ They were crushed and dying in the dirt"), "Candy's Room" saddens with its unhappy fate of prostitution, while "Racing In The Street" borders on depression with its spare sound and the inevitability of a merciless fate. The industrial world is portrayed as a metal hell that breaks your back ("Factory") and numbs the soul with routine and exhaustion; the American Dream is a voice emerging from the darkness, still present only in the (fleeting) rides of two lovers ("Prove It All Night") or on a hill, along an imaginary line where "the dreams are found" ("Darkness On The Edge Of Town").

In the summer of 1979 Bruce Springsteen joined the series of concerts organized by Muse (Musicians United for Safe Energy), an anti-nuclear initiative born in the wake of the Three Mile Island accident; once that chapter closed, he released in October 1980 The River, a massive double album that still stands today as his finest work, the summation of his abilities and of the genres he had explored. Musically, the record doesn't offer any remarkable new ideas or further revolutions compared to the sound already honed on Darkness: the working-class losers remain at the heart of his bitter reflections, the very same young people who, in the early albums, once dreamed of love and success out on the streets; the twenty songs making up the record can basically be split into two categories: the more light-hearted, festive ones ("Sherry Darling", the pop-rock of "Hungry Heart", the first Top Ten single, the rock'n'roll of "I'm A Rocker"), and those steeped in suburban misery and the disillusionment of growing up ("The River", "Point Blank", "Stolen Car", "Independence Day"). The Boss seems here to bring together everything he'd done so far, even anticipating the intimate turn of the future Nebraska (the stark, closing "Wreck On The Highway"). Amid folk detours and fifties-style drives in one's own car, street parties and heartbreak, unexplained deaths and inescapable misery, a clear picture emerges of how life shines with irreconcilable contradictions yet is, in the end, still worth living. Closing side two is perhaps the best song Bruce Springsteen ever wrote, the title track "The River", whose river becomes an existential trope, standing for memories and feelings, but above all their haunting of a present steeped in dissatisfaction; the harmonica intones a desperate melody that seizes the heart, and the piano lays down a soft bed on which to pour out one's tears. Worth noting too is the aching "Point Blank" ("Do you still say your prayers little darlin', do you go to bed at night/ Prayin' that tomorrow, everything will be alright") and the night drive of "Drive All Night", still searching for a past irretrievably lost (death, in this case, being the cause). A cycle has now been completed, and once again, while staying true to his own style, Bruce Springsteen chooses a different path, going it alone, without the thunderous E-Street Band, toward shores of unprecedented, endless solitude.

Snow, Global Success and Crisis

In 1980 Ronald Reagan succeeded Jimmy Carter as US president, branding a decade marked by a broad reactionary backlash affecting both the US and, across the Atlantic, Britain (with Margaret Thatcher, the "Iron Lady"). Faced with such a situation, those young people who once ran through the streets full of dreams, only to then discover the dreary monotony of factory life, found themselves even more alone, plunged into a genuine abyss of madness. That's the reason why a figure as famous and instantly recognizable as Bruce Springsteen could decide to release an album as anti-commercial and out of step with the times as Nebraska (September 1982): quite simply, the world around him had changed, and so had his spirit. Recorded alone on a home four-track and actually made up of demos for songs that were meant to later be expanded and polished, the ten tracks on this record embody, with their unfinished quality and their lo-fi aesthetic ante litteram, the very imperfection of an existence in which the light seems to have faded away completely.

The dark, troubled sibling of the far sunnier (especially musically) Born In The Usa, Nebraska represents the other creative peak of the Asbury Park rocker, a cry of pain rising from the hidden depths of the soul, in the company of beloved Bob Dylan and the ghost of Suicide ("Johnny 99" plays like a Frankie Teardrop stripped of the chance to take his own life, the same endless despair, the same lack of any way out of misery). The harmonica sets the pace, backed by guitar and a broken voice; the cold is palpable, the loneliness eternal. "Atlantic City" is a portrait of urban hardship, where unemployment becomes a swamp one can only escape through crime. The "house on the hill" is a place full of nothing but echoes, intangible, desolate, distant memories. No river seems able to water such barren ground. "Highway Patrolman" is another chilling tale of death brought on by poverty, while "Used Cars" is lived through the eyes of a child who, still too young, has already grasped how hard life is for those not blessed with wealth. The impossibility of identifying with the America of the time, so far removed from Springsteen's ideal homeland, is expressed metaphorically as the irretrievable loss of a father, and with him, every point of reference ("My Father's House"). By journey's end, what strikes most is sheer wonder at human beings' stubborn will to live: "Still at the end of every hard earned day/ people find some reason to believe"; what once was motivated hope now appears as a blind, irrational attachment to pain.

No tour followed the album, in keeping with the intimate nature of the songs on it, and in the meantime Steve Van Zandt left the E-Street Band to pursue his solo career, replaced by Nils Lofgren.

Of an entirely different nature, recorded once again with the band, is the follow-up Born In The Usa, released in June 1984, which catapulted the "Boss" into rock music's highest echelon: with over ten million copies sold, the Jersey man found himself rubbing shoulders with global stars such as Prince or Michael Jackson, and needed full-blown stadiums to stage his live shows. Despite accusations of excessive commercialization, the album stays true to its author's poetic spirit, which, musically, gives the sound a more pop-rock polish while still carrying a strong sense of social awareness. The resentment that arose among many fans of early Springsteen stems from the attempt - ultimately unsuccessful - to politically exploit him. The album's release, in fact, coincided with the height of the presidential campaign ahead of the November election: Reagan, riding a wave of broad support and poised for re-election, interpreted the title track that opens the record as a patriotic call to defend national values, and tried to use it as a soundtrack for his own campaign. "America's future [...] rests in the message of hope in the songs of a man so many young Americans admire - New Jersey's own Bruce Springsteen", the incumbent candidate declared, evidently without having read the album's lyrics at all. The response was clear: "It's one of the usual manipulations, and I have to distance myself from the president's kind words". The same refusal met the counter-proposal from the Democratic candidate, Walter Mondale. The Boss's politics don't run through the corridors of power, but through declarations made before crowds, the only ones capable of mobilizing for the common good. It's no coincidence that, beyond his already-mentioned participation in the "No Nuke" initiative in 1979, he lent his voice in 1985 both to "We Are The World" (USA For Africa) and to "Sun City" (the recording initiative organized by his friend Van Zandt against apartheid).

"Got in a little hometown jam so they put a rifle in my hand

The obvious irony of the chorus sums up, beyond any doubt, how Springsteen's attitude toward an America he can no longer recognize himself in has not changed. The misunderstanding on this point, as we've said, stems from an undeniable lack of attention to the song's lyrics and, it must be admitted, to its driving musical arrangement, bombastic and energetic. Springsteen's old heroes — the street kids who grew up into poverty, haunted by memories and on the edge of madness — are all still here; the positive message that has always underpinned every phase of the songwriter's art resurfaces in all its cathartic power. The values worth fighting for in life remain intact: friendship ("Bobby Jean", "No Surrender"), love ("Cover Me", "Dancing In The Dark"), one's own roots ("Hometown"). Musically, the evolution compared to the previous albums is evident: besides a more catchy, pop-rock impact (in line with the muscular hero who would soon go on to conquer stadiums around the world), the synthesizers make their appearance (courtesy of Roy Bittan, who is still on piano as well), and the rhythm section places even greater emphasis on the power of the bass-drums pairing. Clemons's soaring solos, Federici's organ, Van Zandt's rolling guitar (present only on a few tracks) and the notable rock'n'roll incursions all testify to the continuity with earlier periods. What strikes most about Born In The Usa is undoubtedly the melancholy that runs through the record from start to finish, brushing against memorable tracks like the rockabilly of "Working On A Highway" or the sumptuous lament of "I'm Going Down".

Crowning the commercial boom and the triumphant tour that followed the album's release, Bruce Springsteen put out in November 1986 the five-LP, triple-CD set Live 1975-1985, sequencing forty tracks recorded over a memorable decade (to this day his best, and perhaps unrepeatable). The only real flaw in the work lies in the song selection: notable omissions and an excessive reliance on the Born In The Usa setlist weaken the overall result. Still, there's much worth noting, including "The River", with its long spoken intro in which the rocker sketches tender memories of his father, and the full-band versions of "Nebraska" and "Johnny 99". Worth remembering too is the heartfelt declaration of identity that is the cover of "This Land Is Your Land", a tribute to Woody Guthrie, but also a portrait of the "promised land" the songwriter has always believed in.

The times, however, are growing darker, as the following album, Tunnel Of Love, released in October 1987, makes clear: more intimate in tone, and marked by the stormy crisis with his first wife that would lead to divorce the following year. "Ain't Got You", with its folk appeal, opens the record under the sign of a spent, dying love: ""I got the fortunes of heaven in diamonds and gold/[…]But the only thing I ain't got honey I ain't got you". The melancholic "Tougher Than The Rest" continues the exploration of love, never fulfilled and always torn apart ("One Step Up"). In a sense, Springsteen is repeating here what he had already done years earlier, when he followed the sumptuous The River with a suicidal album like Nebraska. Once again there's a retreat into himself, this time in a much more personal and melancholic form (besides the crumbling marriage, think of "Walk Like A Man", addressed to his father), streaked with a pop sensibility we might call crepuscular. The destructive power of the E-Street Band is kept firmly in check; one can already glimpse the path the Boss would try to follow through the arduous, difficult Nineties. The success of Tunnel Of Love, which went on to sell three million copies, looks more like a trailing effect of the popularity built up in previous years than a merit intrinsic to the album itself: a turn toward intimacy and personal reflection is certainly not what the newer fans expect from him. On the ruins of these fallen loves, where loneliness once again becomes an existential metaphor, no bulwark seems able to stand against the wind — not even the American flag that once proudly flew over the stage during the glorious Born In The Usa tour.

The end of his marriage and the breakup of the E-Street Band in 1989 mark the definitive collapse of everything Bruce Springsteen had been up to that point, the beginning of a disorientation that in the Nineties leads him to release only three albums (two of which came out simultaneously and complement each other). America takes an increasingly bellicose path: the Gulf War and the nationalist, conservative politics of Bush Sr. mark the start of a new era, in which the Communist bogeyman (vanished with the fall of the Wall) is replaced by the equally deceptive specter of terrorism. Finding the strength to start over at forty, facing a world different from the one that had nourished his art, seems almost impossible. The rocker marries backing singer Patti Scialfa (a recent addition to the E-Street Band) and devotes himself to domestic calm, waiting for the muse to return to him. But it will take a long time before that happens fully.

The Nineties

The five years of silence following Tunnel Of Love are broken only by the release, in May 1988, of the EP Chimes Of Freedom, containing four tracks including a live version of Dylan's song of the same name. When, in March 1992, we witness the simultaneous release of two albums, the disappointment, sharpened by high expectations, is considerable. Without the E-Street Band's input (only Roy Bittan is present), Bruce Springsteen surrounds himself with skilled session men from various backgrounds (Jeff Porcaro above all) but fails to recreate the old magic, clearly running low on inspiration. Of the two, Human Touch is the one more focused on radio-friendly appeal, which undermines the overall success of the songs. Among them stands out the violent catharsis of "57 Channels (And Nothing On)", in which the Boss lashes out against the vacuous world of media through a gesture as symbolic as it is eloquent (smashing a television set), while the evening poetry of "The Long Goodbye" sounds like a farewell song to the old Bruce. Lucky Town, by contrast, is a less deliberated, more direct work, recorded in a short span of time, but ultimately weighed down by an excessive sonic flatness: none of this, of course, dispels doubts about the author's creative crisis, and both records suffer a significant drop in sales.

At the end of the world tour that followed the two albums, another live album was released, drawn from a concert commissioned by MTV and performed unplugged: In Concert/ Mtv Unplugged (April 1993). The choice of songs favors the recent output and makes the difference in quality compared to past masterpieces like "Atlantic City", "Darkness On The Edge Of Town" and the dreamy "Thunder Road" even more apparent. The next step is the release, in February 1995, of a Greatest Hits, a shrewd move by Columbia designed to capitalize on the sensational commercial success of "Streets of Philadelphia", a song written specifically for Jonathan Demme's film "Philadelphia" (1993), starring Tom Hanks and Denzel Washington. The compilation contains four new songs: "Secret Garden", "Murder Incorporated", "Blood Brothers" and "This Hard Land", and is notable for the unexpected reunion with the E-Street Band (including longtime defector Steve Van Zandt); a two-hour documentary featuring footage from the sessions for the new tracks on Greatest Hits would be included with the 1996 mini-CD "Blood Brothers", made up of various covers and one new song, "Without You".

Showing no temptation to continue his artistic career with his reunited bandmates (at least for a few more years), Springsteen withdraws once again into the bucolic intimacy of his acoustic guitar, recording alone what is his best album of the decade: The Ghost Of Tom Joad (November 1995), which won a Grammy for Best Folk Album of the year. The work shows undeniable similarities with Nebraska: both are albums steeped in loneliness and recorded without a band's support (or almost, since on the new record the instrumental accompaniment, though minimal, is present), both are pervaded by the despair of poverty (as the album's striking cover illustrates well, showing an unrecognizable Springsteen, seen from behind, his back marked by deep scars). Nonetheless, the imperfect perfection of that earlier masterpiece feels distant here; the overly polished arrangements and the repetition of themes already explored are useful mainly to new generations who haven't (yet) encountered its predecessor. Lyrically, though, The Ghost Of Tom Joad does mark a rediscovered quality, managing to string together new stories of everyday poverty with a universal flavor, something the Boss hadn't managed for some time. We meet the ex-convict of "Straight Time", who, having found a factory job, feels the weight of a gray, wretched life and catches the scent of freedom: "Got a cold mind to go tripping cross that thin line/ I'm sick of doin' straight time"; we cross paths with the renewed Bonnie and Clyde of "Highway 29", the rambling man of "The New Timer", the flight toward a new life in "Across The Border". Musically too, the rocker draws heavily here from the American imagination: country and folk are the primary references, dust under one's shoes an inescapable condition. The album's title (and its content) is inspired by John Steinbeck's novel "The Grapes Of Wrath" and John Ford's film of the same name, but also by Woody Guthrie, who in his "Dust Bowl Ballads" had revisited the figure of Tom Joad, writing a two-part ballad about him. The tour that followed the record preserves its atmosphere, playing only small venues and theaters where, before an intimate audience, those desperate songs could be whispered.

Three years after the release of The Ghost Of Tom Joad, in November 1998, Bruce Springsteen released a 4-CD box set titled Tracks, presented as a genuine compendium of his recording career; the collection includes 66 previously unreleased songs spanning the entire history of Springsteen's work, from the legendary early sessions for John Hammond in 1972 to his most recent productions. These are leftover recordings, demos and outtakes of nonetheless remarkably high quality, offering a panoramic view of the evolution of the Boss's sound: from the vitality of the early compositions to the darker intimacy of the later ones, passing through the climax of the period straddling the Eighties and his worldwide success. A true godsend for fans, and a venture that seems motivated more by artistic than commercial reasons. In April of the following year, a shortened version of the quadruple set arrived in stores, the smaller sibling 18 Tracks, perhaps an attempt to give a taste of those atmospheres to those who hadn't had the nerve (or the means) to buy its predecessor; it includes three previously unreleased songs: "The Fever", one of Springsteen's oldest songs, "Trouble River" and "The Promise", performed live since 1978 but only now committed to record.

With the retrospectives out of the way, it's time to look forward, but a few more years would pass before a new album of original material was released; the end of the troubled Nineties is in fact marked by a reunion (this time longer-lasting) with his old E-Street Band bandmates, for a series of concerts that set the United States ablaze and seems to revive the glories of the past. The crowning achievement of the tour is the release of the double album Live In New York City (March 2001), containing tracks recorded during the June 29 and July 1, 2000 concerts at Madison Square Garden. Despite its troubled gestation (it originally began as a companion project for a TV special), the record conveys the ensemble's old firepower, apparently intact (at least live) despite the passing years. Two previously unreleased tracks are included ("American Skin" and "Land Of Hope And Dreams"), in a setlist that finally dips into the Boss's older repertoire, offering among other things an excellent slow, stretched-out version of "The River" and a "Tenth Avenue Freeze Out" with a chill-inducing soul interlude. The most significant moment, though, is certainly the presence of an acoustic "Born In The Usa", which symbolizes the characteristic transformation of the rocker from stadium-rousing frontman to lone balladeer of sorrow.

The rebirth of the new millennium

The partnership with the E-Street Band continues this time, and in the summer of 2002 the reunited group releases its first studio album in over fifteen years, The Rising, sadly inspired by the attack on the Twin Towers, which on September 11, 2001 completely changed the face of the political balance of power. America's reaction to that traumatic event marked a decisive shift in world politics toward the creation of two opposing fronts: the Christian West and the Muslim East. The fear generated by the terrorist attack at the heart of the United States prevented the masses from perceiving the heavy political manipulation behind the attack and the lie underlying every act of preemptive war (first in Afghanistan, then in Iraq). Bruce Springsteen, always a keen observer of his America, seems to be reborn out of this climate of terror, rediscovering a fresh vein of inspiration; the world around him, ever-present in his art, once again demands to be confronted and shaken with the only weapon the rocker has: music. Sonically, The Rising marks a convincing return to the singer's more rock-oriented sound, which even in its most driving moments never loses the melancholic balladeer mood that characterizes his best work. Nothing new or revolutionary, in any case — if anything, the value of the record lies precisely in the kind of reaction it shows in the face of tragedy: no irrational racial hatred, only emotional flashes of lived experience. The opening "Lonesome Day" states unambiguously: "Better ask questions before you shoot", almost as if foreseeing the developments of American politics in the George W. Bush era, the belligerence and the tightening of security measures. For the rest, the album alternates crepuscular ballads with epic rides, which would mark another great live comeback with a stadium tour that would also stop in Italy. The closing "My City Of Ruins", a song written some time before but kept in a drawer, seems to paint today's American landscape, a modern wasteland: “Young men on the corner/ Like scattered leaves/ The boarded up windows/ The empty streets”.

At the end of the tour, expectations for the new album run high, especially given the hope for a second chapter with the reunited E-Street Band. By the end of 2003, however, only a triple Best Of, The Essential Bruce Springsteen, is released, containing alternate and live versions of already-known songs; its release is almost simultaneous with the DVD "Live in Barcelona", which documents the performance given on October 10 of the previous year in the Spanish city and stands as a splendid testament to his live prowess. A year later comes the DVD version of the MTV unplugged concert from November 11, 1992, with six extra tracks compared to the earlier CD edition.

The rocker from Asbury Park, however, is not much inclined to simply please his audience, and in April 2005 he returns with a new acoustic studio album, Devils & Dust. The record follows just a few months after the end of the "Vote for Change Tour", promoted alongside other famous artists including R.E.M. and Pearl Jam, aimed at raising awareness across the United States ahead of the presidential election of November 2, 2004; as its name suggests, the traveling series of concerts was meant to favor the rise of John Kerry, the Democratic candidate running against outgoing president Bush. It is certainly the most overtly political initiative Springsteen has ever promoted, clearly aware that a change in political direction might have brought back closer the America that he and the protagonists of his songs have always carried in their hearts. The effort, as is well known, proves futile, and perhaps it is precisely in the wake of that defeat that the rocker decides to stop and withdraw into solitude once more, his third time in thirty years.

Devils & Dust once again brings back folk and country sounds, with Springsteen, his voice, harmonica and guitar always front and center, accompanied in the distance by light instrumental touches that don't compromise the record's essentialness. Not all the tracks wallow, at least musically, in the desperate loneliness of their predecessors — indeed there are songs with a faster pace ("All The Way Home", "Maria's Bed"), and overall an atmosphere prevails that, despite the dark lyrics, feels more open and less claustrophobic; perhaps this is thanks to a crystalline production that accompanies the journey of a loner through crises of faith ("Jesus Was An Only Son"), premature deaths ("Silver Palomino") and paid sex ("Reno", which earned him his first "Parental Advisory" sticker).

The spring of 2006 again finds the Boss busy with a new album release: We Shall Overcome – The Seeger Sessions, once again firmly anchored to the folk tradition that has always lain latent beneath the electrified surface of his rock past. Thirteen tracks plus two bonus tracks included on the DVD packaged with the album, old-flavored traditionals brought back to life through the touch of a contemporary artist. Recorded in just three one-day sessions, the album shows an expressive urgency devoted to total spontaneity, where the rough edges of a sound that is in some ways primitive and immediate are never smoothed over by any pop intent. The danceable, infectious joy of tracks like opener "Old Dan Tucker" and the irresistible "O Mary Don't You Weep" alternates with the sad but never desperate melancholy of "Eyes On The Prize" and "Mrs. McGrath", the enveloping solemnity of "Shenandoah", and the protest spirit of "Jesse James" (in the version reworked by Woody Guthrie) and "John Henry". A kaleidoscopic mix of country, jazz, bluegrass, folk and gospel that, while adding nothing new, is nonetheless a delight to listen to and magnificently steeped in the dust of the old frontiers.

Also in 2006, the archives yield up a recording of Springsteen's first-ever concert in Europe, from 1975: with the brilliance of a sound polished to a shine by Bob Clearmountain's mix, Hammersmith Odeon, London 1975 is an essential testament to the explosive chemistry unleashed on stage by Springsteen and the E Street Band. Not just any American rocker's concert, but a performance in which the feverish tension coursing through the stage replaces the usual sunniness with a more dramatic, cathartic sense of urgency.

The hope, raised by The Rising, that the reunion with the E Street Band wasn't just an isolated one-off, is finally fulfilled with the release, in the autumn of 2007, of Magic, an album that, despite its skill and experience, betrays a clear drop in inspiration in the writing of the new songs. The solid single "Radio Nowhere", the dreamy "I'll Work For Your Love" and the loping "Last To Die" can't quite hide the flaws of a record that, for all its fine craftsmanship, comes across perhaps as a splendid excuse to launch yet another tour.

The same year also saw the release of Live In Dublin, which only partially manages to document the festive energy of the shows alongside the Session Band, blending folk standards with forays into Springsteen's own catalog.

Galvanized by the dawn of the Obama era, in 2009 Springsteen gives in to the temptation of voicing his own personal inauguration address, little more than a year after his previous album. The bitter sense of betrayal that ran through Magic's reflection on America thus gives way to a rediscovered "I have a dream": but the enthusiasm of dreams alone isn't enough, and Working On A Dream, despite its far-from-coincidental timing with the change of guard at the White House, fails to redeem the dull results of the previous outing with the E Street Band.

Working On A Dream opts to venture into a lyrically expansive pop classicism, taking Elvis Presley and Roy Orbison as its guiding lights. What's missing, though, is that subtle grace capable of saving ambition from tipping over into bombast.

The E Street Band barely stands out, and Brendan O'Brien's production once again flattens every nuance into plastic. It's only when Springsteen strips back down to his bare songwriting craft that real expressive power comes through, as in the farewell of "The Last Carnival", dedicated to the passing of his old bandmate Danny Federici, or in the bonus track "The Wrestler", which had already won a Golden Globe for the soundtrack of Darren Aronofsky's film of the same name.

Time to settle accounts

In 2010, it's the release of The Promise that makes peace with Springsteen's songs: the lost album that was originally meant to come out right after Born To Run. The story is well known: after landing on the covers of "Time" and "Newsweek", between 1976 and 1977 Bruce Springsteen found himself tangled up in a legal dispute with his former manager, Mike Appel, and for a year was barred from setting foot in a recording studio. Not simply a matter of money, Springsteen still insists today, but a fight to gain full control over his own music. Music that, in the meantime, kept pouring out of him without pause: in exile, all the E Street Band needed was a room in a New Jersey farmhouse to rehearse the new songs, in a spirit almost reminiscent of the "Basement Tapes".

Only once a settlement with Appel was reached could Springsteen finally step into Atlantic Studios in New York, alongside Jon Landau. But another year would pass before the release of Darkness On The Edge Of Town: a year of obsessive, almost maniacal work, during which Springsteen ended up with more than seventy songs on his hands. He chose just ten: ten taut, anguished songs, ten chapters of a single story. "It was my samurai record," he recalls: the album where everything was put on the line.

The two discs of The Promise have nothing to do with the kind of leftover-scraps compilations that clutter record store shelves: what they trace out is a genuine portrait of Springsteen's songwriting at its decisive turning point (completing the monumental retrospective began with Tracks). A set of songs united by the pursuit of a leaner, more personal style of writing, one capable of shaking off the cumbersome "new Dylan" label pinned on the young Springsteen.

For those who wore out the bootlegs of these recordings, The Promise is a dream come true: a collection of songs rescued from oblivion that renews the very same epic sweep of Darkness On The Edge Of Town. "When the promise is broken you go on living / But it steals something from down in your soul", Springsteen murmurs amid the orchestration of "The Promise", a sort of counter-melody to the confused hopes of "Thunder Road". Getting to the bottom of the nature of that promise which life, tirelessly, keeps hinting at: that's the real challenge these songs are about. Because believing in the promised land is a thing for men, not dreamers.

It's the winds of the financial crisis that lead Springsteen back to the pride of redemption. In 2012, the American rocker makes his tightest, most resolute record since The Rising, at least among the albums released with the E Street Band after the reunion. It's called Wrecking Ball, and it sets out to recapture the spirit of the Seeger Sessions, pairing their headlong Celtic temperament with a more conventionally pop-rock production. So the Irish roots of the dances in "Shackled And Drawn" and "Death To My Hometown" mix with accents loaded with a "Born In The USA"-style bombast. An injection of testosterone that paradoxically ends up blunting the force of the songs, just as happened on The Rising. The record, as a result, never quite manages to fully realize its potential.

Springsteen, however, finally delivers a song worthy of his own epic stature: it's the title track, "Wrecking Ball", a nostalgic, muscular ode built of youth, rust and dreams. It hardly matters that the song had already come out as a live single back in 2009: its horn-lit crescendo brings everything home, celebrating the history of Giants Stadium, New Jersey's temple of football, just moments before its demolition.

"There's been a kind of theft that has struck at the very idea of America," Springsteen reflects. "There is no America if you tell somebody they can't get on the train." And so here comes the train: a train of saints and sinners, a train of winners and the defeated. It emerges from behind the bend of our gray days, bound for the land of hope and dreams. "Land Of Hope And Dreams" was the song that marked the E Street Band's return in the late Nineties, and it becomes the last chance to hear Clarence Clemons's sax on a record, following Big Man's passing in 2011. It's the closing of the circle, even if the studio version, with its percussion loops, loses something of the fire the song has on stage. A ride that merges with the verses of "People Get Ready", as the cars of that ticketless train roll on by.

As those versed in etymology will tell you, crisis is an ambivalent word: it signals decision, change. The chance to be reborn. That's what the epilogue of "We Are Alive" is about: a sort of Spoon River of the American dream, a funeral band playing the notes of "Ring Of Fire" through the streets of a ghost town. But the town is alive, vibrating with the memory of a people. It carries the voice of those who fought for justice, of those killed for the color of their skin: "Our souls will rise to carry the fire and light the spark/ To fight shoulder to shoulder and heart to heart". An echo that dispels the shadows and calls together those still determined to live. Hard times come and go, Springsteen repeats. The truth of the heart remains forever.

Riding the wave of the usual triumphant shows around the world, in 2014 it's enough for even just a handful of songs recovered from the previous decade's archives to make headlines. But in High Hopes there's a difference: what Springsteen sets out to do is a kind of act of self-revisitation.

The idea took shape during the 2013 Australian tour, when Tom Morello temporarily filled in for Steve Van Zandt in the E Street Band: "Tom and his guitar became my muse," Springsteen states with conviction. So much so that the former Rage Against The Machine guitarist becomes the engine of the project, contributing decisively to the revised and corrected new edition of songs dug out from the back of the drawer.

And here's where things go wrong, because on High Hopes Morello's guitar work sounds hopelessly bolted on, piling up painfully predictable solos that never manage to tap into the soul of Springsteen's songwriting. The most glaring example comes from the electrified reworking of "The Ghost Of Tom Joad", which betrays the stark intensity of the original for a dose of cut-price bombast. The Hendrix-like mirage remains pure pretension, never even matching the force of the cover already recorded by Rage Against The Machine themselves back in the Nineties.

If Wrecking Ball had managed to find a fitting musical dress, High Hopes instead seems to echo the dull-toned rock of Magic. It's no coincidence that the covers work better here, from the soul-rock freshness of the Saints' "Just Like Fire Would" (pure vintage E Street Band) to the litany of Suicide's "Dream Baby Dream", which turns into a crescendo of organ and keyboards already tried and tested during the Devils & Dust tour.

Despite their disparate origins, the songs on High Hopes still show the coherence of a fully-fledged album, especially from a narrative point of view. Once again, it's Springsteen's ability to never give up on the story he wants to tell that keeps the record standing. Even when the storyteller's craft alone isn't enough to redeem the outcome of a work far removed from the form of his best days.

The secret of the hope the album's title refers to is as simple as falling in love, that alchemy of connection capable of sweeping everything away to the festive beat of "Frankie Fell In Love". It's Shakespeare himself who reveals it to his drinking buddy Einstein: no need for calculations, no need to measure, only the look in the eyes counts. "It's just one and one make three/ That's why it's poetry". This time, though, the sum falls short of a passing grade.

Other rearranged outtakes from this album of rearranged outtakes would be collected on the four-track EP American Beauty (2014).

That same year Springsteen also became screenwriter, director and actor for the 10-minute silent short film Hunter Of The Invisible Game, surprisingly restrained and rarefied, a visual translation of Nebraska.

Thirty-five years after The River, the emotional charge of that period of dreams and illusions comes vividly back to life with The Ties That Bind: The River Collection, a box set that celebrates the memory of a poetics rather than of an album; a reminder that there were years, straddling the late Seventies and early Eighties, when Springsteen's pen created without interruption and the E Street Band played damned tight and in sync. Two further CDs enrich the remastered edition of the album: "The River: Single Album" revisits what, originally titled "The Ties That Bind", was intended as the follow-up to Darkness On The Edge Of Town but never saw the light of day; "The River: Outtakes" gathers a feast of tracks left out of the album's final edit.

In 2016, Springsteen published his first autobiography, tellingly titled "Born To Run". It was accompanied by Chapter And Verse (2016), a collection of classics and previously unreleased tracks drawn from his formative years.

For more than a year, between 2017 and 2018, Springsteen staged a kind of theatrical adaptation of the book at Broadway's Walter Kerr Theatre. A double CD, Springsteen On Broadway, was drawn from the shows, alongside a visual counterpart shot by Thom Zimny, released on Netflix at the same time as the record.

The storyteller's first confession, in front of the audience of the small New York theatre, is that the poet is a pretender. "I've never seen the inside of a factory, and it's the only thing I've ever written about," he jokes. The man born to run is someone who ended up living ten minutes from his hometown. Someone who became famous writing about things he admits having no personal experience of. But that's exactly the storyteller's secret: making you live lives that aren't your own.

Springsteen enunciates every syllable clearly, as if wanting to savor its full weight. He switches seamlessly between singing and spoken word, giving free rein to his storytelling streak, forever poised between a smile and reflection.

There's a lot of talk about roots in Springsteen On Broadway. Being children, being parents. The struggle to put yourself in each other's shoes. A hard-won reconciliation from which the album's most intense moment is born, when Springsteen wipes the tears from his eyes to sing a moving "Long Time Comin'". And in his voice, every breath takes on an almost unbearable weight: “If I had one wish in this God forsaken world, kid/ It’d be that your mistakes will be your own/ That your sins will be your own”.

There's none of the inventiveness in reworking the old repertoire that marked the solo tours of The Ghost Of Tom Joad and Devils & Dust. But by baring himself in such an intimate way, Springsteen manages to give the songs a new candor, something able to reach straight to their essence. It's the beating heart of his songs, truer and more alive here, certainly, than in the collective ritual of the big concerts.

At the end of the story, Springsteen borrows the words of a prayer. The simplest of all, the Lord's Prayer. He, the New Jersey kid who grew up "surrounded by God," between the church bell tower and the nuns' convent, finds himself repeating those words mumbled a thousand times in catechism class or a school classroom. Now, though, they carry a different meaning: the experience of life has given them flesh and blood. It's in there, he seems to tell us, that lies the whole point of the story: that "long and noisy prayer" which is our journey as human beings.

Fourteen years after Devils & Dust, in 2019 Springsteen returns with another solo album, Western Stars: it's almost automatic to expect a return to folksinger mode. But this time the direction is different: the album's own presentation makes that clear from the start, pointing to Sixties and Seventies Californian pop as its chief influence. Strings in abundance, blaring horns, twang echoes, countrypolitan languor. Comparisons with the Glen Campbell of "Wichita Lineman" and the Harry Nilsson of "Everybody's Talkin'" abound, for an album more cinematic than ever.

Western Stars finds its balance in its most stripped-down moments, the ones where the arrangements are content to follow the dusty pace of the songs rather than trying to overwhelm it: the crescendo of the title track takes on a Morricone-esque flavor, while the lyricism of "Drive Fast (The Stuntman)" lets itself be guided by the pedal steel. At times the orchestration works as a simple riff (see the hyper-Springsteenian "Tucson Train"), at times it aspires to a more symphonic sweep ("Chasin' Wild Horses" above all).

In the second half of the record, however, the shadow of what Americans call "schmaltz" — that is, sentimentality saturation — starts to loom dangerously: it's hard to describe the larger-than-life grandiosity of "There Goes My Miracle" or "Sundown" in any other way. And even a song like "Stones," which had all the makings of a perfect Tunnel Of Love outtake, ends up sounding overloaded with emphasis.

In the middle, there's also no shortage of the classic E Street Band number ("Sleepy Joe's Café"), which here leaves the impression of a bit of a digression from the context, with its dance of accordion, organ and Tex-Mex horns.

The myth of the frontier looms large over Western Stars right from the cover, with that wild horse and that imposing sky that seem lifted straight from a Cormac McCarthy novel. A great classic of Springsteen's poetics, so much so that "The Wayfarer" winks self-mockingly at the old "born to run" cliché: ⟦Q1⟧

But Springsteen's West, once again, is the borderline of defeat. Actors past their prime, washed-up stuntmen, disgraced songwriters: the protagonists of the parallel lives in Western Stars seem held hostage by their unfulfilled dreams, resigned to the passing of time between a blue pill and a drink in honor of past glories. ⟦Q2⟧, Springsteen whispers over the chiaroscuro arpeggio of "Somewhere North Of Nashville". Only failure manages to flip the perspective, to let us recognize the truth of our own desire: we chased the road our whole lives, but what we were looking for was a home; we sold everything for one good song, but what we wanted was the love we gave in return.

The most intense moment of the record comes at the end, on the bitter caress of "Moonlight Motel": an empty parking lot, a bottle of whiskey, the ghosts of the past. And once again a voice inside, in the dead of night: ⟦Q3⟧. The credits roll, but for anyone who has truly loved, it can never all be in vain. Maybe tomorrow, on the next train, it will be her. The one you thought you'd lost forever.

The jukebox of memory

In the midst of the 2020 pandemic, Springsteen's twentieth album, Letter To You, arrives as a message to fans that breaks through the fourth wall: "It's my first record where the subject is music itself," he admits. "It's about popular music. About being in a rock band, over the course of time." Not just a collection of songs, but the celebration of an entire career: obviously, once again alongside the indestructible E Street Band.

Music haunted by memories and ghosts, by the shadows of bygone days and traveling companions who are no longer here. "Last Man Standing" is, not by chance, the title of the first song written for the record: old photographs with boots and leather jackets, and the awareness of now being the last survivor of that first Jersey Shore band, the Castiles, as brash and precarious as adolescence itself.

Whether it was nostalgia, or the desire to give a gift to his legion of followers: the fact is that this time Springsteen decides to simply be Springsteen. Instead of straining to escape the formula that brought him success (as he more or less did on every studio album from Born In The U.S.A. onward), he resolves to embrace it fully. That's exactly the strength of Letter To You: just Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, proudly out of time and proud to be themselves. No rehearsals, no overdubs, everything recorded together live: four days of work, "and on the fifth day we rested."

It's no surprise, then, that the record sounds in every way like the younger sibling of The River. The jagged, cutting guitars, the stately drums, the lyricism of piano and organ, even the unmistakable trademark sax (with Jake Clemons standing in for his late uncle): everything is exactly where it was left forty years earlier, forged by tireless onstage chemistry. And it works precisely because of that, because it's what Springsteen and his gang do best.

As a seal on the album's backward-looking spirit, the track list even includes a dive into Springsteen's very earliest repertoire: while sorting through archive tapes (apparently destined for a new chapter of "Tracks"), Bruce decided to give a finished form to three of his legendary early-Seventies demos. A surprisingly fitting choice, because the lean, vigorous rework of "Janey Needs A Shooter" (borrowed at the time by Warren Zevon) has a "Darkness On The Edge Of Town" feel that would be worth the price of the whole record on its own. But "Song To Orphans," too, bolstered by a thoroughly Dylanesque drive (harmonica included), holds up well against the original, while "If I Was The Priest" takes on a stride full of Western epic.

Of course, self-referentiality is lurking just around the corner: songs about a band that sets the crowd on fire, written to be played by a band that sets the crowd on fire… "Ghosts" is the meta-song par excellence: a riff straight out of Tom Petty, a chorus made to be sung like an anthem, and lyrics that have the flavor of a self-fulfilling prophecy: "By the end of the set we leave no one alive." The heart of the song, though, lies in the calling together of ghosts: Clarence Clemons, Danny Federici, George Theiss of the Castiles… "I turn up the volume, let the spirits be my guide/ Meet you brother and sister on the other side."

On the other side, on the far bank of the river: Springsteen's letter is perhaps exactly that, a message in a bottle cast toward the unknown land that awaits us. "I'll see you in my dreams, we'll meet again in another land," he promises in the elegy that closes the album. But his is also a message about the bonds we build down here, about a brotherhood that not even death can dissolve. About the home we want for ourselves and for others: a house lit up in the night, like the one he imagines in "House Of A Thousand Guitars," animated by the sound of every guitar of a lifetime. "It's like that gospel song, 'I'm Working On A Building.' It's the house I've been working to build all these years." It's good to find ourselves there, on the road that leads home.

"Soul man." Those are the only two words Bruce Springsteen would want written on his tombstone. It's not (only) a matter of music: "it refers to life, to work, and to the way you face both." Putting your soul into it, we might say. A calling Springsteen learned from the heroes of soul: from the way they gave voice to emotion, from the way they gave themselves without reservation.

It's no surprise, then, to find him in 2022 tackling a collection of soul and R&B covers. If anything, one almost wonders why it hadn't happened sooner, given how many genre classics he's dusted off on stage during his torrential live marathons. After all, as Martin Scorsese once said, the artist's job is to make the audience interested in their own obsessions. And Springsteen's obsession with soul is an integral part of his story.

In Freehold, New Jersey, in the heart of the Sixties, that was the only music capable of bringing everyone together on the dance floor. To capture the lives of kids back then, Springsteen recalls in his autobiography, "you needed a mix of doo-wop's dark, violent romanticism, soul's vigorous realism, and the vague promise of social ascent offered by Motown."

Those are precisely the roots the American songwriter decides to dive back into, holing up after hours in his studio during lockdown to record a collection of covers (both well-known and obscure) with Ron Aniello, producer of his latest albums. "My goal is to let today's audience experience the beauty and joy of that music," he explains, "just as happened to me the very first time I heard it." It's no accident, then, that the opening words of Only The Strong Survive have to do precisely with memory: "I remember…" a female choir repeats over a bed of strings; "I remember my first love…" Springsteen's spoken intro begins after a drum hit. And Jerry Butler's old hit leaves nostalgia behind to launch into a gleaming slice of pop throwback.

No E Street Band this time, aside from the horn section and Soozie Tyrell among the backing vocalists. Springsteen decides to turn the spotlight on his voice: "I wanted to make a record where I just sang. And what better music to work with than the great American songbook of the Sixties and Seventies?" He once believed his voice was his weak point; now, instead, he flaunts all his confidence as a performer, navigating a deeply personal karaoke session. That sense of spontaneity and fun is the strength of Only The Strong Survive: an approach that inevitably recalls the Seeger Sessions, though a certain excess of faithfulness to the originals (and a certain restraint in his delivery) makes the result less dazzling.

The game works best when the mood turns more festive, as in the choruses of "Do I Love You (Indeed I Do)" or the horns of "Any Other Way," straight out of the Stax playbook. It works less well, on the other hand, when the inflections turn more sentimental, from "The Sun Ain't Gonna Shine Anymore" to "What Becomes Of The Brokenhearted." But most of the tracks on Only The Strong Survive flow with lightness, from the luminous touches of Ben E. King's "Don't Play That Song" to the sinuous groove of Tyrone Davis's "Turn Back The Hands Of Time."

In 2025 Springsteen releases the massive Tracks II: The Lost Albums. Following in the footsteps of Dylan's "Bootleg Series" (itself a forerunner of Neil Young's "Archives"), Springsteen had already released, back in 1998, the monumental collection Tracks, drawing on the best of 25 years of outtakes as a prelude to his historic reunion with the E Street Band.

That's why the news of seven unreleased Springsteen albums (a total of 83 tracks…) is the kind that leaves you stunned: is it really possible that so much material was still hiding in those drawers, waiting to be released?

"The albums in this collection didn't fit the narrative of my creative arc," Springsteen explains. "They're all a kind of anomaly." If you're looking for a common thread running through the seven chapters of this Springsteen-ian miscellany, it's probably just that: the search for one's own identity, with all the forks in the road, side streets, and digressions the journey entails.

How do you reach success without losing yourself? How do you face success while staying true to your own soul? And how do you avoid losing, along the way, the bonds that matter most in your life? It's around questions like these that these songs keep turning, starting, not by chance, from one of the most critical moments of Springsteen's career, the one captured in "L.A. Garage Sessions '83."

We're in the aftermath of the release of Nebraska, his great shadow line, and this time Bruce can't simply set off, as usual, on a new tour with his E Street Band buddies. He's bought a house in California, he's crossed America on the road to get there, but at the end of the journey he finds himself alone in front of the mirror. He has half an album already in hand, the rock'n'roll counterpart to the previous one, but he doesn't know if it's really what he wants. And so, in the makeshift recording studio he's set up in the garage, he begins to wander.

That essentialism seeks a new expression — the same one that years later will lead to "Tunnel Of Love" — in which the sober acoustic skeleton is dressed up with keyboards and drum machines, as on the vibrant unease of "Fugitive's Dream." There are characters who seem to have stepped out of some Raymond Carver story, from "Richfield Whistle" to the Dylan-esque tones of "Jim Deer," but at the same time there's also the shadow of a reluctant "Born In The U.S.A.," one that would like to escape its own bombast (the shaky sketch of "My Hometown") but, despite everything, can't quite manage it.

So the lightness of "Don't Back Down" and "Little Girl Like You" ends up coexisting with the intensity of "Sugarland" and "Black Mountain Ballad," without ever finding true cohesion: "L.A. Garage Sessions '83" is the diary of a rite of passage before global success, one that could easily have been included in a box set devoted to its two antithetical twins, Nebraska and Born In The U.S.A.. It's no coincidence that it's also the album with the most already-familiar tracks of the bunch (the ghost of Elvis haunting "Follow That Dream" and "Johnny Bye Bye," the shadow of Vietnam stretching over "Shut Out The Light," right down to the attempt to seize the fleeting moment in "County Fair"). But even just the harrowing fatalism of "The Klansman," with its relentless bass and its wisps of synth, would be enough to make it unmissable.

At this point, however, the question practically asks itself: is "Tracks II" really a collection of "lost albums," or is the slogan just a convenient way to package together a series of more or less disparate outtakes? The answer comes right away with chapter 2, "Streets Of Philadelphia Sessions": yes indeed, "Tracks II" really does contain albums that were already finished and ready to hit record store shelves. And despite its rather plain, descriptive title, this is the most emblematic case of all: the solo album that, in the mid-Nineties, was shelved to make room for the return of the E Street Band.

At the time, Springsteen's image seemed irreparably tarnished, after the uncertainties of the studio ("Human Touch"/"Lucky Town") and the stage (the tour with his notorious other band). The unexpected success of "Streets Of Philadelphia" marked his moment of redemption: it was inevitable that he'd try to follow it up with a full album. In his home studio, Springsteen began working with drum loops (sampled or purpose-built) and keyboard backing, leaving the guitars in the background for once. The result, as he himself has said, is a sound that's "dark and dreamlike," capable of giving shape to a handful of surprisingly inspired songs.

One shouldn't be too misled by the prologue of "Blind Spot," which gives in to the temptation of chasing the trends of the moment: starting with the pronounced rhythm of "Maybe I Don't Know You," the mood of "Streets Of Philadelphia Sessions" grows drier, more intimate, and at the same time more enveloping. The vocals are restrained and pensive, the synths intertwining with Shane Fontayne's electric guitar.

There's a tremor of strings in "Something In The Well," a choral echo in "Secret Garden" (later re-recorded with the E Street Band for the 1995 "Greatest Hits"). But these are songs steeped in solitude, unfolding between the sinuous melody of "We Fell Down" and the chiaroscuro of "Between Heaven And Earth" — nocturnal, brooding songs that, in "Waiting On The End Of The World," seem to want to bring things full circle with the introspection of "Tunnel Of Love".

And so, instead of seeing the light of day as planned in the spring of 1995, one of the most accomplished albums in Springsteen's post-Eighties discography was shelved for thirty years. Tracks II would be worth seeking out for the chance to rediscover it alone.

It's precisely on the goatee-era Springsteen, the Nineties one, that the collection shines its spotlight: what until yesterday seemed like one of his least prolific periods ever turns out to have been running on an underground creative current all along. "Somewhere North Of Nashville" and "Inyo" confirm as much — two albums that complement The Ghost Of Tom Joad and Devils & Dust respectively, and which once again capture a crucial turning point for Springsteen: the search for a voice that could remain credible despite the privilege of success. Springsteen finds that voice in the guise of a storyteller for an America on the margins, the America of migration and inequality, populated by characters wrestling with life just like his antiheroes of old (though now centered in California rather than New Jersey).

By day Springsteen worked on the songs for "Somewhere North Of Nashville," by night on those that would make up The Ghost Of Tom Joad: the idea was a single unified album, but by the end of 1995 the decision was made to release only the material united by the darkest tones. That's why the songs surfacing today are far more varied than the cohesive official album, ranging from the rockabilly of "Repo Man" to the romanticism of "Under A Big Sky". Springsteen reworks a few songs from the "Born In The U.S.A." era in a country vein ("Janey Don't You Lose Heart" and "Stand On It"), and offers a gentle version of Johnny Rivers' "Poor Side Of Town". A few longtime E Street Band members are on hand (Danny Federici, Garry Tallent, Suzie Tyrell), but it's Marty Rifkin's pedal steel that claims center stage — fresh off recording Tom Petty's "Wildflowers" and a future travel companion of Springsteen's in the Seeger Sessions Band.

During the "The Ghost Of Tom Joad" tour, Springsteen kept writing more stories: "Every night in the hotel I kept expanding my repertoire, digging deeper into the new vein I'd discovered." "Inyo" gathers the songs from 1995-1997 that were left out, in which Springsteen's acoustic storytelling focuses mainly on the Mexican side of the border. The title track, dedicated to the California county of the same name, tells how water was brought to Los Angeles at the start of the twentieth century at the expense of farmers and ranchers in the Owens Valley, while "Adelita" draws on the exploits of the soldaderas during the nineteenth-century Mexican-American War. "The Lost Charro" boasts a full-on little mariachi orchestra, while in "Ciudad Juarez" a wistful trumpet shines through.

While the "lost albums" label doesn't quite fit "Somewhere North Of Nashville" and "Inyo" entirely, the other acoustic chapter in the collection, "Faithless," truly stands as an album in its own right. It's the soundtrack Springsteen composed between 2005 and 2006 for a "spiritual western" that never saw the light of day. And it's one of the biggest surprises of Tracks II, revealing a folk-gospel calling previously unheard of from him, made up of wavering choirs, half-whispered prayers, and dusty guitars straight out of "Pat Garrett & Billy The Kid".

The path of spontaneity and roots is the same one that would soon lead to the release of "Seeger Sessions" (just listen to "All God's Children" to believe it), but what's most fascinating about "Faithless" is above all its sense of incompleteness, its unguarded gaze. And Springsteen's voice seems to come from the tormented soul of some Cormac McCarthy character, teetering on the thin edge between good and evil: "I will pray to understand/ I will walk these barren lands," he murmurs over the arpeggios of "My Master's Hand". "I will follow his command/ I'll be the hammer in my master's hand".

And so we arrive at the more sorrowful notes of "Tracks II," with the box set's last two volumes. "Twilight Hours" (the fruit of two separate sessions, between 2010/2011 and 2017/2018) is the flip side of "Western Stars", though it never manages to find the same balance in paying tribute to the great American pop songbook tradition. The guiding spirits here are Burt Bacharach and Roy Orbison, but sentimentality all too often gets the better of Springsteen (there's even a song written for the Harry Potter saga, "I'll Stand By You"...), though "High Sierra" does still deliver a ballad with real cinematic sweep.

As for "Perfect World," Springsteen himself admits the reason for its inclusion: "There was a lot of stuff in this collection, but there wasn't any rock music. And I know I've got rock fans out there..." In short, lacking a rock "lost album," Springsteen apparently decided to cobble together, as an epilogue, a handful of songs recorded here and there between 1994 and 2011... There are the songs co-written with his friend Joe Grushecky ("I'm Not Sleeping," "Idiot's Delight," and "Another Thin Line," all rather bland), a few cameo appearances from the E Street Band and Tom Morello, and the leftovers from "Wrecking Ball" ("If I Could Only Be Your Lover"). But the heartland rock on display in "Perfect World" is rather short of breath, and the only track really worth remembering is "Rain In The River" (actually salvaged from the same sessions as "Streets Of Philadelphia Sessions").

The over five hours of music in this sort of Springsteenian alternate history could never match the treasure trove of wonders found on the original Tracks, but they do allow us to rewrite an important chapter of his trajectory. Bruce himself, after all, admits that the archives are still far from exhausted... The story hasn't finished being told yet.

But the surprises from the archives aren't over yet for Springsteen: in October 2025, coinciding with the theatrical release of the biopic "Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere," comes a box set dedicated to the genesis of Nebraska, Nebraska '82: Expanded Edition.

A map leading back to Nebraska (remastered for the occasion) that passes through three different places: the house Springsteen rented in Colts Neck, New Jersey, after the end of the The River tour, from which the outtakes of the album's original recordings re-emerge, dating to early 1982; New York's Power Station studios, a few months later, with the E Street Band trying to wrest those songs out of their solitude, during the sessions for the legendary "Electric Nebraska"; and finally, the stage of the Count Basie Theatre in Red Bank, New Jersey, where Springsteen once again tackled the album's ten chapters in the spring of 2025.

Among discarded songs, dead ends and roads not taken, the winding path revealed by the archives exalts the unfinished quality of Nebraska more than ever before. Its secret lies in its unpolished edges, in words left unrevised.

Expectations centre above all on the second disc of the box set, the legendary "Electric Nebraska" that fans had fantasised about for over forty years. And the eight tracks finally brought to light offer a glimpse that doesn't disappoint. "A primitive, almost feral rock 'n' roll", is how Springsteen describes it in hindsight. The E Street Band is stripped down to the bone, and on "Born In The U.S.A." the guitar's biting venom and Max Weinberg's relentless drumming burrow under the skin with implacable force.

So what is it, then, that doesn't work in these sessions, to the point of pushing Springsteen back to the bare bones of his original cassette? It becomes clear during the second verse of "Nebraska", when the band tries to step in, a little timidly: that sense of emptiness and stillness which is the very soul of the song, that "spectral, monotone" voice Springsteen heard around him on sleepless nights, is irretrievably lost. To rediscover the voice of his characters, the rockstar had to take a step back.

Bruce Springsteen's music has by now become synonymous with the very epic of rock'n'roll: what makes the seeming ordinariness of his stories of small towns and backroads so grand is the reach for the infinite that animates his characters' hearts. Because the epic is the everyday turned heroic, and the heroic turned everyday. And so human stature is no longer defined by failure and disillusionment, but solely by the grandeur of the promises one aspires to.

Contributions by Alessandro Matarante ("The Ties That Bind"), Michele Saran ("American Beauty", "Hunter Of The Invisible Game"), Gabriele Benzing ("Tracks II")

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