The chief anomaly within the 7 disc set is this bone thrown to the long time fans in the form of several outtakes from Born In The USA sessions and sessions principally one set of such sessions in 1983. Long time devotees have obsessed over studio outtakes of Springsteen tracks from this productive period in the singer songwriters career since the early 1990’s which was only partly satisfied by material on the original Tracks box set in 1998 and several tracks which showed up on other retrospective sets since such as Essential Springsteen. There is a little overlap here with a couple of tracks that are found on previous releases in some form and in exactly the same form with respect to the gorgeous County Fair.
The vocals and arrangements are exactly as they were recorded in those Garage Sessions 40 years ago containing no overdubs that characterised some of the material that emerged on the Darkness on the Edge of Town and River box sets that were put out a couple of decades or so ago. This release does in no sense completely clear the vaults of 1983-85 era material so it was encouraging to hear that a Tracks III is ready to roll in the hopefully not too distant future.
In some ways it is a shame these tracks are not filled out by some more E Street Band arrangement even had that meant more recent overdubs but the fact they stand as Springsteen’s in between the lo fi of Nebraska and the bombastic smash hit pop star fame that was about to ensue is a source of intrigue.
‘Follow That Dream’ leads off with lush keyboard and synth arrangements not unlike the versions that peppered the latter stages of The River Tour in 1981 where this track like so many others at that time was debuted on stage. Elvis of course sang the original but here Bruce universalises the track and sees perhaps a widescreen epic movie theme “together we’ll search for things that come to us in dreams”.
Don’t Back Down On Our Love and Little Girl Like You are both inoffensive mid tempo rockers in the Darlington County mode, Bruce is still pre-wedding days and so these are short, sweet almost naive and far less complex relationships with the women in his life than he’d encounter by the time he recorded Tunnel of Love but within each of these literal throwaway tracks as always are some nuggets “I lie awake… so I watch the headlights crawl up and down the wall of this lonesome room” So as well as movies inspiring Bruce at this time there is also the ever so slightly more nasal singing styles of Woody Guthrie and Jackson Browne being evoked.
Johnny Bye Bye is another debuted on that River Tour in 81 and has obvious nod’s to Elvis Presley’s sad demise following his reaching for the fame and fortune trap which Bruce referenced specifically when introducing the track on stage but also quite possibly the recently murdered John Lennon is in his mind here you feel. The societal structures in post industrial “balls to the wall” commercialised neo-liberal US of A is the source for both losses you sense.
Sugarland is another familiar to Bruce fanatics having been played on several shows in the early part of the Born In The USA Tour (and fleetingly since) in places like Ames Iowa. Written around the time of Farm Aid 1985 although Bruce never performed at that fundraiser but rather sought to capture universal feelings within working and lower middle class small town mid-1980’s America as Reaganomics ran riot. “We got a whole lotta grain that ain’t got nowhere to go”. Quite timely one senses with the literal seeds of Trump’s MAGA base being sown within this tracks life story.
Seven Tears is an interesting little ditty and a bit of a nod forward towards some tracks that will wind up on Tunnel of Love in 1987 though compared to the maturity on that record things are still a tad simplistic “They wanna know how I ended up here, with tattoos on my face of seven tears”
Fugitives Dream is represented here with two versions. Both are relatively fresh even to most Bruce obsessives, with only some rough incomplete demo’s in prior circulation. It is thickly drenched in synth and sinister overtones. Some residue of Bruce’s own obsession with Suicide’s Frankie Teardrop is here, Nebraska hadn’t quite got that out of his system by 1983 it seems.
Black Mountain Ballad is perhaps too literal which is why by the time the big album came into being much of it’s lyrical content morphs into Downbound Train but it is another gem that hadn’t previously circulated among collectors. “I wanna weep, but the tears don’t run. I wanna sleep, but the sleep don’t come” and the wailing harmonica to close is familiar terrain also but no less compelling for it
Jim Deer sounds urgent almost terrified lyrics spilling out not to be confused with the fairly well known amongst collectors, James Lincoln Dear, we are starting to see again and again characters Springsteen will explore down the line on albums like The Ghost Of Tom Joad hampered in life by chronic misfortune and the conscious cruelty of the ownership classes piety. “Jimmy if you need any extra work all you gotta do is ask”
County Fair is one of my favourite outtake tracks of Springsteen’s and it is included here despite already appearing on the bonus 3rd disk of the 2003 collection “Essential Springsteen”. Here we listen to a gorgeous scene like something out of the closing of John Ford’s Grapes of Wrath evoking small town America and also the popular fairgrounds up and down the UK from 1930’s through 1970’s, the post WWII era of class solidarity, more in fashion since “everybody in town will be there” any disparities in income levels were kinda smoothed ever so slightly but in a way that worked to improve the lot of folks both sides of the Atlantic to an extent never before seen or repeated since. “Oh I wish we never have to let this moment go” Pinochet, Thatcher and Reagan saw to that.
My Hometown here sounds like a musicbox version all tinny and cutesy perhaps recorded late one night when Bruce had already turned in for the night after a few drams. His high register is strained on this track. He would in later years hone his singing craft in this respect think of Sad Eyes from the original Tracks for example, but here it’s almost atonal. There’s a couple of slight lyric additions towards the end with for instance reference to the particular area of Freehold across the railroad tracks due to it being a concentration of migrant workers up from Mexico in the 1960’s and 70’s. A nickname that wouldn’t mark such a place out in 2025 but in 1985 it would have been a notable feature of some US small towns.
One Love has another sinister vibe backed by a relentless driving beat which loosens up in the chorus – one of the other throwaway tracks on this disc where Bruce is experimenting with his voice and crooning styles.
“Once you thought you might make it but babe these days you doubt it” Bruce quizzes his listener’s level of resilience in tough early-mid 80’s times where the bottom literally might seem to be falling out during his taxi driver style dead pan monotone vocals on Don’t Back Down. This could’ve been an E Street classic butu perhaps there were already plenty of songs with “Down” in the title readied for the 1984 blockbuster.
Richfield Whistle is another gorgeous narrative piece, one which could easily have been made into a short movie like one of it’s cousins off Nebraska, Highway Patrolman. “I didn’t like what I was doing, I didn’t lose no sleep at night. Mr Wills he was a rich man, he’d been a rich man all his life”
Of course all these tracks are cousins of tracks off of Nebraska, Born In The USA, even Tunnel of Love but especially of each other on this disc. Like Jim Deer half a dozen tracks ago all the protagonist here had to do to avert catastrophe “was ask” the rich fella. These are fascinating insights not just into Bruce’s songwriting but also the mind of Bruce between the intensity of Nebraska and the jackpot album he was positioned to reach out for.
The Klansman is another that leans into Downbound Train but wheras Black Mountain Ballad may have been too literal, this terrific if terrifying mind-fuck gets to the underbelly of American white supremacist culture in a way that borders on uncomfortable. Perhaps wisely left off the 1984 blockbuster given how wide of the mark many took the title track of that album to suggest about Bruce. 15 years later Bruce was comfortable enough to include Paradise on The Rising and perhaps if he’d not been alongside Madonna, Prince and Michael Jackson in the pop star stakes for a couple of years he could’ve shook a cult following with a tale of lynchings the way Suicide shook Bruce with their horrifying domestic homicide tale.
Unsatisfied Heart is an outtake likely recorded the same day as Fugitive’s Dream that remarkably has been covered live by among others War On Drugs and contains a Beach Boys style mid-section multi tracked vocal bridge which I adore. Yet, as terrifying as The Klansman sounds, ” One night I woke up and as my wife did sleep, I got dressed in the darkness and I fled into the street almost certainly compares.
Shut Out The Light saw the light of day as a B-side of the single Born In The USA but this has multi tracked vocals and contains a couple of additional verses which will delight the fans who have heard several versions via live bootlegs of the track from the early part of the Born In The USA tour in 1984 and fleetingly during the early part of the 1996 Ghost of Tom Joad solo tour.
Now begins the process of trying to sequence these tracks in a coherent way with Nebraska, Born In The USA and prior Tracks releases of the period. Mind you there are another 5 new Springsteen albums to give an ear to yet….
