Bruce Springsteen - Light of Day (1984)

Bruce Springsteen released his sixth studio album, Nebraska, on September 30, 1982, through Columbia Records. A batch of acoustic demos recorded between December 1981 and January 1982, it came out after Bruce shelved an entire electric album, deciding the demo tape better captured what those songs should sound like and where his head was at at that moment. Once the album was out, he decided not to tour in support of it, deciding to promote the album as little as possible. Instead, he spent his time hanging around the Jersey shore and appearing randomly at bars to sing oldies with bar bands. The shelving of the Murder Incorporated album also had other ramifications, with guitarist Steve Van Zandt deciding to leave the E Street Band and pursue a solo career. For the moment, his vacancy was unfilled, as the band had already recorded an album's worth of material and were on hiatus for the time being, but the departure of one of Bruce's best friends and confidantes was sure to be felt. As soon as he left, he formed the Disciples of Soul and released a very successful solo album, while still remaining in touch with Bruce and keeping their friendship alive. It was at this point that Bruce, having long struggled with his mental health and used his work as a form of escape, entered into a major depressive episode that culminated with him going into psychotherapy for the first time in his life, which he still frequents to this day, and moving out from his New Jersey home to the West Coast. 

Once living in Los Angeles, the first thing he did was install a home studio in his garage, which was ready by January 1983 and became the hub of most of Bruce's recording early in the year. He recorded roughly twenty songs there, tracking them completely alone with a drum machine. The material he recorded was of some quality, so much so that at some point he even considered releasing them as the followup to Nebraska, another solo acoustic record. However, he was quickly dissuaded from that and instead focused on another round of E Street Band sessions, trying to strengthen what he'd recorded with them the previous year, recording another album's worth of songs at New York's Hit Factory that May. Still paralyzed by his indecision, he couldn't decide what to release or if to release anything at all, and by July 1983 he had put together a new album sequence, only to once more shelve it and carry on recording. By the time February 1984 rolled around, even manager Jon Landau had put together a tracklist, eighty songs had been recorded, and Bruce was still dissatisfied and looking for the lead single for the album. At the eleventh hour, Bruce recorded "Dancing in the Dark", which seemed to be the hit he was looking for, finally allowing him to put together an album and release it in June 1984. With only four songs in it coming from after May 1982, and all four being absolute highlights of the album, it makes you wonder if the Hit Factory sessions don't deserve an album of their own.

But what if Bruce Springsteen made an album out of the songs he recorded between 1983 and 1984? This reconstruction is a sequel to the second half of my Murder Incorporated post, much in the same way my Unsatisfied Heart album was a sequel to Nebraska. It will be roughly twelve songs long, and feature the highlights of the sessions that immediately followed the shelving of the 1982 recordings, building an album around them for the very first time. Because of that, songs that were only meant to embellish the main BITUSA sessions now will become their own thing, a new Springsteen record that could've been released in 1984. Only songs known to have been recorded during the May 1983 to February 1984 sessions at the Hit Factory in New York will be considered, which means that songs such as "Seeds", written in November 1984 during the BITUSA tour and debuted live in 1985, won't qualify for this album. If a song was recorded as part of the 1983 solo demos and later re-recorded in the studio, it's fair play for inclusion, as long as the said re-recording is available to us. The two songs this applies to, "Cynthia" and "My Hometown", were part of my Unsatisfied Heart reconstruction, which I've since updated and which no longer features the two tracks. We will be basing ourselves on which songs Bruce felt were the best of the sessions instead of our own personal tastes, as it will create the most realistic album. With that out of the way, here's what our new album looks like:

Light of Day (Live 1987)

Cynthia (Tracks)

None But the Brave (Unsatisfied Heart)

Drop on Down and Cover Me (Unsatisfied Heart)

Man at the Top (Tracks)

Stand on It (Tracks)

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No Surrender (Born in the USA)

Bobby Jean (Born in the USA)

Pink Cadillac (Tracks)

My Hometown (Born in the USA)

Dancing in the Dark (Born in the USA)

Janey Don't You Lose Heart (Unsatisfied Heart)

Bonus tracks:

Car Wash (Tracks)

TV Movie (Tracks)

Brothers Under the Bridges (Tracks)

Rockaway the Days (Tracks)

Download link:

Bruce Springsteen - Light of Day (1984)

Springsteen performing live during the Born in the USA tour, 1984.

Our first inclusions are relatively easy, all four songs from the 1983-84 Hit Factory sessions songs that made the BITUSA album: "No Surrender", "Bobby Jean", "Dancing in the Dark" and "My Hometown". All four are absolute highlights of the record, and cornerstones of our reconstruction. Following those, come the songs that made it to the 1983 preliminary tracklist but not the album itself: "Cynthia", "None But the Brave", "Drop on Down and Cover Me" and "Janey Don't You Lose Heart". Even though they lingered in the vaults, these are pretty good songs, and both "None But the Brave" and "Janey Don't You Lose Heart" would have been within the best songs on the album, so the fact that at one point Bruce thought these songs were good enough for the album makes them worthy of inclusion. Following those are the 1984/5 b-sides, as chosen by Bruce himself: "Stand on It" and "Pink Cadillac". The fact that he chose those two out of the nearly one hundred songs he'd recorded for the album tells us that he saw something in them, and we'll respect that by including them on the album. Most remaining songs from the 1983/84 period that made it to Tracks are fun, but inessential, certainly not good enough to stand with the other songs. So they become b-sides, those being "Car Wash", "TV Movie", "Brothers Under the Bridges", and "Rockaway the Days", helping us to present a full picture of the Hit Factory sessions and giving the fans who bought singles more value for their money. 

With that, we have ten album songs and five b-sides, leaving us with two vacancies on the album. How will we fill that? Luckily for us, two songs from the Hit Factory sessions were later performed live by Bruce during the 1980s: "Man at the Top" and "Light of Day". The first of those is relatively straightforward, a song recorded in January 1984 and performed live twice during the BITUSA tour to commemorate the album reaching #1, "Man at the Top". A good song that seems to be pretty dear to Bruce, given the circumstances. The other was "Light of Day", written in 1983 for filmmaker Paul Schrader, who used it as the title song to the 1987 movie of the same name. It was a hit single for Joan Jett and Michael J. Fox, the two stars of the film. By the time of the Tunnel of Love tour in 1988, it had taken the spot of "Rosalita" as the show closer for Bruce shows, where it would stay until 2002. If anything, that goes to show how much Bruce liked the track, and had it not been for the fact that he had already stolen the "Born in the USA" title from a Schrader script, he might've kept that one for himself too. Because of that, not only does it make the album, but it becomes the title track, in "Born in the USA"'s absence. Now, a studio recording of it has yet to surface, so for now a live version from a gig in Asbury Park in 1987 with the whole E Street Band will have to do. Does it sound out of place? Absolutely, but there's no way that song wouldn't make the record, so that's what we'll do.

The sequencing for this will be a mix of the final Born in the USA sequence, the lost 1983 album, and some guesswork, with our first guess being the new title track "Light of Day" in the lead-off spot. With that, all songs from the BITUSA album are on side two, making it insanely strong and featuring the best songs Bruce wrote in this period, and side one is mostly stuff that didn't make it to an album, while still being strong nonetheless. "Dancing in the Dark", "No Surrender", "My Hometown" and "Light of Day" would be the aforementioned five singles off the album, all with the capacity of becoming massive hits. As an album, Light of Day is a much poppier and lighter album than the original record, fusing the energy of The River's happier moments with the 1982 Murder Incorporated sound and rockabilly influences, making for a worthwhile successor to the aforementioned albums, and a nice companion to Unsatisfied Heart. With the album clocking in at more than 50 minutes, side one is much too long to fit on an album as it is, but counting on the fact that the studio version of "Light of Day" would be about a minute shorter, giving us a 49-minute record. The cover is a photo of Bruce in 1984, taken by Annie Leibovitz, the same photographer of the BITUSA cover, to which I superimposed the album title. It's quite interesting to hear the songs Bruce was writing during this strange period in his life, going through many changes and transformations before finally becoming the man at the top.

Sources:

- Brucebase: Born in the USA - Studio Sessions

- Clinton Heylin - E Street Shuffle