Most long-time fans of Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band have no need for the recap, but for the record: in 1975 Bruce Springsteen got caught up in a legal battle with his former producer, the net result being that Bruce didn’t immediately capitalize on the runaway success of Born to Run. Instead, he didn’t begin recording again until mid 1977. In the end, he and the band recorded between 40=50 songs before releasing 10 of them as the album Darkness on the Edge of Town in 1978.
A similar overwriting process led up to the next two band albums, The River (1980) and Born in the USA (1984). That nearly four-year gap between band projects was interrupted only by the solo, acoustic guitar-centered Nebraska (1982). In the meantime, it was business as usual — tunes suited to full band arrangements continued to be written, reworked, and reconsidered.
The resulting surplus of material spawned a pseudo-cult of dedicated archivists who catalog all Springsteen song rumors, recordings and rumors of recordings in an attempt to compile all things Bruce — or at the very least, to find that one great nugget that got smuggled out from that mysterious mine where the Boss digs up his three-minute marvels.
Many of the recordings have since been officially released on various compilations and B-sides. The Tracks box set from 1998, in particular, contained a mother lode of outtakes from The River and Born in the USA. In addition, 2010 saw the appearance of many of the Darkness on the Edge of Town sessions on the retrospective set The Promise.
The point is: There aren’t a whole lot of official, high-quality recordings left out there to collect, are there? Interestingly, some have been hiding in plain view all along.
In the early 1980s, Springsteen and his first lieutenant/guitarist Miami Steve Van Zandt co-produced two comeback albums for 1960s singing sensation Gary “U.S.” Bonds: Dedication (1981) and On the Line (1982). Each contained a number of unreleased Springsteen songs that weren’t scheduled for use anytime soon. So, using the magic of modern playlist technology, we can reimagine a Bonds’ album penned entirely from the Boss himself. It could only be called …
Songs of Bruce Springsteen, as sung by Gary “U.S.” Bonds
Rendezvous**
All I Need**
Dedication*
This Little Girl*
Angelyne**
Out of Work**
Your Love*
Club Soul City**
Love’s On the Line**
(* from ‘Dedication’; ** from ‘On the Line’)
This gets kind of interesting. Both Bruce Springsteen and Steve Van Zandt get co-producer credits. Each member of the E Street Band has an individual musician credit — though the E Street Band itself is not mentioned). The same studios are used, the same production engineers, the same time frame. Yes, there are other players mentioned but, overall, most of this could pass for missing E Street sessions circa 1980-1982.
“This Little Girl” and “Angelyne” in particular are generally accepted to be exactly that: The E Street Band in the studio with Gary “U.S.” Bonds singing some Bruce tunes, with Bruce and Steve in attendance and the usual production crew looking on from the control booth. And Bonds’ typically fine vocal performance shows itself to be perhaps one of the templates on which Springsteen modelled his own approach to singing, so it’s right in character with everything else.
One day, perhaps the E Street renditions of these tunes will appear on a mythical Tracks II box of riches. But even as they are, maybe these gems shine just as brightly as their unearthed counterparts are imagined to shine.
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