The one album Bruce Springsteen took back from his label: “I panicked”
For all of the peaks and valleys Bruce Springsteen has had, you can’t say he isn’t authentic.
Even on the more fractured albums of his career, you can always hear his state of mind on every single song, whether that’s him trying to pick up the pieces of his broken marriage on Tunnel of Love or trying to find hope in trying times on his 2000s records like The Rising or Wrecking Ball. But even for a guy who puts his most human traits out there for the world to see, it’s not like ‘The Boss’ doesn’t have those few times where he has second thoughts about what he’s putting his name on.
Then again, is there any artist that’s proud of every single record they made? I mean, even The Beatles didn’t have the same outlook on their music when looking at records like The White Album, and it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out why people had such a hard time adapting to whatever strange detour Bob Dylan took his fans on throughout his time as a gospel artist or whatever the hell was going on on Self Portrait.
Not everything is perfect, but that’s part of what makes artists human. Springsteen never claimed to be bigger than any of the artists he worked with, and even when he was treated like a musical god, he was more than happy to take a few jabs at himself now and again. But even with a few blemishes in his discography, he would rather not put out anything at all than put out something disingenuous.
Springsteen always wanted to do right by his fans, and that meant trying to make the best record that he could that reflected his state of mind. It wasn’t always pretty, but whereas an album like Nebraska wasn’t going to be for everybody, he was adamant that people heard the most raw version of those songs that he made without having to make them sound glossy in the studio.
Which was pretty ballsy coming after a record as epic as The River. The whole double record is a look through every single piece of Springsteen’s mind in many respects, but while a song like the title track and ‘Hungry Heart’ might be the most fondly remembered songs, ‘The Boss’ said that he initially thought that he didn’t say all that he needed to say on the final version of the album.
There were many compromises that he needed to make throughout his career, but the idea of making The River a single record was never going to sit well with him, saying, “We handed in a single record first. And I panicked after we handed it in, and I took it back. It didn’t feel like quite enough. So I took it back and spent another year, in tears, making the double album. … I shed man tears.”
It did make for a lengthy sit for people that only wanted to hear the singles, but a lot of what makes the album work is how all the songs play off each other. There are many moments where things can get dark, but even if some parts seem to drag, you have to go on that journey so that a song like ‘Wreck on the Highway’ is able to have the impact it’s supposed to at the end of the record.
The River might not be the most concise statement that Springsteen ever made, but you can’t say that he didn’t put his all into every single moment on the record. He had spent a lot of hours trying to make sure that everything sounded perfect, and when he finally got the sound that he heard in his head, it was only natural for him to make the quick pivot into Nebraska on the next outing.
