Bruce Springsteen’s Outtakes and B-Sides Would Be a Career for Anyone Else
What mere mortals would treasure, he simply discards
Somehow, as I have been focused on rants and movies and actually writing some fiction, it has been 13 days since I penned a Springsteen-centric article. My doctor warned me back in ‘87 that if I go more than a week without listening to the entire Born to Run album my heart will explode like Bill’s after Beatrix Kiddo hits him with the Five-Point-Palm Exploding-Heart-Technique in Kill Bill: Vol. 2, and I can only assume going two weeks without a Bruce article would have equally dire consequences. Thus, I am taking no chances.
What can I possibly write about the great man that I haven’t already? In a word: volumes. I haven’t even scratched the surface yet, even regarding the aforementioned Born to Run album, and that’s after a nine-part series in August. Today I’m looking at something that frustrates diehard fans to this day: the songs he consigned to the B-side of singles or left in the vault entirely, songs that would have made any other artist’s greatest hits album.
I said left in the vault, but obviously that’s not completely true; if they had stayed in the vault we never would have heard them. But they were withheld for far too long, left off albums that included songs that while good were not as great as what was kept from us (I’m looking at you, “Glory Days” and “Cover Me”), and only finally released on the Tracks compilation and The River outtakes albums decades after the fact.
The outtakes/B-sides from the Born in the USA sessions alone would have been a career for many bands, and prove that he could have easily made it a double album like The River. Consider for a moment “This Hard Land,” a song that would have fit thematically on either Nebraska or Born in the USA:
Or how about “None But the Brave,” a song both upbeat and melancholy at the same time with a Clarence Clemons sax part that deserved to be included on Springsteen’s best-selling album ever. How he thought “Darlington County” was better than this will forever be a mystery.
Some of the other Born in the USA-era songs he put on B-sides or left out entirely include “My Love Will Not Let You Down,” “Stand On It,” “Pink Cadillac,” “Janey Don’t You Lose Heart,” “Shut Out the Light,” and “Johnny Bye Bye.”
This ruthless cutting of amazing songs from inclusion on an album didn’t start with Born in the USA, however. The Darkness on the Edge of Town sessions saw some incredible tracks shelved, including “Rendezvous,” “Hearts of Stone” (given to Southside Johnny), “Because the Night” (given to Patti Smith), and “Fire” (given to the Pointer Sisters). Most surprising of all, he left off “The Promise,” a direct follow-up to “Thunder Road:”
Even The River, his only studio double album, wasn’t big enough to contain all the songs he wrote during that period. Some of the best include “Where the Bands Are,” “Meet Me in the City” (which was the opening song during The River Anniversary Tour in 2016), “From Small Things (Big Things One Day Come),” and “Held Up Without a Gun.” The first song recorded during The River sessions was his most famous outtake, and easily one of his best songs; “Roulette” was finally released in 1988 as the B-side to “One Step Up.” Written about the nuclear power plant meltdown at Three Mile Island near Harrisburg, Pennsylvania in 1979, “Roulette” is as rockin’, and haunting, today as when it was first recorded:
I’ve put together a playlist of just ten of Springsteen’s best outtakes and B-sides below. Give them a listen as you barbecue this Labor Day, and ask yourself how many albums out there have better songs than these that Bruce thought just weren’t quite good enough.
