First here is bruce on his upcoming album:
“I was working on a record of some of our best unreleased material from the past decade when Tom Morello (sitting in for Steve during the Australian leg of our tour) suggested we ought to add “High Hopes” to our live set. I had cut “High Hopes,” a song by Tim Scott McConnell of the LA based Havalinas, in the 90′s. We worked it up in our Aussie rehearsals and Tom then proceeded to burn the house down with it. We re-cut it mid tour at Studios 301 in Sydney along with “Just Like Fire Would,” a song from one of my favorite early Australian punk bands, The Saints (check out “I’m Stranded”). Tom and his guitar became my muse, pushing the rest of this project to another level. Thanks for the inspiration Tom.
Some of these songs, “American Skin” and “Ghost of Tom Joad,” you’ll be familiar with from our live versions. I felt they were among the best of my writing and deserved a proper studio recording. “The Wall” is something I’d played on stage a few times and remains very close to my heart. The title and idea were Joe Grushecky’s, then the song appeared after Patti and I made a visit to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington. It was inspired by my memories of Walter Cichon. Walter was one of the great early Jersey Shore rockers, who along with his brother Ray (one of my early guitar mentors) led the “Motifs”. The Motifs were a local rock band who were always a head above everybody else. Raw, sexy and rebellious, they were the heroes you aspired to be. But these were heroes you could touch, speak to, and go to with your musical inquiries. Cool, but always accessible, they were an inspiration to me, and many young working musicians in 1960′s central New Jersey. Though my character in “The Wall” is a Marine, Walter was actually in the Army, A Company, 3rd Battalion, 8th Infantry. He was the first person I ever stood in the presence of who was filled with the mystique of the true rock star. Walter went missing in action in Vietnam in March 1968. He still performs somewhat regularly in my mind, the way he stood, dressed, held the tambourine, the casual cool, the freeness. The man who by his attitude, his walk said “you can defy all this, all of what’s here, all of what you’ve been taught, taught to fear, to love and you’ll still be alright.” His was a terrible loss to us, his loved ones and the local music scene. I still miss him.
This is music I always felt needed to be released. From the gangsters of “Harry’s Place,” the ill-prepared roomies on “Frankie Fell In Love” (shades of Steve and I bumming together in our Asbury Park apartment) the travelers in the wasteland of “Hunter Of Invisible Game,” to the soldier and his visiting friend in “The Wall”, I felt they all deserved a home and a hearing.
Hope you enjoy it,
Bruce Springsteen
uh oh –of the three songs heard so far from the January 14 th dropping new Bruce Springsteen (no E Street band apparently, that’s Tom Morello on guitar) album High Hopes one is a cover, one is an oldie, and one is this piece of crap. Or if that’s too harsh, it is a solid bottomed blues rocker with a nothing tune an overearnest vocal and a what the fuck? lyric.
Whenever Springsteen starts in on babies crying in the mother’s arm I tune out and whenever he starts whining about armies I become a warmonger. I am not sure what the problem here is, but what I know for sure is that Springsteen hasn’t been happy with anything in 40 odd years so why should I take him seriously now? Why is he asking for “strength and love?” Why is he asking for anything at all? What does Springsteen want that he doesn’t already own? He has a farm a quarter the size of Central Park which he pays $5K a year in taxes on, he has the love of the world, he has a wife and family, his last album entered the charts at # 1. What else, Bruce? What can the world do for you next? this is a cover of a song by the Havelas but it is all bruce all the time
Was there never a golden age for the US or for Bruce? Or for being alive in the US? Was it always like this, same as it ever was. Will he never find the joy of life and share that. Bruce’s writing is so far removed from his own life it seems to come from another time space continuum. This lousy song has nothing at all to do with the life anyone anywhere is actually living.
Really, this is an amazingly lame little track, who exactly is he singing for? It is so generic it could be for really any one and it is so unspecified it seems like a general complaint about nothing -apparently Bruce doesn’t like war and poverty (how’s that for going out on an intellectual limb?). The song itself isn’t fully formed: it doesn’t coalesce in your ear. I haven’t heard the original but plan to
A hugely disappointing effort, no hope more like.
Grade: D+
