what you see, but a lot of the songs were
written without any music at all.’
Springfield later told Zigzag Magazine,
‘That record reflects the mood I was
in at that particular time... you know,
the fact of having to come into the city
from where I was living, and I didn’t
have a band so it all contributed to that
kind of down feel. But towards the end
of the record I started pulling out of it
with songs like Spirit in the Night which
started to get into a whole different feel.’
For all its virtues and critical
support, Greetings from Asbury Park N.J.
remains one of the least approachable of
Springsteen’s early albums. The record
captured Bruce at his most determinedly
tormented; so desperate to be taken
seriously he appears, at times, to have
forgotten what fun he used to have simply
standing up there onstage singing. To his
credit, it was a mistake that he would be
careful not to repeat on his next album.
Before Springsteen would start work on
that, however, he and his band would
complete over 200 gigs around the United
States, sometimes supporting bigger
established acts like Chicago, most often
playing one-night shows at clubs and bars
along the East Coast. It was a punishing
schedule that left Bruce and his boys
getting by on a couple of dollars each per
day, dining on hamburgers and beer. But
it was also an experience that proved to be
the making of the band, tightening them
up and helping flesh-out songs like Spirit
in the Night and For You, songs that had
sounded stilted on album, but were now
sure-fire crowd-pleasers.
Bruce was also finding time to build
in some of the new numbers he was
writing with the band in mind; warmer,
less wooden-sounding material like
Kitty’s Back, which centered around a
lengthy crescendo-building keyboard
intro from David Sancious, and had
become one of the highlights of the
set. With the newfound freedom
and confidence his band was
giving him, Springsteen suddenly
sounded less like a poor man’s Bob
Dylan and more like a younger,
more carefree Van Morrison. This
was the backdrop that would lead
to the recording of what would be
the first really convincing Bruce
Springsteen album, the joyously
titled The Wild, the Innocent & the
E Street Shuffle. Recorded at the
tail end of 1973 and released in February
1974, the second Springsteen album really
captured what quickly became known
as the signature E-Street sound. Indeed,
in its varied and often esoteric choice of
instrumentation, it remains one of the
most adventurous musical statements
either Springsteen or the E Street Band
would ever make. Unusually, the album
featured Bruce on acoustic and electric
guitar, Danny Federici on accordion aswell as keyboards, and Garry Tallent on
tuba in addition to the bass.
It was also a record practically
overflowing with syncopated beats, jazz
riffs, soul horns and an array of typicallycolourful characters. As Springsteen
explained, he had been searching for
a sound that ‘rocks a little differently- more in the rhythm and blues vein.’
That he achieved this goal on his second
album was almost entirely down to
the band he had assembled, a
fact partly acknowledged in the
album’s elongated title. Most
prominent was the influence of
Clarence Clemons, Garry Tallent
and David Sancious, who between
them had a wealth of experience
playing soul, jazz and R&B on
the black West Side of Jersey. The
songs seem less stridently personal,
and more story based; tracks like
the wheezing Wild Billy’s Circus
Story, the jazzy Incident On 57th
Street (which Springsteen was still
introducing onstage as Spanish Johnny)
and the dreamy New York City Serenade.
Other highlights include the demi-title
track, E Street Shuffle, which featured
“I’d go to every show
expecting nobody to come,
and I’d go onstage expecting
nobody to give me anything
for free. And that’s the way
you have to play.”