I've not read any of the Ronnie Spector obituaries, but I imagine they'll all centre on Be My Baby, her turbulent marriage to Phil, her battle with alcoholism, and maybe that Christmas album.
I'm not sure how many of them will call her the Godmother of New York punk, but I reckon there's a very strong argument for that case. There's a reason the Ramones wanted to work with Phil Spector, and I don't think it had anything to do with the Wall of Sound (which was largely absent from their collaboration anyway). I reckon it's because of the Noo Yawk attitude Ronnie brought to those early discs, and that had very little to do with Phil. You can hear it on her solo stuff too, and though a collaboration with the E Street Band on a Billy Joel song is far more New Jersey than New York... well, it's only across the river.
Billy wrote this as a Ronnie Spector tribute, so he must have been made up when she recorded it.
Regular readers of this blog will probably find my choice for Album of the Year so, so predictable. Particularly anyone who remembers what 2019's Album of the Year was round these parts.
However, a few notes in my defence...
Prior to 2019, the last time I voted a Springsteen album as the best thing I'd heard all year was in 1987, with Tunnel of Love.
Prior to Western Stars, the last Springsteen studio album, 2014's hodge-podge contract-filler High Hopes, barely deserved a mention in my year end countdown.
And prior to that, there were any number of albums released with the resurrected E Street Band that I liked well enough (some more than others), but as much as they might have been good late-stage Bruce albums, they didn't really feel like good band albums. Ironically, the last great E Street Band album then, the last one that truly feels and sounds like the E Street Band... was Born In The USA.
36 years ago.
I couldn't quite put my finger on why this album sounded like a proper E Street record again after such a long time... until I read an interview with Steve Van Zandt in which he explained that unlike all the other records he's worked on with Bruce this century, this is the only one in which the band have contributed as much as they did in the 70s and 80s. All the other albums Bruce has made with them since their reunion, he's come to the room with finished songs and a producer, looking for a very specific sound, and the band have pretty much acted as session musicians to deliver his vision. This record though was recorded like the classic E Street albums of the 70s and 80s. Bruce just brought the songs - acoustic guitar and lyrics. Then he let the band do their thing. And it shows...
Letter To You sounds like a Greatest Hits set from an alternate reality. Most of the tracks would fit comfortably on the old classic albums, without any concessions for a contemporary sound. The opener, One Minute You're Here, wouldn't have been out of place on Tunnel Of Love, with maybe a touch of The Rising.
Then comes the title track, which I was rather underwhelmed with on its own... yet hearing it in the context of the album as a whole (particularly coming off the back of the slow, acoustic opener) really kicks it up a gear.
Three of the songs featured here were actually written prior to Bruce's debut album back in 1973, but have never been recorded by him. Of these, If I Was The Priest, is the one that really could have fallen of the edge of Greetings From Asbury Park, N.J. - like much of that disc, it owes a huge debt to Dylan.
Meanwhile, Janey Needs A Shooter is an interesting one for Warren Zevon fans. A track Zevon heard Bruce playing live back in the day, before loosely adapting it as Jeannie Needs A Shooter on the album Bad Luck Streak In Dancing School. They're very different songs when played back to back, yet they do match up.
The Power of Prayer evokes the chord sequences from Born To Run in a song that's as open to misinterpretation as Born In The USA. On the surface, it seems Bruce is getting in touch with his spiritual side (there's a subtext of growing old and facing up to one's mortality than runs throughout the record). A closer listen, however, reveals a deeper meaning - Bruce's prayer is live music, and this album rewards the listener with the next best thing to seeing the E Street Band playing live.
Rainmaker takes a sly dig at Trump, but that's the only political song on here (despite his activism in the run up to the US election, Bruce decided it would be boring to write a whole album attacking idiot politicians... besides, he's already done that on Wrecking Ball).
Rainmaker says white’s black and black’s white
Says night’s day and day’s night
Says close your eyes and go to sleep now
I’m in a burnin’ field unloadin’ buckshot into low clouds
Rainmaker, a little faith for hire
Rainmaker, the house is on fire
Rainmaker, take everything you have
Sometimes folks need to believe in something so bad, so bad, so bad
They’ll hire a rainmaker
Two tunes here really kick this album up into the higher echelons. House Of A Thousand Guitars starts (rather ironically) with a classic Roy Bittan piano solo before launching into the kind of bombastic lyrical mythologising only Bruce could get away with... with maybe a sly reminder of how much Jim Steinman owes his career to The Boss.
Here the bitter and the bored
Wake in search of the lost chord
That'll band us together for as long as there's stars
Yeah in the house of a thousand guitars
And then comes Ghosts, which is basically Thunder Road or Born To Run grown old, no longer burning to get out of this town, but looking back on a lifetime of running, glorying in the joy of still being alive. It's a love song from a 70 year old man to his 20-something self, full of gratitude and respect. And best of all, it tears the roof off like no Springsteen song has in decades...
I hear the sound of your guitar
Coming in from the mystic far
The stone and the gravel in your voice
Come in my dreams and I rejoice
It's your ghost moving through the night
Spirit filled with light
I need, need you by my side
Your love and I'm alive
I can feel the blood shiver in my bones
I'm alive and I'm out here on my own
I'm alive and I'm coming home
This is a very different record to last year's Western Stars, in which Bruce turned down the path not taken and gave Jimmy Webb a run for his money. By contrast, Letter To You sounds like exactly what you'd expect from a Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band album... just not one we've heard for a long, long time.
Last June, I went to see Bruce Springsteen live in Coventry. This was back when I was only doing one post a week, so I had to crowbar my review into My Top Ten Divorce Songs. Here's what I wrote at the time...
I saw Bruce play live again on Friday
night in Coventry. Probably the fourth time I've seen him now (it's
getting hard to remember such trivia) but once again I was astounded by
the show he put on. I've seen a lot of live music in my day (though not
that much these days), a lot of big bands, big names, megastars. But
I've never seen anyone put on a show like Bruce. 3 1/2 hours of solid,
wall-to-wall action: the instant one song ends, it's 1-2-3-4, and here
comes the next. 3 1/2 hours that were over in a flash. He came on at
6.40 and by 8.30, I was thinking, 'most bands would still be in the
dressing room now, waiting for the underpaid support act to finish'. And
there was still a good 90 minutes to go: longer than a lot of big names
bother these days. If you're not down with Bruce, that's fine, I'm not
here to persuade you otherwise. But when it comes to putting on a show,
there's no one like him as far as I can tell. (I never saw Prince live,
one of my great musical regrets... y'know, I thought there'd still be
time... but from what I hear, he's maybe the only one who came close.)
Anyway, Bruce didn't play anything from
Tunnel Of Love on Friday night. It probably wouldn't have fit the rock
'n' roll extravangza that 'The River' tour had promised. He didn't play
anything from Nebraska or Tom Joad either. I didn't miss them - not with
so much else going on - but I'd have loved to have heard them anyway. 3
1/2 hours... and he barely scratched the surface of what I'd have liked
to hear him play...
Anyway, I have two reasons for bringing this up again today. Firstly, I finished reading Born To Run, the Springsteen autobiography, and obviously I enjoyed it a lot. It gave me insights into his character I'd never appreciated before (not all of it nice, but that's the trick with an autobiography: admit to your failings too). The stuff about his father, and Bruce's own battle with depression, was particularly moving, as was his tribute to Clarence. There were times I thought he tried too hard to be a great prose writer, because it was expected of him, but writing a book and writing a story in a song are two very different skills. Essential reading for Bruce fans, obviously. And the rest of you gave up on this post with the opening line, so I'm preaching to the converted.
The second reason is that the aforementioned Coventry concert has been released for official download, as all Bruce's concerts are nowadays: a great way of beating the bootleggers and making some more cash... who wouldn't want to own a live recording of a great gig? I have to admit, I've never been much of a live album fan, but I make an exception for Bruce, and I've been listening to this recording a lot since my pal Steve (who also attended the Coventry gig) gifted it me for Christmas.
I'm going to share two of the tracks with you today. The first is the track he opened with, a piano & vocal only version of one of his earliest songs, For You, which is incredible.
And the second, a big singalong crowd-pleaser, Hungry Heart... because, if you listen very, very carefully, I'm on backing vocals in there somewhere... amid a crowd of thousands.
If you're interested in checking out any more live Bruce, I recommend the official gig website: http://live.brucespringsteen.net/. Don't tell your credit card company I sent you.
Brett
Anderson's songwriting has always combined glitter and grubbiness, so
an ode to the capital city of both seemed inevitable.
9. Kasey Chambers - Hollywood
Kasey laments the fact that real life ain't like the movies. A cliche, perhaps... but that voice!
One of the more interesting new records I've discovered this year comes from ex-Fleet Fox J. Tillman aka Father John Misty. This is a standout track from his debut album (as FJM), Fear Fun.
Comic book fan David Gedge obviously didn't think Hollywood's version of Spider-Man measured up to the one he read as a kid. And of course, he turns that into a metaphor for disappointing relationships.
Look, if you don't like Billy Joel... you don't like music. The Phil Spector-esque production on this BJ classic proved irresistible to Phil's ex, lead Ronette Ronnie Spector who went on to record her own version... with a little help from the legendary E Street Band.
Sometimes side projects prove more exciting than an artist's day job. Codeine Velvet Club was the brainchild of lead Fratelli Jon Lawler and Glasgow club singer Lou Hickey. The male/female harmonies and big 60s production numbers they created on the band's 2009 debut album promised great things... though sadly, it doesn't seem they're destined to work together again.
1. Bob Seger & The Silver Bullet Band - Hollywood Nights
One of beardy-Bob's bristling best.
In those Hollywood nights
In those Hollywood hills
She was looking so right
In her diamonds and frills
All those big city nights
In those high rolling hills
Above all the lights
She had all of the skills
