Apparently Vinnie Lope had a temper. He had a few altercations. He was a dumbass.
I am actually right at the point in the book when Landau comes into the picture and Bruce talks about Landau reigning in Bruce’s songs to make them shorter and more concise. From most people on this board’s point of view that was probably a mistake, but from a commercial standpoint it turned Springsteen into a superstar.
Yup, he talks about the Ginger Baker quote in the book. Indeed the axing of Lopez appears to be a mix of wanting to change musical styles and the fact that Lopez appears to have had a rather violent temper with altercations within the band (and crew, and promoters) not uncommon.
Bruce Springsteen is full progressive. He shills shamelessly for the criminal Hillary Clinton and corrupt democrats.
Not aware that Bruce had a real career before Asbury Park, soooo I'll check out his Steel Mill stuff, which I guess was probably ùore or less in tune with the late 60's and early 70's times
But I never heard much "prog" in his early albums
That's the one I can see (and I much prefer Spirits In The Night on the Nightingale & Bombers albums)
Actually, MMEB probably made more money from that Absury album than Bruce did for a while, since MMEB also scored a minor hot with For You, from that same album. MM's flair was to take a rather raw/bare song and build total arrangements on the songs, like he did the same with Dylan songs.
Could you name some from his 70's albums (outside Steel Mill that is) please, because I don't see/hear what I would call an "epic"
I guess one could say that the song BtR is epic, but but not in the sense we progheads would call it. you mean the longer stuff on E-Street Shuffle or Jungleland?? (I don't fond rosalite prog at all)
at first listen, Steel Mill sounds prog enough to be featured on PA, if they had a real album out.
I'm not an expert on BS&tESB, but around what time would've Landau come into Bruce's songwriting?
Last edited by Trane; 10-04-2016 at 09:16 AM.
my music collection increased tenfolds when I switched from drug-addicts to complete nutcases.
Prog or not, I would love to hear David Sylvian cover his Secret Garden.
I hadn't realized that was Landau's influence. Because, while Bruce is the absolute leader of the E Street Band, I can't imagine him making his music in a vacuum, unaffected by the people he works with. So I'd thought it might have been more a matter of David Sancious - an open-minded fusion jazzer - leaving the band, and Steve van Zandt - a noted garage-rock purist - joining it.
I agree with the OP, though - there's a prog influence of some sort running through his early work. However, I see it as a different slant on rock "progression" than the one we're familiar with. For starters, his musical materials were always primarily bar-band rock 'n roll and R&B, far plainer and rootsier than almost anything we'd call "prog". Musically, the result seems like a grown-up version of Phil Spector's "teenage operas" taken further, combined with Dylan's extended story-telling ballads, and mixed with lyrical themes from country music, of the tragedy, desperation, and occasional triumphs of, not mythic Western outlaws, but the ordinary, struggling blue-collar guys he'd played for in bars. The result was a bit like Death of a Salesman - an epic tragedy about, not a king, but an American Everyman.
Last edited by Baribrotzer; 10-04-2016 at 04:27 PM.
Isn't Jon Landau his manager? If I remember correctly, he was a former record critic who wrote a review of Greetings From Asbury Park, which began with the words, "I have seen the future of rock n roll, and it's name is Bruce Springsteen". Then after Springsteen parted company with his original manager (or at least the manager he had for the first two or three albums), somehow Landau ended up taking over.
If I'm not mistaken, the change in management was accompanied by a protracted lawsuit that kept Bruce from recording for a couple years. Consequently there was probably a lot of money going out, maybe even more than was coming in, as it were. So it may have been decided that it was a good idea to to "hedge bets", as it were, and keep the music as radio friendly as possible, so as to help make the album more likely to sell a boat load of copies. It was probably the same logic as to why some of the songs on The Wall sound like they were aimed at dance club airplay (though in that case, it was because all of Pink Floyd's past royalties had gone up in smoke in bad investment deals).
Darkness isn't my idea of an album calculated for radio play. It turned out he had hits at that time with two songs not on the album ("Fire" recorded by the Pointer Sisters and "Because The Night" by Patti Smith) while "Prove It All Night" reached top 40 but was not as big a hit as those two.
Jungleland has always been a favorite of mine and I consider it at least loosely progressive rock.
Darkness on the Edge of Town had 2 other radio hits besides "Prove it all Night" in "Badlands" and "The Promised Land." Badlands especially receives/d a lot of airplay on Classic Rock stations.
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