How The River cemented Bruce Springsteen's place in music
IT WAS the record that confirmed Bruce Springsteen as the bard of blue collar America and reshaped our idea of what constituted a great rock album. Now, 36 years later, Springsteen has taken The River on the road and will perform the sprawling double LP in its entirety at two Croke Park shows this weekend.
That the 1980 release holds a special place in the affections of Springsteen has long been obvious âThe River was a record that was sort of the gateway to a lot of my future writing,â he told an audience in 2009.
âIt was a record made during a recession â hard times in the States. Its title song is a song I wrote for my brother-in-law and sister. My brother-in-law was in the construction industry, lost his job and had to struggle very hard back in the late â70s, like so many people are doing today. It was a record where I first started to tackle men and women and families and marriage.â
AT THE CROSSROADS
The writing and recording of the project came as the singer found himself at a crossroads. Just turned 30, Springsteen was American rockâs boy wonder no more, yet still young enough to feel unsure of his place in music and in life.
Did he, for instance, have a long term future as an artist? Why had the success of break-out albums Born To Run and Darkness On The Edge of Town left him so unfulfilled ? Such were the thoughts swirling through his head as he and the E Street Band convened at the Power Station Studio in midtown Manhattan late in 1978.
Then Springsteen didnât have to draw too deeply on his own woes. He had started to look beyond the four walls of his psyche for inspiration. The River was the point at which he became a fully realised story-teller, populating his lyrics with third perspective tales of loss and spiritual hunger.
The Springsteen fans relate to, the diviner of their secret fears and wildest dreams, found his voice here, in this collection of dirges and bluesy rockers.
âThe biggest change was that I started the narrative writing where I would inhabit a character,â Springsteen would tell Thom Zimny, director of The Ties That Bind, a 2015 HBO documentary about the the making of The River. âI would sing in that voice â it was partly me and partly other people.
BACKGROUND TURMOIL
Yet though The River was the most fully realised record of Springsteenâs career to that point it came together in circumstances of considerable turmoil. After the one-two of Born to Run and Darkness On The Edge of Town he was beginning to suspect heâd mined that signature seam of rousing Americana to the limit.
But plotting his next move was not easy. The songs came and and came and initially there was a plan to release a 10-track collection called The Ties That Bind. However, Springsteen wasnât satisfied. He wanted something bigger, deeper, heavier.
âHe has the solo-folk side, and the band side,â The River co-producer Steve Van Zandt told Rolling Stone earlier this year. âMost people do one or the other. He was extremely versatile. And that can be confusing. He didnât want to be tied down.
âHe was getting 10, 12 great songs very quickly at that point. I would be like, âOK, letâs put that out. You want to do 12 more? That will be the next album.â But you canât stop that flow when it happens. Chuck Berry had that flow for five or six years. The Beatles, the Rolling Stones â the great ones have a run where theyâre in touch with something a little bit mystical, a little bit beyond logic.â
Springsteen was indeed eager to broaden the canvas, to channel his deepening awareness of folk singers such as Woody Guthrie and country artists like Guy Clark. All of this and, facing into his fourth decade, an early midlife crisis to be negotiated.
His bandmates were settling down, starting families, while for Springsteen the most important relationship in life was with music. He and his dad werenât speaking; he had been through a series of unsuccessful personal relationships. What was it really all about?
âWe had a couple of goals for The River. One was to make a record that felt like a show,â he explained to Rolling Stone last February. âSo there were character studies. There was bar-band music. It went from being ridiculous and joyous to heart-numbing. I thought: âThis is what I like. I like both of these things.â I always struggled to fit it on a single album. âThis time, letâs make a record thatâs like the show.â It had to be a double album.â
TITLE TRACK
The key track was âThe Riverâ itself, wherein Springsteen puts himself in the shows of a rustbelt striver married too young and unable to hold down a job as recession devastates American industry. The song is specific to the New Jersey of his youth yet universal too, chiming with anyone who has grown up in a small town and wondered if they had the courage and wherewithal to get the hell out.
âThe River was the touchstone for all the writing that came later,â he confided to Zimny. âThe Carter recession and its effect on working people. Thatâs the writerâs job. You have to address these themes in a way that recognises other lives, in a way that respects and honours them and records them faithfully.â
The struggle that went into the record was genuine and seemingly never-ending until finally it was done and Springsteen had coughed up his definitive artistic statement. It has proved a record for the ages. In their yearning and empathy here are songs that will feel as vital as the day they were committed to tape when Springsteen bawls them out at the top of his lungs at Croke Park.
âYou have to understand: Youâre writing in a panic, right?â mused Springsteen recently. âBecause you donât have a record, which is a very anxious and unsettled feeling. While itâs a feeling you have to get used to when youâre a record maker, it never loses its unpleasantness: âIs it going to happen? Are all the pieces gonna fit? Is it going to come to life?â You donât know until it does.â
