Springsteen’s ‘The River’ Album: A Deep Dive into a Musical Masterpiece

It’s a river that never runs dry

I thought that reviewing Springsteen’s Born to Run album would be the most daunting review I would write about his music; as I said in that piece, it’s like trying to review the Sistine Chapel. As it turns out, I was wrong. Having lived my whole life with the eight songs on that album, reviewing it was simple compared to the 20-song monster I’ve been avoiding: The River.

Second only to Born to Run in its impact on my life, The River is hard to classify. It was the first album Springsteen released after turning 30, and is in many ways his first “adult” album. It is certainly the first where he looked at all those kids he put in all those cars on previous albums and asked himself what to do with them once they got where they were going. I could wax philosophical about these things, but Bruce already did that better than I ever could (no surprise there).

During The River anniversary tour in 2016, after opening the show with “Meet Me in the City,” and before launching into the entire album (in order, be still my soul) he described The River this way:

“By the time I got to The River I had taken notice of things that bond people to their lives, their work, their commitments, their families, and I wanted to imagine and write about those things. I figured if I could write about them I could get little closer to having them. People always said the records were good, but they never felt like the show. So, on The River we tried to make a record that was big and felt like an E Street Band show. I wanted the record to contain fun and dancing and laughter and jokes and sex and good comradeship and love and heartbreak and lonely nights and, of course, teardrops. And I figured if I could make a record big enough to hold those things maybe I’d get closer to the answers and the home I was looking for. So tonight let’s go back down to The River and see what we find.”

I would love to say I remembered that intro word-for-word, but I didn’t. Fortunately, they released CDs of all of the shows from that tour, and naturally I bought three copies of the Dallas show (one for me and one each for my daughters, who were there with me). Thus, I am able to transcribe his words exactly, like St. John receiving the Book of Revelation from the angel. The only difference is you can’t dance to Revelation, no matter how hard Pentecostals might try.

The River was Bruce’s first album to hit #1 on the Billboard charts (Born to Run was his previous high, somehow only reaching #3 in 1975; shame on you, America). It’s a tragedy that the only song most casual fans know from this double album is “Hungry Heart,” and even that comes mainly from the number of films it’s shown up in over the past 40 years. I call it a tragedy because The River contains some of the greatest songs Bruce has produced in a five-decade career.

The album contains everything we’re come to expect from an E Street Band record. The joyful bar band tracks like “Sherry Darling,” “Ramrod,” and “Out in the Street” alternate seamlessly with more somber tunes like “Independence Day” (a melancholy ode to his father with an outstanding Clarence Clemons sax solo), “The Price You Pay,” and “The River.” The paradoxes of these songs intertwine throughout the record, just like they do in life.

I’m not going to do a track-by-track review of each song like I did with my reviews of Born to Run and Born in the USA; that would take this thing to a length even Bruce disciples might find intimidating. Rather, I will hit a few of the highlights (for me at least) and let you experience the others with no further input from me.

There is one more thing you should consider when listening to The River, and that is what isn’t on the album. Even releasing it as a double album rather than as a 10-song single album as he originally planned, the number of amazing songs that were left off is astonishing. They included “Meet Me in the City,” “Be True,” “Where the Bands Are,” “From Small Things (Big Things One Day Come),” “Held Up Without a Gun,” “Loose Ends,” and “Roulette” (one of the best songs he’s ever written). These were all finally put together where they belong on the 35th-anniversary edition of The River.

Here are a few of the highlights from an album you need to be playing right now:

“Sherry Darling.” This is the ultimate frat-rock party song, bar none, with one of the most hilarious choruses you’ll ever hear and a Clarence Clemons sax solo easily as good as the song itself. It’s the first Bruce song I taught my girls as toddlers (along with The Smiths’ “There is a Light That Never Goes Out”). As little kids, the line “your mama’s yappin’ in the back seat” stuck with them more than “the highway’s jammed with broken heroes” would have. That bit of family history aside, whenever you have a bad day, play this one as loud as your speakers will allow; I guarantee you will be smiling before it’s over.

“Independence Day.” Bruce has only played this song in concert around 250 times (vs. over 1700 for “Born to Run”), so I consider myself blessed to have seen him play it live twice. From a sheer emotional standpoint, this song about Bruce and his father may be the most achingly beautiful he’s ever recorded. Just consider the last verse:

So say goodbye it’s Independence Day Papa now I know the things you wanted that you could not say But won’t you just say goodbye it’s Independence Day I swear I never meant to take those things away

“Hungry Heart.” One day fateful day, Springsteen and Joey Ramone happened to meet in Asbury Park, New Jersey; not surprisingly, Joey asked him to write a song for The Ramones. Springsteen wrote “Hungry Heart” that very night, but his manager, Jon Landau, advised him to record it himself. He had given away songs like “Blinded by the Light,” “Because the Night,” and “Fire” before, and they had become hits for other people. It was a smart move; “Hungry Heart” became Springsteen’s first Top Ten hit. I’d still love to hear what Joey and the boys would have done with it. Oh, and at the Dallas show in 2016, at 66 years old, Bruce sang this one while crowd surfing.

“The River.” This is the one where Bruce grew up. A lot of artists are still writing the same songs at 30 (and older) that they were writing at 18, and there’s nothing inherently wrong with that (though writing about sneaking out of the house when you have kids who are old enough to be married is a stretch; I’m looking at you, Blink-182). But as he matured, rather than simply writing about people roaring down the highway, Bruce asked himself an important question: where are all these people going and what do they do when they get there? It’s also cool that he wrote the song about his sister and brother-in-law, who married in their teens after she got pregnant and are still together more than 40 years after “The River” was recorded.

“I’m a Rocker.” If you need proof that Bruce and the E Street Band are the greatest bar band of all time, look no further than this silly scorcher. Bruce name drops James Bond, the Batmobile, Kojak, Columbo, and other ’60s and ’70s pop culture icons in a song that starts off balls-to-the-wall and never lets up. It’s exactly what rock was always supposed to be: fun.

“The Price You Pay.” This is one of the most haunting songs Springsteen has ever written, which is no small feat. It’s one of many where he weaves in biblical imagery in one verse, this time from the story of Moses being denied entry into the promised land. Yet even here there is hope at the end. Bruce always leaves us with hope.

That’s my look at an album you need to listen to today (not tomorrow, today). Like all Springsteen albums, this one is best experienced at full volume while driving faster than the law allows down an empty highway. Bruce got what he was aiming for with this one: it really does feel like an E Street Band show, in no small part because they recorded most of it live in the studio with minimal overdubs and other such nonsense.

There are persistent rumors of an E Street Band tour at the end of 2022, and while I am always excited about the prospect of seeing Bruce in concert, the mere possibility of hearing these songs live again is enough to make the year not so bad after all. Here’s the full album:

I hope if nothing else this article has convinced Pierce McIntyre of the greatness that is “The River,” a song he is only slowly warming up to. What are your favorites from this masterpiece? I know you have some Alex Markham, Mark Holburn, and Terry Barr.

All lyrics by Bruce Springsteen and found on www.brucespringsteen.net.

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