Everybody Form a Line: A Look at Bruce Springsteen’s ‘The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle’

It is sadly underappreciated

Born to Run, The River, Born in the USA…these are the albums that immediately come to mind when most people think of Bruce Springsteen, and rightly so. Ask them to go deeper, and you’ll get Darkness on the Edge of Town, Nebraska, Magic, and even his debut album Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J. (Alex Markham would surely include Working on a Dream). The album that rarely gets mentioned nearly 50 years after its released is his second, The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle.

Sophomore efforts can be a hit-or-miss proposition for any artist. With novelists, for example, the second book is often not as good as their debut simply because they poured a lifetime of ideas into that first book and are basically starting from scratch with the second. The same can be true with musicians, and there is no doubt that (lyrically at least) Springsteen threw all he had into that debut album. This being Bruce, however, the second album was, in my opinion, superior to the first; it has faded from memory simply because it had the misfortune of being overshadowed two years later by Born to Run, his third album and The Greatest Album Ever.

The two best-known of the seven tracks on The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle are without question “Rosalita” and “4th of July, Asbury Park (Sandy),” both of which would become crowd favorites at E Street Band shows for the next 5 decades. But if those two are all you know from the album, you are missing out on some of Bruce’s best songs.

In a way, The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle forms a bridge between that sometimes chaotic debut album and the polished masterpiece that is Born to Run. The haunting “Incident on 57th Street” continues the theme begun with “It’s Hard to Be a Saint in the City” on Greetings, a theme brought to a glorious conclusion on Born to Run with “Jungleland.” The piano-heavy “New York City Serenade” gives a glimpse of the equally piano-centric “Backstreets” on Born to Run.

What is clear from the opening chords of “The E Street Shuffle” is that this album is fun. From the “everybody form a line” chorus of that first track to Garry Tallent’s tuba in “Wild Billy’s Circus Story” to Bruce’s killer guitar on “Kitty’s Back,” this is the kind of album you play loud, whether you’re at home, in the car, or playing it on an endless loop like I did one week at my old bookstore. And then there’s “Rosalita:”

The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle also marked the end of the first incarnation of the E Street Band. Mercurial drummer Vini “Mad Dog” Lopez would be fired before the recording of Born to Run, and pianist David Sancious would depart to pursue a solo career. They would be replaced by pianist Roy Bittan and drummer Max Weinberg, who remain with the band to this day.

The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle is a last look at Bruce and the E Street Band when they were still a bunch of punk kids playing Asbury Park bars, before Born to Run, before the Time and Newsweek covers, before Bruce was anointed the “the future of rock and roll.” The album captures a band on the verge of mega-stardom, when they were happy to sell enough records or pull enough from the cover charge at a club to be able to eat for one more day.

I wonder, to paraphrase the line from “Rosalita,” if it all seems funny to them now, looking back 50 years into the past. One thing is certain: The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle is an album that should come to mind much quicker than it does when you hear the word “Springsteen.” Listen to the whole thing below, and I guarantee it will.

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