Leave it to @springsteen to give US the birthday present.... track 10 from #LetterToYou, "Ghosts" is coming on 9/24.



I turn up the volume and let the spirits be my guide

Meet you, brother and sister, on the other side https://t.co/FSHFcuTlYR — Backstreets Magazine (@backstreetsmag) September 23, 2020

- September 23, 2020

LAID DOWN YOUR MONEY? NOW, PLAY YOUR PART

Listening to 1980's "First Time" with "Hungry Heart"

Most recording artists remember hearing themselves on the radio for the first time. Bruce Springsteen reprised a different tale about "Hungry Heart," the first single from The River in 1980: the first time an audience sang it for him. That role reversal was a lead element in the Rolling Stone serial The First Time, where pop culture figures recount significant events. Springsteen initially recalled the River-era first to Jimmy Fallon in a 2012 Tonight Show appearance; with RS he also talks about first hearing the Beatles, Elvis, and Dylan; and later, buying punk and Hank Williams records. "Hungry Heart" wasn't even out when Springsteen hit the road in 1980, and neither was The River. Though the single became something of a signature moment in his performances, it wasn't by design, at least when the tour began: Springsteen played it for the first time in St. Louis, eleven dates in, then not again for another four before it came back for good. Though a Hungry Heart single was in the works, it didnt show up on stage until the tours eleventh concert on October 18, 1980, in St. Louis, MO. Above, a clip of that debut live performance. Hearing embryonic versions now, one gets the sense that something was up: after each cheerful, familiar start, the band would come way down, then Springsteen would try different introductions, from a meditation on inner conflict ("this is… 'Sometimes I think I do, but then again, I think I don't'"), to a sketch of a barroom scene, where the song becomes a patron's tale of woe. With "Hungry Heart" making its way toward Number Five, it would become an every-nighter on world tours behind The River and Born in the U.S.A. In this clip, recorded at the Los Angeles Sports Arena on November 1, 1980, he imagines a barroom conversation as the song begins. Whether prompted by something akin to a cue — one can easily imagine Springsteen gesturing in time with Max Weinberg's snare shot — the moment had arrived in late November, when an audience would fill that space and lay claim to what was theirs anyway. That's what happens when a song makes it into the top ten — or is on its way (see "Born in the U.S.A.," 1984). In this clip, Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band perform "Hungry Heart" at the Rosemont Horizon on November 20, 1980. Springsteen recounts this moment as a "First Time" — hearing his audience take over the song's opening verse. "The entire audience sang it back, and it ended up being an incredible show," says Springsteen now. "And from that point on — this is way pre-internet — people sang it every single night. That was exciting. It was very exciting." If he had been cautious in 1980 about the prospect of a hit single — he was surely aware of the push to Top 40 radio — he gladly stood aside that night in Rosemont, a Chicago suburb. Which musician worth their salt wouldn't want to hear fans packed in an arena sing their song? (also see "Born in the U.S.A.," 1984). By design or accident (or simply the natural course "Hungry Heart" would take), the venue that night, the Rosemont Horizon, played its part: it had notoriously lousy acoustics. Now Allstate Arena, it was, Springsteen says, "one of the most awful-sounding places I've ever been in." Somehow, it had the missing ingredient, and with it, "Hungry Heart" had reached the tipping point. Those echoey acoustics could have created just the right feedback loop, in which Springsteen encouraged a crowd that could really hear themselves — or maybe they did sing at a higher volume in Chicago. A 1984 recording from the same venue captured what sounded like a roar as fans sang their part on "Thunder Road," which had long hinted at the role "Hungry Heart" took on. Though audiences had sung a couplet's worth of "Thunder Road" for years, this recording from July 17, 1984, reveals both the limits of the Rosemont Horizon's acoustics and the power of fans' voices. Why didn't this "First Time" moment happen earlier? We'll never know. A recording from the week before in Baton Rouge reveals its audience was so close, as was Houston's on the first night. The second night, Springsteen played it straight, coming in on the first verse exactly as he does on the record. Then it was on to Chicago, where the arithmetic would change for good on November 20. By the next show, in Largo, Maryland, the new first verse of "Hungry Heart" sounded like what it was and would be forever more: a part of the show.

- September 22, 2020 - Jonathan Pont reporting FIRST TIME HE CROSSED HIS HEART... THAT'S ELSEWHERE

Watch Springsteen share some musical memories with RS

In Jon Blistein's latest installment of their The First Time series, Rolling Stone has Bruce Springsteen recalling numerous firsts: when a song first changed his life; when his audience first sang "Hungry Heart" back to him; when he first heard punk rock, Hank Williams, and Bob Dylan; his first time playing in a band — and it's not the Castiles. Watch below to hear more about The Merchants, and more. - September 21, 2020

A POSTCARD ON SUNDAY

As we await his full Letter, Springsteen in lockdown still feels "as vital as I've ever felt in my life" in RS cover feature

Like many of us, Bruce Springsteen is stuck at home because of the pandemic. But with Letter to You arriving on October 23 — and a raft of projects perhaps not far behind — he's making the most of his time: probably the least surprising thing about today's Brian Hiatt feature in Rolling Stone, a cover story, is that Springsteen has a third album "in the can." A putative follow-up to last year's Western Stars and Letter to You is just one mystery the article touches on. (Springsteen "declined to elaborate" on that unnamed project.) Other topics of Hiatt's feature — for which the Shore native drove to Springsteen's New Jersey farm for a day of conversation, music, and film — are equally familiar, be it the Castiles, or Clarence Clemons, or when he foresees a return to normalcy. For Springsteen, that means playing live with the E Street Band. A tour, he told Hiatt, was due to start in the spring of 2021. Now, Springsteen says, it's looking more like 2022. "I'm going to consider myself lucky if I lose just a year of touring life," he says. Particularly because I feel the band is capable of playing at the very, very, very top, or better than, of its game right now. And I feel as vital as I've ever felt in my life.… It's not being able to do something that is a fundamental life force, something I've lived for since I was 16 years old. Nothing can stand in for the live experience, not even jamming remotely with Dropkick Murphys. "It's always fun," Springsteen says. "But it was very strange to put yourself in a room with a band and then stop. So it's not something I'd want to make a career out of." He's engaging his creativity in other ways: Hiatt's piece echoed Patti Scialfa, who recently described the home studio she shares with Springsteen as a hive of activity (Hiatt doesn't share the unfamiliar title spied atop the top sheet on a music stand). New projects jockey alongside older ones: there's the long-rumored follow-up to Tracks, a supposed collection of both various "lost albums" and individual songs.



Springsteen elaborates on the speed with which Letter to You took shape. One catalyst: skipping the demo-making process. That suggestion came from Roy Bittan and hearkened back to the days when Springsteen would teach the band new compositions by simply playing them on guitar. This time, to remind himself of what he'd written, Springsteen recorded on his iPhone as he went along, going room-to-room in his house to do so. After the title track dropped in mid-September, a few more of the LP's details have emerged, whether the lyrics for "Rainmaker" — which Springsteen reveals he wrote some years ago, bringing instant recalibration to arguments that it was "about" Donald Trump — or "House of a Thousand Guitars," which imagines a rock 'n' roll "heaven on Earth." That stage seems to grow more crowded, which Letter to You doesn't avoid. Springsteen, the last surviving member of his first band, The Castiles, channels that awareness in "Last Man Standing," telling how "You count the names of the missing as you count off time"; he reckons further with mortality in "Ghosts," which Hiatt quotes: I turn up the volume and let the spirits be my guide

Meet you, brother and sister, on the other side A key takeaway from Hiatt's cover story is the resuscitation of the E Street Band sound on Letter to You. Springsteen speaks of self-consciously steering away from the classic sonic chemistry of Born to Run: "from that record onward, I didn't have anybody play that fundamental 'E Street' style. I didn't want to repeat myself." But with Letter to You, Springsteen has allowed himself and the band to steer back. "At one point in the sessions," Hiatt writes, "Springsteen actually told Bittan to play more 'E Street.' 'It makes me chuckle,' says Bittan, "because there were times when he said, 'Don't play it like E Street!'" Springsteen thinks of it like this: "It's just like, 'Hey, what would be creative? What would be fun for the fans? What would we enjoy doing?' It's sort of your own set of rules be damned." He answered that in part by recording contemporary versions of three songs from his earliest years on Columbia Records: "Janey Needs a Shooter," "If I Was the Priest," and "Song to Orphans." (In "The New Timer" we detail the history of each.) Springsteen allays any fears that this kind of retrospection brings with it an air of finality: "I plan to have a long road in front of me.… Some of my recent projects have been kind of summational, but really, for me, it's summational for this stage of my work life. I've got a lot left to do, and I plan to carry on." Much more — on the new material, the state of the Nation, what he's learned from the Black Lives Matter movement, a Zimny-shot Letter to You film, and more — in Hiatt's "Ghosts, Guitars, and the E Street Shuffle: How Bruce Springsteen confronted death, saw Clarence in his dreams, and knocked out a raw and rocking new album with the world's greatest bar band," with photography by Danny Clinch, from the October 2020 Rolling Stone issue no. 1344.

- By the Editors, September 20, 2020

I KNOW SOMEDAY I'LL FIND THE KEY

Archive Series Returns to NJ for third summer '84 Meadowlands release

Over 15 days in August 1984, while Born in the U.S.A. was riding a seven-week spot at #1, Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band played ten shows in New Jersey — an unheard-of arena run at the time — that felt like a victory lap even though the tour was only 19 dates in. Tickets for the Brendan Byrne Arena shows went on sale June 19 and sold out in a day — and this was back when you had to be physically present to buy your tickets. It was only the beginning. The world tour for Born in the U.S.A. would continue for another year. Even so, the Meadowlands run was so important it's fitting that this is its third release in the Archive Series. The first night, August 5, was released back in 2015; the final one, August 20, a legendary show featuring the return of Little Steven and the Miami Horns and an emotional "Drift Away," was released in 2018. This stand coincides with the moment when Bruce broke out from his core audience to a much bigger place in popular culture. Just after the Jersey run, he appeared on the cover of People magazine, clean-shaven and flashing his new pearly whites. He'd caught the biggest wave of his career. We've known that the August 6 show was professionally recorded because of three previous official releases: the searing version of "Trapped" (included on the 1985 We Are the World album); and both "Nebraska" and "No Surrender" (on Springsteen's own Live/1975-85, in 1986). Brendan Byrne Arena August 6, 1984 captures a great example of a summer 1984 show. After a few weeks of set list experimentation, "Born in the U.S.A." became the standard opener. I'm struck by the ambition of the show and how well the band incorporated such diverse new material, including four songs from Nebraska, which was clearly a challenge for an audience ready to rock on a hot August night. Springsteen was still weeks away from having to distance himself from President Reagan (Bruce responded by aligning himself both on stage and off with food banks for the remainder of the tour). But the show conveys a clear message: that all is not right with America, that to be "Born in the U.S.A." is not a call to thoughtless flag-waving. The first set digs deep into the dark side, especially when Bruce introduces songs. The set-up for "Nebraska" — remarks which were not included on Live/1975-85 — sounds prescient about our current machine-driven divisions: "They say that all the new technology and everything are supposed to be bringing the world a whole lot closer to you," Springsteen says, "but it seems like there's more people today that feel isolated from their jobs and isolated from their family and community and government, more and more all the time until… you feel a certain sense of powerlessness sometimes… you just explode." The performance is riveting and bleak; the classic version of Jimmy Cliff's "Trapped" follows like an eruption, having lain waiting under the quiet violence of "Nebraska." The spoken introductions to "My Hometown" are different on the three Brendan Byrne '84 releases, but each involves coming to terms with a home once left behind. On this night, Bruce recalls learning years later that "the monument" in Freehold, where the Castiles posed for their first promo photos [right], honored the Revolutionary War Battle of Monmouth. His story is as relevant as ever, in our time of national reckoning over public statues. Bruce speaks of similar memorials he visited on a pre-tour trip: "I went down to Washington, and I saw the Lincoln Memorial, which is really something to see. Not far from that is the Vietnam Veterans' Memorial…. It got important to me as I got older to know a little more about where I was coming from, and where we all are coming from, before I could understand and see where we're going right now…. Because everything that happens here happens in your name, and in my name, and we all kind of share the responsibility and the shame and the glory." In the second set, the E Street Band just flat-out rocks, and the audience goes crazy. The opening run crackles with definitive versions of "Cadillac Ranch," "Hungry Heart," and "Dancing in the Dark." The band is tight and fast, and Clarence Clemons and Danny Federici weave in and out with just the right flourishes. "Fire" and "Pink Cadillac" sustain the energy and the crowd's interest, even though Bruce hadn't released "Fire" himself (the Pointer Sisters had a big hit with it in 1979, taking it to number two) and "Pink Cadillac" was a B-side. "Bobby Jean" and "Racing in the Street" added a loving, emotional coda to the mostly hijinks-filled second set, with an especially poignant vocal on "Racing." Springsteen has always chosen covers from deep in rock 'n' roll history that thrilled crowds and fit with his own music — and often emphasized a set of ideas. This is on display in excelsis in this show's finale, which features the Rolling Stones' "Street Fighting Man" (its first appearance in the Archives Series) and the medley of the Isley Brothers' "Twist and Shout" tagged with the Contours' "Do You Love Me." You can hear a guy who schooled himself on AM radio, soaking in early-'60s soul and the British invasion to create a rock 'n' roll version of himself, posing in front of the mirror (in his Castiles days, one wonders if Bruce first heard "Do You Love Me" in garage rock versions by the Dave Clark Five or The Kingsmen). "Street Fighting Man," a set regular on the '84 tour, goes a little darker, calling up the memory of the uprisings of 1968 in the U.S. and Europe. The big driving chords are a great fit for the E Street Band (Patti Scialfa really shines here, too). But in an interview for Musician in 1984 conducted just before these Jersey shows, Chet Flippo asked Springsteen if covering the song was a political statement, and Bruce was cautious. "I don't know," Bruce told Flippo, "I like that one line in the song, 'What can a poor boy do but play for a rock and roll band?' It's one of the greatest rock and roll lines of all time. It just seemed right for me to do it. It's just fun. In that spot of the night it just fits in there. It's just so driving, man. After 'Born to Run,' we got to go up. That's the trick. 'Cause it's hard to find songs for our encore. You gotta go up and then you gotta go up again. It has tremendous chord changes, that song." In a presidential election year, right on the verge of taking a more active political stance himself, you can hear Springsteen grapple with the question posed by the song. He ends the show with a cry of "Let freedom ring," which too often got heard as an uncomplicated celebration. Fast forward 36 years to another presidential election year, another summer of "marching, charging feet" and "palace revolution." And wouldn't you know it: the poor boy's still singing in a rock 'n' roll band. Also read: Erik Flannigan's latest nugs.net blog entry, "The Time is Right For a Palace Revolution" - September 18, 2020 - Lauren Onkey reporting

RECAP: VOLUME 12, "SUMMER'S END"

Come lay down in the cool grass with me, let’s watch that summer fade

With an episode called "Summer's End" — not only a general evocation of loss but a shared title with John Prine’s de facto farewell — it felt fair to brace for a wrist-slitter in Volume 12 of From My Home to Yours. In the same way that In the Wee Small Hours and Sings for Only the Lonely ought to come with a warning sticker. And as Bruce cued up the Beach Boys' "Caroline No" to start, that mood felt right on track: Break my heart

I want to go and cry

It's so sad to watch a sweet thing die But the silver lining around a melancholy cloud comes from the fact that Springsteen loves this time of year. A goodbye to summer aches a little less when it's a hello to "locals' summer": E Street Nation, fans, friends, back-to-schoolers, and listeners from coast to coast: welcome to our end-of-summer spectacular! It is always a bittersweet time of year, but it is my favorite season: September and October, locals' summer. Our Shore summer guests have headed home, and the beaches, boardwalks, and sea are ours. A blissful six weeks of summer weather. Dry air, west winds, good waves, and warm fires await. In Sinatra terms, Volume 12 was more "Summer Wind" (today's closing track) than "Angel Eyes" — wistful, no doubt, but also shot through with warm nostalgia, as Bruce maintains his belief that this season holds "perfect days." And the whole thing flew by like painted kites — the shortest episode so far, at just over an hour. Fleeting, like the summer, but laced with "wild, feral magic" from down the Shore. This was a tight, strictly thematic set, with no room for FMHTY mainstays like Bob Dylan or even his own music (sorry, "Girls in Their Summer Clothes"; sorry, anyone who hoped for another Letter to You sneak peek). Springsteen dealt squarely with this time of the season, and he put a finer point on the feeling with an excerpt from Stanley Kunitz's "End of Summer": The end of summer stirs so many conflicting feelings. It's the season whose end is most pronounced. It is truly the end of something wonderful and the beginning of something new. Fall, with its fair days, dry winds, and unknown-ness. Blue poured into summer blue,

A hawk broke from his cloudless tower,

The roof of the silo blazed, and I knew

That part of my life was over. Springsteen spun "one of my favorite Doors songs," some "raw, sexy, late-summer doo-wop" from the Chantels, and "The Green Fields of Summer" by favorite Beantown guest Peter Wolf, sung with Neko Case: "I don't know if you've gotten any of Pete's post-J.Geils records, but they are uniformly brilliant, and I'd hustle to add them to my record collection." "Summer's Kiss" may be a deep cut for many, but for those of us who revere Greg Dulli and the Afghan Whigs, the appearance here of the Black Love climax on Bruce's playlist was a gratifying, fist-pumping coup de grace. It's such a perfect choice for a "Summer's End" playlist… but who knew the Boss would think so, too? Dulli's a Springsteen fan; is it reciprocal? Here it was: "I love the Afghan Whigs," Bruce said. And the selection was even cooler with this introduction connecting three works across centuries: Shakespeare. Othello's last words to Desdemona: I kissed thee ere I killed thee. No way but this,

Killing myself, to die upon a kiss. I think I stole that for "Born to Run." As Dulli sings "Come lay down in the cool grass with me, baby let's watch that summer fade," Vol. 12 is not only a seasonal, chronological follow-up to Vol 8: "Summertime Summertime," but a perfect sequel (the three episodes between notwithstanding) in songs and stories. Springsteen connects songs across the two episodes, answering Vol. 8's answer record with yet another one, to describe what it's like after a day at Manasquan: Man, all I remember was coming home from the beach to my folks' with sand everywhere. Sand in my pants, sand all over the car, sand in all your toys, sand in your ears, sand in your hair! This is the Drifters with "I've Got Sand in My Shoes," which was an answer record by the way, to "Under the Boardwalk," which was an answer record to "Up on the Roof" — a perfect summer triplicate. Dwelling on this time of year — his birthday season, it's worth remembering — Springsteen revisits the "lasting love affair with the desert" he described in Born to Run and Springsteen on Broadway: In 1990, just after my 40th birthday, at the end of summer, my friends and I would motorcycle across the Mojave. I always found something endlessly reassuring and comforting in all the nothingness of the desert. My mind at ease, we'd ride for days on state roads, with nothing but Four Corner desert towns at 100-mile intervals to break our hejira — our travels. With eternity laid out before you, you ride under a sun so blistering you had to cover every inch of exposed skin. With long-sleeve blue-jean shirts, full jeans, gloves, wet bandanas covering our faces, we'd ride til dark and then bunk in roadside motels. Sitting outside of our rooms, nursing beers, rehashing the day's ride, listening to some music. Just there, in the company of smoldering heat and a few other travelers, with their own reasons for being on these deserted back roads. The next morning, you'd watch Air Force jets heading for desert test ranges, leaving six-string vapor trails across the September Mojave sky. We'd bungee our backpacks to our bikes, soak our bandanas in the sink, tie one around your neck, the other around your nose and mouth, fire up some thunder, and ready to go ride straight into the featureless sky. Iain Archer's "Summer Jets" is a stirring, propulsive soundtrack for the moment, the singer-songwriter (Snow Patrol, Tired Pony) "gazing skyward" at those jet trails. Beck, too, in Sea Change mode, provides more aural ache in the form of an instrumental and a track from Morning Phase as Bruce keeps building a mosaic of memories from the same time, other years. The end of summer always felt like a small death. Back to school, locked behind a desk, as the streets were still warm and basking in the freedom of the September summer sun. But come Labor Day, it was as if folks just flipped a switch and seemed determined to deny the late-summer paradise of empty beaches and perfect days, thriving at their most beautifully seductive outside the windows of their offices, factories, and schools. That was something I was never able to do. And these were the days when that loss ached at me: unfinished summer business, lost love affairs, unrequited summer crushes, girls still waiting on quiet corners for summer boyfriends. All this hovered over me like the pungent scent of suntan oil on the tanned, unfamiliar skin of all of those out-of-state girls — who've now returned to school, and Mom and Pop, and chilly days and nights, and who have put you away with all the other townies, in a box labeled, SUMMER. Death becomes literal as Springsteen does indeed fire up the John Prine song that gives this episode its title, in honor of the towering singer-songwriter "who we tragically lost to COVID.… his beautiful 'Summer's End.'" In one of Prine's last recordings, from 2018's The Tree of Forgiveness, he sings: Summer's end's around the bend just flying

The swimming suits are on the line just drying… Just like that ol' house we thought was haunted

Summer's end came faster than we wanted Bruce calls Prine a "national treasure"; he calls Van Morrison "The Maestro." But it's Brian Wilson who's really the patron saint of this episode. From the Pet Sounds opener to a doubleshot of "Think About the Days" into "Summer's Gone" (with "Summer Turns to High," R.E.M.'s "beautiful tribute" to Wilson, in between), Bruce asks, "What would summer be without Brian Wilson?" Beach Boys or no, summer wouldn't be endless. Even Bruce's childhood memories preserve that sense of "part of my life is over" transition, from summer to fall, from outgrown bathing suits to glimpses ("don't look!") of the adult world. By four on the beach, the weekend after Labor Day, there is a thin, drifting coolness in the air. The sun will soon be marking its late-summer season descent over the peaked beach cottages at Manasquan. My sister Ginny and I are wrapped, fully burka-like, in beach towels, changing from our bathing suits into our pajamas for one last feature at the drive-in before the beginning of school and the end of all that is good. My mother is nearby, standing guard as we reach out and hand her sand-filled swimsuits that, as we are growing now, we may never see again. We grab hot dogs and ice cream for dinner at Carlson's Corner. We watch burly men pull in striped bass and fluke off the Manasquan jetty. And we chase each other around the pavilion where today the ghost of my beautiful grandmother sits, enjoying the late-summer ocean breeze. And then, we're all packed in the car heading off to the Shore drive-in. By dusk, Ginny and I are 'neath the arc of the huge screen and the playground below with a dozen or more other kids, holding on to the roundabout until we come uncorked, spinning off in a dizzy trance. Then dusk, and here come the cartoons — classic Daffy Duck and Bugs Bunny — and it's a run back to the car as we hear my dad leaning on the car horn, egging on the main feature. The screen clock starts ticking down, ten minutes for snacks and bathrooms before the show starts, and it's on. Tonight, we'll see just one film — something my parents wanted to see called Blonde in a White Convertible — that has my mother telling us, "Don't look! Don't look!" for certain adult scenes. And then it's an early ride home. About halfway back, on a pitch-black Route 33 — slightly past the recently defunct Cowboy City theme park, where at one time you could see a cheeseball shoot-out on Main Street, any weekend afternoon — a young buck comes bolting out of the wooded Earle Naval Ammunition depot on the right side of the highway and leaps over the hood of the car, its body filling the entire windshield, its left eye shining with blood, animal spirits, and fear. And we are only measurable inches away from eternity. Before he miraculously disappears into the woods, a late-summer spirit on the far side of the highway. The car is in an uproar. We have crossed paths with wild, feral magic. Summer is over. Springsteen returned to the present to wrap with a sayonara to this particular summer of discontent, 2020: "And what a summer it's been. I hope you took your summer pleasures where you could find them, and we'll look forward to a better 2021.… treat yourself to one more late-summer swim, another grilled hamburger and french fries, and if the ice cream man is still running through your neighborhood, pick one up for me: soft vanilla dipped in chocolate, please. As for me, I'm going for an ocean swim right now. "So until we meet again, stay strong, stay smart, stay healthy, stay safe, stay summer… and I'll see you on the beach." Playlist: The Beach Boys - "Caroline No" The Doors - "Summer's Almost Gone" The Chantels - "Summer's Love" [Poetry reading] Stanley Kunitz's "End of Summer" (excerpt) Peter Wolf with Neko Case - "The Green Fields of Summer" Afghan Whigs - "Summer's Kiss" The Motels - "Suddenly Last Summer" The Drifters - "I've Got Sand in My Shoes" Instrumental interlude: Beck - "Phase" Iain Archer - "Summer Jets" R.E.M. - "Summer Turns to High" Instrumental interlude: Beck - "Cycle" Beck - "Morning" John Prine - "Summer's End" Instrumental interlude: Michael Andrews - "A Long Summer Since Passed" Van Morrison - "These Are the Days" The Beach Boys - "Think About the Days" The Beach Boys - "Summer's Gone" Instrumental interlude: San Holo - "One Thing" Instrumental interlude: Lupe Fiasco - "Summer" Frank Sinatra - "Summer Wind" - September 16, 2020 - Christopher Phillips reporting "We should wander around the city and take photos," @Danny_Clinch told @springsteen  how #LetterToYou got its cover image. An in-depth look at a #CentralPark afternoon of weather, light, and creativity from @AmerSongwriter + a look at the #L2U video https://t.co/CuXkoPdh0U — Backstreets Magazine (@backstreetsmag) September 16, 2020

NEED NOT BE PRESENT TO WIN

Whether you'll be in the crowd or not, we're taking questions and requests for Max. Get 'em out by Friday!

If you missed the opportunity to put a question to Max Weinberg for Season 1 of Mighty Max's Monday Memories, here's a second chance. With two socially distanced shows coming up for Max Weinberg's Jukebox, he's taking requests and questions in advance via askmax(at)backstreets.com — and you don't have to be attending the shows in Oceanport, NJ, to play along at home. The Mighty One tells us he'll be taking a good amount of questions and requests from people who aren't attending the concerts, with streaming plans just a little bit down the road. So if you've got any song requests for Max Weinberg's Jukebox, from the scroll below... ...or questions for the Mighty One himself, please send them along with your name and hometown to askmax(at)backstreets.com. Emailing by this Friday will assure we're able to pass along all questions and requests. Also, congralautions to Max's daughter Ali Rogin on the publication of her book, Beat Breast Cancer Like a Boss; she and Max appeared together this afternoon in a virtual launch party and book discussion on Facebook Live, which is now archived so you can watch it here.

- September 15, 2020 - still of Max Weinberg captured from the "Letter to You" video, directed by Thom Zimny with photography by Rob DeMartin New #Vol12 of #FromMyHomeToYours airs this week, as @Springsteen says goodbye to summer with tracks from @JohnPrineMusic @TheBeachBoys @vanmorrison & more. Tune in Wed, 9/16 at 10am on E Street Radio, @SIRIUSXM ch 20 https://t.co/31xq3hM7GD #springsteen pic.twitter.com/Ks3HPelJpr — Backstreets Magazine (@backstreetsmag) September 14, 2020

EVERYBODY RISE UP

By request! In addition to our "Rise Up" crew-neck tee, we'll also be printing a "Rise Up" Women's V-neck tee, on the same soft, lightweight tri-blend fabric. Each of these shirts will be printed in a limited run, based on the number of pre-orders we receive — we'll finalize things this week, in order to print and ship by early October.... so pre-order now to guarantee availability of your size:

We'll be donating a portion of the proceeds of the sale of each shirt to HeadCount, a non-partisan organization that uses the power of music to register voters and promote participation in democracy. Learn more about the 501(c)(3) at headcount.org.

- September 13, 2020



WELCOME TO BOSSTON COLLEGE

BC parent/alum Chris Eidt watches Bruce address the "coronial generation"

Our first-born was nearly four months old the first time my wife and I both together left him for more than two hours. His grandmother came down from New Hampshire, and we took a ten-hour escape to Albany — where we saw our first live show from the Rising tour. That four-month-old is now a freshman at Boston College. After years of indoctrination to Bruce Springsteen's music and a few concerts of his own, it feels fitting that his first extended time away from his parents, his time of growin' up, is in part connected to Bruce.

Last night, two weeks after campus move-in, the university held their First Year Academic Convocation, the official welcome to the newest students. This day for the Boston College community included a noontime Mass of the Holy Spirit, a 470-year tradition among Jesuit academic institutions in which the community gathers to thank God for the gifts of creation and salvation and to seek the guidance and wisdom of the Holy Spirit in the coming year. President Fr. William Leahy S.J., is his homily, talked about the call we are given to "bear lasting fruit to the world" and how being "committed to growing in community meant to not only welcome and value those in our midst but to hold obligation to object to those around us that harm and wound." Engaging in our community and world in this way would come up again on this day.

In the evening, with torches aglow, these young students would normally take their "First Flight" procession through campus that both previews the walk they will take on graduation day and sets the mind to the journey they are beginning, charged to set the world on fire. The destination is the arena — where Eagles play the games — for a keynote address from an author with messages on engaging with the world, developing a habit of discernment, and forming an identity. For otherwise it is as true today as it was in 1985 that "blind faith in your leaders, or anything, will get you killed." And indeed, Bruce Springsteen would be delivering this year's Convocation Address.

This being 2020 and still in the middle of a pandemic, the social engagement side of this event was virtual. First Flight was grounded, and the much-anticipated meeting with the Boss was moved to residence halls to be watched on iPads, computer screens, and TVs. Even the gift of live streaming this event globally seemed to take a little shine off of something uniquely for the BC class of '24. Maybe this is the first lesson in sharing and engagement.

Bruce's gift of communication is not in music alone. While Springsteen on Broadway brought a different level of attention to his storytelling, his skill for delivering a message via spoken word may still be underrated. The lectern is nothing but a different kind of stage, and his ability to paint with words is moving. I am drawn in by the eulogies written to Danny and Clarence, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction of U2, or the 2012 SXSW keynote. And last night, his address to my son and his peers.

Framed by his studio, the tease of guitars and a mixing board in the background, Bruce first noted their common ground, stating, "like you, I am a high school graduate." He shared a regret about not going to college and having to make up his education on his own, imploring the students to make the most of this time in their lives.

"The life of the mind is paramount. The life of the mind is a beautiful thing — along with spiritual life it is the apotheosis of human experience. Take pleasure in your body and your physical life in your youth. Don't waste it, because the aches and pains are coming. But in this place you will not neglect the life of your mind."

He turned part-parent, part-coach, and did the Jesuits proud in teeing up taking advantage of the privilege at hand. "What you are about to embark upon is the greatest adventure of your young life," Springsteen continued. "You can waste it, half-ass your way through it, or you can absorb every minute of what you are experiencing and come out on the other end an individual of expanded vision, of intellectual vigor, of spiritual character and grace fully prepared to meet he world on its own terms."

The second half of the prepared remarks aligned to the Born to Run study guide prepared for the incoming freshman class. Noting that we will soon be looking to them, the "coronial generation," for answers to a better, safer world, Bruce shared his ideas on where to start. He took a walk though finding satisfying work, to immerse yourself into relationships ("to love and let yourself be loved"), to learn to be an informed and engaged citizen, and to heal thyself by "loving your neighbor, your friends, your family, your partner, and yourself."

The conversation on citizenship was more off-study-guide, but it brought the Jesuit ideal of being a man or woman for others to into focus. "Your country needs you: your vision, your energy, your love. Yes, love your country, but never fail to be critical when it comes to your country living up to your and its ideals."

The surprisingly short address clocked in about a minute less than it takes to listen to "Jungleland." More Boss Time followed, though, with a 20-minute, prepared Q&A session of ten questions posed by BC students.

The questions covered topics from the book including passages on the loss of innocence, the legacy of "American Skin (41 Shots)," and finding and holding onto the magic of "1 +1 = 3." Bruce was asked about facing pressure to conform, maintaining confidence ("even today I am a mess of insecurities"), taking risks in music ("I had no other skills and nothing to lose") and the role of faith in musical inspiration ("I consider myself a spiritual songwriter — I write for the soul"), and what he was most proud of ("my relationship with my wife"). The obviously overlooked — or moderated out — question was, will you pick a guitar and play us a song?

There was no-cross promotion this night. It was about and for the students. Yet on the day a Letter to You was announced, it was clear that this time with them was his letter to these students. I think about how many parents in the recent graduation-and-leaving-home cycle wrote their version of this letter (mine was fittingly in the form of a "To Do List") to their son or daughter where we summoned up all our hearts found true in our desire to see them achieve their hopes and dreams.

Last night wasn't just a presentation, it was an intimate exhortation from Bruce to engage and commit that echoes the love we have for our children. Our children, not being treated as children, need to hear that from people other than their parents. Bruce delivered, giving a message of work, commitment, and love to the many but it was received directly and personally. To my son and fellow, much younger, Eagles: Go set the world on fire.

In the archived video below, Springsteen's portion of the 2020 First Year Academic Convocation begins at the 25:50 mark

- September 11, 2020 - Chris Eidt reporting



THE NEW TIMER

Three old songs are new again on Letter to You

Letter to You, Bruce Springsteen's twentieth studio album, arrives as some of its predecessors have: revisiting songs he'd previously recorded, performed, or given away to fellow musicians. Though all spring from new E Street Band sessions, at least three of the album's 12 tracks have a backstory, dating to Bruce's earliest years as a young artist just signing to Columbia Records in the early 1970s.

From "Sherry Darling" and "Independence Day" to "Because the Night," "This Hard Land," and "Long Time Comin'," many Springsteen songs had lives before finding space on a studio recording and emerging in a traditional sense. "Land of Hope and Dreams" and "American Skin (41 Shots)" served as hallmarks of the 1999/2000 Reunion Tour before getting cut in the studio for Wrecking Ball (2012) and High Hopes (2014).

In 1995, when Springsteen reassembled the E Street Band in the studio for Greatest Hits, he came not only with material written for the occasion, but also with several tunes he'd had in his back pocket: "This Hard Land" had been kicking around for more than a decade. The final sequence of Letter to You suggests a similar framework.

In both thought and expression, Letter to You happened very quickly. Springsteen told Martin Scorsese at a May 2019 Netflix event in Los Angeles that he'd been inspired over the course of a couple weeks, by the end of which he'd written "almost an album's worth of material for the [E Street] Band." As he did in the 1995 sessions, Springsteen also revisited older songs when the band convened late last year, this time from further back than ever.

We don't yet know how closely any of the three — "Janey Needs a Shooter," "If I Was the Priest," and "Song For Orphans" — might resemble previously known arrangements. To prepare for their modern E Street renditions, it's worth (re)acquainting ourselves with what has come before.

JANEY NEEDS A SHOOTER

It was a contender, alright: Springsteen considered "Janey Needs a Shooter" to some degree for each record from Greetings From Asbury Park, N.J. through The River. That ubiquity, across eras and arrangements, makes it something of a wild card here. One early '70s take features Springsteen on piano (and was actually cut to acetate at the time, suggesting more serious interest).

A later one, probably from the spring of 1979, finds Springsteen working out the words over an acoustic guitar.

A rocking E Street Band rehearsal intrigues the most, likely recorded in Springsteen's own living room in May of that same year. Its crude sound, captured on a boom box (or something like it), probably isn't sufficient to simply drop on to a studio LP, but it's a clue nonetheless: it sounds nuanced, its parts both in place and practiced.

That rehearsal take intertwines with Warren Zevon, who recorded and released "Jeannie Needs a Shooter" in 1980. Intrigued by Bruce's title, Zevon borrowed it and went on to write what he called a "cowboy song," using neither the storyline nor the melody contained in Springsteen's original. In fact, Zevon's tale on Bad Luck Streak in Dancing School is closer in spirit to classic Americana, like John Phillips' "Me and My Uncle," which became one of the Grateful Dead's most oft-performed numbers.

From different angles, both songwriters aim squarely at the patriarchy. Zevon's is a classic boy-meets-girl tale, which becomes boy-meets-her-father, who happens to be a law man. Springsteen's composition — initially spelled "Janie" — features a different spin, with heroics predicated not on Janie's Old Man, but instead on a series of interlopers — a doctor, a proctor, a mechanic, and a cop (Janey's job Springsteen leaves to the imagination).

Both in melody and verse, the 1973 piano version sounds like the prequel to "Incident on 57th Street," with Spanish Johnny in an aspirational space, telling stories of the men Janie would "turn down like dope" — seeing himself as a protector ("I'm staying here tonight baby, and I won't let you slide"). Turning over the Wild and Innocent, it's a different story when easy money lures him away. Six years later, the 1979 full-band version combines that 57th Street spirit with that of the future River cut "The Price You Pay."

IF I WAS THE PRIEST

Also known as (the more grammatically correct) "If I Were the Priest"

"If I Was the Priest" was one of 12 songs Bruce Springsteen played for John Hammond during his May 3, 1972 audition in New York City, which landed him on Columbia Records shortly thereafter. Five would appear on Greetings, and a quarter-century later, four of the solo acoustic recordings from this very audition reel ("Mary Queen of Arkansas," "It's Hard to be a Saint in the City, "Growin' Up," and "Does This Bus Stop at 82nd Street") would appear on Tracks. While Bruce performed most of these for Hammond on acoustic guitar, he played "Priest" on piano.

Like other compositions Springsteen played that day, such as "Arabian Nights" and "Cowboys of the Sea," "If I Was the Priest" might have gone by the wayside had it not been included in a batch of demos Mike Appel used to shop Springsteen originals to other artists.

These recordings made their way to Intersong Music, a publishing agency in the U.K.; thanks to these "London Publishing Demos," which Bruce recorded in mid-1972, "If I Was the Priest" found a home with Allan Clarke in England. The Hollies singer covered Springsteen's unreleased "If I Was the Priest" for his 1974 self-titled solo album.





Though the swagger at the outset of Springsteen's piano-based demo sounds promising (and prescient of The Rolling Stones' "Loving Cup"), it wasn't a contender for the first LP. There's no mistaking it for more upbeat numbers like "Blinded by the Light" and "Spirit in the Night," which Springsteen wrote at the prompting of label chief Clive Davis, who rejected an initial sequence of Greetings for having "no hits."



A studio version of "If I Was the Priest" was part of a batch of early recordings slated for a gray-market release in the mid-'90s called Prodigal Son; pirate versions of that proposed title emerged, with "Priest" released on Before the Fame. Springsteen appeared in court in the U.K. — in coat and tie, no less — to quash the "official" release and eventually prevailed in retaining his rights.

SONG FOR ORPHANS

Also known over the years as "Song to the Orphans," "Song of the Orphans," et al.

Like "Janey" and "Priest," "Song for Orphans" has a rich history that its obscurity may not suggest. Springsteen performed this one live in 1972 and '73. Tagged back then as a so-called "New Dylan," a 1973 radio performance seems instead to portend something like Neil Young's "Campaigner."

It only took on a Dylanesque feel when Springsteen brought it back in 2005, at the end of the Devils & Dust tour in Trenton, New Jersey (an Archive Series release in 2019). Apparently, Springsteen had heard a bygone version of "Orphans" on Sirius' newly-launched E Street Radio channel, which prompted one of two breakout performances ("I think this is an outtake from Greetings From Asbury Park that's never been released," Springsteen said. "You're not going to know this bastard — then again, some of you just might!")

Widely bootlegged, the song's origins date to 1972, when it was included in the same publishing demos as "If I Was the Priest." Springsteen apparently kept the song in consideration after his first two albums; it appeared on an early song list for Born to Run [pictured above, 1974]. Like "If I Was the Priest," a studio recording of "Song for Orphans" was part of the Prodigal Son material, appearing on The Early Years and other gray-market titles.

How it fits in with contemporary material has us wondering, though the "Song For Orphans" narrative would not feel out of place on Western Stars. Its position in the Letter to You sequence — a denouement, perhaps, before the dream finale — is enticing. Springsteen tends to obsess over the narrative thread an LP weaves from start to finish; penultimate tracks have ranged from "Spirit in the Night" and "Meeting Across the River" to "Dancing in the Dark" to "Hello Sunshine." Stay tuned.

Of course, all this is just history. It remains to be seen how Springsteen has reworked with these slices of juvenilia as he returned to them as a man of 70, rather than an artist in his 20s just starting out — what the modern-day E Street Band brings to them, and how he positions them to tell a new story on Letter to You.

- September 9, 2020 - Jonathan Pont, Christopher Phillips, and Erik Flannigan reporting



SPRINGSTEEN DELIVERS: NEW ALBUM IS OFFICIAL!

Recorded with the E Street Band, Letter to You arrives October 23

It's a red-letter day. A Shore Fire Media announcement has confirmed that a new Bruce Springsteen studio album, his 20th, is just around the corner: Letter to You is scheduled for October 23 from Columbia Records, on vinyl and CD.

The announcement comes accompanied by a first listen, via a video for the title track:

Along with the sound of the single, this morning's press release differentiates the forthcoming album immediately from Western Stars, headlining Letter to You as a "rock album featuring the E Street Band" and later describing it as a "rock album fueled by the band's heart-stopping, house-rocking signature sound."

Springsteen co-produced the 12-track Letter to You with Ron Aniello, recording at Springsteen's home studio in New Jersey in late 2019 — meaning pre-quarantine, and the band did indeed record together as a unit, harkening back to sessions for The River and Born in the U.S.A. In fact, as Bruce tells it, this is the "livest" they've ever been in the studio:

"I love the sound of the E Street Band playing completely live in the studio, in a way we've never done before, and with no overdubs," Springsteen says. "We made the album in only five days, and it turned out to be one of the greatest recording experiences I’ve ever had."

For the five-day session, Springsteen reconvened Roy Bittan, Nils Lofgren, Patti Scialfa, Garry Tallent, Stevie Van Zandt, Max Weinberg, Charlie Giordano and Jake Clemons.

"I love the emotional nature of Letter to You,” says Springsteen. And while we don't know precisely the story it will tell, song titles suggest that the artist is taking stock and looking back over his 50-year career — especially given that three of the songs date back to its beginning. As the press release states, "Letter to You includes nine recently written Springsteen songs, as well as new recordings of three of his legendary, but previously unreleased, compositions from the 1970s, 'Janey Needs a Shooter,' 'If I Was the Priest,' and 'Song for Orphans.'"

1. One Minute You're Here

2. Letter to You

3. Burnin' Train

4. Janey Needs a Shooter

5. Last Man Standing

6. The Power of Prayer

7. House of a Thousand Guitars

8. Rainmaker

9. If I Was the Priest

10. Ghosts

11. Song for Orphans

12. I’ll See You in My Dreams

Letter to You was mixed by Bob Clearmountain and mastered by Bob Ludwig. The album's cover photo was taken in 2018 by Danny Clinch, at Central Park West and 72nd Street in NYC, near where Springsteen was staying during his Springsteen on Broadway run.

We'll have pre-ordering information available soon for the album; for those who dug such recent Backstreet Records exclusives as the Springsteen on Broadway pin and Western Stars bandana, we're working to nail down another exclusive item for our readers.

Also watch this space for more information on those three songs that date back to the 1970s — though as for precisely how they fit in with the newer tracks on Letter to You, we'll all be waiting until October for that.

- September 10, 2020 - photograph by Danny Clinch

These troubled times call for a rising. Limited run of this new Backstreets T-shirt will print ASAP pre-order now to guarantee your size, from XS to 3X. Well be donating a portion of the proceeds to @HeadCountOrg. https://t.co/daAMN48glL #Springsteen #RiseUp #TheFutureIsVoting pic.twitter.com/FXao6YIcF6 — Backstreets Magazine (@backstreetsmag) September 9, 2020



ANY REQUESTS FOR MAX WEINBERG'S JUKEBOX? ASK MAX!

The Count Basie Center for the Arts has a new outdoor and socially-distanced concert series, and later this month Max Weinberg will play two of their "Concerts in the Garden." Max brings his Jukebox band to the Blue Grotto in Monmouth Park, Oceanport, NJ, on September 24 and 25 (tickets via Ticketmaster with more info here).

One of the hallmarks of any Max Weinberg show — especially Max Weinberg's Jukebox — is his interaction with the crowd, from taking questions to playing song requests. But with new distancing rules in place to keep concertgoers and performers safe, what's a bandleader to do?

"I'm calling it 'Distant Socializing,' as all safety protocols are in place," says Max. "Widely spaced tables, masks, sanitizing stations, the works. But I will still be taking song requests and questions — the same way we did it for Mighty Max’s Monday Memories."

Below we're posting the song scroll that Max plays at his Jukebox shows for fans in the crowd to pick what they want to hear. This time, fans will help create the setlist in advance.

If you'll be attending the Blu Grotto concerts, take a look at this repertoire of more than 200 classics, and send your request to askmax(at)backstreets.com — we'll pass on all requests to the Mighty One before the shows.

We originally set up that email address for Mighty Max's Monday Memories, the virtual Q&A series Max started in the spring to help keep us all entertained during lockdown, answering questions from Backstreets readers around the globe. If you missed any of its five episodes, we highly recommend you spend some time with MMMM on his YouTube or Instagram accounts.

Though Max wrapped up Season 1 in June, his intention has been to return to the format somehow — and the upcoming concerts will give him another chance to answer more questions. So you can send song requests and/or questions for Max to askmax(at)backstreets.com — please include your name and hometown, too, and we'll make sure he receives them!

- September 9, 2020

On @YouTube as well: Bruce Springsteen will address Boston College students this week. Here's how to watch. https://t.co/QTKdvGiQZE via @BostonDotCom — Backstreets Magazine (@backstreetsmag) September 8, 2020

A LUST SO FINE: HAPPY 5th TO JESSE JACKSON'S PODCAST

Ask a tramp like us what they miss the most about the lack of concerts this year, and one of the answers you'll most certainly hear is: connection.

The excitement of seeing our favorite band make music on the spot is certainly a main draw, but there's something about being in the presence of thousands of fellow fans united by a common interest that heightens the experience.

Our social networks (the real kind) are filled with people we've met at shows, and every concert is both a family reunion and expansion. In these COVID days, we miss that connection. We have online networks like BTX and Facebook, of course, but text-based messages can't match the fidelity of those in-person relationships.

But there's at least one place where deep fan connections still happen, forged and fostered by podcaster Jesse Jackson. Jesse's podcast Set Lusting Bruce (a play on the obsessive fan's never-ending chase for the elusive rarities) celebrates its fifth anniversary today, continuing a long string of conversations with Springsteen fans sharing their stories, experiences, and why Bruce Springsteen matters to them.



Set Lusting Bruce host Jesse Jackson

Music podcasts are a pretty well-trod genre, and even a search for Springsteen podcasts will turn up more than a handful. Several are worthwhile; SLB has a claim to being the first, and it is unique in Jesse's insistence on keeping the focus on the fan rather than the artist.

The inspiration for SLB came after Jesse, already a veteran pop culture podcaster with series on Doctor Who and Game of Thrones, did a guest-host stint on an a podcast called Eighties Retro Overdrive published by Southgate Media Group, focusing on Bruce Springsteen's albums of the 1980s. After the episode, Jesse mused to SMG co-founder Rob Southgate that he was considering starting a Springsteen-focused podcast inspired by the film Springsteen & I.

The idea of an ongoing podcast series focusing exclusively on fan stories might have sounded dubious to some, but Rob had a firm belief that if you're passionate about something, you should podcast about it. So was born Set Lusting Bruce, and in an era where most podcasts don't last more than ten episodes and a few months, five years and almost 600 episodes later, it's still going strong.

SLB's reach has grown considerably in those five years, but as Jesse notes, listeners aren't the focus of his quest. "I just want to talk to interesting people."

And he certainly does: Jesse's guests span a wide spectrum from well-known superfans like Stan Goldstein and Dan French to fans more notable for their day jobs, like famed comic book writer Ron Marz and The Simpsons showrunner Mike Scully. His latest episode features actress Maureen Van Zandt, who of course has a uniquely up-close-and-personal perspective to share.

But Jesse's favorite guests are often the ones with deeply personal stories of how Bruce's music helped them or their loved ones face life's challenges, like Tom French, whose prematurely born daughter survived with the help of Bruce's music, or J'aimee Brooker, who used Bruce's music to help her disabled son learn to communicate.

Jesse believes every fan has a story, and he's learned over the course of the series how to elicit them, almost always starting conversations by asking about what kind of music filled guests' household while they were growing up, and usually ending by asking "Is there anything I didn't ask you that I should have?" Jesse learned the importance of that last one after he wrapped an episode, thanked his guest, and the guest replied (after the recording had stopped), "sometime I should tell you about how I got drunk with the E Street Band!"

And then there's the "Mary question," sure to elicit thought-provoking responses from Springsteen fans (you'll have to listen to an episode to see why).

In recent months, Set Lusting Bruce has gone further afield with its guests and topics, slowly morphing from a podcast about Springsteen fans to a podcast about music fans, where the host just so happen to be especially into Bruce.

"My bread and butter are talking to Springsteen fans, but I like meeting people who are passionate about a topic," Jesse explains, and since his focus is on the fan, the conversation often follows the guest's passion from Bruce to wherever it may lead. "When you blog or podcast, you publish for an audience of one. I'm having good conversations, and I hope my listeners are enjoying them."

When asked how long he envisions the series running, Jesse replied, "I've thought about that… how much is this is about I want people to hear, and how much is me just enjoying doing it?" Sometimes the effort and energy required gets to him, "but then there's that great conversation where an hour and a half flies by, and it feels like we're just getting started. It's worth it for that. As long as my wife will put up with me, and as long as I'm enjoying it, I don't plan on ending anytime soon."

Jesse admits to finding it more challenging these days to find new people to talk to, however. "I'm petrified that I'm going to reach the point where I don't have anyone scheduled and don't have any episodes in the can, and oh my god, what am I going to put out next week?"

As a former guest myself, I can vouch for the ease, comfort, and natural flow that Jesse ensures each and every guest experiences. He even once accommodated a guest who was self-conscious about her English secondary-language skills by sending her his questions in advance, allowing her to record her answers, and then weaving her responses with his own to produce a remarkably natural sounding conversation.

So if you've got a story to tell and you're missing those rich conversations between passionate Springsteen fans, Jesse's got a slot on his schedule reserved just for you. Reach out to him at setlustingbruce(at)gmail.com. To subscribe, simply go to your favorite podcast player and choose the Subscribe option.

Happy fifth anniversary, SLB, and here's to the next five years!

- September 8, 2020 - Ken Rosen reporting - visit Ken's blog at estreetshuffle.com



BOSTON COLLEGE GOES BACK TO SCHOOL WITH THE BOSS

Bruce Springsteen to address First Year BC students this week

Boston College announced in April that the common reading for incoming freshmen of the Class of 2024 is Bruce Springsteen's autobiography, Born to Run. In July the students received a copy of the book, and a detailed reading guide frames how to approach the text both as the story of Springsteen's life as well as inspiration for students "to reflect on their own story."

This is far from the first time that Bruce has made it to a college curriculum. I have been teaching "Springsteen's American Vision" for 15 years, and there are dozens of other courses that focus on various elements of Bruce's work, whether religion, social class, gender, region, or the history of rock 'n' roll.

This is not a college course, however, but a welcoming — an invitation to cultivate, with their new community, habits of intellect and discernment. Students are not required to listen to the music, watch the live performances, read the interviews, or engage the scholarly literature. And truth be told, they likely do not know much of Bruce's work. (At Rutgers, where I teach, students take my course because their parents raised them as fans, and it's New Jersey.)

Boston College, a Jesuit institution, did not choose the book because Springsteen is a world-renowned, iconic musician and public figure (nor because his son Evan graduated from there in 2012). They selected it because his autobiography has already taken its place as a master work of literature that invites reflection on our own journey and how our understanding of it shapes who we are today and how we engage the world.

That last piece is critical to Jesuit education, and it is essential to Bruce's story as the autobiography probes the realms of "work, faith, family" and how Springsteen's adult understanding of his past shapes his present and future.

Born to Run is nothing if not the story of Bruce's growth. It is a work that offers remarkable access to his inner life. Students at Boston College may find the material on religion especially pertinent as Bruce discusses both his estrangement from Catholicism and its lasting hold over him.

He also discusses his bouts with depression and anxiety and admits to seeing a psychiatrist. I hope these passages give struggling students comfort. If Bruce Springsteen still suffers, perhaps they will see their own problems as unexceptional and manageable.

The irony of a community college drop-out composing a lyrical work that is now required reading at college is likely not lost on anyone (including Bruce, one imagines). This is perhaps the greatest gift that reading Born to Run offers: testimony to the power of education.

Bruce hated school and grew up in a house devoid of books, yet he chose to devour literature and film and remade himself into an intellectual. That noun has lost favor, yet it is something of which to be proud, a person who engages ideas and thinks critically.

Bruce name drops Willy Loman and Starbuck in Born to Run, and I hope students at Boston College are encouraged to read Death of a Salesman and Moby-Dick, the works where these characters come to life, and hundreds of other books as well. That is the reason to go to college: not to find a vocation, but to get an education.

The reading guide opens with the question, "Why Read a Book?" In the age of Snapchat and Instagram, an age of dwindling attention spans, reading a book may seem like a staggering task. A book, however, is the best way to get outside oneself, to think about others and in doing so reflect on ourselves.

I only wish, in addition to the reading guide, Boston College provided a listening guide. I hope students take the time to play Springsteen's music. At a minimum, they should blast the track that gives the autobiography its title.

When they do, they will doubtless relate to a protagonist who is trying to cope with the "runaway American dream," just as these students begin their journey and try to figure out their path.

They will also learn that both autobiography and song are about the search for love. That is the eternal message of Springsteen's life and work: "love is wild, love is real."

Having read the book, students at Boston College will receive an additional treat: this Thursday, September 10, Bruce will virtually address the class of 2024 at its First Year Academic Convocation. He no doubt will continue to tell his story and offer words of inspiration for these dark and difficult days. Hopefully, he will also bring his guitar.

Boston College is making a public stream available of Springsteen's address, via bc.edu on September 10 at 7pm. You can also download BC's associated reading guide for Born to Run from bc.edu 9/8 Update: as Boston.com reports, the 2020 First Year Acaemdic Convocation with Bruce Springsteen will also stream live on YouTube.

- September 7, 2020 - Louis P. Masur reporting - Lou is Distinguished Professor of American Studies and History at Rutgers University; he is also co-editor of Talk About a Dream: The Essential Interviews of Bruce Springsteen, and author of Runaway Dream: Born to Run and Bruce Springsteen's American Vision and, most recently, The Sum of Our Dreams: A Concise History of America

REMEMBER ALL THE MOVIES (AND TV SHOWS, TOO!)

With Labor Day Weekend 2020 deemed by public health experts as crucial in containing COVID-19 through the upcoming months, there's no better time for Springsteen fans to stay home, stay safe, relax, and binge some movies and TV. We've got an appetizer to enjoy, before you start digging into the entrees.…

Backstreets contributor Shawn Poole recently recorded an hour-plus conversation (via Zoom) with New Jersey-based film critic Caroline Madden, centered around her book Springsteen as Soundtrack: The Sound of the Boss in Film and Television. Poole and Madden cover all 13 of the films and television series that each got a chapter's worth of attention in her book — nearly all of which are available for streaming over this long weekend or in the days to come.

Madden discusses each production's effective usage of Springsteen's music, as well as what she learned from her interviews for the book with the great independent filmmaker John Sayles (among the first to receive permission from Springsteen to use his music in a film) and longtime Springsteen manager Jon Landau (who once served as Rolling Stone's Record and Film Editor back in his days as one of pop-culture's most perceptive published critics.)

You've probably seen at least some of these movies and shows before, but it's also likely that you haven't seen them all, and Madden provides some fresh insight for a rewatch. We highly recommend her book — published by McFarland, it's aimed at a textbook market and priced accordingly, but it's certainly not too academic for any fans interested in reading more about the use of Springsteen's music on screen. Click here to score a signed copy from Backstreet Records.

- September 6, 2020



LAND OF HOPE AND STREAMS: NEW YORK IS ROCKIN'

Catch Willie Nile's virtual album release show over the long weekend

The pandemic isn't stopping our favorite artists from getting new music out there, and Willie Nile recently put out his 13th studio album, New York at Night. Check out clips for "New York is Rockin'" and "Under This Roof" for a taste — it's inspiring, invigorating stuff, as we've come to expect.

Promoting new material is trickier these days, with no real chances to gig; but Willie managed to put his full band together last week at NYC's Bowery Electric for a socially distanced concert to celebrate the new album, and you can still watch it online in its entirety for a few more days. This "Run Free" clip is taken from the full streaming concert:

If you like what you see, you've got until Monday night to catch the whole show; click here for tickets to watch on demand with add-on options for audio downloads, shirts and more.

- September 4, 2020.



SHOULDER TO SHOULDER AND HEART TO HEART

Point Blank at 40

On September 3, 1980 — 40 years ago today — Dan French mailed out the first issue of his fanzine, Point Blank. I have one in front of me as I type. It has been appreciated and cared for: the A4 paper has yellowed ever so slightly over the years; the corners have rounded as readers repeatedly turned the pages; the two staples equally spaced along the left edge leave slight rust stains. Number 1 opens with an ink outline of Springsteen in one of his signature poses, the neck of his guitar coming out of a barely visible left hand, his body skinned with acknowledgements, credits, and production and printing information typed on a typewriter.

I have no idea how Dan pulled this off; the spacing is absolutely perfect. Dan describes Point Blank as "an unofficial and casual fanzine for Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band. It is non-profit-making, aiming only to promote the improvement of conditions for Springsteen fans, particularly the deprived British variety." Handwritten on the neck of the guitar: "No. 1 in a possible series. . ."

Point Blank would eventually have a run of 12 issues, ending in 1992 with a special double issue dedicated to Springsteen's 1992 tour of the United Kingdom.

Improving conditions for Springsteen fans was something Dan felt a need to do because, as he wrote for a British Museum/BBC post about Point Blank in 1980, Bruce fans "were isolated, with little means of making contact, sharing news, and communicating our shared interest." Music fans didn't have forums or Facebook or Twitter; they had to wait until news trickled out in magazines like Rolling Stone, Melody Maker, or Crawdaddy.

At some point Dan came across Ken Viola and Lou Cohan's bi-coastal U.S. fanzine first published in 1978, Thunder Road, and, later, Gary Desmond's Liverpool-based fanzine, Candy's Room, which also celebrated its 40th anniversary this year. He thought he'd give it a try, as he wrote in a 30th anniversary essay, "as a way to meet other Bruce Springsteen fans, in a world before the internet and email, when the only way to connect with people was to place a small ad in a paper and wait to see what would happen."

It was, as Jeff Matthews, founder of the fanzine Rendezvous, wrote me in an email about the importance of Point Blank,

the age of pen pals, stamp addressed envelopes and 50p fanzines. Cassette tape trading, Bruce quizzes, concert meet ups, next album speculation and rumors — this was great fun and it united fans around the world with one common cause. Forty years ago, as a young Bruce fan, and thanks mainly to the fanzines like Backstreets, Point Blank, and Candy's Room, we clung onto every little bit of Bruce trivia like gold dust. And the friendship and community extended, for me, outside of his music and led me to Dan French in 1981. So thanks to Dan French and Point Blank magazine for many, many years of community and true brotherly friendship.

The desire to build community is one of the motivating factors among the more than a dozen Springsteen fanzine founders and contributors I've spoken to over the years. And Point Blank, just as so much of what Dan has done as a Springsteen fan and for other fans, breathes community. In Number 1 alone, Dan immediately thanks "Thunder Road and Candy's Room for the idea," and the issue contains a page of letters, an article dedicated to Thunder Road, and detailed information on how fans can buy each of them. Reading this in 1980, when you felt like an isolated Springsteen fan, would show you that you're not alone, that there are other tramps out there yearning to connect and celebrate the man whose music has brought meaning to their lives.

Number 1 was composed almost exclusively by Dan. He advertised it in various music magazines with such success that only a few months later 80% of Number 2 was composed by outside contributors. People were hungry and wanted to be involved. Dan quickly sold the initial print run of 200 and had to reprint Number 1 many times. Same with Numbers 2 and 3, and by 1982 Dan had to consider them out of print so he could concentrate on putting together future issues.

Each issue feels more confident, with more diverse voices, exclusive content, coverage of more musicians, sophisticated layouts, and funny cartoons, but each still holds that kitchen-table cut-and-paste DIY Xerox aesthetic that is so endearing of 1980s fanzines. When you hold it in your hands, you are holding fandom in its purest form. It led Dan from the hours composing, crafting, and organizing pages to the concerts themselves. For Dan, writing in The Fever fanzine in 1983, "It was most encouraging to stand outside the concert halls during Bruce's tour holding the magazine and to be approached by readers and correspondents I'd never met before, and even stay with them for the provincial shows."

Point Blank, like so many fanzines before and after, was a "social media" that led not to clicks and likes, but to human connection. And eventually to meeting Bruce and handing him a copy of Point Blank.

In 2010, Dan created a free online archive of Wild and Innocent Productions materials: scanned PDFs of all 12 Point Blank issues; a five-issue publication, Songs to Orphans, which provided lyrics to many of Springsteen's unreleased songs; links to collaborations with other fanzine creators; and many work-product documents. We encourage you to look at each of the issues and artifacts, as there are some real gems, such as:

A photo gallery with behind-the-scenes photos of Bruce and many of the band members, including this photo of Bruce holding a copy of Point Blank at the Newcastle airport, in May 1981.

An exclusive audio recording and transcript of Max Weinberg's lecture at the Astoria Theatre, London, 10 August 1986.

A handwritten letter from CBS Records, August 1984, detailing upcoming single releases.

Point Blank Number 9, which has been uploaded in its raw, un-Xeroxed form, revealing the cut-and-paste technique. Also wonderful is raw draft of "Point Blank in the Promised Land" from 1982, describing Dan's visit to Asbury Park.

And my favorite issue of Point Blank, Number 5 (1982), which contains a revealing early interview of Bruce after his April 26, 1981, show at Forest National in Brussels by Marc Didden and translated by Ria Aeschlimann. For me, this is fanzines at their best: there's no way I would have ever found this interview, and if I did it probably would have been in the original language.

In the interview Bruce gives glimpses of his love of music that comes through so well in his current From My Home to Yours series. When asked about covering Woody Guthrie's "This Land is Your Land," Bruce's response shows his emerging confidence in being overtly political from the stage, his indignation about the state of the country, and how he sees his lineage as a political artist: "I sing that song to let people know that America belongs to everybody who lives there: the Blacks, Chicanos, Indians, Chinese and the whites, no matter what the Ku Klux Klan may think about that. You know what gave me such a thrill tonight? That the whole audience went 'booo. . .' when I said the words, 'Ku Klux Klan.' I never got that reaction before. That strengthens my conviction to strike out against those kinds of people. . . . It's time someone took on the reality of the '80s. I'll do my best."

Point Blank emerged with The River, when Bruce was just beginning to gain world-wide fame and confidence in his political voice, published through the behemoth that was Born in the U.S.A and the shock of Bruce breaking up the E Street Band, and came to a close when Bruce was grappling how that fame affected his life and, as we would later learn, his mental health. In other words, Point Blank was there for some of Springsteen's most complex and challenging years, with Dan documenting, recording, and sharing.

Through it all, Dan ensured that Point Blank stayed true to its original goals: build community, celebrate music, and have fun while doing it. And, yet, perhaps even more significant is the legacy of generosity, humility, and caring for all fans that Dan fostered through his fanzine and his activities since. He's been a brother-in-arms and true friend to Backstreets, which shares the same birth year. All Springsteen fans, whether they realize it or not, should be indebted to what Dan French has created for and gifted to our community over the last 40 years.

Visit Wild and Innocent Productions

to download issues of Point Blank and more as free PDFs

- September 3, 2020 - Bill Wolff reporting - Associate Professor of Communication and Media Studies at Saint Joseph's University, Wolff is the editor of Bruce Springsteen and Popular Music and is working on Springsteen Zines: An Oral History of Springsteen Fanzines.

RECAP: VOLUME 11, A "LABOR DAY EXTRAVAGANZA"

From My Home to Yours hears America singing

The eleventh episode of From My Home to Yours is a Labor Day special, and it brings to mind a weird little armchair criticism Bruce Springsteen receives from time to time: how can he still speak to or even understand the concerns of the working class? Now that he's, y'know, a rich rock 'n' roll star?

"It always comes up," Bruce told Backstreets in 2004. "I've settled into the fact that I'll be answering that question for the rest of my working life." It's a misguided question for all sorts of reasons, but as he noted then, it especially denotes "a tremendously muddled idea of how writers write."

Volume 11 is very much about the writers writing. As workers work, the writers write, and it's all reflected not only in the songs on Bruce's new Labor Day playlist but in the poems he recites throughout. Poetry abounds — from his own literal poetry readings to the spoken word of Patti Smith's breathless "Piss Factory" from 1974 — blurring lines between 20th century poets and songrwiters, their mutual inclination to capture a nation at work.

Greetings E Street Nation, friends, fans and listeners from coast to coast! Welcome to our Labor Day extravaganza. Today we are celebrating the American working man and woman — all the folks that keep our world spinning 'round and 'round.

Pop hits, sincere paeans to American industry, warnings about "working for the man," ironic and even grieving takes on labor, it's all here. Because our DJ knows a thing or two about work. He'll work hard for your love, as the hardest-working man in show business, and yeah, he knows about the working class, too. The working, the working, the working life (if you're surprised his own "Factory" didn't show up, maybe it's because the aforementioned "Piss Factory" is, he says, "one of the best songs about factory work I've ever heard").

From the cold open of Aaron Copland's stirring "Fanfare for the Common Man," Bruce moves on to Roy Orbison. "The Great One" (as Bruce calls Roy O.) did write "Working for the Man," speaking of writers, and it's only one of five tracks on the list with "work" in the title. Six, if you count Philip Levine's moving "What Work Is," a poem Bruce recites in full. His own "Working on the Highway" is represented in a cover by Joe Ely ("a great friend of mine… fabulous singer/songwriter/rocker out of Texas").

Organized labor receives plenty of focus, starting with a timely stand-up bit by Jimmy Tingle from his 2008 comedy album Jimmy Tingle for President:

We have all these great holidays, they all have meaning — nobody even knows what they mean anymore! Like, Labor Day: people don't even realize what Labor Day's about. People protested, they demonstrated, they had to sacrifice for things like… the 40-hour work week, benefits, to abolish child labor in this country, safe standards in factories! Some people lost their jobs; some people lost their lives. People don't even realize it — it's completly off the radar. People go, "Labor Day, Labor Day, Labor Day, let me think... are the liqour stores open? Or do we have to drive to New Hampshire?"

Oh, you can't scare Bruce, he's sticking to the union… and the union is also repped here by Woody Guthrie's "Union Maid" (a portion of it, anyway) and Joe Hill's "Rebel Girl," as sung by Hazel Dickens on the 1990 Smithsonian Folkways collection of Hill's songs, Don't Mourn - Organize! Songs of Labor.

This portion of the show shines a light on Hill, a labor activist and songwriter who paid the death penalty just over 100 years ago. Bruce takes us back to his own one-off performance of an old union anthem about the man: "Joe Hill" (AKA "I Dreamed I Saw Joe Hill Last Night"), from the High Hopes tour stop in Tampa. The 1936 Earl Robinson composition was popularized by Pete Seeger and FMHTY favorite Paul Robeson (and later, Joan Baez); in some ways it's a precursor to "The Ghost of Tom Joad" and "We Are Alive." Bruce spins his own recording here, performed on May 1, 2014 — International Workers Day — as "a salute for the union folks here tonight."

Digging that one out of his live archives, the DJ expanded on the song with some biographical details (which he may well remember from reading his Howard Zinn) and even a poem — Hill's last piece of writing, from the night before his death:

Born in 1879, Joe Hill was a Swedish-American labor activist and a member of the Industrial Workers of the World — better known as the Wobblies. He was dubiously convicted of a murder and executed by firing squad on November 19, 1915 at Utah's Sugar House Prison. This was his last will and testament: My Will is easy to decide,

For there is nothing to divide

My kin don't need to fuss and moan—

"Moss does not cling to a rolling stone" My body?—Oh!—If I could choose

I would want to ashes it reduce,

And let the merry breezes blow

My dust to where some flowers grow Perhaps some fading flower then

Would come to life and bloom again This is my Last and Final Will —

Good luck to all of you,

Joe Hill

Public Enemy's "Fight the Power," an "all-time classic" in the mix, bursts right out of Bruce's live "Joe Hill," conjoining these two songs written a half-century apart. "To make everybody see, in order to fight the powers that be?" It's there you'll find Joe Hill.

There's plenty of workplace diversity in the viewpoints here, and the spirit of Adele Springsteen's work shoes is in the mix as much as Douglas's factory whistle."Let's send one to the working women out there!" Bruce says at one point, reaching for Mick Flavin's "Working Woman" rather than a mainstay like Merle Haggard's "Workin' Man Blues." He later underscores the point by adding Valerie June's "Workin' Woman Blues" to the playlist. And then there's "the Queen of Disco, Donna Summer":

She works hard for the money! I had the pleasure of writing a song and doing a session with Donna and Quincy Jones in the mid-'80s. She was absolutely lovely. I originally wrote "Cover Me" for her, and then Mr. Landau heard it and, doing his duty as my manager, advised me to keep it. So I wrote a song "Protection" for her and recorded it with her. Good… but no "Cover Me."

You can listen to the Donna Summer recording here — that's Bruce on the guitar lead (and subtly, his vocal in the fade-out). He recorded "Protection" with the E Street Band in 1982, but his own version has yet to be officially released. It's better than he seems to think.

Even further back in Bruce's back pages, today's a good day to remember that this is a guy who had a freakin' band called Steel Mill. Which made his recitation of Langston Hughes's "Steel Mills" all the more resonant —

The mills

That grind and grind,

That grind out new steel

And grind away the lives

Of men, —

In the sunset

Their stacks

Are great black silhouettes

Against the sky.

In the dawn

They belch red fire.

The mills —

Grinding new steel,

Old men* *In his recitation, Bruce's delivers the last two lines as "Grinding out new steel / Grinding out new steel"

— though the real masterstroke was following this with his own "Youngstown."

"Steel Mills" is typically considered Langston Hughes's first poem. When he was in high school in Cleveland, his stepfather worked in Ohio steel mills; the poet wrote this at the age of fourteen. Which seems astonishingly young — but then, Springsteen knows all about what a 14-year-old kid can take in.

Once again, the idea that a successful artist can no longer have much to say on this subject ignores the power of his own formative years in a working class family — fully formative years, as evidenced by the Born to Run bio, the Broadway show, and this very radio show. In the stories he's been telling, Bruce's childhood never seems that far away. Again and again (especially in Volume 8, "Summertime Summertime") we're reminded that he is regularly in touch with the boy who grew up commanding the night brigade. His younger self — who watched as work brought joy and indentity to his mother, struggle and darkness to his father — seems always in reach of his psyche, and his childhood has always informed his writing on the recurring subject of work.

And if "you grow up and you calm down" about such things… well, as the Clash would have it, you're "working for the clampdown."

That classic London Calling track appears here "in these days of evil Presidentes" as a Springsteen cover, again from the High Hopes tour — with heavy labor from Tom Morello (who makes several appearances today, as part of Bruce's 2014 live band as well as in Rage Against the Machine's "Ghost of Tom Joad" cover).

A Clash song would likely have made the new DJ set no matter the subject, considering the recent birthday celebration for Joe Strummer (in which Bruce calls the Clash leader "my great, great departed friend and brother that I never had… my inspiration for the past 40 years"). But "Clampdown" in particular is an important facet in this 90-minute playlist about the value and dangers of "working hard" and "working for the man."

"Clampdown" goes right into another live E Street Band performance, learning all those facts real good in "Badlands" from Tempe 1980 — "Live at Arizona State University, November 1980, the night after Ronald Reagan was elected President" — and we'll return to the Reagan era in full force toward the end of this set.

Of course, the backdrop for this episode is not only Monday's Labor Day holiday, but also a COVID-parallel epidemic of joblessness in this country. As reported by the Washington Post, based on Department of Labor figures as of August 27, there are 27 million Americans receiving some type of unemployment assistance.

That's a frightening figure, especially for anyone who understands, as Springsteen has expressed it, that "the lack of work creates a loss of self." Bruce spoke on the subject after the Great Recession at a 2012 press conference for Wrecking Ball, emphasizing that the human cost of unemployment is "devastating. People have to work. The country should strive for full employment. It's the single thing that brings a sense of self and self-esteem, and a sense of place, a sense of belonging." Eight years later, he offers encouragement for those out of work.

On this Labor Day we have to pause and think of the millions of Americans who have been displaced and left jobless by the coronavirus. There is little as painful as to be without productive work. So for this Labor Day, we send our prayers up for a healthy working nation in the coming days, months, and years ahead.

Peter Gabriel's "Don't Give Up" was the accompanying long-distance dedication, and it came in the midst of a summational pack of songs from the mid-'80s that recall the height of the Reagan era.

It's interesting that when Bruce Springsteen thinks of "working songs," even he still thinks of "heartland rock." After all the commercialization and co-optation and parodies and gauzy effects of the decade, still standing tall in Volume 11 is the music of the genre's holy trinity: Bruce Springsteen, Bob Seger, and ("my friend… terrific American songwriter") John Mellencamp. "Pink Houses" is the pick for JCM, his perfect slice of Americana and early-'84 Top 10 hit, which he and Bruce finally sang together last year.

For Seger, it's 1986's "Like a Rock" charging from the gate. Liberated from its heavy rotation in Chevy truck commercials (much as they may have actually benefitted auto workers in his home state), we're reminded that the song was never about chassis and tailgates at all, but about a lot of other things: the passage of time, aging and idealism, pride and sense of self, and yeah, the dignity and purpose hard work brings to a body. Stretched out here for its full length, rather than in 15- and 30-second spots, "Like a Rock" reintroduces itself as a lean and potent piece of craft — the sound, in the end, not of autoworkers welding, but of writers writing.

The song's sense of dignity is where you knew all this would wind up, this journey through all these aspects of labor, workin' neath the wheel, from the fields to unions to the Charlotte County road gang. And when the foreman calls time, Bruce lands on New Jersey's own Walt Whitman — all hail the Service Area in Cherry Hill — with a recitation of "I Hear America Singing."

"That's our show for today, folks. Until we meet again, stay strong, stay healthy, stay safe… and have a wonderful Labor Day."

Playlist: Aaron Copland - "Fanfare for the Common Man" Roy Orbison - "Workin' for the Man" Joe Ely - "Working on the Highway" Mick Flavin - "Working Woman" Jimmy Tingle - "Labor Day" [Poetry reading] Langston Hughes's "Steel Mills" Bruce Springsteen - "Youngstown" Woody Guthrie - "Union Maid" Hazel Dickens - "Rebel Girl" [Poetry reading] Joe Hill's "My Last Will" Bruce Springsteen - "Joe Hill" (live in Tampa, FL, 5/1/14) Public Enemy - "Fight the Power" Bruce Springsteen - "Clampdown" (live in Sunrise, FL, 4/29/14) Bruce Springsteen - "Badlands" (live in Tempe, AZ, 11/5/80) [Poetry reading] Philip Levine's "What Work Is" Rage Against the Machine - "The Ghost of Tom Joad" Donna Summer - "She Works Hard for the Money" Valerie June - "Workin' Woman Blues" Patti Smith - "Piss Factory" John Mellencamp - "Pink Houses" Peter Gabriel - "Don't Give Up" Bob Seger - "Like a Rock" Instrumental interlude: Ola Gjello - "Crystal Sky" [Poetry reading] Walt Whitman's "I Hear America Singing"

- September 2, 2020 - Christopher Phillips reporting



THE WORKING, THE WORKING, JUST THE WORKING EPISODE

From My Home to Yours rolls back out this week with Volume 11

One thing that's really helping us get through this year is Bruce Springsteen's E Street Radio show, From My Home to Yours. Though it's generally on a bi-weekly schedule, you never quite know when to expect the DJ to return with a new episode, so it's always good to have a definitive heads-up. And this week... he's bringing it in again.

Volume 11 of From My Home to Yours will be a Labor Day special, airing for the first time tomorrow morning (Wednesday, September 2 at 10am Eastern) and rebroadcasting throughout the holiday weekend. According to the SiriusXM blog, Volume 11 will be dedicated "to workers around the country":

From "Factory" to "Working on the Highway," Bruce Springsteen has written and performed so many songs about the American working men and women. And in honor of Labor Day, the legendary musician will dedicate a special episode of his exclusive SiriusXM series, From My Home to Yours, to workers around the country.… featuring songs from Woody Guthrie, Joe Hill, Patti Smith, Public Enemy, Rage Against The Machine, Donna Summer, Bob Seger, Roy Orbison, and more.

If you miss the initial airing, Volume 11 will also be available On Demand on the SiriusXM app, as well as repeating on E Street Radio:

Wednesday, September 2 at 10am and 6pm

Thursday, September 3 at 6am and 3pm

Friday, September 4 at 10am and 4pm

Saturday, September 5 at 12am, 8am, and 5pm

Sunday, September 6 at 9am and 6pm

Monday, September 7 at 7am and 4pm

Tuesday, September 8 at 12am and 8am

- September 1, 2020



LOOK INSIDE THIS FALL'S BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN: ALL THE SONGS

Coming this fall from Octopus/Hachette is the next installment in their All the Songs series, focused squarely on our man with Bruce Springsteen: All the Songs - The Story Behind Every Track. It's a weighty addition to the Boss bookshelf, at 672 pages and more than six pounds, a chronological song-by-song resource co-written by Philippe Margotin and Jean-Michel Guesdon.

For a sneak peek, the publisher has provided us with a blad as a PDF — a 16-page sampler, previewing the content and layout — and we can share it with you here to give you a better sense what to expect.

View the blad online, or right-click that link to save the PDF to your computer.

The new book invites comparison with Brian Hiatt's similarly titled Bruce Springsteen: The Stories Behind the Songs, released last year — Hiatt's is a must-have, particularly for its wealth of new historical information based on numerous new interviews.

As you'll see in the blad, All the Songs is amalgamating secondary sources instead, offering a different perspective with more of a focus on musical structure (co-author Guesdon is himself a musician, composer, and sound engineer); it also works in material that was beyond the scope of Hiatt's book, including cover songs (the entirety of the We Shall Overcome album, for instance).

We're compelled to put asterisks by the All and the Every in the new title, since any Springsteen diehard will be able to identify songs that got away from Margotin and Guesdon. But if you can handle such omissions, there looks to be plenty to enjoy in their song-by-song analysis of the vast majority of Bruce Springsteen's output from Greetings through Western Stars.

Pre-order Bruce Springsteen: All the Songs in our online shop now, to guarantee bonus Backstreets exclusives: a custom bookplate signed by both authors, as well as a promotional bookmark. We'll ship upon the book's publication in October, in plenty of time for holiday gift-giving.

- August 31, 2020

No official word of a new ?@springsteen? album, but the ?@AsburyParkPress? offers a sensible reading of the tea leaves https://t.co/AYuCNuDSaS — Backstreets Magazine (@backstreetsmag) August 31, 2020

TOMRROW (8/30), BAR A WELCOMES BACK SPRINGSTEEN ON SUNDAY

Springsteen on Sunday will be broadcasting on location this weekend, the weekly radio program on 107.1 The Boss (WWZY-FM) returning to Lake Como's Bar Anticipation with listeners once again invited. Join DJ Tom Cunningham outside for two hours of socially distanced, socially responsible fun.

Guests this week will be the Jersey Shore's country music renegades Williams Honor (Gordon Brown & Reagan Richards, above with TC), and they're bringing a brand new song from their forthcoming album to debut. Plus after the broadcast is over, they're going to stick around and play a couple of songs.

Also on the show will be leader/saxophonist of the Sensational Soul Cruisers, Screamin' Steve Barlotta (right, with TC), who is working his way back from an arduous recovery from COVID. Ain't so sin to be glad you're alive, live and in-person!

The station has joined forces with the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 400 to help our friends at Fulfill. (formerly the FoodBank of Monmouth & Ocean Counties). We encourage you to raid your cabinets for some non-perishable food items to help feed neighbors, as Sunday's event will include a "Stuff-A-Truck" for Fulfill. Food insecurity is at an unprecedented level, and you can help make sure hunger won't win here.

No cover charge. Doors open at 8am, brodcast starts at 9am, bar opens at 10am. Grab a bite to eat from the brunch menu or full menu. With every breakfast platter you receive a complimentary Bloody Mary or Mimosa!

For the safety of all present the following will be implemented:

Patrons must wear masks while entering the venue or leaving their table to use the restroom.

Tables will be positioned 6' apart, with the front row of tables 12' from the broadcast.

Seating "Table For Two," "Table For Four" and "Table For Six" configurations only.

Admittance includes a dining and drinks service, with service and seating beginning at 9am.

Fans must remain seated at their table.

Dancing will not be permitted.

Lawn chairs, blankets, pets, food or beverages are strictly prohibited.

Bar Anticipation reserves the right to change any policy without notice.

Venue security will enforce ground rules, which will follow current CDC and State of New Jersey guidelines for outdoor events and dining.

In the event of inclement weather, an alternate plan will be announced.

Please refer to Bar Anticipation for any other questions.

If you can't make it in person, tune in at 9am ET on 107.1 FM at the Jersey Shore (and in Southern Ocean County at 99.7), and go here for all ways and shapes and forms of listening options: 1071theboss.com/apps-streaming/

- August 29, 2020



BIG BOSS BOOK COMING THIS FALL

Pre-order All the Songs now for Backstreets exclusives!

Due in October, the latest entry in the All the Songs series is a massive hardcover spanning five decades, Bruce Springsteen: All the Songs - The Story Behind Every Track.

Co-authors Philippe Margotin and Jean-Michel Guesdon — who collaborated on earlier books in this series for The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Pink Floyd, and Led Zeppelin — take on the Springsteen catalog from Greetings through Western Stars.

They've also kindly done some autographing for us, so that the first 500 pre-orders will ship from Backstreet Records with a signed bookplate. A free, exclusive bookmark, too!

Now, we wouldn't be the trainspotters we are without noting: All the songs? No, not all the songs. Studio album and EP tracks, yes, along with B-sides — and Tracks and 18 Tracks, even The Promise and Chapter and Verse are covered. But you'll discover omissions, too. "The Man Who Got Away" isn't the only one that got away.

But any more songs and it might get too heavy to lift — this is a hefty one for your coffee table (don't drop it on your foot), 670 pages packed with song-by-song notes on genesis, lyrics, production, crew, and more, well-illustrated with color and B&W photos throughout.

Pre-order now to guarantee signed bookplate and bookmark, until further notice, to ship in October!

- August 27, 2020



AUTHOR BRIAN HIATT GUESTS FOR NBTB SEASON 1 FINALE

Today, the None But the Brave podcast wraps up its inaugural season with an extensive and informative interview with Brian Hiatt, Senior Writer at Rolling Stone magazine and author of the authoritative book Bruce Springsteen: The Stories Behind the Songs.

Podcast co-hosts Backstreets contributor Flynn McLean and film producer Hal Schwartz talk to Brian about the origins of the book and how he got access to the many key Springsteen associates quoted, including all of the producers Bruce has worked with over the past three decades. The interview also includes such juicy details as the story behind the still-unreleased 1995 Western swing album that Bruce simultaneously recorded with The Ghost of Tom Joad, as well as the tale about how Hiatt discussed Bruce's performance of "Achy Breaky Heart" from the legendary Basie '93 show with Billy Ray Cyrus himself.

"We were very excited to talk to Brian about his book," McLean says. "He's a long-time fan who knew what to ask the involved personnel to get a deeper read on Bruce's catalog."

Schwartz adds,"We really had a blast talking with Brian. His book is absolutely essential reading for every Springsteen fan."

Listen now via Apple Podcast | Spotify | Google Podcasts | Stitcher | Tune In

Hiatt signed for us when his book came out, and autographed copies of Bruce Springsteen: The Stories Behind the Son