SPRINGSTEEN ’78: A RETURN THROUGH THE DARKNESS

With the release of the Born to Run album in 1975, Bruce Springsteen found himself in the middle of a media frenzy. Both Time and Newsweek magazines put him on their covers the same week, while the LP and Springsteen’s live shows received almost universal acclaim. This newfound attention also brought about a situation all too familiar to musicians dealing with rising fame: a lengthy lawsuit against his former manager. During the trial, Springsteen was barred from recording for a year until a settlement was reached on May 28, 1977. Only days later on June 1, recording began for the next album, which would be Darkness on the Edge of Town, released on June 2, 1978. While the Born to Run cover featured an iconic photo of Bruce and saxman Clarence Clemons playfully leaning on each other, Darkness used stark portraits of an older looking Springsteen (now sans the scruffy beard) standing alone in a wallpapered room looking rather defeated. The new songs reflected this somber tone. Gone was the stylized street romance of the previous album, replaced with tales of lost and desperate souls looking for a way out, accompanied by a harder, more guitar-oriented sound.

A North American tour commenced on May 23,1978, in Buffalo, New York, and continued throughout the rest of the year. Some cities hit early on were visited again later in the tour, so I was lucky enough to see both the June and December Seattle shows. The December 20 performance remains my favorite concert of all time. Many fans hold the Darkness tour in high regard because it’s as if Bruce completed writing and arranging the new songs while performing them live. The Darkness recordings sound like demos in comparison to the concert versions.

Fans were treated to radio broadcasts of shows in Cleveland, Passaic, Atlanta, Los Angeles and San Francisco (all of which became essential bootlegs). Springsteen’s reputation as a live performer only grew during this time, so I’ll never understand why an official release from the 1978 tour never appeared back then. However, we finally got something close to it just this year. Although Springsteen has been selling archival concert recordings via downloads through Nugs.net for almost ten years, Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band: The Darkness Tour ’78 is the first official release to comprehensively cover the Darkness era shows, though it’s only available on streaming platforms. It gathers together twenty performances from the Nugs archives to present the album in sequence, followed by other songs recorded during the sessions that weren’t released at the time, but played live.

“Badlands” opens the Darkness album and provided a rousing launch for many of the 1978 concerts as well. Even today, the song hardly ever fails to ratchet up the energy whenever it’s unleashed. It’s propelled by a relentless galloping piano riff that borrows the main instrumental hook from the Animals’ “Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood,” transposed from a minor to major key. The Darkness Tour ’78 collection uses the September 19 Passaic broadcast performance (many of the selections are from the tour radio shows previously mentioned), which begins with a dramatic, crashing three-chord progression. In concert, Bruce’s guitar solo screams with more passion than on LP, while the quiet piano and guitar vamping of the instrumental interlude that follows is far more subtle and effective than on the studio take. This dynamic arrangement mirrors the defiant, yet desperate lyrics.

Talk about a dream
Try to make it real
You wake up in the night
With a fear so real
You spend your life waiting
For a moment that just don’t come
Well, don’t waste your time waiting

Badlands, you gotta live it everyday
Let the broken hearts stand
As the price you’ve gotta pay
Keep pushin’ ’til it’s understood
And these badlands start treating us good

Guitar pyrotechnics continue as a cascade of buzzing distortion and feedback introduce “Adam Raised a Cain” from an early tour stop in Berkeley, California. Lumbering blocks of guitar chords highlight an uneasy relationship between a father’s past and a son’s future. It should be noted that the 1978 shows in particular feature Bruce’s blistering guitar soloing more than any subsequent tour.

Hushed keyboards and glockenspiel gently couch Springsteen’s emotional, wordless wails at the start of “Something in the Night.” Instead of recalling the exhilarating escape of Born to Run, the lyrics leave the lovers “running burned and blind” at the end. The recording here is from the often overlooked pre-Darkness 1977 tour and features alternate lyrics. In this case, the album version towers over this early runthrough, which sounds rather clunky and a bit too strident to capture the mysterious, dusky atmosphere of the studio cut. The take used on the album is from the first June 1 session, where dark echo and pounding drums effectively convey the bleak loneliness and loss of the words. “Something in the Night” made a few appearances early in the 1978 tour, but was soon dropped (the arrangement still didn’t quite work). However, the song’s occasional live airings over the years eventually regained some of the beautiful despair found in the original. [I should mention that good quality tapes of the 1977 Boston shows have circulated among collectors for years and all are prime candidates for an official archival release.]

The haunted characters that inhabit the Darkness landscape find some solace in the next two songs, “Candy’s Room” and “Racing in the Street.” A rapid-fire hi-hat sizzles behind Springsteen’s monologue, where he boasts that despite visits by “strangers from the city,” he’s determined to be “Candy’s boy.” Snare drum rolls then explode as he goes “driving deep into the light, in Candy’s eyes.” The momentum rises, making room for Springsteen to let loose on the guitar once again. This unusual ebb and flow structure makes “Candy’s Room” particularly effective in a live setting. The brooding piano ballad “Racing in the Street” depicts Asbury Park’s street racing car culture that was thriving at the time. Those working dead end jobs show off and race their customized creations every weekend. But the final verse and its heartbreaking piano and organ coda makes for powerful in-concert climax, indicating that such an escape may only lead nowhere.

A wailing harmonica becomes the musical hook on “The Promised Land,” another rousing anthem, full of hope overcoming dashed dreams. Like “Badlands,” the song rarely fails to tear off the roof. This time, it’s Steven Van Zandt who takes his turn at the quick-fingered guitar solo.

Well there’s a dark cloud rising from the desert floor
I packed my bags and I’m heading straight into the storm
Gonna be a twister to blow everything down
That ain’t got the faith to stand its ground
Blow away the dreams that tear you apart
Blow away the dreams that break your heart
Blow away the lies that leave you nothing but lost and brokenhearted

On LP, “Factory” is a country tune, complete with dancing Floyd Cramer-style piano fills, supplied by Roy Bittan (David Lindley’s mournful fiddle even graces an early outtake). But live, the song took on a darker hue, as a low, steady organ drone and slow, booming drumbeats back Bruce solemnly intoning the first verse, laying out the daily dead-eyed grind of the working life. In “Streets of Fire,” a trapped, lost soul lives and talks only to strangers. Gloomy power chords express the singer’s lonely existence, making the song a perfect setlist followup to “Badlands” in 1978.

“Prove It All Night” is the weakest recording on the Darkness album, tame sounding compared to the rest of the songs and brought down by Max Weinberg’s curiously mediocre drum fills. They stumble rather than push the song forward in any way. On the ’78 tour, “Prove It All Night” transformed into a lengthy setlist centerpiece, introduced by near jazzy piano chords to introduce Springsteen’s blazing guitar solo that gradually gathers momentum, climaxing as the song proper begins. The song is finally the mighty rocker it deserved to be. This performance alone exemplifies why the Darkness tour needs more official documentation.

Darkness on the Edge of Town ends with the title track, leaving its protagonist stripped of everything, but unwilling to give up. The simple guitar and piano motif quietly ushers in Bruce’s subdued vocal, until drums and guitars explode, underlining howls of determined rage. A stately organ prelude added a touch of gospel to the tune whenever it was played live, as in this rendition from the August 9th Cleveland Agora show.

By the time he and the E Street Band entered the studio in the summer of 1977, Bruce had accumulated a substantial backlog of material. Nine of these songs, plus one unreleased fan favorite from 1973, appear on The Darkness Tour ’78. All were frequent setlist additions. “Rendezvous” is unlike anything Springsteen had previously recorded. It’s a 12-string, power pop, British invasion confection that makes a fun, energetic showpiece. Bruce gave the song to San Francisco pop rocker Greg Khin, which should have been perfect for him to cover, but his recording of it is pretty lackluster.

“The Promise” is a desolate piano ballad that almost found a place on the Darkness album, but Bruce didn’t want people thinking it concerned his recent managerial squabbles (“When the promise was broken / You go on living”). A couple studio takes have been released on various archival collections over the years, but none match the raw emotion of the live solo versions that often appeared early in the tour. The song was performed during the 1977 tour as well, and a full band arrangement was attempted on stage in 1976.

“Because the Night” was among the first songs recorded for the album sessions. Everyone involved believed it was a sure-fire a hit, but Springsteen was frustrated with the song and never completed the lyrics. Recording engineer Jimmy Iovine was also working with the Patti Smith Group at the time and suggested giving her a cassette of the unfinished tune. She completed the lyrics in one night and had the biggest hit of her career. In concert, “Because the Night” became another epic Bruce guitar workout and fan favorite. Live, Springsteen apparently still didn’t have finished lyrics in mind and often resorted to mumbling, but eventually picked up Patti’s contribution. The smoldering lust of “Fire,” anchored by a sneaky bass line, is another live favorite that Bruce gave away. Bruce’s takes from the early Darkness sessions went uncompleted as well, since he originally intended to give the song to Elvis Presley, who died a few months later. Instead, rockabilly revivalist Robert Gordon recorded it, then the Pointer Sisters grabbed “Fire” and made it a pop hit.

The second set of many of the Darkness shows delivered a generous helping of unreleased material, such as the sultry 1973 r&b ballad “The Fever.” Despite the lack of an official release, the song gained popularity because tapes of it were supplied to radio stations in 1974. I remember hearing it constantly circa 1975. Springsteen himself has said he doesn’t like it much and once again gave away one of his most beloved tunes, this time to his Asbury Park buddy Southside Johnny, who made it his own setlist highlight. It shows up in Bruce’s repertoire fairly frequently and The Darkness Tour ’78 playlist presents a passionate rendering from the December 8th concert in Houston, Texas.

A couple of lively party songs never would have made onto Darkness, but “Action in the Streets” and “Sherry Darling” did provide a dose of levity in concert. The first outtake went through several iterations over a three-year period. A horn section that joined the scattershot 1976 tour was perfect for the soulful r&b of “A Love So Fine,” which morphed into the lyrically changed, but similar sounding “Action in the Streets” the next year. By 1978, a variation of the song became a sax and guitar-led instrumental titled “Paradise By the Sea” that opened the second set at the start of the tour. It’s surprising that 1977’s “Action in the Streets” was picked for inclusion on this set, since “Paradise By the Sea” is a better representation of what was actually played on the later tour. “Action” is a fun rarity though, so it’s nice to have. “Sherry Darling” is an all-out frat rocker, extolling the pleasures of the beach and summertime love. It would find a home on Bruce’s next album The River, a two LP set that made room for such lightweight fare.

Three more songs that would appear on The River also received 1978 tryouts and continue to reflect the serious themes explored on Darkness on the Edge of Town. “Independence Day” is a mournful ballad about a volatile father-son relationship that concludes with the child finally leaving home. It is one of Springsteen’s most autobiographical works and mirrors the stories about his father that he frequently told during shows. “Point Blank” presents a chilling portrait of a young woman trapped by life’s circumstances beyond her control. It’s telling that audiences were pin-drop quiet for such a dramatically hushed journey into relentless despair. The janggling Byrds-like rocker “The Ties That Bind,” originally slated as the title track for an early prototype of The River, made an excellent live second set opening shot. The lyrics concern connection, hope and escape.

You sit and wonder just who’s gonna stop the rain
Who’ll ease the sadness, who’s gonna quiet your pain
It’s a long dark highway and a thin white line
Connecting baby your heart to mine
We’re running now but darling we will stand in time

To face the ties that bind
The ties that bind
Now you can’t break the ties that bind
You can’t forsake the ties that bind

Soon after witnessing the 1978 Springsteen shows, I managed to acquire a three-LP bootleg boxset of the Passaic radio broadcast. I must have played that illicit album hundreds of times. For quite a few of my friends, it became their gateway to discovering the magic of Bruce in concert. Enough old and new fans were ready and waiting to snap up an official, good quality release from these shows, yet we had to wait decades in order to download them. Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band: The Darkness Tour ’78, may not offer an entire show, but it is an enjoyable overview that contains some great performances and songs that may not be familiar to casual listeners. It takes me back to that summer of Darkness, and my favorite era of Springsteen’s career.

JUNE 30, 2023