Workin' all day in my L.A. garage - Shawn Poole reviews L.A. GARAGE SESSIONS '83

July 18, 2025

"The conventional wisdom," writes Erik Flannigan in the section of the hardcover Bruce Springsteen: The Lost Albums book included with the physical Tracks II box-set, about the period of home-recording that Springsteen did in 1983, "is that [after releasing Nebraska] Springsteen was feeling a gravitational pull towards a rock album with the E Street Band. His fans expected it. But what L.A. Garage Sessions '83 reveals... is that he felt a growing and ultimately more powerful draw towards making more music alone, outside of a band dynamic."

The notion that L.A. Garage Sessions '83 is some type of revelatory release that newly dispels "conventional wisdom" about this period of Springsteen's career, however, is itself dispelled by the fact that the existence and significance of what is contained on L.A. Garage Sessions '83 - including Springsteen's serious consideration of releasing an album of material like this instead of Born in the U.S.A. - already was covered extensively in Dave Marsh's second Springsteen biography, 1987's Glory Days: Bruce Springsteen in the 1980s. It's not like Marsh's book was read by only a handful of the most devoted Springsteen fans, either. Glory Days spent two months on The New York Times Book Review's Best Sellers list, staying in the Nonfiction top-10 for all but one of its eight weeks on the list, peaking at Number 6. Furthermore, more than half of the tracks on L.A. Garage Sessions '83 have been available widely for years now via bootleg versions; gaining access to hear many of them eventually became as easy as performing a YouTube search. At least Flannigan acknowledges the previous existence and availability of those bootlegged tracks, albeit ever so briefly and parenthetically, in his essay on L.A. Garage Sessions '83.

Nevertheless, it should be readily acknowledged that none of the bootlegs can hold a candle to the stellar mastering work on L.A. Garage Sessions '83 performed by Bob Ludwig and Rob Lebret, no doubt working with the best available lowest-generation versions of the original session recordings. Even a track like the beautiful "County Fair," which already received an official release on The Essential Bruce Springsteen back in 2003 (with overdubbed drumming by Max Weinberg that is not on the Tracks II version,) sounds so much cleaner and clearer here.

At least for me, "County Fair" is the true standout on this set. While some have been reading more into the song in light of Chapter 45 ("California") of Springsteen's Born to Run memoir, you really don't need to know a thing about that "event" to experience and appreciate the song's essential greatness: its moving, brilliantly detailed, and metaphoric meditation on the fleeting qualities of life's greatest moments, and our own inevitable mortality. It's all right there in the song itself, from the name of the band set up at the north end of the field (James Young and the Immortal Ones) to the song's closing lines where the singer/narrator thinks to himself, "I wish I'd never have to let this moment go." The perfect track to follow it on any playlist? Richard & Linda Thompson's "Wall of Death," of course. And speaking of beautiful female voices, it's a crying shame that whoever sang those gorgeously eerie yet soothing wordless vocals at the end of "County Fair" has yet again gone uncredited. My money remains on the mystery singer being Ruth Davis, the former spouse of the late, great Bruce Jackson. (Davis also was the credited backing-vocalist - credited as "Ruth Jackson" at the time - on the Born in the U.S.A. version of "My Hometown.")

As for the rest of L.A. Garage Sessions '83... meh, I'm not that impressed. Being a longtime fan of both Elvis and Bruce, and more than a bit obsessed with all of their various connections/intersections, I think it's nice to finally have an officially released '83 garage-sessions version of "Follow That Dream," though I also think the live 1981 arrangement - as captured beautifully on this officially released recording, for one - is much better. And even the live version of "Follow That Dream" from the 1986 Bridge School benefit - also released officially - utilized the same melody as the L.A. Garage Sessions '83 version, but greatly improved upon it by ditching those odd drum-machine/synth flourishes and - very important/significant - altering the phrase "every man..." to "everyone." On the other hand, the L.A. Garage Sessions '83 version of "Johnny Bye Bye" is both good and unique in comparison to previously released versions, though I'm not sure just how many folks other than Elvis/Bruce freaks like myself will be interested in yet another officially released version of "Johnny Bye Bye"/"Bye Bye Johnny"/"Come On (Let's Go Tonight.)"

Meanwhile, the L.A. Garage Sessions '83 versions of "My Hometown" and "Shut Out The Light" are nowhere near as good as the originally released 1984 versions of these songs (the version of "My Hometown" on Born In The U.S.A. and the version of "Shut Out The Light" originally released as the B-side of the "Born in the U.S.A." single and later included in the original Tracks box-set.) Each of them contain extra words and verses that do nothing to improve or enhance the respective song's essential points; in fact, leaving those words/verses out greatly improved each respective song. And the hoarse-whispering style Springsteen employed for the L.A. Garage Sessions '83 version of "My Hometown" doesn't fit the mature perspective of the song's narrator in his mid-thirties, as he soberly relates undeniable realities, anywhere near as well as his singing style on the Born in the U.S.A. version. (Just a few lines of Born in the U.S.A.'s "My Hometown," by the way, do a much better job of conveying the insidiousness and complexities of racism than all of "The Klansman.")

Most of L.A. Garage Sessions '83 seems... interesting, at best, to me. But interesting in much more of a "roads not taken" way than in a "Wow! Can't believe this didn't make the cut!" way. In his Glory Days interview with Dave Marsh, Chuck Plotkin summed up this period of Springsteen's recording activities by saying, “It looked for a long time like we could end up with Nebraska II.” And I think that also sums up exactly the problem with much of this music. It feels like Bruce, armed with a much more sophisticated and advanced home-recording device than his now-famous TEAC Tascam PortaStudio 144, set out to try to recapture what he did with the recordings that became Nebraska. But he failed to do so, primarily because anybody who sets out to consciously make an album like Nebraska - even if their name happens to be Bruce Springsteen - is bound to fail. Nebraska truly was such a "happy accident" (despite the emotional tone of the album being about as far from "happy" as you could get) that the idea of purposefully making an album that's "like" it is a fool's errand. Furthermore, none of the Nebraska-styled material on L.A. Garage Sessions '83 comes close to having the same emotional impact as the greatest material on Nebraska like "Highway Patrolman," "State Trooper," "Used Cars," "My Father's House," and "Reason To Believe." A lot of the mannerisms remain - the connections to Appalachian ballads, the Suicide influence, etc. - but it all still comes off feeling like just a shell of what it's trying to emulate/expand.

The trio of lightly rocking tracks - "Don't Back Down On Our Love," "Little Girl Like You," and "Don't Back Down" (and yes, the repetition of phrases in the lyrics of these demos is even more prevalent than in those that ended up becoming Nebraska) - might have had some potential if given the full E Street Band treatment in a professional recording studio. Nevertheless, here they sound like they still have a long way to go before approaching the quality-level of any of the rock tracks released on Born in the U.S.A.

More important, whether Bruce Springsteen himself thinks so or not (and the book accompanying Tracks II makes it clear that he still straddles on this point even now,) releasing Born in the U.S.A. after Nebraska was the correct choice to make. Springsteen arrived at what would become the height of his stardom, visibility, influence, and popularity with something very important to say and offer to anyone willing to listen. He also got there after having first assembled a strong team of friends, collaborators, and supporters who would help to ensure as much as possible that neither he nor his essential messages would get lost in all of the noise, potential isolation, and distractions that can accompany such stardom. "My Born in the U.S.A. songs were direct and fun," he wrote in his Born to Run memoir, "and stealthily carried the undercurrents of Nebraska. With my record greatly enhanced by the explosiveness of Bob Clearmountain’s mixes, I was ready for my close-up." Furthermore, the album's hard-rocking title track, for all of the unintentional and intentional distortions of its meaning over the years, still most accurately captures all of the mournful bitterness, anger, confusion, and tragedy of the Vietnam War, both for the soldiers who fought it and for their loved ones. Yes, there were - and are - some who didn't/don't "get it," but many of us did, and do.

In the end, as Dave Marsh wrote somewhat prophetically - not in Glory Days, but in the introduction to the reprint of his review of Nebraska in his Fortunate Son anthology - it's very good indeed that Bruce Springsteen's next officially released album after Nebraska "didn't show that Bruce had become an eager eccentric after the fashion of Neil Young. Springsteen's ability to assert his right and need to make some personal, idiosyncratic statements is something to celebrate, especially since it coincides with an especially traumatic time in our country's political system. But that achievement would mean much less if in the process Springsteen lost his balance and fell, not from a state of grace neither he nor any other pop star has ever known anyway, but out of touch with the very people who lent his work meaning in the first place."

Of course, your mileage may vary. At least now any interested fan can pull the L.A. Garage Sessions '83 material out of the garage and take it for a spin of their own, whenever they choose to do so.