Letter From America: The Boss is back

What did you do during lockdown (and by that I mean the first lockdown…)? Did you discover the joys of Zoom? Were you sucked into a weekly online quiz with your extended family? Did you acquire a new hobby? Eat yourself into a Jabba The Hut-sized mound? Finally make use of that yoga mat you’d bought but never used? Or, perhaps you did a Captain Tom, and walked yourself into the record books and the nation’s hearts. 

If you’re a musician, lockdown has possibly been a boon to creativity, if only to compensate for tours not going ahead. Look at Paul McCartney - he recorded McCartney III, out in December, on his own at his studio in Sussex, handling all the instruments himself. And I bet it’ll be a corker.

Though this took place last November (a sweeter, disease-free time, right?), Bruce Springsteen’s approach to housebound boredom is to invite your mates round and, in a week, put together a new album. Not that those mates are anyone: they’re called the E-Street Band. And the album is Letter To You. 

Recorded over five days at The Boss’s home in Colts Neck, New Jersey, a twenty-minute drive from Asbury Park and the real Jersey Shore so steeped in Springsteen history, the album, in his own words, “turned out to be one of the greatest recording experiences I’ve ever had.” That might sound hyperbolic, but Springsteen says there’s a “emotional nature” to the album that he loves, a point that comes across in the Apple TV making-of film about the album. It shows the camaraderie of a group - trusted sidekick Stevie Van Zandt, Patti Scialfa (Mrs. Springsteen), Nils Lofgren, Roy Bittan, Max Weinberg, Garry Tallent, Charlie Giordano and Jake Clemons (the ‘Big Man’, Clarence’s sax-playing nephew) - crafting an album, a band Springsteen says in the film informs how he writes, inspiring him to “write big”. 

Back in the spring of 1974, Springsteen and the band started work on the Born To Run album, labouring over the next 14 months - six of which on the title track alone - to create scale, something akin to the Spector ‘wall of sound’. It was an angry, frustrating time for all concerned, but ultimately, the exhaustive process produced a perennial classic. In sharp contrast, Letter To You took a fraction of the time to make, but the result is, it has to be said, equally impressive. That said, some songs on the album took an awful long time to reach a record: the epic If I Was A Priest was originally written for the Greetings From Asbury Park, N.J. album, Springsteen’s debut almost 50 years ago. Dusted off and finally recorded in the November session last year, it’s as fresh as anything more freshly minted, even for a song which treads somewhat on religious sensitivities by imagining Jesus walking through the Wild West. Significantly, it has an important place in Springsteen lore, being one of the songs he played for Columbia Records executives at their first meeting in May 1972, prompting label boss John Hammond to hope that every song on the artist’s debut LP would be like it. 

Another resurrected from the 1970s is Janey Needs A Shooter (which Warren Zevon purloined with The Boss’s permission for his 1980 song Jeannie Needs A Shooter), while Songs For Orphans also dates back to the Greetings era, and has only previously been heard in public before at a single show 2005 Devils And Dust tour. “It's wonderful how the older songs fit so well into this album, Van Zandt told Forbes recently. “It's remarkable really. That, Janey Needs A Shooter and Songs For Orphans are all from the early '70s. To have something fit so well 50 years later - oh my God, I swear we have completely redefined chronological time, I'm telling you! I think rock and roll has changed science. Seventy is the new 40.”

Picture: Bruce Springsteen, 2020/Danny Clinch

Springsteen is now 71, but as if proof that age is just a number, Letter To You arrives in what feels like a period of unblinking industriousness. Like his near-contemporary Neil Young (or even, come to think of it, his somewhat British equivalent Paul Weller), there has been little sign of slowing down as he reaches his more senior years. Letter To You is his fourth in eight years, his second since 2014’s High Hopes with the E-Street band fully on board, and comes just a year after the wonderful Western Stars. All this, the Born To Run autobiography, and that extended run of Springsteen On Broadway, his New York residency that ran for five shows a week from October 2017 until December. The following year. Much like his legendary, near-four hour concerts, Springsteen has never done things by halves.

“I’m at a point in my playing life and artistic life where I’ve never felt as vital,” he recently told the New York Times. “My band is at its best, and we have so much accumulated knowledge and craft about what we do that this was a time in my life where I said, ‘I want to use that as much as I can.’” The product of this is an album recorded live and without need for endless overdubs, but also an album of undeniable energy, power and subtle texture in tremendous balance and, somehow, an inherent sense of love and camaraderie. Missing, of course, from this are the late Danny Federici and Clemons Snr, though their spirits - as witnessed frequently in the Apple TV documentary, are never far from any of the band’s hearts, least of whom, Springsteen himself. The band’s closeness undoubtedly was the fuel that drove the making of Letter To You.

“I had cut a song on the record called Janey Needs A Shooter earlier on for a one-off for Record Store Day,” Springsteen recently told America’s National Public Radio. “But when I listened back to it, it was the closest thing the band had ever sounded to Darkness On The Edge of Town. You know, that was because we all played together and sang at one time, and because we relied only on the instrumentation of the band and no overdubs. So I said, well, I'd be interested in making a record where we return to the template of Darkness On The Edge of Town. And so, consequently, I made no demos of the songs. I simply recorded them on my acoustic guitar into my iPhone, waited until the band got here, played in the songs on an acoustic guitar and then we went and performed the music.” 

“I knew I wanted to make a record with the band,” Springsteen added in his New York Times interview. “I knew I wanted it to be the pure instrumentation of the band: two keyboards, the guitars, the bass, drums and saxophone, and I didn’t want anything else. I didn’t want to demo or have preconceptions of the music, so I didn’t touch the songs until I taught them to the band. The approach is confirmed by Van Zandt, who told Forbes: “I kept emphasising if [Springsteen and the E-Street Band] do make another record - and it was really not clear if we ever would - but I said, 'If we do, let's go back to the old way’, which we had done on three records, Darkness On The Edge Of Town, The River and Born In The USA, where Bruce walks in with an acoustic guitar, plays his songs and everybody has a chance to give their input.”

The result is a classic Springsteen album, neither melancholy or overtly upbeat, but a continuation of the reflective mood he’s been in since the autobiographical period of his book and Broadway show. Along with the songs written in another time, there are nostalgic hat-tips to the past, such as the stonking Last Man Standing, which pays tribute to his teenage band, The Castiles, of which - he reveals in the Apple TV film - he is now the only surviving member. There is similar thought for mortality and absent friends on I’ll See You In My Dreams. While the dynamics of Letter To You may not vary from expectations of what a Bruce Springsteen/E-Street Band album should offer, there is so much more to enjoy that just the comfort food of familiarity. The understated opener, One Minute You're Here is as tender as the title track that follows it, or as prototypical as Ghosts, perhaps serving the simple purpose of being a celebration of what it is to be in this brotherhood of musicians.

Rock bands are, in general, uneven communities. Invariably riven by ego, creative tension and mismatched personalities, they are often held together by artistic tension alone. Bruce Springsteen has, at his disposal, an unique family, even when he dips into the E-Street collective on his 'pure' solo albums. Together they produce something no other entity in rock music is capable of. As hackneyed as it is to say, they are truly more than the sum of their parts. Letter To You, with its raw simplicity, its power and energy is an album to savour, for sure, but also one to just enjoy for what it is. And it may well be one of the best that Bruce Springsteen and his gang have ever produced.

Parklife

Picture: Twitter/British Summer Time

It was one of those days when it was peculiarly fun to be British. Or English. Or something between the two. The middle Sunday in July, with events conspiring to schedule the Cricket World Cup Final between England and New Zealand at Lord's, the British Grand Prix at Silverstone and the Wimbledon Men’s Final on the same afternoon as the last of six British Summer Time events in London's Hyde Park. For there, 65,000 people - with a notable skew towards women - convened for a guiltiest-of-pleasure line-up consisting of Feeder, Texas, Keane and the Black Eyed Peas on the main stage, leading up to the headline act of one Robert Peter Williams, a "singer-songwriter and entertainer" (so says Wikipedia) from Stoke-on-Trent. 

Being peak Britain, peak British summer, the crowd was largely good natured and progressively sozzled as the extended afternoon's drinking bore on. With no football to cheer on, some male sections of the crowd attempted a chorus of "Cricket's coming home" as news of England's victory just over a mile away in St. John's Wood came through. For others, it was a bonding experience. Mother-and-daughter combos - one couple wearing T-shirts identifying themselves as such - worked their way through bottles of rosé, others daringly sank pints. No surprise that, by the end of the evening husbands were doing sterling work holding some wives upright.

It was, however, enormous fun. This year's British Summer Time line-up has been low on edge and high on entertainment. Over two weekends Hyde Park has hosted headliners Celine Dion, Stevie Wonder with Lionel Ritchie, Barbra Streisand, Neil Young and Bob Dylan, and, last night, Williams, with Saturday night's Florence + The Machine arguably this year's most left field entry. But here lies a point: whether Streisand is your thing or Dylan, the chance to commune with your like-minded music fan is what this sort of thing is all about. I've long admired Glastonbury for the same thing: it's not just or even necessarily about the artistic eclecticism of grooving to pure pop, heavy rock, hip-hop or folk in the same afternoon, it's about the shared experience of having a good time. Music snobbery is left at the gate.

Which will bring me, in a moment, to Williams. Building up to his arrival, Feeder, Texas and Keane did sterling work warming up the crowd. As is often the case at these shows, it's a slowburn thing - many were still queuing for pizza when Feeder played their set, while Sharleen Spiteri (whom I discovered is four days older than me) and band created a pleasing wedding party singalong vibe with feelgood hits like the disco Let's Work It Out, I Don't Want A Lover, Black Eyed Boy and Say What You Want. Keane, often dismissed as being somewhat fey, were anything but, though the contrast between frontman Tom Chaplin's credentials and, say, a Liam Gallagher barely needs highlighting when the singer from the charming Sussex parish of Battle asks if anyone knows the cricket score. Theirs is, like Texas, a crowdpleasing set, prompting the audience half already crammed in front of the Great Oak stage to sway their arms and groove gently to proper festival sing-songs like This Is The Last Time, Everybody's Changing, Bedshaped, Is It Any Wonder? and Somewhere Only We Know. 

I'll confess, of the entire day's line-up, Black Eyed Peas interested me the least. I've seen them before - in Paris, no less - and while their on-stage energy is relentless, their music leaves me somewhat unmoved. That's not meant to be curmudgeonly, just a statement that, even at a pop-driven show like this one, there are different branches of the church that will.i.am, apl.de.ap and Taboo preach at. That, though, thankfully doesn't prevent the crowd getting into pre-Williams mode with some now well-oiled frugging to the likes of Let's Get It Started, Rock That Body, Hey Mama, Just Can't Get Enough, Don't Stop the Party and Where Is the Love?. Half the fun of these outdoor megagigs is people watching, and by 6.30 in the evening there are plenty of people to watch, especially those for whom the well organised refreshment facilities have enabled conversations to open up between random groups of people. The mother and daughter, for example, in front of us who were having a whale of time gabbing away with the lesbian couple who just happened to be parked on the grass next to them.

If there had been any doubt, however, as to who everyone had come to see, the Hyde Park engine stepped up several gears with the arrival of the main event, the main act: Williams. I'd hardly call myself a fan on the same scale as many around us, but the outset of Williams' solo career and his collaborations with Guy Chambers in particular, stood him out from the crowd. Take That did nothing for me, but the infectious Williams/Chambers partnership came closest to the naturally appealing pop-rock that Elton John and Bernie Taupin used to craft. And then Williams went a little LA. He still is, but here in Hyde Park we had a front row seat (well, metaphorically speaking, seeing as my other half and I were occupying a patch of turf some way to the back) on a unique entertainer. Yes, entertainer. That might conjure up some ITV Saturday night game show host who sings a bit, but Williams is blessed with charisma, and a great voice, too. Now, I know you might think I'm now selling out my rock cred, but there is a degree of perfection about Let Me Entertain You, the obvious set opener (even if it does still whiff a bit of The Who). There is also that schoolboy cheek that, even at 45 years old, Williams shows off with every opportunity, from his trademark opening, "Allow me to introduce myself. My name is Robbie 'Fucking' Williams", to the roaring amusement of everyone in the crowd. Before he'd even arrived, he'd fanfare himself with The National Anthem Of Robbie Williams, containing the self-depreciation of "Yes he went to rehab, drugs and drink took him low, but would still make Rudebox and gave rap a go".

Parts of the show reminded me of those Seaside Special summer TV extravaganzas from the 1970s, where various light entertainers - some, probably, now doing time - would introduce Showaddywaddy or The Three Degrees, along with The Dad's Army cast from a carpark in Torquay. Thus, the lovely Leslie from Scotland was scooped up out of the crowd and onto a red sofa for Williams to loon around, serenading her with Something Stupid. A man with 'Gay Best Friend' on the front of his T-shirt is singled out for a partially reworked She's The One. And in another Williams concert staple, his pub-singing crooner dad Pete is brought out for a duet of Sweet Caroline, eliciting maximum audience participation on the "bap-bap-BAH!" brass parts.

Millennium, featuring John Barry's gorgeous, sweeping string arrangement from his theme to You Only Live Twice, takes us back to that period of Williams' career when he could get away with anything, including a Bond-themed video, followed by another strong item from the I've Been Expecting You album, the glorious No Regrets, Williams' cathartic flushing of the Take That experience, co-written with Neils Tennant and Hannon. By now, Williams could be doing Three Blind Mice and the crowd would not complain. In fact, the crowd would probably encourage him to sing it, just for laughs. And he would oblige. 

Williams seemingly can get away with it. Covers of Wilson Pickett's Land Of 1000 Dances, Queen's We Will Rock You and the intro riffs of AC/DC's Back In Black on the front end of Kids simply add to the vaudeville. By the time we get to the inevitable ending, Angels (introduced by "I wouldn't go without doing 'the hit'"), Williams has the 65,000 eating out of his hands. It is also this point of the evening, I'd been warned, that he takes something of a liberty with the paying audience by letting them do some of the heavy lifting. No one complains though. Angels is that beautiful piece of anthemic communion that even the hardest-hearted would find difficult to resist a pub-style "...and throo it ALL...!!!!". 

We are now, at this point, near the end. For some, a long journey home without access to public amenities is going to be a very clear challenge. Others are stopped in their tracks heading for the exits when they realise Angels, and the group stage bow thereafter, isn't the end of it. There's just one more, Williams with Chambers on keyboards doing Sinatra's My Way. Somehow, it was the song Robbie Williams was born to sing, not just to lovingly recreate his dad's pub singing act, but to bathe in the many ironies of Paul Anka's original lyrics. Worth it, down to the very last drop. 

Party over. Oops, out of time.

When David Bowie died in January two things happened. Firstly, there was an understandable outpouring of grief. Bowie wasn't just a pop star - he'd transcended that status at the outset of his career. His music, his art, his way of life were on a totally different plane, and the impact he'd had on those who'd grown up with his music (as well as those who'd come late to the party and found out in the best way what the fuss was all about) was immeasurable. Certainly more so than any other rock star I can think of.

The second thing that happened was the abrubt realisation that musical icons who'd emerged in the '60s and '70s were beginning to pop their clogs. Well, to be fair, clogs were popping long before 2016 came knocking with its apparently unstoppable roll call of celebrity death. Brian Jones, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Elvis Presley, John Lennon, Keith Moon, John Bonham, Michael Jackson, et al, should still be rock and rolling, had rock and roll not got in the way. And, then, if you really want a depressing legacy, Wiki the hip-hop acts who have died in an age range of early-20s to mid-40s, with causes grimly including: "shot and killed" (numerous), "car accident", "complications from AIDS", "cancer", "complications from diabetes" and a long list of strokes and heart attacks.

If you were to transplant these deaths into the general population it's likely that you wouldn't see anything greatly different (though "shot and killed" may not be as prevelent an exit in every part of the world...). The bleedingly obvious point I'm making here is that people die all the time: 55.3 million each year, 151,600 people every day, 6,316 people each hour, 105 people each minute. Two people will have died, somewhere in the world, in the time it has taken you to read this sentence.

Unfortunately we expect our icons to be immortal. At some point - whether we like it or not, accept it or don't - we will have to bear with the news of Paul McCartney and Ringo Star reforming the Fab Four upstairs. Even the Rolling Stones can't go on forever. Not even Keith. No doubt the insurers of a special gig this October in California that will feature the Stones, Bob Dylan, McCartney, Neil Young, Roger Waters and The Who are sweating bullets, given the rate we're losing celebrities this year.

However, like Bowie's death, last night's news of the 57-year-old Prince moving on came from nowhere. Even if the tabloids have since been intrusively digging around reports of prevailing ill-health, here was another icon departing as unpredictably and, in a way, as eccentrically as he had conducted himself throughout life and as an integral figure of that trio of Madonna (whom Prince was older by just a couple of months) and Michael Jackson (who was just a couple of weeks younger than La Ciccone).

They were children of the first pop era, who'd learned their way in the world in the '70s to become the premiere megastars of the MTV age, mixing dance and pop with gawdiness and sexuality, to take over the very arenas rock's behemoths had occupied the decade before.

Prince, Madonna and Jackson were the undisputed pillars of the 80s in pop. Just as Bowie, glam and art rock had done for the 70s, they established put image, reputation and music to work. And while Jackson may have been the self-styled King of Pop and Madonna its Queen, Prince was by no means the errant offspring. Like Bowie, he was an innovator who took recognised forms and adapted them to his own idiosyncratic sense of artistry, crucially both in the studio and on stage.

Prince was an analogue musician in the pre-digital age who sounded like no other. His 'Paisley sound' was his own, uniquely, and unlike any other contemporary in black or white music. And, of course, with his adrogyny, he challenged what black or white musicians should sound and look like. Somehow he appeared to be overtly sexual and asexual at the same time. In his music there was a lot of funk, soul and R&B, but also a lot of rock, blues and psychedelia, and more than a lot of knowing humour. The thing is, we just knew so little of him which, actually, in this era of knowing what everyone has for breakfast thanks to social media, is fine by me.

My abiding memory of Prince was being crammed into the Stravinski Auditorium in Montreux three years ago on a hot, sweaty Saturday night. Somehow I'd managed to get down to the front of the stage, which is not my normal MO at concerts at all. The Stravinski is perfectly shaped to see artists from almost everywhere in the room, such is its pleasant intimacy, but by virtue of the fact I'd been forced to use a side entrance, I was right up against a human barrier of security people shining torches on anyone who dared to get their phones out to photograph the Purple One. By the time he was on stage, I was resembling one of the bodies in Picasso's After Guernica, deformed and bent totally out of shape by the crush.

Not exactly being the right shape or physique for such exertions, I ended the concert with cramp in both feet and both calves, gasping for the drink I'd been denied by being hemmed in down at the front. And I wouldn't have had it any other way - as Prince, backed by his muse-du-jour 3rdeyegirl, funked out for close to three hours barely 20ft in front of me. It was one of the gigs of a lifetime, coming in the midst of a long summer of concert-going. You can read my review of it here: http://whatdavidbowiewoulddo.blogspot.co.uk/2013/07/party-over-oops-out-of-time-prince-at.html

Instagram/Montreux Jazz Festival

I've been less effected by Prince's death than Bowie's, simply because Bowie meant much more to me, and in a way, that gave me greater licence to wallow. But, like every obituary and music fan who has thusfar commented on the Purple One's sudden demise, his genius was truly, really unparalleled, even if that does, after so many celebrity deaths, sound like hyperbole. Much of that is down to the fact you can't, really, nail down what it was that made him so innovative.

The starting point would be his starting point, the 1978 debut album For You - written almost entirely by him and performed exclusively by him. It's personnel listing reads: "Prince - all vocals, electric guitar, acoustic guitar, Orr bass, bass synth, singing bass, fuzz bass, Fender Rhodes electric piano, acoustic piano, Minimoog, Polymoog, ARP String Ensemble, ARP Pro Soloist, Oberheim 4-voice, clavinet, drums, syndrums, water drums, slapsticks, bongos, congas, finger cymbals, wind chimes, orchestral bells, wood blocks, brush trap, tree bell, hand claps, finger snaps."

Over the next three albums - which included 1980's Dirty Mind (the one with Prince posing on the cover in, well, his underpants) - his polymathic virtuosity expanded further, along with more of his American moral sensitivity-challenging mild eroticism (Smash Hits named him The Purple Perv). In 1982, 1999 put him squarely on the map with the a whopping, 70-minute double album that featured the brilliance of its title track, along with Little Red Corvette and Delirious. Purple Rain, which followed, is arguably one of the greatest albums of the decade, removing Springsteen's Born in the USA from the top of the US charts and featuring the hits When Doves Cry, Let's Go Crazy, Purple Rain, I Would Die 4 U and Take Me With U and ending with the anthemic, nine-minute gospel-meets-blues opus of a title track, one which showcased Prince's excellence as a lead guitarist, an attribute he was rarely credited for.

These were the albums that introduced me to Prince. These were the albums that established him as an artist, really, like no other. There would be 33 more to come from Paisley Park Studios, each as confounding and as their predecessor, some without fanfare, some without even a name attached to them (), but all unmistakeably without parallel or without imitation. That may not be your definition of genius, but it certainly comes close to mine. And that is what we mourn for. Death is inevitable, that we know. But loss is something you can't allow for, especially the loss of someone as brilliant as Prince Rogers Nelson.