The 1995 album Bruce Springsteen’s band couldn’t make: “I just wasn’t sure”
There’s a good chance that Bruce Springsteen would have still been playing the boardwalks of New Jersey were it not for The E Street Band.
Although he was a captivating presence with a guitar in his hand, thinking of him without the blaring saxophone of Clarence Clemons or the guitar fireworks of Nils Lofgren or Stevie Van Zandt is like watching Tom Petty without the Heartbreakers or Neil Young without Crazy Horse. The rest of the band are the ones telling the story along with him, but ‘The Boss’ knew when to cut his employees loose every now and again.
Because when you look at some of the greatest albums in Springsteen’s catalogue, not every one of them needed to have a massive arrangement playing with him. His music always had that sense of dramatic weight to it from the moment he started singing, and a record like Nebraska or Tunnel of Love would have been crushed under the weight of his bandmates if they took a swing at any of those songs. Then again, those weren’t supposed to be Springsteen songs from skin to core.
He was only writing for himself when performing those tunes, but the magic on display there was nearly impossible to ignore. They needed to go out, and while the rest of the band respected his independence, Springsteen didn’t want to strictly be tied to his band forever. If he was making music like what turned up on Human Touch and Lucky Town, though, he probably needed them a little bit more than he thought.
It’s not like those records are outright bad; in fact, some of the songs on there are pretty damn good. But for someone who was associated with heartland rock and speaking for the common man, this was the first time that ‘The Boss’ was making music that could have been written by anybody. If he couldn’t find what he wanted by writing pop-rock songs, though, he wanted to stretch himself by going back to the folk tradition.
After all, his heroes like Bob Dylan and Pete Seeger were all used to making stripped down material, and The Ghost of Tom Joad was his chance to speak his mind. The title track is among one of the finest tunes that he made during the 1990s, but Springsteen admitted that he may have been hiding the fact that the group was on the verge of collapse by the end of the decade.
Everyone was butting heads over where they should be going next, so Springsteen figured this record was the best way for him to put a musical canopy over himself while he recovered, saying, “I just wasn’t sure of my rock voice. I wasn’t sure of what it sounded like or what it was going to be doing or what its purpose was at that moment. The band wasn’t functioning together at the time, so I kind of went to where I thought I could be most useful.”
Kudos to him for recognising his strengths, but it’s not like those rough patches were going to be fixed immediately. Even when being inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, ‘The Boss’ didn’t end up sticking up for the rest of his band, eventually leading to the band waiting a few decades before they got acknowledged on their own. But when the world was shook by the aftereffects of 9/11, all of that icy atmosphere seemed to melt away when they got together to make The Rising.
Springsteen may not have been cut out to make the rock and roll that he used to, but when listening to him with his band, he feels like a new man trying to lead himself, his bandmates, and the rest of the world through the horrific tragedy in New York. It wasn’t going to be easy to put the pieces together, but most people were grateful to see everything moving in the right direction again.
