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July 7, 2025 This just in... We are EXTREMELY pleased and excited to announce that permission has been granted for this Wednesday's special Newtown Theatre "Movie Club" screening of John Sayles' 1983 film Baby It's You ( the first major film to license Bruce Springsteen's music for its soundtrack) to be presented on the big screen in its newly and beautifully restored 4K edition. If you'll be in the Newtown, PA area this Wednesday, you do NOT want to miss this special opportunity to see this fully restored version of the film in a rare theatrical screening. Read below for more information on the film and how to get your tickets . Special thanks to Fun City Editions for allowing us to present its 4K restoration of Baby It's You the way it originally was meant to be seen... on the big screen! Click here to purchase the Fun City Editions Blu-ray of the 4K restoration , featuring a new, exclusive essay by film scholar and Letters To You contributor Caroline Madden , who'll be presenting Wednesday night's special screening with her fellow Letters To You contributors, filmmaker Joe Amodei and editor/publisher Shawn Poole. Letters To You contributor and filmmaker Joe Amodei  recently launched a monthly "Movie Club" screening/discussion series in partnership with The Newtown Theatre  in Newtown, PA. Next month's screening will be writer/director John Sayles ' great 1983 film, the nostalgic teen-romance drama Baby It's You , which also was the first major film to license Bruce Springsteen's music for its soundtrack. The Asbury Park, NJ of yore is portrayed in the film, as well, in a sequence where the main characters visit the legendary town and even spend some time at the now-demolished Palace Amusements building, which still stood and was in operation when Baby It's You  was filmed. About a year-and-a-half after the film's release, Sayles would begin working with Springsteen on the filming of several of his music-videos. (See the vintage image below.) from the World Tour 1984-85 tourbook - shots of filmmaker John Sayles directing the "Glory Days" music-video - Sayles also directed the music-videos for "Born in the U.S.A." and "I'm On Fire." All Letters To You readers who'll be in or near Newtown, PA are invited to attend this special event this Wednesday, July 9, beginning at 7:30 p.m. After screening the film, Joe will be joined by Letters To You contributing writer and film-scholar Caroline Madden , as well as editor/publisher Shawn Poole, for an audience discussion/Q-and-A about the film and its enduring significance. We hope that you can join us for this special evening. General-admission tickets are only $12 each, and your ticket-purchases will help to support the continued restoration and maintenance of the historic Newtown Theatre. Incidentally, all members of The Newtown Theatre get free admission to Baby It's You , as well as free admission to all other "Movie Club" screenings, along with other membership benefits. Click here for information on how to become a member of The Newtown Theatre. Click here for more information on the Baby It's You screening,  and to purchase tickets as a non-member of The Newtown Theatre.  See you this Wednesday!

image from the official "Long Walk Home" music-video July 4, 2025 Say goodbye...and hello; it's Independence Day 2025 here in the U.S.A. Tonight the fireworks and/or drones will be hailin' and/or sailin' all over the place, forcing a light into all those left stranded - or worse - as "Dear Leader"'s "big, beautiful bill" now becomes the newest law of this hard land. Meanwhile, last night, on another continent, Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band's "Land of Hope and Dreams" Tour reached its end. What originally had been planned as just a spring/summer series of make-up dates for postponements on their 2023-24 tour became - unfortunately out of necessity - something far more important and special. As I wrote shortly after this tour launched , and the significance of what Springsteen and his band were doing at this year's May-July gigs quickly became clear, " No other major musical stars - nobody else famous in rock, pop, hip-hop, soul/R&B, and/or country - have yet mounted a tour where at every show the theme of resisting and surviving the Trump administration's agenda is explored so deeply and overtly throughout the evening." Hey, remember how many of us, especially thanks to the early, astute online insight of Stevie Van Zandt , could see the connection between the structure and tightness of the 2023-2024 shows with the E Street Band and what Bruce previously delivered on his own with Springsteen on Broadway ? Well, the 2025 "Land of Hope and Dreams" Tour, while also continuing to be very tightly structured, connected strongly to Springsteen on Broadway in another way, too, through what Bruce said back in 2018 during each nightly Broadway introduction before performing "The Ghost of Tom Joad." In the version of Springsteen on Broadway filmed for Netflix and released as an official recording , culled from Broadway performances that occurred in mid-July 2018 during the first Trump presidency, that introduction went as follows: "I never believed that people come to my shows, or to rock shows in general, to be told anything, but I do believe that they come to be reminded of things... to be reminded of who they are at their most joyous, at their deepest, when life feels full. It's a good place to get in touch with your heart and your spirit. It's good to be amongst the crowd, to be reminded of who we are and who we can be collectively. And music does those things pretty well. Sometimes, they can come in pretty handy, particularly these days when some reminding of who we are and who we can be isn't such a bad thing. "I refer back to the weekend of the March For Our Lives when we saw all those young people in Washington and citizens all around the country remind us of what faith in America, and what real faith in American democracy...how sacred that is. That weekend, you just saw what it actually looked and felt like, and it was just encouraging to see all those people out on the street, and all that righteous passion alive in the service of something good, to see it still there at the center of the beating heart of our country, in spite of what've been going through. And it was a good day; it was just one good day. "But it was a necessary day, because these are times when we've also seen folks marching, and in the highest offices of our land, who want to speak to our darkest angels, who want to call up the ugliest and the most divisive ghosts of America's past, and they want to destroy the idea of an America for all. That's their intention. That's what we've been seeing in the outrage of the broken families along the border and in hate-filled marches on American streets this year... things I never thought I would see again in my lifetime, things that I thought were dead and gone forever, on the ash-heap of history. "We've come too far and worked too hard. Too many good people paid too high a price, paid with their lives, to allow this to happen now. There's been too much hard work done, and sacrifice. "There's a beautiful quote by Dr. [Martin Luther] King that says, '...the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.' It is important to believe in those words and to carry yourself and to act accordingly, to live with compassion. Have faith in that what we're seeing now is just another hard chapter in the long, long, ongoing battle for the soul of the nation." So on this 4th of July, I remain very grateful to Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band for acting accordingly, providing me - and us - yet again with that " righteous power" of art and music when it's most needed, and for indeed reminding us once more of who we are and who we can be collectively. And I wish all of those true, beloved patriots a peaceful, pleasant Independence Day, a safe journey homeward, as well as continued safety here at home, moving forward. Of course, after today's barbecues and tonight's fireworks and drone-shows are over, all of us concerned U.S. citizens still have much more work cut out for us. But at least now we have some more great " rock-and-roll in dangerous times" to accompany us in our struggles together. Turn it up...

backstage in Manchester, England - May 14, 2025 - photo by Rob DeMartin - used w/ permission July 2, 2025 Happy 76th Birthday, and best wishes for many, many more happy birthdays ahead to "Professor" Roy Bittan, who remains one of the greatest musicians in rock and roll, let alone on E Street. Roy always plays the appropriate keyboard part for the song - whether it's big or small, complex or deceptively simple, on piano, organ, or synth (or even occasionally on accordion, should the need arise.) For example, it's been more than fifty years since he joined the E Street Band, more than fifty years since he began providing those essential piano parts of "Jungleland," and he's still finding ways to play that song differently enough each time to keep it fresh, keep your attention, and keep it live in every sense of the word. It's master-level musical performance that remains so alive... and so beautiful, of course. Manchester, England - May 17, 2025 - photo by Rob DeMartin - used w/ permission Roy's done a ton of great performance and production work off E Street, as well. One of our all-time favorites remains his contributions to Ian Hunter's 1979 masterpiece You're Never Alone With A Schizophrenic , where Roy joined fellow E Streeters Garry Tallent and Max Weinberg, backing Hunter in the studio. (Check out the anniversary-related "Expanded Edition"/"Deluxe Edition" forms of this album for extra outtakes and alternative versions from those recording sessions.) And of course, to date The Professor remains the only E Street Band member to share official co-writing credits with Bruce Springsteen on a Springsteen album ("Roll of the Dice" and "Real World" on Human Touch .) Happy Birthday, Roy, and many, many more! Keep them keys keepin' on!

James Baldwin in 1962 - photo by Carl Mydans/The LIFE Picture Collection/Shutterstock - used with permission June 29, 2025 As LGBTQ Pride Month 2025 begins drawing to its close, with the end of The "Land of Hope and Dreams" Tour following shortly thereafter, there's no better time for us to focus on James Baldwin , the great writer, orator, and civil-rights activist. Baldwin's life and work have had and continue to have an enduring impact on literature, the struggles of African-Americans, and the LGBTQ movement. Bruce Springsteen has been invoking Baldwin's name and work during every single show on The "Land of Hope and Dreams" Tour, before performing "My City of Ruins," when he says, "A majority of our elected representatives have failed to protect the American people from the abuses of an unfit president and a rogue government. They have no concern or idea for what it means to be deeply American. The America l’ve sung to you about for fifty years is real and, regardless of its faults, is a great country with a great people. So we’ll survive this moment. Now, I have hope, because I believe in the truth of what the great American writer James Baldwin said. He said in this world, there isn’t as much humanity as one would like, but there’s enough. Let’s pray..." The Baldwin quotation that Bruce has been so regularly and movingly paraphrasing comes from the 1971 short-documentary film entitled Meeting the Man: James Baldwin in Paris . The making of this half-hour film was marked by a crew of British documentarians engaging, sometimes contentiously, with Baldwin around the intersection of his art and his politics. During one of the film's interview segments, Baldwin said, “There may not be, you know, as much humanity in the world as one would like to see, but there is some. There's more than one would think. In any case, if you break faith with what you know, that's a betrayal of many, many, many, many people. I may know six people, but that's enough. Love has never been a popular movement, and no one's ever wanted, really, to be free. The world is held together, really it is held together, by the love and the passion of very few people. Otherwise, of course you can despair. Walk down the street of any city, any afternoon, and look around you. What you've got to remember is what you're looking at is also you . Everyone you're looking at is also you . You could be that person. You could be that monster; you could be that cop. And you have to decide in yourself not to be.” At another point in the same segment, the white Englishman interviewing Baldwin asserted that Baldwin was "writing for white people," to which he replied, "I'm writing for people , baby. You know, I don't believe in white people. I don't believe in Black people, either, for that matter. But I know the difference between being Black and white at this time. It means that I cannot fool myself about some things that I can fool myself about if I were white." In the 2021 Renegades: Born in the USA  podcast/book project that Bruce Springsteen co-created with former U.S. President Barack Obama, Springsteen told Obama that he started reading James Baldwin's 1963 book The Fire Next Time in the aftermath of the murder of George Floyd. (The book's title, incidentally, is derived from one of its essays' quotation of lyrics from the traditional spiritual "O Mary Don't You Weep," also recorded by Springsteen on 2006's We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions : "God gave Noah the rainbow sign; no more water, but fire next time!") He then read to Obama a passage from the book that Springsteen said "always stuck with me:" "White people in this country will have quite enough to do in learning how to accept and love themselves and each other, and when they have achieved this - which will not be tomorrow and may very well be never - the Negro problem will no longer exist, for it will no longer be needed." Within Springsteen's circle, there probably has never been a bigger fan of James Baldwin's writing than Bruce's longtime biographer and friend Dave Marsh . (And speaking of President Obama and his tenure at the White House, during that period Marsh's email messages would often end with his signature accompanied by a 1961 quotation from James Baldwin - featured in 2010's The Cross of Redemption: Uncollected Writings - that reads, "[W]hat really exercises my mind is not this hypothetical day on which some other Negro 'first' will become the first Negro President. What I am really curious about is just what kind of country he’ll be President of.") In Marsh's excellent 2006 book Bruce Springsteen On Tour: 1968-2005 , he turned to Baldwin's writing three separate times to help convey three important moments in Springsteen's live-performance career. First, when writing about the transformative breakthroughs that Springsteen and the E Street Band underwent in their performances on their 1975-76 Born to Run Tour, Marsh quoted from the same Baldwin essay "Letter From a Region in My Mind" that was collected in The Fire Next Time and from which Springsteen read a portion to President Obama. The portions of the essay that Marsh quoted, however, were two different ones that directly connected to music-making: "White Americans seem to feel that happy songs are happy and sad songs are sad , and that, God help us, is exactly the way most white Americans sing them," and "To be sensual, I think, is to respect and rejoice in the force of life, of life itself, and to be present in all that one does, from the effort of loving to the breaking of bread." "[B]ut Springsteen," wrote Marsh of the Born to Run Tour that launched fifty years ago this summer, "never sang white. Everything he chooses to sing, no matter who writes it, has the doubleness and contingency of which Baldwin speaks. You can't hear 'The E Street Shuffle,' or 'Mountain of Love,' or 'Thunder Road' or 'When You Walk in the Room,' and make neat divisions between happy and sad, or even strong and weak. What exists in Bruce's renditions of these is precisely sensual presence." Second, when addressing how strongly Springsteen and his great 1992-93 touring band incorporated elements of Black gospel music into their shows, Marsh again cited a quotation from Baldwin's "Letter From a Region in My Mind" essay - this time one that was a bit longer - about the power of the music that he experienced in the Black churches of his youth: "There is no music like that music, no drama like the drama of the saints rejoicing, the sinners moaning, the tambourines racing, and all those voices coming together and crying holy unto the Lord. There is still, for me, no pathos quite like the pathos of those multicolored, worn, somehow triumphant and transfigured faces, speaking from the depths of a visible, tangible, continuing despair of the goodness of the Lord. I have never seen anything to equal the fire and excitement that sometimes, without warning, fill a church, causing the church, as Leadbelly and so many others have testified, to rock. Nothing that has happened to me since equals the power and the glory that I sometimes felt when, in the middle of a sermon, I knew that I was somehow, by some miracle, really carrying, as they said, 'the Word'—when the church and I were one. Their pain and their joy were mine, and mine were theirs—they surrendered their pain and joy to me, I surrendered mine to them—and their cries of 'Amen!' and 'Hallelujah!' and 'Yes, Lord' and 'Praise His name!' and 'Preach it, brother!' sustained and whipped on my solos until we all became equal, wringing wet, singing and dancing, in anguish and rejoicing, at the foot of the altar." "The differences were many," wrote Marsh in comparing Springsteen's 1992-93 shows to what Baldwin was describing. "[T]here was ample warning, for one thing, the cries were different, the looks of wear meant something very different indeed. But in essence what sustained and whipped James Baldwin onward sustained and whipped Bruce Springsteen onward. To grow closer to that essence - to cause the church of his musical morality to rock - he went to its root." And finally, and most appropriately prophetic, especially given the name of this very important and special current tour in which Bruce Springsteen continues incorporating the words of James Baldwin at each and every show, Marsh quoted one of Baldwin's greatest works of short fiction when writing about the greatness of Springsteen's song "Land of Hope and Dreams," first featured in the nightly setlist of the 1999-2000 Reunion Tour with the E Street Band, for which it was written: "Rock and roll is the language of individualism, but it is also the language of the human bond, the story of each struggle and the realization that all those struggles are one. At moments like those, it is both sides of that equation at once. When the music gets to that place, we have come to the land of hope and dreams, where all of us - saint and sinner, whore and gambler, lost souls - come together. It is just as James Baldwin wrote in 'Sonny's Blues' : 'For, while the tale of how we suffer, and how we are delighted, and how we may triumph is never new, it must always be heard. There isn't any other tale to tell, it's the only light we've got in all this darkness.'"

June 27, 2025 Happy Tracks II: The Lost Albums Release Day! Despite feeling it important and necessary to address that elephant in the room yesterday, today we are nothing but eager to begin diving into all of the music itself, as we know that many of you, Dear Readers, are, too, regardless of whatever digital/physical medium you'll be using to do so. We also plan to take our sweet ol' summertime doing so. Bruce Springsteen has chosen to present this massive amount of previously unreleased Tracks II material as seven distinct "lost albums," so we fully intend to treat that approach accordingly, really sitting with each of these records and letting each one sink in deeply before writing extensively about it. We plan to have more than just one writer taking on this big job, too, so you'll be getting some different and interesting perspectives along the way. We're looking forward to doing this kind of listening, thinking, and writing, and we think you'll agree that ultimately, our not rushing anything unnecessarily will yield much greater rewards for all of us. After all, summer's here (at least for those of us in the Northern Hemisphere) and the time is right for digging in this deep, right? In the meantime, happy listening to all, y'all. It's been a long time comin', but now it's here!

Douglas Springsteen, circa 1960, as seen in the 2021 book RENEGADES: BORN IN THE USA, co-written by Barack Obama and Bruce Springsteen June 15, 2025 "During the pandemic," Bruce Springsteen stated in the official trailer for Tracks II: The Lost Albums , "what I did for that period of time was I finished everything I had in my vault." Well, Bruce, I sure hope that doesn't mean that "Father's Day," which didn't make the cut for Tracks II , will remain in that vault for a long time to come. On April 12, 2017, I got to hear "Father's Day" at the U.S. Copyright Office in Washington, D.C., along with two friends: filmmaker Nick Mead ( Swing , Clarence Clemons: Who Do I Think I Am? , A Thousand Guitars , I Was A Teenage Sex Pistol , etc.) and Backstreets magazine/website editor/publisher Chris Phillips. Almost a decade later, the three of us still agree that we heard something very special that day. I wrote about the experience at Backstreets.com in a report published on Father's Day 2017. You can click here to read my archived report. At that time I described "Father's Day" as "a powerful rocker, built around scorching guitars and pounding drums that bring the noise before Bruce sings a note and continue to do so well after his singing stops...Bruce and whoever else accompanied him clearly brought their best game. On the basis of the music alone, this track ranks with other great long-unreleased Springsteen rockers of the past like 'Roulette' and 'Murder Incorporated.' (Here's hoping it eventually receives an official release, as those tracks eventually did.)" I also added that even within the limitations of the Copyright Office listening experience, in which not every detail regarding the characters and situations depicted in the song could be understood in detail, "it certainly doesn't sound like anyone's having a very happy Father's Day. The song seems to be exploring the impact of fathers who are absent, either physically or emotionally or both." I have no idea why Springsteen fans won't be able to hear "Father's Day" on Tracks II after it drops two weeks from now on June 27. Perhaps since Tracks II is built around a "lost" full-length albums concept rather than the comparatively more loosely organized collection of studio outtakes that was the original 1998 Tracks box-set, it was just too difficult to find a fitting spot for "Father's Day" on any of the seven "lost" albums that constitute Tracks II '. As my archived Backstreets.com report noted, on the same date that Bruce submitted "Father's Day" to the U.S. Copyright Office - April 7, 1995 - he also submitted "Between Heaven and Earth" and "Blind Spot," two tracks that will be included on the Streets of Philadelphia Sessions album of Tracks II , but even if "Father's Day" was recorded during the same period that tracks like "Between Heaven and Earth" and "Blind Spot" were, it doesn't share any significant sonic similarities with those two tracks or presumably the rest of the material on  Streets of Philadelphia Sessions . Perhaps it was considered instead for possible inclusion on the Perfect World album of Tracks II , which we already know was newly assembled using various tracks from the mid-1990s through 2018. But again as we also know already, for whatever reason(s,) "Father's Day" will be nowhere to be found on Tracks II . There's another intriguing possibility to consider, as long as we're just speculating... Perhaps later this year, "Father's Day" could be included on the soundtrack of Deliver Me From Nowhere , the Springsteen biopic that will be released next October. After all, with Bruce's relationship with his own father apparently being a strong plot element of the film, perhaps "Father's Day" could serve as closing-credits music and/or somewhere else on the soundtrack, especially since the song's subject has to do with father-relationships that are... er, less than ideal. In any case, here's hoping that "Father's Day" eventually gets an official release of some type, and much sooner than a few more decades from now. After all, to these ears and to those of some friends of mine, as well, it sounds just too good to remain "orphaned" by its father, getting heard pretty much only by those fans willing and able to make the trek to D.C. Happy Father's Day 2025 to all who are celebrating it today! -Special thanks to Nick Mead and Chris Philips UPDATE (June 18, 2025:) In today's New York Times feature on Tracks II , Bruce Springsteen has revealed that Tracks III is already finished. “It’s basically what was left in the vault [from the early 1970s through 2025.] So there was a lot of good music left. There are five full albums of music.” Fingers and toes crossed that "Father's Day" will be among those yet-to-be-released recordings. screenshots from Thom Zimny's short film Inside Tracks II: The Lost Albums

June 26, 2025 If you're a Springsteen fan visiting or returning to this website, you've probably read at least some of the initial reviews and other features about Tracks II: The Lost Albums published online at various sites over the last week or so, leading up to tomorrow's official release of the box-set. Perhaps you also noticed the absence of something rather significant in the overwhelming majority of those reviews and features... To her credit, our fellow former Backstreets contributor Caryn Rose seems to be the only writer at a major outlet to have even acknowledged the overpriced physical-media (CDs/vinyl formats) elephant in the room. In her June 17th NPR article "The essential listening guide to Bruce Springsteen's 'Tracks II: The Lost Albums,'" Rose wrote, " It's worth mentioning that this set is significantly more expensive than the first Tracks , which weighed in at $49.99 for the four discs, roughly $100 in 2025 dollars. Tracks II: The Lost Albums is listed at $299.99 for the seven-CD version and $349.98 for the nine-LP set." We'll go even further, especially since no other major music journalists/outlets seem interested in doing so... Tracks II , in its physical-media forms (CDs/vinyl,) is not only significantly more expensive than the original Tracks box; it is shaping up to be the most overpriced regularly issued/distributed physical box-set ever released by a major recording artist. As of this writing, with the official-release-date only a day away, Amazon - often chief among retailers with the price to beat on items like this - still has the seven-CD version priced at only 13% below its $299.99 list-price, and the nine-LP set priced at only 6% below its $349.98 list-price. If anyone's still dreaming of any significant pre-release-day price-drops under Amazon's pre-order price guarantee... well, it looks like if dreams came true, now wouldn't that be nice. We haven't found any other outlets with pricing-plans significantly lower than Amazon's, either. Don't get us wrong. Of course we remain excited about and interested in the seven albums' worth of previously unreleased Springsteen music headed our way. And those of us who are fine with the digital/streaming version of Tracks II are unlikely to have any problems with paying only about $70 or possibly nothing extra at all, depending on the terms of our streaming-service subscriptions, to dive into all of this forthcoming music. But on behalf of anyone and everyone who still makes physical-media purchases, we ask whomever is responsible for the pricing of this box-set, openly and for the record... WTF?! You're selling the 9-vinyl-LPs box-set for about $350 and the 7-CDs box-set for about $300. The average new single-vinyl-LP release currently sells for $25-$30. So at its most expensive, the total price of the nine vinyl LPs in the vinyl version of Tracks II  should be about $270. Are we expected to believe that the " 100-page cloth-bound, hardcover book featuring rare archival photos, liner notes on each lost album from essayist Erik Flannigan, and a personal introduction on the project from Springsteen" truly justifies the extra $80 added to the price of the Tracks II   vinyl version ? And the $300 price for the 7-CDs version of Tracks II  is even more mind-boggling. Currently, a single-CD version of a new album usually sells for no more than about $18, and often for less than that. But even at $18 per CD (with one of those CDs - the Faithless album - clocking in at a mere 35 minutes or so, by the way,) that comes to $126, which doesn't cover even half of the 7-CDs version of Tracks II 's $300 price, making it appear that you're now attempting to sell that included " 100-page cloth-bound, hardcover book" for a whopping $174 ! And speaking of that book, those essays, the Springsteen introduction, archival photos, etc., why can't those of us who are paying for the digital/streaming version of Tracks II purchase/receive a digital version of that book, as well, as a PDF or whatever? Given Bruce Springsteen's 2021 music-rights sale to Sony Music Entertainment, it's no longer quite as clear exactly where to direct questions about pricing concerns like this, let alone focus any justifiable anger. What is very clear, however, is that somebody - and most likely somebody on the team at Sony/Columbia - gave the green light to the inordinately high pricing of the CD/LP box-sets of Tracks II: The Lost Albums . Here's hoping that today's active music press/media professionals - especially those with larger audiences, wider access, and greater resources - begin to treat this sad economic fact accordingly. What's also clear is just how drastically the landscape has changed - in the music industry, in music journalism, and of course for us music fans, as well - since the late, great Tom Petty took his famous stand against another record company's relatively minor attempt at price-gouging . Glory days, indeed.

"The Godfather of the Guitar" in action onstage @ Liverpool on June 4, 2025 - photo by   René van Diemen June 21, 2025 "On the guitar... The Godfather of the Guitar... The Minister of Heart and Spirit... the great, great Nils Lofgren!" - Bruce Springsteen introducing Nils Lofgren in Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band: Live in New York City Happy 74th Birthday, and best wishes for many, many more happy birthdays ahead to Nils Lofgren. Nils remains a great guitarist and great singer on and off E Street, and also continues to write beautiful music and lead great bands of his own in his various solo ventures through the years. And as for that "Minister of Heart and Spirit" part, well you just couldn't find a nicer person when it comes to interacting with his fans. Nils has been especially gracious and generous to us here at Letters To You whenever we've asked him for some of his valuable time, and we couldn't be more grateful. We also couldn't be happier that one of Nils' more recent projects involves his finding yet another way to connect with fans. In his ongoing Rockality series , Nils has been putting on his storyteller hat and sharing some amazing stories from his long career in a loose, fun, and creative streaming video format. Viewers get to experience what it's like to sit down one-on-one with Nils in his home-studio and have him personally tell you about his life as a musician, including various encounters over the years with the likes of Jimi Hendrix, Eric Burdon, Sly Stone, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Neil Young, and, yes, Bruce Springsteen. Oh, and Nils always has a guitar with him for each half-hour-or-so storytelling session. It's interesting, educational, entertaining, and, far more often than not, downright riveting. Right now, all seven episodes to date of Rockality can be purchased as a special package for only $16.99. Click here for details and to place your orders. Happy Birthday, "Godfather" Nils! We love ya, good sir, on and off E Street. Sing on, brother, play on...

June 19, 2025 Letters To You contributor and filmmaker Joe Amodei recently launched a monthly "Movie Club" screening/discussion series in partnership with The Newtown Theatre in Newtown, PA. Next month's screening will be writer/director John Sayles' great 1983 film, the nostalgic teen-romance drama Baby It's You , which also was the first major film to license Bruce Springsteen's music for its soundtrack. The Asbury Park, NJ of yore is portrayed in the film, as well, in a sequence where the main characters visit the legendary town and even spend some time at the now-demolished Palace Amusements building, which still stood and was in operation when Baby It's You was filmed. All Letters To You readers who'll be in or near Newtown, PA are invited to attend this special event on Wednesday, July 9, beginning at 7:30 p.m. After screening the film, Joe will be joined by Letters To You contributing writer and film-scholar Caroline Madden , as well as editor/publisher Shawn Poole, for an audience discussion/Q-and-A about the film and its enduring significance. We hope that you can join us for this special evening. General-admission tickets are only $12 each, and your ticket-purchases will help to support the continued restoration and maintenance of the historic Newtown Theatre. Incidentally, all members of The Newtown Theatre get free admission to Baby It's You , as well as free admission to all other "Movie Club" screenings, along with other membership benefits. Click here for information on how to become a member of The Newtown Theatre. Click here for more information on the Baby It's You screening, and to purchase tickets as a non-member of The Newtown Theatre. See you on July 9th!

June 18, 2025 "Let me tell you a little story," says Jeremy Strong doing an excellent Jon Landau impersonation in the just-released trailer for Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere (the full official title of the film, which will be released by 20th Century Studios on Friday, October 24th.) Overall, however, just how accurately and convincingly the story behind what led Bruce Springsteen to release Nebraska before Born in the U.S.A. will be portrayed... Well, that still remains to be seen, of course. In any case, here's our first official and extensive taste of what to expect onscreen come late October. Okay; roll it: The onscreen singing, incidentally, is being portrayed by a mix of Springsteen's vocals with those of Jeremy Allen White, who's playing the adult-rock-star version of Bruce in the film. This mixing of their vocals sounds at least somewhat jarring at times, as can be heard especially in the teaser-trailer released yesterday: Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere was written for the screen and directed by Scott Cooper, based on the book Deliver Me from Nowhere: The Making of Bruce Springsteen's Nebraska, by Warren Zanes. In addition to White as Springsteen and Strong as Landau, the film also features Paul Walter Hauser as guitar tech Mike Batlan, Stephen Graham as Springsteen’s father Doug, Odessa Young as composited-though-fictionalized love interest Faye, Gaby Hoffman as Springsteen’s mother Adele, Marc Maron as Chuck Plotkin, and David Krumholtz as Columbia executive Al Teller. The film is produced by Cooper, Ellen Goldsmith-Vein, Eric Robinson, and Scott Stuber. Tracey Landon, Jon Vein, and Zanes are the film's executive producers. the first (only?) official movie poster, featuring Danny Clinch's photo of Jeremy Allen White as Bruce Springsteen

June 13, 2025 Additionally, in May of 2024, we at Letters To You deeply explored Brian Wilson's huge influence on Bruce Springsteen's work, as part of our feature on the release of Frank Marshall and Thom Zimny's Beach Boys documentary. It's especially worth reading/re-reading in light of this week's news. Click here to read our archived article.

June 12, 2025 Below you can listen to "Sunday Love," the opening track from the "lost" Bruce Springsteen album Twilight Hours , which will be included in Tracks II: The Lost Albums , to be released worldwide on Friday, June 27: As per today's official press release , Twilight Hours finds Springsteen exploring "orchestra-driven mid-century noir" with what Springsteen himself calls "romantic, lost-in-the-city songs" in "an ode to the great American pop music tradition." He was working on Twilight Hours while simultaneously creating what became his Western Stars album. "At one time," says Springsteen in the press release, "it was either a double record [with Western Stars ] or they were part of the same record... I love Burt Bacharach and I love those kinds of songs and those kinds of songwriters. I took a swing at it because the chordal structures and everything are much more complicated, which was fun for me to pull off. All this stuff could have come right off of those sixties albums." In the music of Twilight Hours , the release states, Springsteen also draws inspiration "from the vocal work of Frank Sinatra and Andy Williams, the prose of Flannery O’Connor and James M. Cain, and the Robert Mitchum film Out Of The Past ." In addition to the influences listed above, "Sunday Love" certainly draws lyrical if not musical inspiration from the Great American Songbook standard "A Sunday Kind of Love," recorded not just by many famous pop and jazz singers like Ella Fitzgerald, Frankie Laine, Louis Prima and his Orchestra (w/ Anita Leonard on vocals,) and Dinah Washington, but also many major artists of the doo-wop/rock-and-roll genres, including The Del Vikings, Dion, The Four Seasons, The Harptones (on the Bruce label, no less!,) Jan & Dean, and Asbury Park, NJ's own Lenny Welch. Here are the full production credits for "Sunday Love," as written and recorded by Bruce Springsteen: Guitar, Keyboards, Synthesizer, Percussion, Vocal, Producer: Bruce Springsteen Guitar, Percussion, Piano, Producer, Recording Engineer: Ron Aniello Drums: Max Weinberg Bass: Kaveh Rastegar Keyboards: Scott Tibbs Background Vocal, Vocal: Patti Scialfa Background Vocal: Soozie Tyrell Background Vocal: Lisa Lowell Recording Engineer: Toby Scott Recording Engineer: Rob Lebret Recording Engineer: Ross Petersen Mixing Engineer: Bob Clearmountain Mastering Engineer: Ted Jensen photo by Danny Clinch - used with permission Click here to listen to "Sunday Love" via the platform of your choice . Click here to get pre-ordering information for Tracks II: The Lost Albums , which will be released worldwide on Friday, June 27.