The River

by

Bruce Springsteen

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Magnificent.

THE RIVER alternates between rockers like "Cadillac Ranch," "I'm A Rocker," and "Out In The Street," songs that sing of carefree summer teen years that sound like they're blasting from the windows of somebody's Camero along the boardwalk, and a big set of tunes that address the real world problems that tug at your heals behind those idyllic scenes.

The real heart of THE RIVER are Springsteen's characters struggles with love and relationships. They're all searching for somebody, finding somebody...but then what? So many of them run into brick walls, finding out all too quickly that the happy ever after ends before it starts. Haunting tunes like "Stolen Car" are hard to get past:

"She asked if I remembered the letters I wrote when our love was young and bold. She said last night she read those letters, and they made her feel one hundred years old."

But for all the hard times these characters come up against--losing love, driving girlfriends and their mothers to the unemployment office, struggling to keep a job--the final moment of THE RIVER is one of hope. After consoling a dying man at the scene of a horrific car crash, Springsteen sings of climbing in bed and watching his girl as she sleeps:

"I just lay there awake in the middle of the night, thinking about the wreck on the highway."

The road, which had been a vehicle of hope and escape on all of Springsteen's previous records, has been transformed into a black line between life and death; it is his love and home and security that suddenly seem comforting, instead of smothering.

But the next Springsteen LP, NEBRASKA, wouldn't stay at home...it follows those characters who chose to cross that black line and follow the road.

I bought this 2 LP set the week it was released and enjoyed it a lot. I was glad to hear a single ("Hungry Heart") and that song especially accents Bruce's amazing voice. But even on this fine song, it becomes clear that the tempo is in a complete straitjacket. In the book "The Mansion On The Hill" Fred Goodman makes a telling point about Jon Landau's massive influence on Bruce during this period. They both loved 50's-style rock, and their arrangements for all of these songs were very 50's retro - and not in a good way. The tempos in many of the songs are almost plodding, the rhythms have no ambiguity or contradictions that so many great songs have. The arrangements are stilted despite the remarkable playing abilities of all the musicians. The songs become boring after repeated listening. One of the many great aspects of Bruce's live performances is the looseness and freedom that the players are given. This ambiguity is central to emotional reaction and virtually all of Springsteen's post-1975 recordings suffer from its absence. Thankfully, the straitjacket comes off during live performances and the presentations are fresher.

My favorite songs from this double album are the above-mentioned single, "Cadillac Ranch", "Point Blank" and "Independence Day", the latter two written and performed during his "Darkness" tour in 1978.