Revinylization #50: Bruce Springsteen’s Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J. at 50

In Jan Swafford’s wonderful 2020 Mozart biography The Reign of Love, he intimately weaves the composer’s life story with the music he created. Along the way in which, he confirms a legendary scene. Played to the hilt in Amadeus, Milos Forman’s 1984 movie adaptation of Peter Shaffer’s play, the then-reigning Hapsburg monarch, Joseph II, rushes backstage after the premiere of Mozart’s first operatic blockbuster, The Abduction from the Seraglio, and opines, "Too lovely for our [Viennese] ears, my expensive Mozart, and monstrous many notes." Sassy by nature or maybe simply stung by the implied criticism, Mozart supposedly replied, "Exactly as many as needed, Your Majesty."

That quote rings in my head every time I hearken to Bruce Springsteen’s still-astonishing 1973 debut album, Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J., which has simply turned 50 and been reissued in Mobile Fidelity’s Ultradisc One-Step collection.

After seeing The E Street Band and its skinny, bearded, live-wire frontman play in 1973, I used to be keen to listen to this oddly titled first album. After I ripped off the shrink and flipped again the postcard packaging, it grew to become clear instantly that the keen, pressing 23-year-old city poet from Long Branch, New Jersey, suffered from a malaise much like Mozart’s: on this case, too many phrases. But it is exactly that detailed verbal furythe energetic sense of an formidable avenue poet who often bought carried awaythat animates Greetings and makes it such a wealthy masterpiece. From the opening stanza of the album’s first tune, "Blinded by the Light," it is clear that this child from North Jersey is a lyrical gunslinger with aspirational chops: "Madman drummers bummers and Indians in the summertime with a teenage diplomat/In the dumps with the mumps because the adolescent pumps his means into his hat."

The album’s different single, "Spirit within the Night," recorded with simply Springsteen, drummer Vini Lopez, and a newly arrived Clarence Clemons, is nothing lower than a psychedelic phrase storm. Springsteen populates a wild evening of stripling abandon along with his first set of legendary characters, together with Wild Billy, Hazy Davy, Crazy Janey, Killer Joe, G-Man, and Mission Man. Some of the album’s greatest lyrical moments comply with: "By the time we made it as much as/Greasy Lake I had my head out the window and Janey’s fingers had been within the cake/I believe I actually dug her ‘trigger I used to be too free to pretend/I mentioned, ‘I’m damage.’ She mentioned, ‘Honey, let me heal it.’"

In Greetings‘s most blatant love tune, "For You," there’s the whiff of Rosalitas to return as he pushes his lyrical items to the sting: "Didn’t you suppose I knew that you just had been born with the facility of a locomotive/in a position to leap tall buildings in a single sure/And your Chelsea suicide with no obvious motive/ you may giggle and cry in a single sound."

The phrase maelstrom reaches its peak within the rousing nearer, "It’s Hard to be a Saint within the City." A personality we affiliate with the songwriter sings in a tricky growl about his "pores and skin like leather-based" and his "diamond-hard look of a cobra." Then he swaggers, "I may stroll like Brando proper into the solar/Then dance similar to a Casanova" earlier than shifting to extra of a whisper because the language throws the sparks: "With my blackjack and jacket and hair slicked candy/Silver star studs on my duds similar to a Harley in warmth." The whisper returns a number of occasions earlier than this "backstreet gambler with the luck to lose" provides the punch line: "It’s so exhausting to be a saint if you’re only a boy out on the road."

One of the present vinyl reissue growth’s most enduring mysteries is why neither of the primary two entries in Springsteen’s hallowed catalog has ever had particular person Columbia/Sony deluxe-LP reissues. Nor, till now, has Greetings or The Wild, The Innocent & The E Street Shuffle ever been licensed to a high-quality audiophile label for reissue, as Born to Run was to Classic Records in 2005. The lack of reissues with upgraded sonics could also be associated to the long-time controversy over the dodgy, at occasions muddy sound of these first two albums, a situation often traced again to 914 Sound Studios in Blauvelt, New York. A transformed gasoline station, owned by Brooks Arthur, Phil Ramone, Art Ward, and Don Frey, "914" (after the world code) was deserted for The Record Plant in Manhattan after the recording of the one, "Born to Run." Bruce’s then-manager Jon Landau was unimpressed by the studio’s services, gear, and piano that would not keep in tune.

The first Greetings remaster was by Bob Ludwig in 2014; he remastered all of the early albums for The Album Collection, Vol. 1 19731984. This new 180gm One-Step LP was mastered by Krieg Wunderlich and Shawn R. Britton; MoFi prominently shows its mastering chain: "¼" / 15ips analog grasp to DSD 256 to analog console to lathe." The new report has clearer sound, an airier presence, and marginally extra punch than a number of unique pressings I personal or the 2014 remaster. The low-end, all the time a obtrusive sonic flaw on this recording, has been audibly improved. Beautifully pressed and packaged in a thinner and less-grand slip case, that takes up much less room in your shelf, this new One-Step is one of the best sounding Greetings but.

As Springsteen artistically toggled between eager to be an city troubadour within the mildew of Bob Dylan and a sweat-drenched, R&B rocker keen to show up the electrical guitars and join with an viewers, Greetings was his first try and seize a few of each on a recording. This debut album is most important as audible proof of the boy earlier than The Boss, nonetheless harmless however rising miraculously as an individual and songwriter. As he sings in "Growin’ Up," the LP’s second tune, that is the place he is discovering that stability the place "my toes they lastly took root within the earth however I bought me a pleasant little place within the stars.

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February 1, 2024 at 05:41PM