Take ‘Em As They Come: Bruce Springsteen’s Tracks at 25
Reflecting on the Boss’s career-spanning box set
To put Tracks in proper perspective, we have to remember where Bruce Springsteen’s career was in 1998.
The global triumph of Born in the U.S.A. was nearly a decade and a half in the past. Tunnel of Love was a solid follow-up to that monster, but it was moody and thoughtful (he isn’t singing about cars, he’s singing about relationships!) and left the stadium-anthem-loving part of his fan base wanting more.
Then came The Other Band and a pair of uneven 1992 releases, Human Touch and Lucky Town, which were also the focus of 1993’s In Concert / MTV Plugged, all three of which left the E Street Band-loving part of his fan base wanting more.
Greatest Hits came out in 1995, followed the next year by the five-song EP Blood Brothers. Fans were thrilled by the idea that the handful of new songs on these releases marked the first time since 1984 that the full E Street Band had recorded together, but: A greatest hits package and an EP? Bruce, you tease! We wanted more, and 1995’s The Ghost of Tom Joad acoustic album wasn’t filling our sonic stomachs.
Then along came Tracks, truly an embarrassment of riches for any Springsteen fan.
Released November 10, 1998, the box set includes 66 cuts across four CDs beginning literally at Day 1 of the Boss’s recording career: The first disc opens with four of the more than a dozen demos Bruce recorded for Columbia Records on May 3, 1972, the day after he auditioned for the legendary John Hammond.
What follows is gold, Jerry, pure gold. Outtakes from 11 albums stretching from The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle through to The Ghost of Tom Joad with nearly two-thirds of the box coming from sessions for The River (13 cuts), Born in the U.S.A. (17 cuts) and Human Touch (11 cuts).
Springsteen has long been known as a phenomenally prolific songwriter, and the best of his outtakes (and there are hundreds) are less about the quality of the song and more about the fact that the song didn’t happen to fit the theme of the album he was creating at the time.
Some of the tunes here were released as B-sides, most notably “Pink Cadillac” (Natalie Cole’s cover, released in May 1988, hit #5 on the Billboard chart). Other B-sides included here: “Roulette,” “Be True,” “Johnny Bye Bye,” “Shut Out the Light,” “Stand on It,” “Janey Don’t You Lose Heart,” “Lucky Man,” “Two for the Road” and “Part Man, Part Monkey” (re: that last song, count me a fan; then again, I’ve always loved Inherit the Wind).
Much of the material not officially released as B-sides was widely circulated among fans on bootlegs. Early material like “Seaside Bar Song” and “Thundercrack” were the stuff of legend. Quality sound on an official release? Nothing better for the Springsteen faithful.
Some of the songs on Tracks stand solidly in the top tier of anything he’s ever written: “Back In Your Arms,” an outtake from the 1995 Greatest Hits sessions, is often cited as one of his most romantic songs. This version from April 22, 2014 in Pittsburgh is an exceptional performance with a tremendous intro.
Or consider “The Wish,” which became a cornerstone of Springsteen on Broadway. It’s a love letter to his mother that brought many a tear to the eyes of audience members at the Walter Kerr and St. James theaters.
Which is not to say that every one of the 66 tracks here is a gem. When Vulture ranked 340 Springsteen songs from worst to best, seven songs from Tracks made the bottom 40 with two in the bottom 10: “Bishop Danced” (336) and “Zero and Blind Terry” (335).
Taken as a whole, though, Tracks stands alongside the official album releases as a monumental “Best of the Rest” collection as it slams the door shut on phase one of Springsteen’s career. Phase two began in 1999 as the Reunion Tour kicked off a new era for the E Street Band and 2002’s The Rising kicked off a new era for Springsteen’s recorded output.
Which begs the question, of course: What about a Tracks 2, perhaps to celebrate the 25th anniversary of Tracks and everything that’s taken place since the 1999 E Street Band reunion?
The Springsteen rumor mill is as active as that of any artist, but a box set of outtakes from The Rising, Devils & Dust, Magic, Working on a Dream, Wrecking Ball, High Hopes, Western Stars and Letter to You has never been part of the discussion.
AUDIO: Bruce Springsteen “Gave It A Name”
What has, though, has been a box set of five previously unreleased albums that itself has been referred to in fan circles as Tracks 2.
As American Songwriter reported last year, Springsteen “put the collection of music together while ‘cleaning out the vault’ during a recent winter. ‘Some of it is older stuff that the band plays on, and some of it is newer stuff where I was conceptualizing during that period of time,’ said Springsteen. ‘It’ll give people a chance to reassess what I was doing during that time period. Also, a lot of the stuff is really weird. I can’t wait to see the response to some of it.’”
The weirdest aspect evidently is that one of the unreleased albums focuses heavily on drum looping. “That’s going to be as weird as people think it’s going to be,” the Boss said. “But it uses all drum loops and things like that, and it uses synthesizers. I like the record myself.”
The past year, though, has been filled with radio silence about the project. Of course, Springsteen has been busy touring, then dealing with peptic ulcer disease, so it’s likely that the five-LP project has been languishing on the back burner. Don’t bet against its release in the not-too-distant future, though.
In the meantime, there’s Tracks. And it’s glorious.
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