Springsteen Revisited: The River

The following is part of an ongoing series in which I re-evaluate Bruce Springsteen's records, in chronological order (reverse chronological in this blog), and their impact on my life and musical tastes. Some are more well written than others and the same holds true for grammatical errors. They were originally written for an online community that I participate in, but I thought I'd post them here for the sake of posterity.



I've said it before so many times I'm sure everyone is sick of hearing it, but if any album deserves a re-mastering, it's this one. Not all of the songs are as badly mixed as others, but the whole could stand it. From the git-go it's noticeable, with "The Ties That Bind" blaring so much trebley high end that it hurts the ears when played at a loud volume.
But anyway, enough complaining about that.
I think my problem with The River is this: After three albums from Springsteen that didn't have a single bad song in the lot, I found that I didn't like not only a couple but a few songs on this double album. How many double albums have you heard folks say about them, "It's okay, but there's really a great single album in the whole thing". That's exactly the case with The River. I could compile a list of ten songs from it and I guarantee it would be every bit as strong, maybe even stronger than one or two of the last 3 albums he'd put out.
I had a real hard time choosing Favorite Tracks (as opposed to "nearly impossible" on the last 3)...I thought I knew exactly which ones were going to make the cut, then found myself re-arranging the list...it was not quite so hard this time to make a Least Favorite Track list.
So yeah, to my mind The River is a very uneven affair that suffers from a bit of filler (not to say some of that filler is bad, it just doesn't live up to the truly great songs that it's mixed in with).
If The River had been my first exposure to Springsteen instead of Darkness On The Edge Of Town, it would have been "Drive All Night" that would have made me a hardcore Bruce fan. This is Springsteen at his pinnacle. Just breathtaking.
I caught something today that sort of slipped by in all these years of loving that song. I always thought it was your typical love song, albeit more powerful and soulful than most. But the first line came on and he sings "When I lost you honey, sometimes I swear I lost my guts too"...so he's singing all this to a girl he's somehow or other "lost". Did he lose her to another man? Did he lose her to death? No matter how he lost her, he's caught up in an intense fever dream where she's right there with him. He reminisces on the past, singing "I would drive all night AGAIN, just to buy you some shoes and to taste your tender charms" as if this is something he did once, on a whim, and now recalls with affection. He sings about how she's got his love, his heart & his soul, as if they are things she took with her when she left. The depth of his love is displayed in his promise not only to drive all night, but through the wind, through the rain, through the snow. This song and it's lyrics are, IMO, too powerful to be about a girl who ran away. I get more out of it in thinking that it's about a man whose wife has passed away sometime in the past.
But that may all be a load of bollocks. You decide.
The songs that didn't make the Favorite Tracks, just barely, are, in no particular order, "The Ties That Bind", "Independence Day", "I Wanna Marry You", "Fade Away", "The River" and "Wreck on the Highway".

4 Stars
Favorite Tracks: "Drive All Night", "Stolen Car", "The Price You Pay", "Point Blank"
Least Favorite Tracks: "Ramrod", "Cadillac Ranch", "I'm a Rocker", "Hungry Heart"