Massive Music List

For more than 35 years, Bruce Springsteen has set a standard of consistent excellence that few other rock and roll artists could ever hope to match. He has written so many great songs, as both a solo artist and with the E Street Band, that it would seem almost impossible to try and rank those classics one against another. And yet one fan was daring enough, or maybe foolhardy enough, to try. Following up our Beatles and Stones countdowns, JamsBio presents “No Retreat, No Surrender,” a worst-to-first countdown of every album cut in Springsteen history, plus a few choice outtakes, live classics, and soundtrack songs – that’s 200 tunes ranked and defended. Check out JamsBio.com each day as the countdown is gradually revealed, and prepare to hit the message boards to defend your favorites.

The complete list to date.

The Last Five:

160. “Black Cowboys” (from Devils & Dust)

159. “I’ll Work For Your Love” (from Magic)

158. “Good Eye” (from Working on a Dream)

157. “Let’s Be Friends (Skin to Skin)” (from The Rising)

156. “Spare Parts” (from Tunnel of Love)

155. “It’s Hard to Be a Saint in the City”

From Greetings From Asbury Park, N.J.

LISTEN HERE

This song holds a special place in Springsteen lore because it was one of the tracks he played in his legendary audition for John Hammond in 1972 that earned him his recording contract. (Some accounts claim it was the first.) There is no doubting that the talent was already there by the bushelful, although this song makes it clear that it still needed some molding.

“Saint” betrays the fact that it was written lyrics-first; as often happens in songs like that, the melody is an afterthought. There’s not even a real hook to grab you. It just sort of rumbles along, hampered by the muddy production prevalent on Greetings From Asbury Park, N.J. The drums sound muffled, the acoustic guitar disappears early, and the bass never comes through clear. Only David Sancious’ tinkling piano asserts itself throughout the entire track.

But the lyrics are undeniably great, a patchwork of quotable lines that still add up to tell a memorable story. There is an undercurrent of melancholy amidst all the braggadocio. Notice that much of the tale is told in the past tense, as if the streets that the narrator owns throughout the song finally pushed him to the brink, to the point where he can see the toll it’s taken. The first two verses show the player at the top of his game, but the final stanza leading into the chorus, now in the present, depicts the losers, zombified subway denizens clinging to the rails.

Springsteen’s narrator seems to have made it out before meeting his fate, but it’s clear that, for a guy who would romanticize the streetlife so well in the years to come, Bruce could already see the downside.

154. “When You’re Alone”

From Tunnel of Love

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So much of Tunnel of Love consists of songs portraying the things that break a relationship apart. “When You’re Alone,” the penultimate track on that album, shows the couple after the bomb has dropped, sifting through the detritus and searching for the truth.

What the Boss’ character finds here is the realization that maybe all the little things that tore them apart weren’t worth the resulting drama, because, as the chorus bluntly puts it, “When you’re alone you ain’t nothin’ but alone.” All of the bitterness and “hard feelings” are gone; left behind is hard-earned wisdom and a hint of forgiveness. Bruce even tosses in what seems like autobiography in the second verse to drive his message home.

I just wish the track could have been a little less sleepy. Playing all the instruments himself, Bruce lays the organ on thick and washes everything else but the vocals out. Take the keyboards on the fade-out of “My Hometown,” multiply them by five, and you get the picture. Only the sweetly sad refrains, aided by backing vocalists Patti Scialfa, Clarence Clemons, and Nils Lofgren, stand above it all.

Musical limitations aside, “When You’re Alone” is a mature testament to the irony of realizing what’s most important only after it’s gone.

153. “My Lucky Day”

From Working on a Dream

LISTEN HERE

Even if it’s a little bit paint-by-numbers E Street Band, Bruce and the gang play “My Lucky Day” with such enthusiasm that you can forgive the formulaic nature of it all. It’s just wonderful to hear them still able to rip out material like this after all these years. Check out the relative lifelessness of similarly-themed Springsteen tracks from the early 90’s for a comparison.

It’s all there from the get-go: The snap of Max Weinberg’s drums, the propulsive gusto of Garry Tallent’s bass, and Roy Bittan, charging hard through the gaps with his piano chords. By the time you get to Clarence’s brief blast in the bridge, it’s all gravy. You’ve already been transported to rock heaven via that humble yet prodigious thoroughfare known as E Street.

The lyrics are just your typical love-conquers-all sentiments, with some of the autumnal shadows that hang over Working on a Dream seeping into the mix. The melody is buoyant enough to let the bright colors of the music shine through radiantly. Early on in his career, Bruce often had excellent tracks hidden by poor recordings; here is a case of the opposite, a relatively pedestrian song raised to another level by the chemistry of his backing group.

152. “Soul Driver”

From Human Touch

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If you can get by some of the elements that Bruce tries to shoehorn into the mix here, you’ll find a hidden gem in this forgotten song off Human Touch. Why Bruce felt the need to add the distracting clanking percussion is a mystery; the same could be said for the odd flute-like sound effects peppered throughout.

Only the soulful organ work of old buddy David Sancious hits home. It’s the proper backdrop for Bruce’s gut-wrenching ruminations on love and loss. The imagery is razor-sharp. Listen to this killer opening: “Rode through forty nights of the gospels’ rain/Black sky pourin’ snakes frogs and love in vain.”

Elsewhere, Bruce urges on his companion to pull together, the future be damned: “Does fortune wait or just the black hand of fate/This love potion’s all we’ve got/One toast before it’s too late.” It doesn’t matter if they go down, as long as they go down together: “Here’s to our destruction.” If only the mediocre backing track didn’t threaten to overwhelm all else, “Soul Driver” might be more than a worthy obscurity.

151. “Drive All Night”

From The River

LISTEN HERE

Anyone who’s ever seen Bruce Springsteen live knows that he understands the power of repetition. He can stretch a line of music out indefinitely, slowly and subtly building on it with incremental variations in volume from the band. When they break out of that rut into a new section of the song, it’s an exhilarating moment.

He tries something similar on his recording of “Drive All Night” off The River. The song drags out for over 8 minutes, and it’s essentially the same basic structure throughout – spare to begin with some extra touches coming in like some sumptuous organ and soulful saxophone. But, basically, you’ve got Max Weinberg and Garry Tallent locked into a slow groove, and Bruce testifying on top.

I suppose you’re feelings for the song depends on your liking of this sort of construction. It does have a certain raw power to it, especially toward the end when Bruce lays it all on the line with some braying vocals. Those vocals are deliberately unschooled, the perfect way to portray his characters’ powerful emotions. The moving tunnel vision of Springsteen’s protagonist, who focuses in on his love in the face of all the distractions, the “fallen angels,” the “calling strangers,” waiting in the street to do them harm, is even more poignant when you consider that he doesn’t even have her any more, according to the first line of the song.

My, does it go on though. Some true believers get off on this stuff, but I could have lived with a shortened take just fine. Just because he’s willing to drive all night to get to his girl, it doesn’t mean we have to be with him for the whole trip.

The complete list to date.

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