91. Bruce Springsteen, "Darkness on the Edge of Town"

 

I'm going to tread lightly here, because this album is (rightfully) regarded as an all-time classic, as you can see because it's here at 91, but it suffers a little bit following Jimi yesterday.  Not because it's not a good album!  It's a good album!  But it has a kind of sameness and uniformity of sound that makes it come across as a little plodding after the wild creativity of Axis: Bold as Love.  Hendrix is a hard act to follow!  Even Bruce would tell you that.

Now, let's get to how good this album is, because when you think of "pure, uncut rock and roll music," this is what you're thinking of.  "Badlands," the album opener, is like if you compressed all of early Springsteen into one song - it's got that guitar, Clarence Clemons' aching sax lines, Max Weinberg's drums, which are perfectly suited to the music, not too much, not too little (I love the little three-snare-hit fills at the end of each phrase in the middle), and of course Bruce's classic tale of a striver working for something bigger than himself:

Badlands, you gotta live it everyday
Let the broken hearts stand as the price you've gotta pay
Keep movin' till it's understood
And these badlands start treating us good

The first single, "Prove It All Night," another 24 karat lock all-time classic rock song, is in the same theme, maybe Springsteen's Ur-theme, which is, in his own words, "Success requires sacrifice:"

Baby, tie your hair back in a long white bow

Meet me in the fields behind the dynamo

You hear their voices telling you not to go

They made their choices and they'll never know

What it means to steal, to cheat, to lie

What it's like to live and die 

I don't love all the songs.  I think "Streets of Fire" is kinda overblown and "Something in the Night" really never achieves liftoff velocity, but criticizing anything about this album just feels wrong,  This is delievered with such a pureness of heart and spirit that you have to really be an asshole to sit around and pick at it.  

One amazing thing is the songs that Bruce wrote during the sessions for this album and then gave to other artists, like "Because the Night" for Patti Smith and "Fire" for the Pointer Sisters.  You could retire after writing those two songs and say you were a wildly successful songwriter, and those are the ones Springsteen gave away.  Sheesh.

Is this album in my personal Top 500? I can't see playing it all that much but if I've got some open slots, sure.