August 29, 2025 This autumn, Bon Jovi will re-release its 2024 album Forever in a new edition entitled Forever (Legendary Edition . ) The Legendary Edition version adds to the original album's tracks recorded and released by the band (which now includes former E Street percussionist and E Street Choir member Everett Bradley) some additional vocal and instrumental contributions from a group of well-known collaborators, including Bruce Springsteen. The Springsteen collaboration, an overdubs-generated duet on the slow country-tinged ballad "Hollow Man," officially dropped today as one of two preview tracks for Forever (Legendary Edition,) which will be released in full on October 24. You can hear this new version of "Hollow Man" in the official YouTube video embedded below: It ain't exactly uplifting to hear Bruce Springsteen sing, "Here I am, a hollow man, telling stories 'bout the promise of a promised land," followed a bit later in the song by him singing, "And what do you dream now that you've sold your dreams? What do you sing when the song's been sung?" Here's hoping that Springsteen didn't choose to sing on this particularly depressing ditty because he saw any current autobiographical aspects to the song. Step away from the ledge, Bruce (and Jon Bon Jovi!)

August 27, 2025 Two years ago, shortly after this website had launched, we were honored to be introduced to our friend Sarah Gregory and her moving, powerful, and challenging story. Sarah wrote about her experiences for Letters To You, and her essay remains one of the best, most important ones we've ever published. Click here to read Sarah's 2023 essay for Letters To You, "'Grabbed my pen and bowed my head...' - How 'Letter to You' inspired healing and forgiveness." We also are pleased, though certainly not surprised, to learn that Sarah remains very active around death-penalty issues. It's great to know that she continues to share her story and speak out on behalf of forgiveness, justice, and sanity. With that in mind, we are very glad to help spread the word about Sarah's upcoming "Be The Boss" episode on E Street Radio . She'll be playing some of her favorite Springsteen tracks and, of course, sharing some of the story of how Bruce's song "Letter To You" inspired her to write a life-changing letter of her own. SiriusXM subscribers can catch Sarah's E Street Radio "Be The Boss" episode on these dates/times: Saturday, August 30, beginning at 11:00 am ET Sunday, August 31, beginning at 6:00 pm ET Sarah also will be among the featured participants at The Atlantic Festival 2025 in New York City. On Thursday, September 18, she will be one of the panelists for "Redefining American Justice," which will feature The Atlantic staff writer Elizabeth Bruenig, Equal Justice Initiative founder and Executive Director Bryan Stevenson, along with Jenisha Watts and Clint Smith of The Atlantic , as well. Bruenig has written two Atlantic articles featuring insights from Sarah Gregory. (Click here to read "Inside America's Death Chambers" from the July 2025 issue , and click here to read "What It Means to Forgive the Unforgivable" from May 2023 .) If you're interested in attending The Atlantic Festival 2025 to see Sarah Gregory and other scheduled participants, click here for information on how to purchase Festival passes . (Prices will increase today, Wednesday August 27, at 11:59 p.m. ET, so get your passes before then for the best rate.)

August 25, 2025 “ Born to Run  was an instant classic. Anyone who loves rock and roll must respond to its catalog of styles, the rough and tough music, the lyrics that sum up the brightest hopes—and some of the darkest aspects—of the rock and roll dream... “ Born to Run  makes no stylistic breakthroughs, as the fundamental Elvis Presley and Beatles recordings had done. But it does represent the culmination of twenty years of rock and roll, and when it was released in 1975 it was the strongest possible testimony to the continued vitality of that tradition... “Left without an American rock star, the underclass rebels who formed rock and roll’s natural constituency drifted away from music, toward motorcycles and petty crime. The few who stuck with the music listened more often to Black music than to white sounds, which left an enormous vacuum. Bruce Springsteen was the first American rock performer in nearly a decade—since [Jimi Hendrix]’s death—to attempt to fill that space. And his emergence would create, in surprising ways, a flood of followers and would reopen issues many had thought closed. If the meaning of ‘punk’ has changed drastically since 1975, Born To Run must be counted as the record that set the stage for its reemergence at all. It was a record that took the music’s possibilities from the hands of craftsmen and profiteers and gave them back to the sort of people who loved rock because they lived it.” - Dave Marsh, Born to Run: The Bruce Springsteen Story , 1979   “At record’s end, our lovers from ‘Thunder Road’ have had their early hard-won optimism severely tested by the streets of my noir city. They’re left in fate’s hands, in a land where ambivalence reigns and tomorrow is unknown. In these songs were the beginnings of the characters whose lives I would trace in my work (along with the questions I’d be writing about—'I want to know if love is real’) for the next four decades. This was the album where I left behind my adolescent definitions of love and freedom; from here on in, it was going to be a lot more complicated. Born to Run  was the dividing line.” - Bruce Springsteen, Born to Run  (his autobiography,) 2016

August 24, 2025 "The Vault" consisting of Bruce Springsteen's unreleased recordings has taken on a mythical status, with fans long speculating about the treasure trove hidden inside. Tracks II: The Lost Albums  confirms that not every Bruce Springsteen song yet to see the light of day shines as brightly as hoped. While much of the seven-albums set includes some gems, there aren’t as many "shoulda-been-released" songs as there were on the original Tracks . Many tunes feel decidedly middle-of-the-road—especially those on the collection's final album (which also is the final album to be reviewed in Letters To You's Summer 2025 Tracks II deep-dive,) Perfect World . Perfect World  is different from the rest of the albums in the box-set, which were either conceived as full bodies of work or intertwined with other projects. This patchwork of songs was written between 1994 and 2011. In his introduction to the hardcover Bruce Springsteen: The Lost Albums  book included with the physical Tracks II  box-set , Springsteen describes Perfect World  as "a record I pieced together from work I had held for this project... I wanted just a little fun, noise, and rock 'n' roll to finish the package." The only thread tying the generally buoyant songs together is a cast of restless characters who remain idealistic, even as the world gives them no reason to be. The first three songs are collaborations with Joe Grushecky from the mid-1990s, which have all been performed live in the past. “Another Thin Line” rocked the E Street Band’s Reunion Tour at Madison Square Garden in June 2000, and then during the final shows of The Rising  Tour at Shea Stadium in 2003. The more scathing “Idiot’s Delight” occasionally appeared during the Devils & Dust  tour in 2005. “I’m Not Sleeping” was frequently played alongside Grushecky at the Light of Day and Soldiers and Sailors benefit concerts between 2010 and 2014 as an exuberant duet. Roy Bittan’s lilting piano chords and the steady guitar in “I’m Not Sleeping” belie the frustration and isolation the narrator endures. “Turn off the TV, because it bothers me / I’ve seen all that, all that I wanna see,” he sings. The narrator has chosen to close his eyes to the dangerous and unfair world around him, one that is broadcast nonstop on the 24/7 news cycle. It’s a predicament many of us can relate to amid our current political chaos. “Feed the rich, eat the poor / Stack their bodies outside my door,” he spits, with the latter line being one that would reappear in slightly altered form nearly a decade later in "Last to Die" on Magic . One of the joys of Tracks II  is spotting how lines have been repurposed; the album offers insight into Bruce’s creative process, showing how he continually tinkers with particular turns of phrase. "Idiot's Delight" has a lot more bite than Grushecky's honky-tonk version with The Houserockers on the 1998 album, Coming Home . Bruce Springsteen frequently presented a stripped-down version with vocals warped through a bullet mic on the Devils & Dust tour that sounded as if the song was coming from the bowels of Hell. It was fitting for a narrative about Saint Peter looking down on the self-destructive and foolish humans who had been given a beautiful world and so royally fucked it up. Springsteen’s gravelly voice has a devilish snarl, matched by the whining harmonica and sprawling organ that sounds like the narrator’s blood boiling with anger. This hard-blues rocker is yet another song that feels dangerously relevant to our volatile political times. “Another Thin Line” rounds out the Grushecky collaborations. It captures the working-class struggle of just getting by, with lyrics like: “More layoffs, up go the stock / Busted out below, sittin’ pretty on top” and “Money's all gone, nothin' in the bank / Somebody gets sick, family closes rank.” Despite the narrator’s despairing situation, the song has a propulsive energy, especially with Tom Morello’s searing guitar break. The cowbell ticks like a doomsday clock, signaling that there’s no crawling out from the economic grind. If not for the gnarly sound, it could’ve come straight off Wrecking Ball . “Another Thin Line” is a driving anthem for those living paycheck to paycheck—an unfortunate predicament for many today. The Grushecky trio of songs is the strongest and most cohesive on the album. The next crop of songs, in which Springsteen returned to writing on his own, are interchangeable in their appeal and memorability. “The Great Depression” is a cheerful, folksy tune that calls to mind “Tomorrow Never Knows” from Working on a Dream . But instead of being reminded not to waste the time you’ve been granted with your loved ones, the narrator in “The Great Depression” has already lost everything that was once in his possession. The airy piano and plaintive banjo create a compelling tension between the narrator’s despair over playing cheap and easy games with his lover’s heart and destroying the romantic relationship he worked so hard to build. “Blind Man” gently pulls the listener along with its sleepy rhythm and Springsteen’s quiet, flat voice, much like the smooth current of the river the narrator travels on in search of a lost love. Even as life moves forward and the tides are still coming in and out, he is on a journey that feels endless. As a result, the quietly plainspoken tune doesn’t feel like it goes much of anywhere, save for some gliding organ passages from Charlie Giordano. The greatest sin of the majority of tracks on Perfect World  is that they are merely serviceable. The single release “Rain in the River,” however, has a more impressive sound. The main character’s anger and despair pour into the hard-driving drums and shredding guitars. Springsteen’s voice is guttural, sounding like he has a throat full of gravel, which adds to the song’s grittiness. The title is a simile about how Marie's love for the narrator is now untraceable—like the rain that blends into a river. There’s a titillating mystery as to what exactly has occurred in the song when the narrator stands on shallow ground and Marie's long black hair, then leaves town with his Colt by his side. Has he killed her? He comes across like some unscrupulous gunslinger in a Western movie. “Rain in the River" is simple and short, but its forcefulness is welcome compared to the string of rather flighty tunes on Perfect World . “If I Could Only Be Your Lover” was a Wrecking Ball  demo that did not have enough political punch, even though its narrators face foreclosures and dried-up work during an economic downturn. It’s got some passionate guitar solos punctuating the chorus, but the overall melody languishes and does not flow well. The most interesting aspect of the track is its outro of sparkling chimes that resemble a music box; it seems better suited to many other songs in Bruce’s catalog that are far more romantic and tender. Bruce Springsteen’s use of falsetto is an unexpected treat in songs, carrying an ethereal vulnerability absent from the gruff vocal style he’s known for. He employs it in “Cutting Knife,” whose lyrics evoke a kind of medieval ballad: “I have a fair love to whom I’m not true / For this I’ve no reason that’d satisfy you / I thought myself a gentleman and kind / Yet to her good soul and beauty / I’ve willed myself blind.”  It’s an unusual song, built around the striking metaphor of a cutting knife as a woman whose sharp, unflinching qualities call the narrator out in his worst moments. The chorus is elevated by Patti Scialfa’s glowing background vocals. The closing songs of Perfect World  are also notable. “You Lifted Me Up” has repetitive and simple lyrics, but its cheerfulness is infectious. Lines like “All of my faith’s in you,” “You lifted me up,” and “All of my praise to you” aren’t Springsteen’s typically rich poetics, but there’s a zesty energy in the uplifting piano lines and Steve Van Zandt and Patti Scialfa’s vocals that would thrive in a live setting. T he Bruce Springsteen: The Lost Albums  book describes “You Lifted Me Up” as "a spiritual companion" to “Land of Hope and Dreams.” You can especially hear this connection in the jubilant guitar riffs of the Live in New York City  version from 2000, and how the lyrics portray interpersonal relationships as the handiwork of a higher power. “Perfect World” is a lovely closer. It begins with very vivid yet simple imagery of what the world is really like and what we imagine it to be: “Every lover would get a rose on Valentine’s Day / And every stray dog would find its way / I’d be in your arms tonight 'neath the eves / Instead of at your doorstep down on my knees.” This contrasts sharply with the more twangy, raspy cover by John Mellencamp released on his album Orpheus Descending  in 2023. We feel that longing for a “perfect world” far more deeply in Springsteen’s resonant and fragile vocals. In the chorus, Bruce lowers and elongates his voice, as if his throat is tight with sadness, making the gap between hope and reality palpable. Tracks II should be regarded as more of a window into an artistic process rather than fully-formed songs admired for their masterful craftsmanship. Perfect World  exemplifies that most clearly as a grab bag of unassuming compositions without a home, hardly masterpieces but still solid and intriguing listens. -- Film critic, scholar, and writer Caroline Madden  is also the managing editor of the academic journal BOSS: The Bi-Annual Online Journal of Springsteen Studies , and the author of the book Springsteen as Soundtrack: The Sound of the Boss in Film and Television . To connect with Caroline and learn more about her work, please click here to visit her website .

August 23, 2025 Yesterday, Bruce Springsteen/Sony Music digitally released "Lonely Night in the Park," an outtake from the Born to Run sessions, to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of Born to Run (which officially will hit the big 5-0 on Monday, August 25, having been released on that date back in 1975.) You can hear/download "Lonely Night in the Park" via your preferred online music service by clicking here , or just click the embedded YouTube link below: As released-to-date Born to Run outtakes go... Well, at least this one isn't quite as bad as "Linda Let Me Be The One" from Tracks . Unfortunately, it's also nowhere near as good as "So Young And In Love" from Tracks . My pal (and Letters To You contributing writer) Lisa Iannucci astutely and hilariously described "Lonely Night in the Park" to me as sounding far too much like John "Johnny Cougar" Mellencamp's "I Need a Lover" for comfort. And while it clearly has been beefed up and cleaned up with modern-day contributions from Ron Aniello, Bob Clearmountain, Rob Lebret, Stevie Van Zandt, and Springsteen himself, it's still essentially the same track that's been available in bootleg form widely for decades, played frequently on E Street Radio over the years, etc. Finally, despite the beautiful Eric Meola image accompanying the release of "Lonely Night in the Park," there are absolutely no Clarence Clemons saxophone contributions to be found on this track. All in all, releasing this rather unimpressive outtake, which greatly pales in comparison to every single track that actually made the cut for Born to Run , comes across as a very weak way to celebrate such a major anniversary for such an important album in Bruce Springsteen's oeuvre. How 'bout a long-awaited official release of, say, the best-possible audio available/obtainable from that legendary August '75 Bottom Line stand instead, hmm? Just sayin'. Of course, your mileage may vary on this formerly officially-closed alternate route to Thunder Road, Duke Street, Highway 9, Flamingo Lane, and the Turnpike. To each...

August 21, 2025 The City of Long Branch, NJ , where Bruce Springsteen lived during the creation of his career-defining Born to Run  album, is revisiting Springsteen’s formative years with a brand new exhibit at The Long Branch Arts & Cultural Center entitled Born to Run: Springsteen in Long Branch . The exhibit, produced in collaboration with Monmouth University and The Bruce Springsteen Archives & Center for American Music (BSACAM,) showcases memorabilia and artifacts from the Archives. With Born to Run officially turning fifty years old next week, the Springsteen in Long Branch exhibit is part of the Archives' and the Garden State's extensive celebration of Born to Run @50. The exhibit had its opening-reception this past Tuesday, August 19. photo by Lisa Iannucci - used with permission photo courtesy of The Bruce Springsteen Archives & Center for American Music - used with permission photo by Lisa Iannucci - used with permission Marilyn Rocky, who was Bruce Springsteen's "landlordess" while he lived in his rented Long Branch, NJ home during the creation of Born to Run , walking by a replica of Springsteen's now-iconic guitar featured on the cover of Born to Run - photo courtesy of The Bruce Springsteen Archives & Center for American Music - used with permission Those who may have seen Springsteen: His Hometown , the 2019-2020 Archives/Monmouth County Historical Association co-sponsored exhibit centered on his in his hometown of Freehold, may recognize some of the materials included in this new exhibit. Nevertheless, there are still many rarely seen items, including a drum kit from Bruce’s early band Earth, and a replica Fender Esquire that echoes the instrument made famous on the iconic Born to Run  album cover. photo by Lisa Iannucci - used with permission photo courtesy of The Bruce Springsteen Archives & Center for American Music - used with permission photo by Lisa Iannucci - used with permission The presentation, like many such exhibits, is chronological, and features blowups of newspaper clips and rare, historical photos of Bruce at some of the Long Branch venues where he's played, as well as some of his local hangouts, including The Inkwell, Max’s Hot Dogs, and The Windmill. Highlights of the exhibit include selected quotes painted in red or black cursive and mounted near the individual installations, as well as a particularly eye-catching blowup of the famous Eric Meola Born to Run  album-cover photo of Springsteen and Clarence Clemons. The opening was crowded with a wide assortment of folks, many of whom hung around to mingle and reminisce, including journalists, musicians Joe Bonanno, Vini Lopez, and trombonist Tommy Meares, and local pols Mayor John Pallone and Rep. Frank Pallone, Jr., who took the time to post some great photos of the exhibit on his Facebook page . In a "Mad-Dog"-museum kinda moment, Rock & Roll Hall of Famer and former E Street Band drummer Vini "Mad Dog" Lopez gets caught enjoying Tuesday night's exhibit-opening-reception - photo courtesy of The Bruce Springsteen Archives & Center for American Music - used with permission The exhibit is open weekdays from 8:30-4:30, and runs through November 15. The Cultural Center will host some related events, including a presentation on Bruce’s years in Long Branch, and a storytelling event. Call 732-222-7000 x 2050 or follow one of The City of Long Branch's social-media accounts - here , here , or here - for further information. Admission is free, and parking is available on the street or in the municipal lot behind the building. __________ A related but more somber note - On the same day as Springsteen in Long Branch 's opening reception, we received word of the passing of an old, beloved friend of the Jersey Shore music scene: the great Michael “Tunes” Antunes, longtime saxophonist with John Cafferty & the Beaver Brown Band . Antunes, who appeared as band member “Wendell Newton” in Eddie and The Cruisers  (1984) (the soundtrack of which featured the hit single “On the Dark Side,”) played in a number of New England-based bands before joining forces with Cafferty in the 1970s. Softspoken and generous with his time, Antunes was a strong presence onstage and became a fan favorite with showstopping solos on songs like “Tender Years,” long one of Bruce’s favorites. Having been invited down from their native Rhode Island by Springsteen’s loyal number-one fan and occasional employee, Obie Dziedzic, Cafferty and his band soon became fixtures on the Jersey Shore music scene, and have played several local venues over the years, including The Fast Lane and The Stone Pony. In the early days, they would crash at Obie’s Asbury Park apartment, and she took them under her wing, introducing them to the local music scene and its vibrant community including Bruce, who jammed with them several times in the 1980s. They continue to gig up and down the northeast coast, and played The Wonder Bar earlier this summer. Antunes, whose health had been a concern for a couple years, did not make the trip. Rest in peace, Tunes; you were one of a kind.

August 19, 2025 EDITOR'S NOTE: In 1973, a young rock critic by the name of Jon Landau - who at the time also happened to be married to a young music/film critic named Janet Maslin - reviewed Bob Dylan's soundtrack album for Pat Garrett and Billy The Kid , the '73 Sam Peckinpah film in which Dylan also acted, alongside James Coburn and Kris Kristofferson. "True to its soundtrack genre," wrote Landau in Rolling Stone , "much of the record is made up of instrumental music never intended to stand on its own and useless on an album." Ouch, the irony! What exactly would young Mr. Landau think of Bruce Springsteen's Faithless , a "lost album" of soundtrack music (including instrumental music) for another western film - a "spiritual western," at that - but a film that, to date, doesn't even exist? The world can never know, of course, but that's okay with us here at Letters To You. In any case, we're much more interested in knowing what our friend and occasional contributing writer Joe Amodei - the veteran filmmaker, astute movie buff, and longtime Springsteen fan - thinks of Faithless . Take it away, Joe... When I was asked to pen a review of one of the seven albums in Bruce Springsteen’s epic  Tracks II: The Lost Albums   release, I was hesitant. The album that was offered to me was Faithless . I knew going in that this album was not a typical well-written, epic Springsteen record release. This was a totally different path the rock star had taken, a path that as a fan, I always had wondered why it hadn’t been traveled previously. This was a score, a soundtrack to what was to be a major feature film. Of course, Bruce has written and contributed original songs to several films over the years, most famously with his Oscar-winning "Streets of Philadelphia" for Jonathan Demme's Philadelphia , and he's even done a bit of interstitial and prelude scoring for both his "Hunter of Invisible Game" and Western Stars films that he co-directed with Thom Zimny. Nevertheless, he's never taken on the task of scoring an entire film before, and therefore I've never before written about a soundtrack album containing - presumably - the full Springsteen-composed score for a feature film. I would not be diving into many songs, lyrics, and music that tell their own stories, as Bruce so poetically gives us in almost all of his albums. That would be done by the folks who inherited the jobs of reviewing the other six Tracks II albums. Lucky them. This would be the opposite thing, entirely. This time the music and the songs would go hand in hand with a story already written by someone else. The source material would not be Bruce. And the music I would be listening to would be written to take us deeper into that story, and to dig deep into that emotion that would be on the big (or little) screen on which we'd be watching the film. Pretty heavy stuff, and quite a different adventure for this longtime Springsteen fan. Oh, and I forgot the most important thing... The unknown mystery. The MacGuffin that I could not use because... well, it didn’t exist. There is no movie I can watch with this music in it. There isn’t even a script I can read as I listen to the music. As most if not all readers of this review will know, the score was written and then recorded before a frame of film ever was shot. And then the movie was never made. And we are not 100% positive what that movie is. And of course, no one is talking. (Well, as I would come to find out there actually was one person "talking," but more on that later.) So, I did some digging anyway, and here is what I found. Throwing just a bit of caution to the wind, I’ll go slightly out on a limb here and write that Faithless definitely would have been the score for a film based on a Tom Eidson western novel entitled St. Agnes' Stand . This is the book that some folks have spoken about online as the one that might have been the film's source material. (Springsteen only has gone on record so far as to tell Rolling Stone 's Andy Greene that he composed and recorded the music on Faithless using both "a book" and "a screenplay.") Having now read St. Agnes' Stand myself, I have no doubt at this point. And I have another pretty good source, to boot; Bruce Springsteen himself told me. Actually, he told all of us; he just didn’t say it out loud. I’ll explain below. But first, some more on St. Agnes' Stand . Published in April 1994, this western saga tells the story of a shot-up, weary cowboy with a bullet in his leg, who goes by the name of Nat Swanson. Nat's on the run, being pursued across the desert towards California by a group of men intent on killing him. He comes across a wagon train that has been attacked by an Apache tribe out for blood in the worse fashion. Upon approach, he finds an elderly nun named Sister St. Agnes, still alive, who takes him to a hidden cave where two other nuns, along with seven young children, are sheltering in place. Sister St. Agnes believes that Swanson has been sent by God to save them. Swanson is not the believer Sister St. Agnes wants him to be, but he knows he is their only hope as the marauding Apache are getting closer and closer to discovering and infiltrating their hiding place. The book was a somewhat hot property, and optioned by Dreamworks to be made into a feature film that was to be directed by Martin Scorsese. There are also reports that at one point Sydney Pollack was in the mix to direct, as well. But as we know, none of this ever happened; the film was never made. Eidson’s novel has a spiritual bent to it, as the elder Sister St. Agnes truly believes that the Almighty has reached down and sent this man to save them, a la Homer Smith in the wonderful Sidney Poitier film Lilies of the Field ("gonna build me a chapel") or the long-running hit show Highway to Heaven , starring Michael Landon. But that’s as far as the spirituality goes in St. Agnes' Stand . The book contains nightmarish pages of brutality committed by the Apache that would most likely have been toned down at least somewhat for the film adaptation. The novel's depiction of the Apache is not the fair and accurate portrayal one would hope we'd see today. So the question remains: Is Faithless the unused score that was written for a cinematic adaptation of St. Agnes' Stand ? At this point it’s still left completely up to you, but there are some big clues that Springsteen himself gives us via the liner-notes and the book The Lost Albums included with vinyl-LP/CD versions of Tracks II . Along with Bruce referring to the film as “a spiritual western," there are lines in the lyrics of “Where You Goin', Where You From” that refer to a crossbow and a Hawken gun. These are the weapons of choice used by Nat Swenson in St. Agnes' Stand . In the same song, we find the lyric “I’ve got me a home on the other side of this storm." St. Agnes' Stand contains a sequence with a torrential life-threatening storm and flood that the characters fight to survive. Also, Swanson carries with him a deed to a home in California, and that is where he is headed if he can survive. And there is more. Let’s look at each track on the album... Track 1 - “ The Desert” (Instrumental) - As Bruce says in the book The Lost Albums , this is basically “interstitial music” that speaks to the images on the screen. It sets a tone and in this case, it could be the opening of the film, following Swanson as he heads into the sprawling desert, evading capture. Track 2 - “Where You Goin’, Where You From” - Swanson is on the road now, and has eluded capture. Not sure where the road is heading but, as the lyrics say, it’s “on the road to kingdom come” and “I've got a round in my Hawken gun,” which, as stated above, happens to be the gun that Swanson carries throughout St. Agnes' Stand . Further evidence is the line  “Black powder on my thumb.” As we learn in the novel, Swanson has fired the gun before the story begins, which would have blackened his thumb. Also appearing in this song's lyrics is the line “I've got a quarrel in my crossbow.” Again, this is Swanson's main go-to when fighting the Apache, presumably the "devil" Bruce refers to in the song. For me, this is one of the highlights of the album. Backed on vocals by his sons Evan and Sam, along with Patti Scialfa, it sounds like a nice little almost-folksy song, but the lyrics are deadly serious and talk of danger behind and ahead. The song ends with a moody instrumental piece that is as haunting as it is beautiful. Track 3 - “Faithless” - This is the story of Nat Swanson. A lone cowboy with no faith but the barrel of his gun who, as the song says, “walked 'neath the eves of the garden” and “in the valley 'neath an endless sky,” beaten and alone, but for the desert in front of him and the stars above. And then in a moment of acceptance comes the line “Then I found you.” God? Maybe. More likely it's Sister St. Agnes, but it clearly spells out that this lost man has found something meaningful. As a stand-alone song, this character could be anyone, and that is what makes this song one of the main reasons why the album has been called a spiritual journey. Track 4 - “All God’s Children” - With an obvious nod to the children being sheltered and hidden away from the Apache, this gospel-church-clapping, knee-slapping song is the most raucous one on the album. As loud as it is lively, and with the “Glory Hallelujah” chorus, this could be one song to make it on stage at a Springsteen concert. (Coincidentally, Eidson also wrote and published a 1996 novel entitled All God's Children .) Track 5 - “A Prayer By The River” (Instrumental) - This is where the score begins to soar. As background music, this would work just about anywhere, but I believe this would have been used throughout the film during its most serious and spiritual moments. With the Morricone-style angels providing the choral backdrop, this passage perfectly fits into what the movie would be saying. Track 6 - “God Sent You” - Wow! Another title or subtitle could be “Sister St. Agnes' Theme," as it personifies all that she is wishing for and is asking for help from God. This is one of the most beautifully written and sacred songs Bruce has ever given us. More hymnlike than anything else he has written, it is one that grabs your heart and reaches into your soul. This one actually brought tears to my eyes with its beauty and soulfulness. It could stand away from the score and have different meanings to different folks but in particular for those who believe in the word of God. It is my favorite piece from the album. (Interesting point of speculation... Why the apparent "last-minute" lyric change - and clearly modern overdubbed vocal by a much older-sounding Springsteen - from the line "His inner light is my patience" as printed on the album's lyric-sheet, to “Through His inner light, forsake temptation?”) Track 7 - “Goin to California” - Almost like a companion to “Where You Goin’, Where You From” in its wistful rendering by Bruce. This could be in the beginning or the end of the film. Not a whole lot to it, but in the frame of the score it would work well, and it does have some rip-roaring banjo. Track 8 - “The Western Sea” (Instrumental) - Moody, atmospheric and once again leaning towards the spiritual side of things. Purely written for the score. Track 9 - “My Master's Hand” - Another song that could take the stage at any Springsteen show, and one that possibly brings some of Bruce’s own spirituality into the film. This could be played over end credits or leading up to the exciting climax. Nat Swanson, at this point in the story, is all in and will do anything, including dying, if it means saving the nuns and the children. This is where he becomes what Sister St. Agnes has prayed for. He is the miracle she asked God for, and in these lyrics he surrenders to Him. This is more like a Springsteen song than any other on the album. One wonders if this is a description of Swanson, or of Bruce himself, as he sings “I’ll live in the love of my master's hand.”  Or is it a combination of both? It is interesting to think about this, especially given the continued ambiguity and ambivalence around how Springsteen publicly discusses his perspectives on religion and spirituality.   Track 10 - “Let Me Ride” - This could have been featured on a few of Bruce’s previous albums, and while the lyrics could fit somewhat into the story of St. Agnes' Stand , I’m not sure how well it works both as a piece of the score and as a one-off. I like the vocals, and in particular the chorus, but feel this is one song that didn’t belong on this album. Track 11 - “My Master's Hand (Theme)" - This instrumental version of "My Master's Hand" is, again, a piece that could also be played throughout the film, broken up to compliment the action taking place, as well as over the closing credits.   Faithless would be the perfect score to any film adaptation of Eidson's novel. Each piece carries with it the feel of the spiritual journey the characters undertake. This journey takes them along the desert and mountainous terrains that can be found in classic John Ford westerns. It's interesting that Bruce composed a score without ever seeing any images of a completed film. We all have seen pictures of famous composers in front of a full orchestra in a recording studio, looking up at a screen while the action is right in front of them. Bruce did not have that advantage. Bruce loves the music of composer Ennio Morricone. I wonder if he knew that for the films that Ennio made with his frequent collaborator Sergio Leone, this is how the great Maestro often worked. He wrote much of the score for films like The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly and Once Upon a Time in America before the film was shot. Master meets master. Many critics and fans have placed Faithless at the bottom of the seven-albums set we now know as Tracks II: The Lost Albums .  But for what it is, and, more important, what it was recorded to be , I think it belongs up there with the best. Someone out there should make this film. You already have a score.

August 8, 2025 I was drawn to Inyo , first, because of the apparent ways it speaks to The Ghost of Tom Joad and especially its tour. Tom Joad was a startling break from what Springsteen had released before, even Nebraska , because much of the music seemed little more than ambient orchestration for the words. I remember struggling to hang on as I played it over and over again in my living room. But less than two weeks after its release, I was lucky enough to see one of the early shows on the Joad  tour in the Rosemont Theater outside Chicago, and I could not have imagined one person with a guitar conjuring up a more moving performance. The musical heart of the songs became apparent, and when Springsteen dipped into the back catalog, new dimensions appeared. Using his guitar as percussion for an acapella “Promised Land” close, I could swear that a twister rolled around the darkness of the theater. Regarding this newly released collection recorded around the time of that tour, Joad ’s live “Across the Border” offered a glimpse of what we hear on Inyo . At the place in “Border” where the “hope in our hearts” takes the migrant’s imagination, a place he can only dream of because it hasn’t yet been reached, Springsteen kept singing wordlessly after the lyrics, a high keening sound in a register I certainly didn’t know he had. It was a falsetto in a sense common in regional Mexican music, a leap that reached beyond what seems possible in search of something the heart feels sure is true. It was a haunted and haunting sound, as if the singer were actively trying to find and hold onto that place in the song where “pain and memory will be stilled.” We hear Springsteen using that kind of vocal again here, almost serving the same purpose on the album’s most beautiful song, “El Jardinero (Upon the Death of Ramona).” Every note on the guitar is a tender struggle like the daily details of the gardener’s work as he tries to find his lost daughter in the beauty that surrounds him. Each step is a deeply convicted effort. The character worries that his grief may itself be a sin of indulgence, and he trims branches to allow the breezes he associates with Ramona’s spirit to blow freely. He works for his living son, and he works for his wife, yet he finds himself asking, “how will my heart ever mend?” At the end, he’s left crying wordlessly again, layer upon layer of those vocals over deliberate steps of guitar, that high head voice blending with shimmering keys as if the father’s and daughter’s ghosts have aligned. On one level, Springsteen is at his most Woody Guthrie on this record—as with “Tom Joad,”  “1913 Massacre,” and “Deportee,” telling stories that have been told before in his own way, telling stories heard along the beloved Mother Road, Route 66, the bulk of it in the desert Southwest, and telling stories he read in the newspaper. The title track uses the Owens Valley water wars to lay a deep foundation for the ongoing California water crisis and the region’s ongoing fires, not to mention water wars and fires that rage nationwide. In that song, the Paiute who were pushed off the land are only mentioned briefly, but it’s not long before the album’s hard focus becomes the lives of the Indigenous peoples of that Southwest that take up most of the record—those here before the Spanish and here before northern Europeans gave the whole thing a Southern European name while attempting to drive the Spanish-speaking peoples across the Southern border. In fact, while the actual protagonists of “Indian Town,” “Our Lady of Monroe,” “One False Move,” and “When I Build My Beautiful House,” may not explicitly be Indigenous or Mexican American characters, they just as easily could be. It’s hard to miss the parallel between “Monroe’s” “little brown-eyed girl shootin’ cans in the river” and the revolutionary warrior “Adelita,” who “stood above us firing her rifle till the gunpowder turned her hand black.” As with much of the best of Springsteen’s work, this is a story about who we are as Americans and intentionally blurs the lines between that question and who we once were in hopes of connecting us around who we might be. For such reasons, I’m not only thankful for the great musical leaps provided by mariachi bands on “Adelita” and “The Lost Charro,” but I find these songs career triumphs. The trumpet and harp on both songs are thrilling, and the great vocal percussive notes on “Adelita” call to mind Ennio Morricone’s beautiful western orchestrations. Surprisingly, Springsteen’s creative use of synth (that sounds a lot like ethereal vocals) and Curt Ramm’s trumpet create a similar cinematic effect on “Ciudad Juarez.” Regarding the falsetto mentioned earlier, “The Lost Charro” uses such vocal leaps in repeated refrains as a now-migrant worker remembers his lariat. It’s a kind of playful grace note that manages to evoke the painful yearning in the memory. Not incidentally, it also calls to mind Roy Orbison and his own ranchera influences. In some ways, this music is, in fact, also about all those lonely dreams Orbison sang about, where they came from and how they bind us together. Though not numerous, among the more prominent and welcome nods to Guthrie and the folk tradition are the singable choruses here. “Inyo” itself may have pretty-much-unsingable verses, but the “ain’t you feeling dry” chorus invites Soozie Tyrell to chime in vocally as does the chorus of “When I Build My Beautiful House.” The “Godmother when I die” refrain of “The Lost Charro” takes on rowdy choral backing as it builds. “When I Build My Beautiful House,” as a folkie closer, calls to mind “My Best Was Never Good Enough” in its simplicity, but its tone is very different: an earnest dream of something beyond the ephemera, in that sense more like “Across the Border.” In fact, “When I Build My Beautiful House” actually was written and recorded before “Across The Border,” as was “Blue Highway” from Somewhere North of Nashville , both of which contain variations of the same house-on-a-hill-where-pain-and-memory-have-been-stilled phrasing/imagery that ended up in “Across The Border.” The origins of another album closer also glimpsed here is a twinkle of “We Are Alive” in “The Aztec Dance.” A deceptively slight-sounding piece, “The Aztec Dance” relies on sustained synth and whispery guitar arpeggios for accompaniment, eventually accented by a smattering of bright notes on piano. In this case, Springsteen seems most concerned that the music does not get in the way of the words at all. If anything, the sounds are there to add a slight patina to this portrait of young boys with machetes and young girls in satin dresses doing traditional folkloric dances. The song is after the universal in the specific. By the end of the first stanza, it’s focused on one dancer in particular, Teresa, and her mother who is fixing her hair, helping her get ready. She complains to her mother about the ways strangers talk about her people, and her mother tells her about the Edenic world before the Europeans arrived and enslaved her ancestors. “City gone and left in ruins, they cry bitter tears in another world,” the mother explains just before the tenderest and most powerful of affirmations, “But here in this world, my daughter, they have you." With that line, a mother hands her daughter a sense of connection, dignity, and purpose, perhaps what all of us need most in today’s climate so hostile to such beauty. -- Danny Alexander is a Kansas-based writer, teacher, and activist. He is also the author of Real Love, No Drama: The Music of Mary J. Blige (available for purchase here and here ,) and the co-editor (with Daniel Wolff) of Kick Out the Jams: Jibes, Barbs, Tributes, and Rallying Cries from 35 Years of Music Writing by Dave Marsh . Click here to connect further with Danny and his work at his Substack platform.

August 1, 2025 Somewhere North of Nashville is, as its title suggests, a traditional Nashville country record laden with echoes, metaphor, and callbacks. There are song titles that tie back to other songs with similar titles (“You’re Gonna Miss Me When I’m Gone,”) song titles that are the same as those of other people’s records (“Tiger Rose,”) and songs that refer to books or films (“Tiger Rose,” “Repo Man,” “You’re Gonna Miss Me...,”) or bands (“Blue Highway.”) There also is plenty of just plain country and popular music standard imagery: bluebirds, endless highways, echoing footsteps, lonesome train whistles. It pushes all the right buttons sonically and lyrically, but does it hold up in terms of quality? The answer is... well, sort of. The record is cohesive in sound, but the material is, at best, uneven. And what stands out is not heretofore unreleased or unfamiliar material, but a well-placed cover and a couple of alternate versions of previously released tracks. The other originals, while they are serviceable and align thematically with the album as a whole, are, for the most part, not particularly memorable. The overall sound, as well as the musicianship, is solid, with standout performances throughout from familiar faces like E Streeters Dan Federici, Garry Tallent, and Charlie Giordano, alongside studio vets like drummer Gary Mallaber and pedal steel guitarist Marty Rifkin. It’s hard to find fault with the record’s polished, professional Nashville sheen, which is more difficult to pull off than it sounds. And much of the upbeat material - a virtual bonanza of country two-step rockers - deserves recognition for its clever lyrics and catchy melodies and arrangements. Leadoff track “Repo Man” is just such a two-step. It’s a first-person account in the rocking vein of “Stand on It” that features a powerful Springsteen vocal, and one of several compelling story songs that would not be out of place on a Chuck Berry record. Though the title refers to what might not be a common term in most folks’ daily lexicon, country radio listeners are no doubt all too familiar with the notorious "repo men" (automobile repossession workers) who haunt lower middle class neighborhoods, hounding folks who are behind a payment or two for a secondhand junker on which they made a bad deal. So kudos to Bruce for introducing a possibly unfamiliar topic to a wider audience. Its opening riff instantly grabs your attention, and it’s definitely worth repeat listenings. Another two-step, the rockabilly standout “Tiger Rose,” originally saw the light of day on Arkansas roots rocker Sonny Burgess’ 1996 eponymous album. It’s a cheating song that would have done well as a rabblerouser towards the end of a Springsteen set or a late night club jam, and it’s a shame it hasn’t popped up in a set list here or there. It’s practically impossible to do a bad version of Johnny Rivers’ “Poor Side of Town,” and it’s not difficult to see why Springsteen included this particular song, given its title and subject matter: the possibility that love might just have the power to lift folks out of poverty. His childhood was far more hardscrabble than most folks realize, and the hopeful note at the tail end of the song must surely resonate. It’s a lovely cover, and the type of material he really ought to explore more often. “Delivery Man” is a humorous story song - and another two-step - about a guy who drives a delivery truck filled with crated chickens (which you’ve most likely seen if you’ve ever driven on the Delmarva Peninsula). It’s a working man’s song that one might easily hear on country radio, but the visual of caged chickens on a speeding semi truck, feathers flying everywhere, is most likely not a welcome one for the animal lovers in Bruce’s audience. Nonetheless, it grabs your attention with a forceful lead vocal and playful lyrics about how things can go wrong rather quickly out there on the road. “Stand on It” is an all-out roots rock barnburner that showed up at Stone Pony jams in the late 1980s and later in a couple benefit performances in the 1990s. It’s a can’t-miss track that instantly gets folks moving, and it’s another song that has been shamefully overlooked by both rock and country artists in search of material. The Nashville arrangement suits its driving backbeat, but most folks will probably still prefer the original “Glory Days” B-side. This is another song that should show up in a set more often. Several songs on the record have very similar titles: “Repo Man”, “Delivery Man” and “Detail Man.” There is no way any official release would include all three of these song titles, regardless of their quality. And others - “Blue Highway,” “Silver Mountain,” “Under a Big Sky” - while thematically coherent and well-executed, just aren’t particularly memorable. "Under a Big Sky," for example, doesn't pack as much of an emotional wallop as the officially released track that it later morphed into and became: the heartbreakingly beautiful epic "Chasin' Wild Horses" on Western Stars . A similar criticism can be made of the alternate version of Western Stars ' "Somewhere North of Nashville," recorded just within the past decade or so and tacked onto this collection of mostly mid-1990s material as its "lost album" title track. “Janey, Don’t You Lose Heart,” like “Stand on It,” was another gem of a B-side that was issued during the Born in the U.S.A. period. It’s strong lyrically and meshes well with the album’s mood and tone, but the pedal steel and country arrangement suck the life out of the song. One misses the Roy Bittan piano fills and Nils’ tag vocal at the end, and its slick feel just lacks the urgency and romance of the original. And “You’re Gonna Miss Me When I’m Gone” is just a disappointment all around. If you choose a title of such import and resonance, you owe your audience a song that delivers a punch, and while this Springsteen track is of a piece with the record in terms of its subject matter - cheating, loneliness, heartbreak, regret - it just doesn’t go anywhere. The song, which echoes the traditional “When I’m Gone” - a Carter Family staple - is a first-person narrative that bemoans a love interest who just doesn’t appreciate the singer, who’s halfway out the door. Unfortunately, its mostly forgettable lyrics and melody pale in comparison to the stark authenticity of the Carters at their best. The best songs on the record are more fully realized as rockers than country two-steps. And the release, while impeccably produced, just does not have that catchiness that makes you want to immediately play it again as soon as the final track fades. Overall, while Somewhere North of Nashville contains some of the best material of the seven "lost albums" in Tracks II , it’s also not difficult to hear why many of its tracks were not previously released in some fashion. At one point in time, “throwaway” songs like these often became outstanding B-sides (“Janey...," “Stand on It”) or circulated as essential bootlegs. Now, unfortunately, it seems the vaults are being emptied simply to empty the vaults.

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 "every one ." 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.

photo by Terry Wyatt/Getty Images for the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum - used w/ permission July 29, 2025 Happy Birthday, and best wishes for many more happy birthdays ahead, to the E Street Band's "First Lady of Love," Ms. Patti Scialfa! This year we're celebrating Patti's birthday by continuing to celebrate her welcome return to the stage just last week, when she joined Rodney Crowell, Emmylou Harris, Bernie Leadon, James Taylor, and Trisha Yearwood in Nashville at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum’s CMA Theater for a special concert event saluting Linda Ronstadt and the Los Angeles country-rock scene of the 1960s through the 1980s. Click here to read (or re-read) our full report on last week's special concert. Please enjoy these additional photos, courtesy of our friends at the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum, as we look forward to seeing - and of course hearing - Patti and friends in the professionally-filmed version of last week's concert, set to debut next month on The Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum’s website  and YouTube channel . photo by Terry Wyatt/Getty Images for the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum - used w/ permission We at Letters To You look forward to sharing more details with our readers about the filmed version, as they become available, and we also look forward with continuing hope that 2025 will be the year all of us Scialfa fans finally will get to hear Patti's long-awaited next solo album. Again, Happy Birthday, Patti. It's so great to see - and soon be able to hear - you back in action. photo by Terry Wyatt/Getty Images for the Country Music Hall of Fame and Museum - used w/ permission

July 25, 2025 So what exactly is the deal here? Springsteen fans who've been paying enough attention for long enough have known about the legendary hip-hop-influenced "loops album" for years... decades, even. We also have heard repeatedly about just how close it was to being released in the spring of 1995. "I finished it," says Bruce Springsteen himself in one of his latest versions of a fairly frequently told story, this one featured in Thom Zimny's short film Inside Tracks II: The Lost Albums , "Bob Clearmountain mixed it... and I didn't put it out," he adds with a chuckle. So if this indeed is that album at last, released in the same complete form that was intended for release thirty years ago, why on Earth would it have been called Streets of Philadelphia Sessions , yet not include a version of the hit 1994 song "Streets of Philadelphia" on it? And if the plan truly was to release an album entitled Streets of Philadelphia Sessions without "Streets of Philadelphia" on it, why would the album packaging have used no photography other than a set of Neal Preston's shots from the 1993 filming of the "Streets of Philadelphia" music-video? Instead, this 2025 release feels very much like a retitled, shortened, and/or otherwise altered version of what was intended for release back in Spring 1995. That wouldn't be such a big deal, of course, if folks in the Springsteen camp, including Springsteen himself, hadn't repeatedly indicated that we fans finally would get to hear his full "loops"/"relationship" album in what was intended to be its finalized 1995 version, as - to quote Springsteen archivist Erik Flannigan in the book The Lost Albums included with vinyl-LP/CD versions of Tracks II: The Lost Albums - "a cornerstone of The Lost Albums ." In any case, and more important, what is on Streets of Philadelphia Sessions just doesn't sound as groundbreaking or exciting as it might have sounded decades ago, if it ever did. First off, those legendary loops are prominent parts in only half of the tracks on this version of the album: "Blind Spot," "Maybe I Don't Know You," "We Fell Down," "Between Heaven And Earth," and "Secret Garden." And it's actually only on "Blind Spot" where the looping - combined with the sound of a male shout repeatedly sampled à la Rob Base and DJ EZ Rock's 1988 hip-hop classic "It Takes Two" - still feels like a radical rhythmic departure from most, if not all, of Springsteen's other musical moves. On the remaining tracks, the loops simply provide synthesized drumming beds that aren't that different from the drumming sound and the role it has played on many other Springsteen tracks. In "Maybe I Don't Know You," for example, there's not much sonic distance between that track's drum sound and the one to be found on, say, "Brilliant Disguise." This album's version of "Secret Garden," which remains one of Springsteen's most beautiful, moving, and mature "relationship" songs, doesn't sound anywhere near as fully realized - or as good - as the 1995 E Street Band version recorded for Greatest Hits , featuring Clarence Clemons' gorgeous closing sax solo. Clearly the choice to make that version the first officially released one was correct, especially since it eventually became Bruce's final top-40 hit in the U.S. to date, peaking at number 19 on Billboard 's Hot 100, with renewed interest in the track after it was featured in the soundtrack of the film Jerry Maguire . (Incidentally, although Shane Fontayne is credited for his guitar work on the Streets of Philadelphia Sessions  version of "Secret Garden," after repeated listenings I have yet to hear any evidence of it.) While the lyrical perspective here often maturely explores the darker and more complex aspects of love - and a few do it rather well, leading to effective, at least artistically and musically interesting tracks like "Blind Spot," "Waiting On The End Of The World," and "Between Heaven and Earth" - it's not like Springsteen wasn't doing that already on previously released material like Tunnel of Love , Human Touch , and Lucky Town , the three officially released albums that directly preceded his work on this material. And something like the beautifully heartbreaking and soulful Human Touch outtake "Trouble In Paradise," co-written with Roy Bittan and featured more than a quarter-century ago on the first Tracks box-set, goes just as deep and dark lyrically as this long-anticipated material, even without layers of foreboding synthesizer sounds attached to it. It's just more than a bit ironic and amusing that some who seemed so cool to such emotionally mature material in the past now appear so gaga over what's to be found here on Streets of Philadelphia Sessions . It's also rather mind-boggling that in 1995 "Bruce, Inc." came so close to officially releasing an album in which Bruce Springsteen sings a line comparing a relationship to being "like... a disease" not once, not twice, but thrice in separate tracks among only ten such selections presented here: "Blind Spot," "Waiting On The End Of The World," and "The Farewell Party." It's one thing to have left alone the repeated "deliver me from nowhere" line (in both "State Trooper" and "Open All Night") on Nebraska , especially since attempting later to alter a sung line in the demo source recordings that became Nebraska would have been extremely difficult if not impossible to pull off successfully, given the technology involved. But the recording technology that Springsteen was using for the material on Streets of Philadelphia Sessions , more than a decade after the recording of Nebraska , would've made it very easy to add a different phrase or line to a song, avoiding such heavy repetition. I guess Bruce just thought that "like...a disease" phrase was among his best songwriting accomplishments ever. (Sorry, Boss; it isn't.) Ironically, the biggest standout for me on Streets of Philadelphia Sessions is a track that has absolutely no drum loops or any other kind of hip-hop influence. "One Beautiful Morning" is instead a rocker about the tragic death of a beloved woman (coincidentally with yet another lyrical reference to another unnamed "disease,") and how those she left behind will carry on without her. I wouldn't be surprised at all if, like "Streets of Philadelphia," the spirit of Kristen Ann Carr also lives in this song. I would be equally unsurprised to learn that Bruce pulled the "promises to keep" phrase in "One Beautiful Morning" from the "promises to keep" phrase that he added to the closing line in his version of Harry Chapin's "Remember When The Music." In any case, "One Beautiful Morning" is one beautiful, moving, and powerful song, among the finest that Bruce Springsteen has ever written and recorded, and I'm so glad that it's been released officially at last. Play it... loud .