Word: springsteens
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Covering rock music, as Correspondent James Willwerth discovered on this week's story on Bruce Springsteen, can be almost as exhausting as gigging a round of one-night stands. Based in New York, Willwerth has reported on the multibillion-dollar record business for TIME for several years. It was while working on a cover story on the industry (TIME, Feb. 12, 1973) that Willwerth first heard of Springsteen, then the idol of a small but growing cult. After listening to an acetate pressing of the struggling rock rebel's first album, Willwerth marked Springsteen as a singer...
Gato has matured, to borrow from some of Nat Hentoff's album lining prose, and his stuff has gotten more vibrant, if less free in form over the years. He has, however, traded in the top jazz back-up men for some players who would do better accompanying Bruce Springsteen. Now Gato's in town, but before you go down to Paul's Mall to see him, consider this: the last time he was in Boston he played nothing but jazz/rock including cuts from his "Alive" album, which he recorded one week after his appearance here...
...every "Jungleland" though, there is a "Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out," which is not complex musically but, like the bass line in "Sunshine of Your Love," allows for incredible solos. Contrasting to the tightness of "She's the One" is the emotion of "Night," where Springsteen's vocal and Clarence Clemon's blaring, buzzing sax transcend the simple message--"You work from nine to five/And somehow you survive/Till the night"-- and make boredom and anguish palpable...
CLEMONS PLAYED with Springsteen on his first two albums; hearing him again conjures up images of the loose, everybody-plays-three-instruments exuberance that is lost in Born to Run. Only Clemons and Garry Tallent, the bass guitarist, remain from the "E Street" group, and Tallent no longer fools around with tubas and accordians--the brass players on Born To Run are pros, on loan from other studios. What makes Born To Run frustrating to listen to is the lingering suspicion--no, firm conviction--that with the spunk of his original group, Bruce Springsteen would have produced a great record...
...Bruce Springsteen seems to be leaving the backstreets behind. His arrangements have less and less of the heat and roar of the pits in them. He's smoothing out his music and he's headed out on the turnpike. And out on the turnpike, neither the screeches not the fumes are quite so noticeable. AM radio takes over on the turnpike...