Tracks II: The Lost Albums Provide A Sliding Doors Moment for Bruce in the 90s

I’m a studio album guy. With my favorite artists, I care about what they did in the moment. Studio albums are what the artist decided to release at the time and they are the statement the artist was trying to make. Whenever an artist puts out something from “the vault” my default is that if these songs were great they would have made the album. For the most part that is probably true of course. But with Bruce Springsteen, it’s a little bit different. Unlike say Bob Dylan or Neil Young, Springsteen tends to really fuss over albums and doesn’t release everything. Neil Young has 43 studio albums, not including CSNY stuff. Dylan 40. Bruce has half that and while, yes Dylan and Young got a head start, they haven’t been going for twice as long. Springsteen famously left “Because the Night” and “Fire” off Darkness on the Edge of Town and gave them to Patti Smith and The Pointer Sisters, respectively. Both had bigger hits with those songs than Springsteen had with anything from Darkness. Just because a song is good, doesn’t mean it fits the themes of his albums and so you will find good tracks on his cutting room floor. So Bruce does have good stuff in his “vault” and I’m always happy to hear new stuff from Bruce, especially Bruce in the 1900s.¹

Still, I tend to treat stuff from “the vault” almost like going to a museum. These are relics from the past that might help explain what the artist was trying to accomplish at the time but they were ultimately discarded in pursuit of a different vision. They are often unreleased songs that have a similar vibe or early stabs at songs that eventually got released in a different form.² This is what Springsteen’s first volume of Tracks does. It has songs left on the cutting room floor or demos of songs that eventually got released in a different form. It has some great songs on it but you can always see why Bruce left them off. They don’t quite fit the theme of the studio albums even when they are good songs.

Tracks II puts itself out there as something different - “lost albums.” Bruce says they are “fully mixed albums” but ultimately he says they didn’t feel “essential.” Its seven discs are each a separate album that, mostly, come from a specific era. Some coincide with something else that he released. Others were just shelved altogether. Since Bruce sees them as albums I will treat them as such and write about them separately.

LA Garage Sessions ‘83

This is the one I was most interested in at the start. After 1980’s The River, Springsteen was set to make its follow up that would eventually be 1984’s Born in the USA, the record that made him a global superstar. In the interim, he released the sparse, haunting Nebraska in 1982, a set of home recorded demos about childhood memories, serial killers and drifters living in the margins of society. LA Garage Sessions is a mixture of those two records. There are some Nebraska type songs on there like “The Klansman” a tale of a child who sees his father and brother join the KKK. Like most of the songs on Nebraska, it passes no judgment on these characters who live outside of society’s norms out of a sense of isolation and desperation. Also like many of the songs on Nebraska it is from the perspective of a child. That perspective helps talk about the characters without being preachy about it. Rather than saying what it means, Bruce is saying it just is and leaves the listener to decide what it means.

This is an artifact album. Both Nebraska and Born in the USA were released, just not with these songs. The songs that might have been on Nebraska are the more interesting songs. “The Klansman” and “Richfield Whistle” would have fit on Nebraska but they also serve to point out that part of the power of Nebraska is the way it was recorded - in Bruce’s bedroom on crummy equipment. It was lightning in a bottle. The way they were recorded, makes these songs about loners doing desperate things even more haunting. Here, with the full band production, they lose some of the ghostly disconnect from rational society that Nebraska has. As for the ones that didn’t make the cut on Born in the USA, songs like “Follow That Dream” and “Don’t Back Down on our Love” sound like they could have been on it but also don’t easily make the case for what you would leave of of Born in the USA in favor of them.

This record is ultimately why I feel the way I do about stuff from “the vault.” Bruce made 2 great records during this period. He was firing on all cylinders. Of course he had to leave some good songs off. This collection doesn’t make me wish either Nebraska or Born in the USA were any different. I was curious about this one but mostly it wasn’t that interesting to me.

Streets of Philadelphia Sessions

Now this one is something different. Unlike the LA Garage Sessions, these aren’t outtakes from an album that Bruce released. It really is an album that got shelved. After putting out 2 albums in 1992 that both fans and critics were indifferent towards, Human Touch and Lucky Town,³ Bruce spent a few years as the 90s version of Kenny Loggins, writing songs for movies. He wrote “Streets of Philadelphia” for the movie Philadelphia and “Secret Garden” that ended up on the soundtrack for Jerry Maguire. Both of these songs feature drum machines, moody synths and loops mixed in with guitars and more traditional Bruce instruments. Both “Streets of Philadelphia” and “Secret Garden” at the time sounded unlike anything he had done. This record is a whole album of these songs and for me, the best of Tracks II and one of the most interesting “what ifs.” It makes me wonder why he shelved it. The 90s are considered a career low point for Bruce with Human Touch and Lucky Town being largely unpopular and Ghost of Tom Joad being wholly uncommercial, though it has its admirers.⁴

Streets of Philadelphia Sessions might have made people look differently at Bruce in the 90s. I was in high school during this period. I was a huge Springsteen fan in a time when it was not cool to be a huge Springsteen fan. But there is a world in which songs like the dark and atmospheric “Something in the Well” or the trap beats of “We Fell Down” would have resonated with my generation who weren’t really into the bombastic cornball Bruce who danced on stage with Courtney Cox. The jangly “One Beautiful Morning” would have fit in among Gin Blossoms and Toad The Wet Sprocket on the radio. Lyrically the songs are about relationships, men and women. They are more personal than most of Bruce’s output, although this era feature his most personal stuff.

My memory is hazy, but it seemed like “Secret Garden” was popular among my fellow GenXers compared to other Bruce stuff, especially 90s Bruce. But he was pretty ambivalent about popularity. So he shelved this album. It would probably not have added or taken away from his legacy, but it is a good record and I’m interested in what people would have thought about it in 1993. I wish we’d gotten this in the moment but I’m glad it’s here now.

Faithless

What if Bruce Springsteen made a Tom Wait’s album? That is what Faithless sounds like. Legend has it this was to be the soundtrack for a film around 2005 and Springsteen wrote the soundtrack before production began and then the film never happened. This would have been in-between Devils and Dust and We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions. It has several instrumental tracks and has a mixture of Spaghetti Western fare and Old Spirituals. It’s not as sparse as Devils and Dust but has a little bit of that vibe and you can see how it might have led to The Seeger Sessions with it’s heavy use of bluegrass instruments like banjos and dobros. It’s on songs like the gospel stomp of “All God’s Children” where he uses a croaky voice that it gets into Tom Waits territory along with “God Sent You” which echoes Waits’ own “Georgia Lee.”

Every artist at some point becomes a legacy artist and nothing they do after that really adds or takes much from that legacy. For me that happens for Bruce after The Rising in 2002. After that, Bruce made some straight forward albums but he also explores other interests like crooner on Western Stars or his R&B covers albums. That’s kind of what happens on Faithless. I don’t think Faithless would have moved the needle much had it been released but it is an interesting artifact and I would have liked to have seen the movie it was supposed to accompany.

Somewhere North of Nashville

This album was recorded at the same time as The Ghost of Tom Joad in 1995. Bruce was a little all over the place in the 90s. You’ve got the straight ahead Human Touch and Lucky Town, the loops and beats of “Streets of Philadelphia” the sparse, depressing Joad, and then this album that sounds like Dwight Yokam (“Tiger Rose”) and Turnpike Troubadours (“Silver Mountain.”) I really like these songs. It is certainly just Bruce following his muse much like he’s done for the last decade or so, trying on different clothes. It’s got several uptempo, honky tonk tracks with the word “man” in them “Repo Man,” “Delivery Man,” and “Detail Man” that are good if a little same-y. The standouts to me though are the ballads like “Under A Big Sky” and maybe the best song on the whole box set “Janey Don’t Lose Your Heart.”

This one is right in my wheelhouse, Bruce Springsteen but twangy. Bruce said he didn’t release it because he liked The Ghost of Tom Joad better. I don’t know what would have happened if he had released it instead of The Ghost of Tom Joad. Bruce was probably too big a star and too, well you know, to ever get much play on country radio but it is certainly more country that the Shania Twains and Tim McGraws that were on the country station at the time. There is a world where Bruce releases only Lucky Town, Streets of Philadelphia and Somewhere North of Nashville and we look at his 90s output differently.

Inyo

This one spans some time. Some of the songs date back to the Joad sessions of 1995 with others being recorded around Devils and Dust in 2005 and later. It’s like if The Ghost of Tom Joad and Devils and Dust weren’t as sparse. It has the same tales of the downtrodden, with the same focus on migrant workers and the border as Devils and Dust but the production on many of the songs is filled with trumpets and mariachi flourishes and a kind of Marty Robbins like country music. The songs as they are here fit lyrically and thematically with Devils and Dust but several do not fit sonically. The title track and “Indian Town” are more in line with the spare production of Devils and could be outtakes but they are the exceptions. Songs like “Adelita” and “The Lost Charro” have a more cinematic, Spanish feel to them with flamenco guitars and trumpets and Bruce using a crooning falsetto. “One False Move” and “Ciudad Juarez” are real standouts. This is an interesting record but I can see why he shelved it. It’s a little too heavy on the mariachi in spots. But I would have liked something in-between this and Devils and Dust.

Twilight Hours

This is the stuff he was doing on 2019’s Western Stars. There are differences that make this not totally feel like outtakes. While both are orchestral and feature Bruce using more of a crooner’s voice, Western Stars is more like the collaborations with Jimmy Webb and Glenn Campbell while Twilight Hours is almost more like Sinatra’s In the Wee Small Hours. Western Stars features songs of drifters and losers like the aging actor in the title track. Twilight Hours is more star-crossed lovers in smoky bars. It’s fine but not essential.

Perfect World

Similar to Inyo, this one spans twenty plus years worth of songs from different eras. These are the arena rock songs that didn’t make the cut on Bruce’s post Tunnel of Love rock albums. The first three songs were on albums by Joe Grushecky. These three sound like 21st Century E Street Band arena rock songs along with songs like “Rain in the River” and “Cutting Knife.” They sound like the songs that would have been on The Rising, Magic or Wrecking Ball. “Perfect World” which ended up on a John Mellencamp album and “The Great Depression” are more mellow, reminiscent of songs like “Brilliant Disguise.” These are the kinds of late period Springsteen songs that are probably the least essential and least interesting of this set. It really is the from “the vault” stuff I don’t usually care about.

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Of the 7 “lost albums” in this box set, it is the ones from the 90s that are the most interesting, Streets of Philadelphia and Somewhere North of Nashville. Both of them would have seen Springsteen reinventing himself and putting on different personas in the 90s. Would they have been commercially successful? Maybe Streets, probably not Nashville but they would have made the 90s a less fallow period for him. The two albums that bookend the boxed set have the feel of outtakes and there are some good songs on there. The LA Garage Sessions provides a window into what a productive and creative hot streak Bruce was on in the early 80s but I’m glad he resisted the urge to make either Nebraska or Born in the USA a double album. Faithless and Inyo are both Bruce really trying something different. They would be interesting albums in his catalog but would not be among the standouts. I feel the same about Twilight Hours as I do about the record he did release, Western Stars. Bruce has earned the right to release an orchestral, crooner album if he wants. I have earned the right not to care that much about it.

I will probably revisit some of these from time to time - especially Streets of Philadelphia and Nashville. It’s more interesting to think about the “what ifs” than it is to listen to. So, I’ll probably still blast Born to Run on road trips and play Nebraska when the world is too much.

1. I also like Neil Young and Bob Dylan’s vault.

2. Most of Tracks II are unreleased songs.

3. I like the song “Human Touch” but not the album. Lucky Town is OK but at the bottom of Bruce’s catalog.

4. I like it