Top 25 Springsteen Songs: Honorable Mentions Part III
Highlighting some of my favorite live-in-concert performances of the Boss' work.
I bet you all thought I couldn’t do ANOTHER honorable mentions post, but I came up with one more.
This post is about the Springsteen songs that I love as performed live; specifically, songs as they are performed live in a specific iteration from a specific tour.
I’m a big Tunnel of Love fan and I enjoy the setlists and performances from the Tunnel of Love Express tour. One of the standouts from those setlist, in terms of reinvention of the songs, is “All That Heaven Will Allow.”
The extended intro/monologue from Springsteen is good and sets up “Springsteen as storyteller” that we’ll eventually get in full with Springsteen on Broadway, but what I particularly enjoy are the extra flourishes that you don’t get on the album version. The guitar being forward in the mix, Clarence Clemons’ saxophone solo, the organic bounce to the song. It sounds like something you would hear (or would listen to) while walking on the boardwalk by the Jersey Shore. It takes what’s a pretty slight song on the record and pushes it to be something more substantial
Springsteen’s second album—The Wild, The Innocent, and the E Street Shuffle— features a few tracks I adore and will be talking about later on in this series. While “The E Street Shuffle” is a fun one, another “getting the band together” type song, it’s not one I play a lot when I’m listening to that album. But this slowed-down version from the 1975 Born To Run tour is one I keep returning to.
It feels like a completely different song in some respects (as opposed to the version of “All That Heaven Will Allow,” which does feel like an expansion upon the original song). It’s slowed down and groovier, with a bit more force behind it. It’s also a Roy Bittan showcase as his piano drives the song.
Famously, Springsteen wrote the chorus and had the idea for “Because the Night,” but passed that along to Patti Smith, who built on it and made it her own. That said, “Because the Night” appeared in Springsteen’s concert setlists starting in 1978. While Patti’s version is amazing (the best in-studio version of the song, I’m not a huge fan of the Springsteen version released as part of The Promise collection), Springsteen’s performances of the song are quite good. Those performances during that 1978 Darkness tour are something else.
It’s a testament to how great artists work—a song that for Patti is an incantation becomes, for Springsteen, an anthem and a raised fist. The difference between a smolder and a blazing fire. ’d be tempted to put it on my Top 25 list if I didn’t acknowledge and see it as a Patti Smith song and I’m only including originals.
I also enjoy Springsteen’s second verse, which is different from Patti Smith’s.
What I got, I have earned
What I'm not, baby, I have learned
A quick sidebar—I know there are people who are “too cool” for Springsteen—he’s too mainstream, too normie, too whatever. But I love the fact that he had this friendship with this punk icon in Patti Smith and that he co-wrote “Because the Night,” one of her biggest songs.
I’m cheating a little bit because I already had this song as part of my Honorable Mentions, Part I post, but I couldn’t leave off this stripped down version of “Tenth Avenue Freeze Out” from the 1975 Born to Run tour.
The strength of the songwriting really shines in this, because even though you don’t have the same full sound in your mind you know it’s there and you can feel it. It’s kind of like Hemingway’s Iceberg Theory but for music. This and the version of “E Street Shuffle” from that same tour feel very much of a piece to me.
“Sherry Darling” is a fun song off The River, which Springsteen has described as being in the “frat rock” tradition.
Another sidebar—I do enjoy so much of that “frat rock.” If you don’t know what it is, look it up and put on some of those songs. They’re A LOT of fun.
But even more than the album version, his performances of the song during (once again) that 1978 Darkness tour get even closer to that ideal version.
The more organic nature of the song being performed live obviously enhances this. I also enjoy the electric guitar flourishes during the second verse. You lose the chorus that starts with “Let there be sunlight, let there be rain” but I think what you gain makes up for it.
This should ACTUALLY be it for the Honorable Mentions posts (though never say never…) and we’ll pick up with the actual countdown again very soon. But I had to shoutout these songs that didn’t really fit in elsewhere even though they certainly warranted some praise.