Bruce Springsteen: "Born to Run" to "Born in the USA"

<v Speaker 1>All right, everybody, welcome back to the Shirley You Can't
<v Speaker 1>Be Serious podcast. We have just ended our series on
<v Speaker 1>the best golf Comedies of all time, and now we
<v Speaker 1>are about to begin a new series.
<v Speaker 2>We are starting one of the coolest six week deep
<v Speaker 2>dives that I can think of. It's going to be
<v Speaker 2>all about the summer of nineteen eighty four.
<v Speaker 1>We have frequently talked about what year is the most
<v Speaker 1>eighties year of all eighties years, and Jason, I think
<v Speaker 1>you have said nineteen eighty four.
<v Speaker 2>I am spiking the football. It's nineteen eighty four.
<v Speaker 1>Okay, So if we go back in times in nineteen
<v Speaker 1>eighty four, from a kid in nineteen eighty four, I
<v Speaker 1>could have gone to the movie theater and watched Sixteen Candles,
<v Speaker 1>h Grimlins, Top Secret, Romancing the Stone, Red Dawn, Revenge
<v Speaker 1>of the Nerds, Beverly Hills, Cop Police Academy. I mean
<v Speaker 1>these are the most iconic of iconic Terminator, the Last Starfighter,
<v Speaker 1>I mean Last Last. I mean, it's the most iconic
<v Speaker 1>eighties movies.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, and you're talking music wise, You're talking about When
<v Speaker 2>Doves Cry by Prince, You've got what's love got to
<v Speaker 2>do with it? From Tina Turner. You've got Footloose, You've
<v Speaker 2>got Against a Lodge, You've got the Van Halen albums.
<v Speaker 2>I mean, you've got Huey Lewis Sports. That whole summer
<v Speaker 2>was amazing.
<v Speaker 1>So our attempt today will be to take you back
<v Speaker 1>to that time as we begin by comparing two albums
<v Speaker 1>that were at the top of the charts in the
<v Speaker 1>summer of nineteen eighty four, Huey Lewis and The News Sports.
<v Speaker 2>And Bruce Springsteen's Born in the USA.
<v Speaker 1>Two super iconic albums. Yeah, so here we are. We're
<v Speaker 1>comparing these two incredible albums of two guys whose names
<v Speaker 1>are followed with and the band. Right, you've got Huey
<v Speaker 1>Lewis and The News, and you've got Bruce Springsteen and
<v Speaker 1>the East Street Band. Yes, right, they both got sexophone players.
<v Speaker 1>They're both gravelly voiced, not traditional of the time sounding guys,
<v Speaker 1>but they were killing it at the time.
<v Speaker 2>That's exactly right.
<v Speaker 1>And these albums were their biggest success of their recording
<v Speaker 1>career up until that point.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, biggest sellers for sure.
<v Speaker 1>Okay, this episode, our executive producers are Chris and Jeanie Alexander.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, Chris and Jeannie are some of my oldest friends
<v Speaker 2>in the world. Chris was the best man at my wedding,
<v Speaker 2>he was in the nursery with me at my church.
<v Speaker 2>And Jeanie is one of my wife's oldest friends, her
<v Speaker 2>college roommate, and so we ran around together at ou
<v Speaker 2>and some of my dearest friends in the world. Chris
<v Speaker 2>and Jennie, thank you so much for being Patreon and
<v Speaker 2>just supporting our podcast. We love you, guys and are
<v Speaker 2>very very thankful.
<v Speaker 1>Genie came up in the youtubo episode, right.
<v Speaker 2>She knows her stuff, man, she knows her stuff. She
<v Speaker 2>is a big YouTube fan.
<v Speaker 1>Well, if you want to be an executive producer of
<v Speaker 1>our podcast, be sure and visit our Patreon page. It's
<v Speaker 1>as cheap as a cup of coffee a month to
<v Speaker 1>become an executive producer of one of our episodes. To
<v Speaker 1>be sure and go check that out. All right, We're
<v Speaker 1>going to start off this comparison by talking about Bruce
<v Speaker 1>Springsteen and Born in the USA, and the next we'll
<v Speaker 1>talk about Huey Lewis and the news in sports.
<v Speaker 2>I can't wait.
<v Speaker 1>Okay, do you have any personal feelings about Born in
<v Speaker 1>the USA?
<v Speaker 2>So I was one of those kids who thought originally
<v Speaker 2>that Born in the USA is like this big fist
<v Speaker 2>pumping patriotic I love America songs.
<v Speaker 1>Wrong, I know, I know, right. Yeah, Well, it's not
<v Speaker 1>like they were. I mean, they did everything they could
<v Speaker 1>to fool you about the content of the song. But yeah,
<v Speaker 1>that's I was in revisiting. I'm like, oh, well, big
<v Speaker 1>misunderstanding here.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, and so I definitely knew this album. I was familiar,
<v Speaker 2>especially with the videos.
<v Speaker 1>Huh.
<v Speaker 2>So for me, I grew up a baseball player. I
<v Speaker 2>love Glory Days. I love that video. The idea of
<v Speaker 2>being a rock star baseball player is very appealing.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, I mean, talk about reaching your target audience by
<v Speaker 1>being the guy who's just throwing some balls at a
<v Speaker 1>board at the local park. He nailed it. He nailed
<v Speaker 1>his blue collar demographic.
<v Speaker 3>Yeah.
<v Speaker 1>Before we get going, I just want to point something out.
<v Speaker 1>We have been talking to each other now for a
<v Speaker 1>couple of years, face to face, and one of the
<v Speaker 1>reasons that I can do that is because you don't
<v Speaker 1>have nose hair. Have you been talking to people and
<v Speaker 1>like you can't even concentrate on what they're saying because
<v Speaker 1>of their nose hair.
<v Speaker 2>Absolutely, they like tucked you.
<v Speaker 4>It dangles, yes, it wiggles, it's it's a total distraction. Absolutely,
<v Speaker 4>And so let me let me say, if you are
<v Speaker 4>one of those guys, we have a product that is
<v Speaker 4>supporting the podcast that you need to check out. Is
<v Speaker 4>called the weed Whacker, and it is from Manscape.
<v Speaker 2>It is an amazing product. It trims your nose hair.
<v Speaker 2>It's not embarrassing. You just stick it up there. It
<v Speaker 2>takes care of it.
<v Speaker 1>You're not gonna look at people and bother them, right,
<v Speaker 1>And I'm one of those guys who's self conscious about
<v Speaker 1>my nose hair. So somebody that you're gonna see me
<v Speaker 1>and I'm gonna be like yanking them out and wincing
<v Speaker 1>in pain, don't do that. There is a special thing
<v Speaker 1>that they make and they've also just released. In addition
<v Speaker 1>to the weed Whacker, they have just something called the lawnmower.
<v Speaker 1>If you have other areas of your body that you're
<v Speaker 1>looking to trim up. And I'd like to point out
<v Speaker 1>that a giraffe is easier to see in the planes
<v Speaker 1>than it is in the forest. So that's that's wonderful. Yes,
<v Speaker 1>yes it is.
<v Speaker 2>So it's very it's very good around sensitive areas if
<v Speaker 2>you know what I'm saying.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, they have also an entire shavekit called the Ultra
<v Speaker 1>Smooth Package package. You get the idea.
<v Speaker 2>So who doesn't want their package Ultra Smooth?
<v Speaker 1>Right? Right? So don't forget to go to manscapes dot
<v Speaker 1>com and use the promo code fan sided twenty to
<v Speaker 1>get twenty percent off your order and free shipping.
<v Speaker 2>Whack it.
<v Speaker 1>Perfect time. So let's talk history of mister Springsteen, shall we?
<v Speaker 2>Yes, let's go.
<v Speaker 1>Okay. So September twenty third, nineteen forty nine, Young Bruce
<v Speaker 1>Springsteen is born in Long Beach, New Jersey. His family
<v Speaker 1>is a blue collar family, scraping by. His dad goes
<v Speaker 1>through multiple jobs. He's a prison worker, he's a bus driver,
<v Speaker 1>he works at a factory. And knowing this kind of history,
<v Speaker 1>to say that Bruce is kind of political in his
<v Speaker 1>songs might be a bit of an understatement. Yeah, he
<v Speaker 1>definitely is, and we don't get political on this podcast,
<v Speaker 1>but you can certainly tell that his upbringing formed his politics,
<v Speaker 1>which then formed the stories behind a lot of these songs.
<v Speaker 1>But interestingly, Bruce himself never worked in a factory, never
<v Speaker 1>worked on a highway, never had a real job in
<v Speaker 1>his life. He was always a musician, yeah, and he
<v Speaker 1>was inspired to do that back in nineteen fifty five
<v Speaker 1>ish six, maybe when he saw a guy on TV
<v Speaker 1>swinging his hips and girls screaming their heads off, mister
<v Speaker 1>Elvis Presley. Yes, yeah, So he decides at that moment,
<v Speaker 1>I've got to be a rock and roll star, and
<v Speaker 1>he convinces his mom to rent him a guitar. They
<v Speaker 1>do not have enough money to buy a guitar, so
<v Speaker 1>she rents him a guitar for something like twenty five
<v Speaker 1>bucks a week. And he's terrible. I mean, he's just
<v Speaker 1>a little kid. He's like he's six seven years old
<v Speaker 1>at this point, and so she rents him this kind
<v Speaker 1>of crappy guitar, and it quickly becomes a parent that
<v Speaker 1>he needs to get rid of the guitar, like there's
<v Speaker 1>that he's not learning to play it. And so he
<v Speaker 1>knows at some point that he's got a part with
<v Speaker 1>this thing that he's treasured for these two weeks, right,
<v Speaker 1>and so he goes out in the backyard and does
<v Speaker 1>a concert for his you know, nine and ten year
<v Speaker 1>old friends and swings his hips and shakes his booty
<v Speaker 1>and plays not chords and everybody's laughing and loving it,
<v Speaker 1>and he's like, someday, someday nice. So someday comes. A
<v Speaker 1>few years later, at the age of sixteen, he tells
<v Speaker 1>his mom this, by the way, we've hit the British
<v Speaker 1>invasion at this point. Okay, you got the Beatles, you
<v Speaker 1>get the Stones. Yeah, And so he tells his mom,
<v Speaker 1>if you can get me an electric guitar, I can
<v Speaker 1>get a job. He and his dad didn't really get
<v Speaker 1>along very well. He and his mom got along much better,
<v Speaker 1>and Christmas Day she ends up buying him a cheap Japanese,
<v Speaker 1>fairly tunable, one pickup electric guitar a Kent. Yeah, I've
<v Speaker 1>never heard of it either.
<v Speaker 2>I'm sorry, Kmarts something like that.
<v Speaker 1>And it is the greatest Christmas present he has ever got.
<v Speaker 2>I heard him talk about this. He said, the immense
<v Speaker 2>investment that it took to buy this guitar. He said
<v Speaker 2>it cost sixty dollars and he had never seen sixty
<v Speaker 2>dollars in one place at one time.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, it blew his mind, right, and so he's determined
<v Speaker 1>to make this a success. He immediately joins up with
<v Speaker 1>a band called the Castiles, and they pretty quickly record
<v Speaker 1>a forty five couple of songs. Okay, he and one
<v Speaker 1>of the other band members right as they're driving to
<v Speaker 1>the recording studio.
<v Speaker 2>Nothing like pressure.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, well, you know, hey work for any excess, right Yeah.
<v Speaker 1>And by the time he's eighteen, the Vietnam War is
<v Speaker 1>in full bloom and he gets his draft card, right,
<v Speaker 1>and so he has to go to the local doctor,
<v Speaker 1>and his dad in his past when they would have
<v Speaker 1>their fights, he's like, boy, I can't wait till the
<v Speaker 1>army gets a hold of you. They're going to make
<v Speaker 1>a man out of you. And that was kind of
<v Speaker 1>before all of Vietnam was happening. And so he comes
<v Speaker 1>back from his doctor visit. His dad's like, well, hot
<v Speaker 1>to go, and he says, well, I'm afore F, which
<v Speaker 1>means he failed it, like he deliberately gave him answers
<v Speaker 1>that he knew would cause him not to be draftable.
<v Speaker 1>His dad's response is, well, I think that's probably good. Yeah.
<v Speaker 1>So a year later, his family decides to move out
<v Speaker 1>to California for better job prospects, and Bruce stays in
<v Speaker 1>New Jersey. He thinks, if I can play at these
<v Speaker 1>clubs in Asbury Park, I can make a name for myself,
<v Speaker 1>and so he stays. Unfortunately, at that time, the clubs
<v Speaker 1>in Asbury Park only wanted bands that were playing top
<v Speaker 1>forty music, and Bruce is trying to write original stuff.
<v Speaker 1>They weren't really interested in original work. The exception to
<v Speaker 1>this rule was this place called the Upstage Club, and
<v Speaker 1>it's this place that welcome musicians playing original music. And
<v Speaker 1>so you could go in start playing at nine, probably
<v Speaker 1>not get done play until five am, and you'd get
<v Speaker 1>a whopping five dollars.
<v Speaker 2>See per hour. That would be yeah, not very much.
<v Speaker 1>Not very much, right, And I don't know what it
<v Speaker 1>was back then. I don't know what minimum wage was
<v Speaker 1>back then, but that's not even an hour of minimum
<v Speaker 1>wage now, right. And so if you happen, though, to
<v Speaker 1>get a job there as a club musician, then one
<v Speaker 1>night of play could get you fifteen dollars woo. Yeah.
<v Speaker 1>So one of the club musicians was this kid named
<v Speaker 1>Steve van zandt little Stevie van Zant. He managed to
<v Speaker 1>get a job as a club musician there, and that's
<v Speaker 1>where he and Bruce ultimately cross paths. So Bruce has
<v Speaker 1>several bands during this time, one called Earth, one called Child,
<v Speaker 1>one called Steel meal one called the Doctor Zoom and
<v Speaker 1>the Sonic Boom, and so that's how he and Steve
<v Speaker 1>crosspaths in nineteen seventy two. So just a couple of
<v Speaker 1>years later he's been playing the music scene. This guy
<v Speaker 1>named Mike Appel notices him and thinks he's got potential,
<v Speaker 1>and Mike has him sign in like parking lot sign
<v Speaker 1>on the hood of a car, a management agreement. Mike's
<v Speaker 1>claim to fame up to that point is that he
<v Speaker 1>had written a song for the Partridge Family. That was
<v Speaker 1>his big connection with the music industry. But it's bigger
<v Speaker 1>than anybody else had that. Bruce knew, so he was like,
<v Speaker 1>you know, why not. So he's a twenty one to
<v Speaker 1>twenty two year old kid signing this multipage agreement with
<v Speaker 1>this guy. Yep. But Mike Appel does get Bruce an
<v Speaker 1>audition with John Hammond, who's one of the key management
<v Speaker 1>at Columbia Records. Bruce goes in and sings Mary Queen
<v Speaker 1>of Arkansas.
<v Speaker 2>Bruce Springsteen Columbia Pop Audition job number seven nine eight two,
<v Speaker 2>Mary Queen of Walkin Saw Take.
<v Speaker 3>One, Mary Queen margin song, It's not Tooly Dream.
<v Speaker 1>And John says you belong on Columbia Records. So they
<v Speaker 1>go through this and at some point John Hammond pulls
<v Speaker 1>Bruce aside and he says, listen, this deal that you've
<v Speaker 1>got with Michaeppel is not a good deal. You need
<v Speaker 1>to try to get out of it. But out of loyalty,
<v Speaker 1>Bruce stuck with Mike. He would regret that decision. Yeah, yeah,
<v Speaker 1>So Columbia thought that Bruce was kind of a folk singer.
<v Speaker 1>He has very Bob Dylan style. I mean, if we
<v Speaker 1>want to talk about word smith ory, if that's a word,
<v Speaker 1>he's got it right. I mean, he has an amazing
<v Speaker 1>way to find those words that trigger nostalgia, emotion, just
<v Speaker 1>an amazing ability with words. But he wanted to record
<v Speaker 1>a rock record. He didn't want to be a folks singer.
<v Speaker 1>He want to be a rock singer. Right.
<v Speaker 2>I can see where people would be like, hey, this
<v Speaker 2>guy reminds me about Dylan. Yeah, there are similarities there.
<v Speaker 2>I'm glad that he decided to go, let's make a
<v Speaker 2>rock and roll record.
<v Speaker 1>Right. So what he decides to do is go back
<v Speaker 1>to Asbury Park, pick up some friends from Jersey that
<v Speaker 1>included Vinnie mad Dog Lopez, Gary Tallent Danny Federici and
<v Speaker 1>Dave Sanchez and future most Important person in the World Clarence.
<v Speaker 2>Clemens Flashback Bill and Ted episode.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, so here's the story on Clarence Clemens, right, Yeah,
<v Speaker 1>So Clarence Clemens had been playing in the same area
<v Speaker 1>of town that Bruce had been playing in Kay for
<v Speaker 1>a while. He had gotten easy jobs as soul musician
<v Speaker 1>and it was you know, black and white were very
<v Speaker 1>separate at that time, and he didn't really want to
<v Speaker 1>play that. He was a rocker. He wanted to play
<v Speaker 1>rock music. He ended up with this other band and
<v Speaker 1>was playing rock music covers with them, and a girl
<v Speaker 1>in the band was like, you've got to meet my
<v Speaker 1>friend Bruce. You guys would get along so well and
<v Speaker 1>you need to play together. And so he'd heard that
<v Speaker 1>for several months, but they were always playing at the
<v Speaker 1>same time, never got a chance to meet each other.
<v Speaker 1>And one night, this big storm happens. I think it
<v Speaker 1>knocks out the power at the club that Clarence is
<v Speaker 1>playing at, and he thinks, Okay, I'm going to go
<v Speaker 1>down and see if I can meet this Bruce guy.
<v Speaker 1>So it's pouring down rain, lightning, wind is horrible. He
<v Speaker 1>walks the few blocks down to the club. He opens
<v Speaker 1>the door, and as he opens the door, the wind
<v Speaker 1>like blows the door. Okay, so that's his perspective on it.
<v Speaker 1>But I can imagine the perspective of everybody inside the
<v Speaker 1>bar when this six foot four giant black man at
<v Speaker 1>this white club opens the door to thunder and lightning
<v Speaker 1>blasting behind him, and it looks as like he's ripping
<v Speaker 1>the door off, throwing it down the street. And so
<v Speaker 1>he comes in and he's like, I want to sit in,
<v Speaker 1>and Bruce says okay, and they fall in love with
<v Speaker 1>each other.
<v Speaker 2>That's fantastic. Let's talk about how they got the band name,
<v Speaker 2>the EA Street Band. Okay, one of the guys in
<v Speaker 2>the band lived on Eas Street.
<v Speaker 1>Yes, I don't remember who it was. It was Dave Santius,
<v Speaker 1>but I don't really, I'm not sure one of those
<v Speaker 1>guys lived on East Street. So why not call it
<v Speaker 1>the East Street Fan.
<v Speaker 2>I'm just here to pass on knowledge. It's a great
<v Speaker 2>band name, the Eas Street Band. Yeah, I mean, as
<v Speaker 2>long as there's somebody before it. Huey Lewis and the
<v Speaker 2>East Street Band. Hey, I grew up in a town
<v Speaker 2>where he had a street b Street, C Street, I
<v Speaker 2>swear yeah, D Street, so I understand.
<v Speaker 1>There you go. And their first album was appropriately called
<v Speaker 1>Greetings from Asbury Park, New Jersey. Of course, immediately comparisons
<v Speaker 1>start getting made between Bruce and Bob Dylan and music
<v Speaker 1>reviews right, but the critics kind of tear it up
<v Speaker 1>and it's not a big commercial success. Later that year
<v Speaker 1>they come out with their second album, which is called
<v Speaker 1>The Wild, the Innocent, and the East Street Shuffle. And
<v Speaker 1>this one actually got rave reviews by the critics, so
<v Speaker 1>they really loved it. But it's long and not remotely commercial. Yeah,
<v Speaker 1>nothing is going to be getting played on the radio,
<v Speaker 1>which means you're not going to have a lot of
<v Speaker 1>album sales. Yes, so record company of course starting to
<v Speaker 1>scratch their head a little bit and tap their fingers. Fortunately,
<v Speaker 1>Bruce has the ability to put on an incredible live show.
<v Speaker 1>He is notorious even still for doing like three hour
<v Speaker 1>long shows that are full energy the whole time. He
<v Speaker 1>would do these live shows and his fan base keeps
<v Speaker 1>on growing and growing, and at some point, this music
<v Speaker 1>critic from Rolling Stone magazine named John Landau comes in
<v Speaker 1>to see one of his shows, and after seeing his show,
<v Speaker 1>he writes and Rolling Stone. I've seen the future of
<v Speaker 1>rock and roll and it is Bruce Springsteen.
<v Speaker 2>That's fantastic. I think we need to put a pin
<v Speaker 2>in that guy's name because he's going to show up later.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, yes, he is, importantly Yes, So at that point,
<v Speaker 1>Bruce is really struggling, but he writes and records this
<v Speaker 1>song called Torn to Run. Everyone sees the potential for
<v Speaker 1>this to be an incredible hit, Like it's his style
<v Speaker 1>is not one that's radio friendly, but this song definitely is.
<v Speaker 1>And Micah Pell even like sneaks copies of this song
<v Speaker 1>to pro Bruce Springsteen radio stations there in New Jersey.
<v Speaker 1>And the following continues to grow and grow, but he
<v Speaker 1>doesn't have an album to go along with it, and
<v Speaker 1>then his team starts to fall apart. Mad Dog leaves,
<v Speaker 1>he's replaced by this guy named boom Carter, but then
<v Speaker 1>Dave Sanchez, who is probably the best musician in the group,
<v Speaker 1>leaves and he takes boom Carter with him. So he's
<v Speaker 1>lost two drummers and his best musician in a span
<v Speaker 1>of just a few months. And then he runs across
<v Speaker 1>this guy who I think is a key to the
<v Speaker 1>album that we're going to talk about in just a bit.
<v Speaker 1>His name is Max Weinberger. Okay, so you've heard the
<v Speaker 1>name Max Weinberger before, Yeah, because you probably have seen
<v Speaker 1>him on Conan O'Brien, right, right, So that guy was
<v Speaker 1>the replacement drummer that ended up being the drummer for
<v Speaker 1>the East Street Band. He had been playing with this group.
<v Speaker 1>He's just in college at the time and still living
<v Speaker 1>at home, but he had been playing for this group
<v Speaker 1>called the Jim Morino Band that was a support for
<v Speaker 1>Springsteen's band at Seaton Hall. So when Bruce puts out
<v Speaker 1>an ad of hey, we need a new drummer, he's
<v Speaker 1>all about it, right, And this is what it says
<v Speaker 1>in the newspaper ads. It says no junior Ginger Bakers.
<v Speaker 1>So Ginger Baker was the drummer for Cream and he
<v Speaker 1>was notorious for like these really long drawn out, big, nice,
<v Speaker 1>blamey solos. And they were like, we don't want that guy.
<v Speaker 1>We want straight and narrow drumming. Max is a guy
<v Speaker 1>who likes simplistic and ordered drumming. Right. He is in
<v Speaker 1>a big show. Vote. By the way, I sent you
<v Speaker 1>a video where it's Max Weinberg in a drum off
<v Speaker 1>with his son, Jay Weinberg, and Jay's the he's the
<v Speaker 1>drummer for Slipknot. That's not Max Weinberg kind of drumming.
<v Speaker 1>That's that's big, big, showy drumming. Yes, And they do
<v Speaker 1>a swing song in this drum off and it is fantastic. Yeah, yeah,
<v Speaker 1>you should check it out anyway, So he answers the
<v Speaker 1>Village Voice ad he knows he's going to keep his
<v Speaker 1>drumming condensed contained, and Bruce offers them the job at
<v Speaker 1>one hundred and ten dollars a week, and so he
<v Speaker 1>quits college just a few credit shy of degree and
<v Speaker 1>joins the eas Street band.
<v Speaker 2>Good choice.
<v Speaker 1>So they go to the studio. They start trying to
<v Speaker 1>put the album together to go with this song Born
<v Speaker 1>to Run, and Michapel insists on producing, but they can't
<v Speaker 1>make it sound like it is in Bruce's head, and
<v Speaker 1>Bruce is starting to doubt Mike's abilities. So at some
<v Speaker 1>point Bruce has his old friend Steve van Zant come
<v Speaker 1>by and he's like, hey, you want to work with us,
<v Speaker 1>and you know, they're just hanging out initially, it's like, hey,
<v Speaker 1>do you want to help us put this album together?
<v Speaker 1>And it's like sure, and that becomes him becoming a
<v Speaker 1>member of the East Street Band. As time goes on,
<v Speaker 1>right right, he also brings in put a Pen in It,
<v Speaker 1>John Landau, who had said that he was going to
<v Speaker 1>be the future of rock and roll, to help them
<v Speaker 1>get the right sound because they're just struggling. And Landau
<v Speaker 1>ends up breaking down a lot of the barriers that
<v Speaker 1>were slowing down the progress of the album, and Bruce
<v Speaker 1>makes him a co producer with him and Bruce and
<v Speaker 1>Mike Appel, and Mike is pissed.
<v Speaker 2>He is not pleased.
<v Speaker 1>Right, he thinks he's being replaced, and as it turned out,
<v Speaker 1>he was right about that. Yep. The record company starts
<v Speaker 1>putting pressure on them because they've been working on this
<v Speaker 1>for months. They've already put out promotions and advertisements and books,
<v Speaker 1>tour and so ultimately they forced this album out. July twentieth,
<v Speaker 1>nineteen seventy five, finished recording Born to Run.
<v Speaker 2>Okay, So, one of the things I found interesting about
<v Speaker 2>the story behind Born to Run. So Bruce is out
<v Speaker 2>to make this great rock song and he wants something
<v Speaker 2>radio friendly, something to please the record company, and so
<v Speaker 2>he comes up with Born to Run. He thinks, man,
<v Speaker 2>I've knocked it out of the park with this one.
<v Speaker 2>This is a great song, and when he puts it out,
<v Speaker 2>it doesn't really catch fire like he wanted it to. Now,
<v Speaker 2>if you are a long distance runner like you and
<v Speaker 2>I have been in there past, yeah, Born to Run
<v Speaker 2>is a part of your playlist. That's just how it
<v Speaker 2>is if you're a runner, right, and it gives you
<v Speaker 2>extra legs and it's a great song. But at the
<v Speaker 2>time when it came out, it wasn't really.
<v Speaker 1>That big of a hit. Yeah, it wasn't as big
<v Speaker 1>as he wanted it was. Still it was a career
<v Speaker 1>maker for him.
<v Speaker 2>It was he thought it would be like the best.
<v Speaker 1>Song, number one song. Yeah, it didn't even crack the
<v Speaker 1>top ten. It's crazy. Yeah, so it's a success. I mean,
<v Speaker 1>he does have a great deal of success because of
<v Speaker 1>this album Born to Run. A few weeks after it
<v Speaker 1>gets released, they play a sold out show in New
<v Speaker 1>York at this club called the bottom Line Line. There
<v Speaker 1>were reporters there, music critics there, new fan base there,
<v Speaker 1>and he dazzles them all and within a few weeks
<v Speaker 1>he becomes a superstar. He's on the cover of Newsweek
<v Speaker 1>and Time, magazine in the same week. Same week, calls
<v Speaker 1>up his dad. He's like, I'm gonna be on the
<v Speaker 1>cover of Newsweek and Time at the same time, Dad,
<v Speaker 1>and he's like says, like, well, it's better than another
<v Speaker 1>picture of the president.
<v Speaker 2>I guess I heard him talk about this. He said
<v Speaker 2>that when he called, he was like, basically it was
<v Speaker 2>the equivalent of telling his dad that he had taken
<v Speaker 2>Santa Claus's job at the North Pole.
<v Speaker 1>So the album reaches number three, but Bruce realizes he
<v Speaker 1>is not making very much money.
<v Speaker 2>Yes, this is a problem, curious.
<v Speaker 1>So he hires an attorney in an accountant to check
<v Speaker 1>the books, and he finds out that he doesn't really
<v Speaker 1>own the rights to his own songs. Michappel, his company
<v Speaker 1>owns those and Mike is taking a majority of the
<v Speaker 1>profits for his company. So Bruce sues Mike yep, and
<v Speaker 1>then Mike counter sues Bruce, and Bruce does not record
<v Speaker 1>another album for about three more years. And I mean
<v Speaker 1>he's shooting up like a rocket. Yeah, cover of two
<v Speaker 1>Pinnacle magazines and then Crickets, and then the magazines start
<v Speaker 1>to publish whatever happened to Bruce Springsteen articles, Yeah, that
<v Speaker 1>must be very hard, but he wasn't willing to give
<v Speaker 1>up control of his music, and so they just continued
<v Speaker 1>to fight and he refused to record. Michappel stopped him
<v Speaker 1>from recording with John Landau through the lawsuit, and so
<v Speaker 1>finally on May twenty eighth, nineteen seventy seven, at three
<v Speaker 1>o'clock in the morning, Bruce and Mike settled their lawsuit.
<v Speaker 1>Bruce gives up a lot of money, Mike gives up
<v Speaker 1>control of the music. Bruce makes John Landau his new manager,
<v Speaker 1>and they quickly produced an album, and this album details
<v Speaker 1>the difficulties and lessons from that point in life. And
<v Speaker 1>that album was called Darkness on the Edge of Top.
<v Speaker 1>So he plays countless shows and the three hour long shows,
<v Speaker 1>and a mass is an incredible fan base. He graduates
<v Speaker 1>from theaters into playing arenas, and then he goes and
<v Speaker 1>he plays the No Nuke's Benefit with some giants from
<v Speaker 1>the seventies like Crosby, Stills and Nash and Carly Simon,
<v Speaker 1>but he is the one that steals the show. So
<v Speaker 1>he manages to revive his struggling career. Then, in nineteen
<v Speaker 1>eighty records the album The River that has a song
<v Speaker 1>called The River which was inspired by his sister's planned pregnancy.
<v Speaker 1>Good song, but it also interestingly, up to this point,
<v Speaker 1>as we said, he hasn't cracked the top ten, but
<v Speaker 1>there's a song on this album that breaks that streak.
<v Speaker 2>He's got a great top forty song that's called Hungry Heart.
<v Speaker 1>I mean, so good, so great song. So here's it's interesting.
<v Speaker 1>You listen to that song, you're like, man, he sounds younger.
<v Speaker 1>He's a voice a little bit higher. Yeah. Yeah, they
<v Speaker 1>sped up a song. They actually sped up the tempo,
<v Speaker 1>like not just the temple, like, they sped the recording
<v Speaker 1>up so that his pitch actually increased. He's saying it lower.
<v Speaker 1>They sped it up to be higher, faster, and it worked.
<v Speaker 1>Sound great. Yeah. So then we've got some time where
<v Speaker 1>it's very prolific songwriting time for him. But he's like
<v Speaker 1>he's recording with a cheap tape recorder and a guitar
<v Speaker 1>and his garage and like he'll keep these tapes in
<v Speaker 1>his pockets for weeks at a time, and then he
<v Speaker 1>meets this producer named Chuck Plutkin, and he's like, here
<v Speaker 1>are my tapes, and so Chuck pluckin incredibly I mean
<v Speaker 1>he hasn't really done much of until this point. He
<v Speaker 1>engineers these pocket tape kruddy recorder in the garage songs
<v Speaker 1>into professional sounding produced songs for the Vinyl LP. And
<v Speaker 1>that is what you get on the album Nebraska.
<v Speaker 2>Wow, that's incredible. I've not ever heard this story.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah. So he goes on a songwriting spree. Yeah, he does,
<v Speaker 1>and puts together something like eighty songs, and they whittle
<v Speaker 1>it down to eleven songs, and he presents those songs
<v Speaker 1>to John Landau and John Lando says, you don't have
<v Speaker 1>a hit, right, right, right? How many times have we
<v Speaker 1>said the same story over and over right? And I
<v Speaker 1>mean eighty songs that he's whittled down to eleven, And
<v Speaker 1>the guy that you've trusted with everything, your manager, your
<v Speaker 1>go to guy, says you don't have a hit. You
<v Speaker 1>to write another song. They have a bit of a battle.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, he gets mad at him. He says, look, dude,
<v Speaker 2>I've written seventy songs. If you want to hit, you
<v Speaker 2>write the hit.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, And so Lando gets pissed and he walks out. Yep,
<v Speaker 1>Bruce is pissed and he's walking around blowing off steam.
<v Speaker 1>But of course, as all musicians do. He ends up
<v Speaker 1>sitting down with the guitar, strums out a chord, strums
<v Speaker 1>out another chord, and sings and get up in the
<v Speaker 1>evening and I ain't got nothing to say. And to
<v Speaker 1>hear that story behind that song. It elevated that song
<v Speaker 1>on my I Love this Song list because if you
<v Speaker 1>know the story behind a song that he's been working
<v Speaker 1>and working and beat down and has made himself a
<v Speaker 1>prisoner of the career that he longed for and loved,
<v Speaker 1>and these are the words that come out from that song.
<v Speaker 2>Oh man, so powerful, that's right, it is, It absolutely is.
<v Speaker 2>And the fact that this creativity can come out of
<v Speaker 2>a I mean, he had a two year battle with
<v Speaker 2>his former manager, plus he just had a fight with
<v Speaker 2>his new manager, and he's done all this work and
<v Speaker 2>he had written like Prince levels of songwriting, right.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, songs. He'd even considered doing a double album on
<v Speaker 1>the deal, Yeah, with Nebraska and Born in the USA,
<v Speaker 1>all those songs that they were putting together. He had
<v Speaker 1>thought about doing a double album.
<v Speaker 2>Yes, so most of the songs from the Born in
<v Speaker 2>the USA album were written and recorded in nineteen eighty two.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, Yes, like seven of the seven of the twelve, yeah,
<v Speaker 1>were recorded together at the same place, and then they
<v Speaker 1>recorded the other four and then finally ended up recording
<v Speaker 1>the Dancing in the Dark class.
<v Speaker 2>Yes, yes, I thought it was interesting. The name for
<v Speaker 2>the album that he had in mind, Murder Incorporated.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah. Interesting. Interesting. I don't know what that means, but
<v Speaker 1>right there you go. Okay, and so now he's got
<v Speaker 1>these songs. He feels like they've got a hit, potential
<v Speaker 1>hit on their hand. Little they know what's about to come,
<v Speaker 1>and so they need a cover for the album, right right, yep.
<v Speaker 1>So you know the photographer Ann Leebowitz, Annie Leebowitz, Okay,
<v Speaker 1>she is a world famous photographer of musicians, and the
<v Speaker 1>picture of Bruce's butt comes from her pictures of him
<v Speaker 1>and in front of this flag. Yes, some people thought
<v Speaker 1>that the cover was depicting Bruce urinating on the flag,
<v Speaker 1>but he said, no, that was unintentional. We took a
<v Speaker 1>lot of different types of pictures and in the end,
<v Speaker 1>the picture of my ass looked better than the picture
<v Speaker 1>of my face, and so that's what we went with
<v Speaker 1>on the cover. I didn't have any secret message. I
<v Speaker 1>didn't do that very much.
<v Speaker 2>Now here's the rumor, right right, Actually this is an
<v Speaker 2>unconfirmed rumor that when she showed in the picture, he said, no, no, no,
<v Speaker 2>see I want to change my clothes, my hair, my face,
<v Speaker 2>and she said, okay, let's take a picture of your butt.
<v Speaker 2>That is not true.
<v Speaker 1>That's jo Okay, all right, So I'm gonna talk about
<v Speaker 1>James Buckley. James Buckley is one of our top top fans, right.
<v Speaker 2>James Buckley has become a friend of ours.
<v Speaker 1>Yes, he's one of our Patreons executive producer. By the way,
<v Speaker 1>check out Patreon if you want to be an executive
<v Speaker 1>producer of an episode. But James is an attorney and
<v Speaker 1>also a drummer, and so I just threw out to him,
<v Speaker 1>I'm like, hey, we're comparing Hue Lewis and Bruce Springsteen.
<v Speaker 1>What are your thoughts? And he gave his opinion on it.
<v Speaker 1>But we started talking about Max Weinberg, right, because he's
<v Speaker 1>a drummer, and he notes, you know, not only does
<v Speaker 1>he gives up the legal career in order to become
<v Speaker 1>a rock musician and then you know, go on to
<v Speaker 1>be the musician for a couple of different late night shows.
<v Speaker 1>But in listening to the album again, I think Max
<v Speaker 1>Weinberg is the key to the success of this album
<v Speaker 1>because you have this loud, popping, hooky drum beat that
<v Speaker 1>goes along with all of Bruce's somber, dark, deep lyrics,
<v Speaker 1>and together you have a balance that strikes a chord
<v Speaker 1>with a swath of people around the country.
<v Speaker 2>Nice like it a swath a swath. Wow. All right,
<v Speaker 2>before we do track by track, I've got a couple
<v Speaker 2>more things I just want to throw out there while
<v Speaker 2>we're talking about it. Okay, So in the mid eighties,
<v Speaker 2>you had this thing called boss Mania, like people went
<v Speaker 2>crazy for Bruce Springsteen. Yep, Okay, I sent you a
<v Speaker 2>video of a clip from Growing Paints.
<v Speaker 1>Oh yeah, do.
<v Speaker 2>You remember this?
<v Speaker 1>Yes? Okay, So just and I remember the episode is
<v Speaker 1>really Oh yeah, I totally remember the episode. I was
<v Speaker 1>a Growing Pains fanatic. So yes, I remember.
<v Speaker 2>So Mike Seaver and his dad Jason Seaver, huh, go
<v Speaker 2>to a Bruce Springsteen concert together and they it's funny
<v Speaker 2>because they're both really into it. And then on national TV,
<v Speaker 2>Jason Seaver gives Mike a big hug and like this
<v Speaker 2>is my guy and gives him a kiss.
<v Speaker 1>And it embarrasses.
<v Speaker 2>Yeah, but they're having such a good time at the
<v Speaker 2>Bruce Springsteen concert. I thought that was really fun.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, okay, now I will say this. They have a
<v Speaker 1>big discussion about this and how his dad has embarrassed him,
<v Speaker 1>and he's like, what I thought, we're just having a
<v Speaker 1>good time. There's a big converse that you could that
<v Speaker 1>I could have with my kid at this sure, sure,
<v Speaker 1>And so you kind of get the idea. And then
<v Speaker 1>at the end of the episode, Mike is in this
<v Speaker 1>room with all of his friends and they're listened to
<v Speaker 1>the stereo pretty loud, and Jason comes in and is like,
<v Speaker 1>you guys need to turn it down. We're in the
<v Speaker 1>next room. You know, there's a reasonable level. And it
<v Speaker 1>kind of gives him a wink and walks out the
<v Speaker 1>door and he starts dancing in the kitchen with Maggie.
<v Speaker 1>And the funny thing is is the song that they're
<v Speaker 1>playing on the radio sounds exactly like Footloose, which we
<v Speaker 1>will be covering in our Summer of nineteen eighty four.
<v Speaker 2>Can't wait for that.
<v Speaker 1>Yeah, okay.
<v Speaker 2>So one of the things I wanted to throw out
<v Speaker 2>here this is this is a tidbit that I learned
<v Speaker 2>that was like, WHOA, I can't believe this Okay, Born
<v Speaker 2>in the USA became the first compact disc manufactured in
<v Speaker 2>the United States for commercial release.
<v Speaker 1>Crazy.
<v Speaker 2>It was manufactured in Tera Hoode, Indiana, in September of
<v Speaker 2>nineteen eighty four. Before that, CDs had been imported from Japan. Wow,
<v Speaker 2>first CD manufacturers in the US. It was literally born
<v Speaker 2>in the USA.
<v Speaker 1>Wow. Good one, man, good one. Thank you. So tune
<v Speaker 1>in next week we will cover Born in the USA
<v Speaker 1>track by track as we plow into our Summer of
<v Speaker 1>nineteen eighty four series.
<v Speaker 2>It's going to be amazing comeback with This.
<v Speaker 3>Was a big baseball where.
<v Speaker 1>That scene ball by Boom, but the critics kind of
<v Speaker 1>tore it up. It was not a big commercial success either. Okay,
<v Speaker 1>you want to say it with Obsberg? Yeah, uh, save
<v Speaker 1>that for the outtakes. The okay,