Bruce Springsteen - The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle
Written by: Moti Kupfer
Release date - 5.11.1973
The early 1970s were the flowering of the singer-songwriters, a roster that included David Bowie, Paul Simon, Elton John, Bob Dylan, Tom Waits, Billy Joel, Cat Stevens and a young man from Long Branch, New Jersey, who was already known as "The Boss" (more on that nickname later).
The Boss, better known as Bruce Springsteen, was signed to Columbia Records after impressing with a versatile songwriting style that drew on rhythm and blues, soul and rock 'n' roll. His commanding stage presence caught the attention of the producers Mike Appel and Jim Cretecos, and of Columbia's talent scout John Hammond, who signed him.
Columbia was expecting a singer-songwriter, and his debut album, "Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J.", duly delivered a folk-rock record built mainly around the acoustic guitar.
For his second album, Springsteen arrived knowing exactly that he wanted to play rock 'n' roll with the E Street Band, and he made that clear to John Hammond. "The main thing for me about 'The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle' was that I wanted to present myself as a rock 'n' roll performer," Springsteen said. It was the moment that defined his central place in rock for the rest of his long career, on an album released on November 5, 1973.
Columbia executives wanted Springsteen to leave his band and re-record the album with session musicians they would bring in. "I can't do that," Springsteen said, and he stood by the E Street Band, which at the time featured saxophonist Clarence Clemons, Danny Federici on accordion and organ, Garry Tallent on bass, David Sancious on piano and keyboards, and drummer Vini Lopez.
The album's convoluted full title, "The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle", draws on E Street, the road where keyboardist David Sancious lived, as well as on the title of the 1959 film "The Wild and the Innocent", starring Audie Murphy and Sandra Dee.
The Israeli angle: in 1949, the year Bruce Springsteen was born, far from him in La Paz, Bolivia, a boy named Louis Scharfschwart was born to a family of Polish origin. The family immigrated to Israel in 1962, and Louis later enlisted in the army and served in the entertainment troupe of the Paratroopers Brigade. On the advice of the musician Avraham Zigman, he changed his name to Lahav.
After the army he went to New York to study sound engineering. "My original plan was to study philosophy, film and even fashion design, but it didn't take long before I made a U-turn and began studying at the Institute of Audio Research," Lahav recalls.
"I was looking for a way to leave my mark on New York's studio scene, so I contacted the World Bank and told them I was planning to set up a studio in Israel," Lahav said, adding: "They had a policy of assisting Third World countries back then, so they were willing to introduce me to some people in the industry. One thing led to another, and at some point the people at Ampex introduced me to Neil Diamond's producer, Brooks Arthur, who took me under his wing and gave me a job at his 914 Sound Studios in upstate New York. It took me about six months to become a sound engineer, and suddenly I was recording people like James Taylor, Janis Ian, 'Blood, Sweat & Tears' and more."
"One day in 1972, a producer named Mike Appel brought a young, almost unknown artist into the studio, and I fell for him immediately. It was Bruce Springsteen," Lahav recalled. He worked with the Boss from 1972 to 1975, and also brought in his then-wife, Tzruya "Suki" Lahav, whose voice was layered several times to create a choir effect after the children's choir booked for the session failed to show up.
He earned the nickname "The Boss" because, early in his career, he was in charge of logistics and of paying the band members' wages. Born in New Jersey, he has Irish, Italian and Dutch roots, and his surname comes from the province of Groningen in the Netherlands.
His first inspirations were Frank Sinatra and Elvis Presley, and he bought his first guitar after seeing The Beatles on "The Ed Sullivan Show". He began his musical career in 1965 with a succession of short-lived bands, until he found his musical home in the E Street Band some six years later.
On his second album, Springsteen broadens his folk-rock approach in a jazzier, more rock-oriented direction. He creates a mosaic of street life in suburban society, drawing here on the romanticism of Van Morrison.
The album takes us straight into the Boss's world, surrounded by characters who are dancing or brawling at the height of a summer's day.
Throughout the album Springsteen sings and observes people from different angles. Sometimes he watches from the sidelines as people ride a Ferris wheel; at other times he turns the spotlight on the people he grew up with in New Jersey, in the song "The E Street Shuffle".
In "4th of July, Asbury Park (Sandy)" the Boss sings about Asbury Park, the New Jersey resort town that is slowly losing its charm, while in "Kitty's Back" he uses metaphorical language and vivid imagery to portray Kitty as a mysterious, seductive figure who is impossible to resist.
In "Wild Billy's Circus Story" Springsteen sings about the Clyde Beatty-Cole Bros. circus, focusing on its many special performers. Springsteen invented the characters, but he identified with circus people and claimed there was a parallel between their lives and those of musicians.
In "Incident on 57th Street" Springsteen writes as an observer, rather than in the specific, personal manner he usually adopted. The story is set in New York and tells of Spanish Johnny and Puerto Rican Jane, recalling Leonard Bernstein's musical "West Side Story".
In "Rosalita (Come Out Tonight)" the Boss answers everyone who wrote him off and claimed he had no chance. He writes an elusive love song, a love in the shadows with a girl whose mother refuses to see them as a couple, so they must hide from her constantly. The song became one of the Boss's most requested live numbers.
In the album's closing song, "New York City Serenade", Springsteen writes about the streets of Manhattan and the dark characters who live there once the lights of the night come on: the pimp and the prostitute. The grimy lives of the night people play a central role here, yet the song offers no judgment of how they live. Springsteen simply focuses for a while on their lives, delving into their souls to understand who they are and why they do what they do.
For Listening: Spotify, Apple Music
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