The album Bruce Springsteen thought went way too far: “You can make that argument”
There are always going to be limits on how far our favourite artists can push themselves. As much as someone like Johnny Cash and his ability to turn any tune into a badass outlaw track, there was a slim chance that anyone was going to buy the idea of him hopping on a hip-hop beat or playing alongside Miles Davis in his prime. It’s important for everyone to experiment, but Bruce Springsteen had the kind of hindsight to realise when something was going drastically wrong behind the scenes.
Then again, some of the best Springsteen albums are only as good as the people he has behind him as he is playing. The E Street Band has gone through many different incarnations, and whether they had Stevie Van Zandt in the early days or hearing Nils Lofgren add some more sophisticated lead lines to everything, it was always about serving the tune at the heart of everything.
But by the 1980s, ‘The Boss’ had proved he didn’t always need the rest of the group to prove that he could say something of importance. Nebraska is one of the best albums he ever made strictly because of how raw it sounds, and while guest performances were kept to a minimum on Tunnel of Love, Springsteen wore his heart on his sleeve and come out of everything as a much stronger artist than before.
After that kind of album, though, it’s safe to say that Springsteen had reached the end of an era. The optimism of Born in the USA had been given a heavy dose of reality, so it was only natural for him to start moving in a different direction on the next record. But whereas Nebraska switched things up by getting darker, the album Human Touch felt like listening to Springsteen being replaced with an artificial version of himself in places.
“Looking back on it, I might have cut those songs somewhat differently and with a different sound.”
bruce springsteen
Although there are some great tunes across both projects, the whole thing feels a bit too chipper to be associated with Springsteen. After all, some of his greatest tunes are focused on seeing the beauty of the world with songs that are rough around the edges and seeing him get this slick sound behind him felt a bit too glossy. Born in the USA still managed to have some bite behind it, but this felt like a bid for him to write pop tunes.
It’s not like ‘The Boss’ didn’t disagree later on, saying, “Well, you know, looking back on it, I might have cut those songs somewhat differently and with a different sound. That’s the reason that immediately upon being finished with Human Touch, I wrote and recorded an entire other record before that record could even come out! You know? I think I was looking for an antidote of some sort or a balance of some sort that I felt, maybe we went a little too far in this direction production-wise on that album. You can make that argument.”
And while Lucky Town did get a bit more stripped-down by comparison, Springsteen flipped all the way back to the primal way of recording during The Ghost of Tom Joad. The songs might have received a kick in the ass when he eventually played them live, but listening to the final version of that record feels like him alone with his acoustic guitar make the equivalent of a folk-rock album.
Human Touch might not be the kind of record that fans were hoping for from Springsteen during his prime, but it’s easier to see his journey by looking at the moments that don’t work out. Sure, the record was far from perfect, but sometimes it’s easier to appreciate this detour knowing that it teach him the lessons he would need to make something like The Rising later on.
