Released 1973.
Designed by Teresa Alfieri and John Berg.
Prof: For me, this is all about the back cover picture of the band: a crew of maniacally grinning, barely shod boardwalk scruffians. Garry Tallent (far right) looks like a homicidal drifter who just happened to wander into the shoot on his way to his job in the mail room of the Asbury Park chapter of the Charles Manson Legal Defense Fund. Yes, here’s the band having a good laugh—most likely at the earnest folkie drag Bruce is wearing on the front cover. The front cover is the Springsteen that Albert Hammond, Jr. signed; the back cover is a glimpse of who he was about to become and who he needed to engineer that transformation.
Gorjus: I have to say, the front cover is a wonderful candid portrait of an introspective Springsteen in this last bid to sell him as a Dylan. Much ink has been spilled about the wonderfully diverse E-Street Band, normally over the landmark design of Born to Run, but that visual grandeur was yet to come: the back cover is a bunch of damn hoodrats. They look like they’d put on a damn fine show, even if one of them played recorder on the record (his name rhymes with “Juice Flingjean”).
Prof: In retrospect, it’s no surprise that David Sancious (center, seated) left the band after this album. He’s the only one who doesn’t look like he smells strongly of cheese.
Gorjus: Or—I have to say this—look like they’re auditioning for Chicago. Yet the most important thing about the cover is the typeface. Columbia Records art director John Berg—who also worked on Asbury Park, which we looked at last week—also had a hand in the production of this cover. You’ll see very similar delicate lettering two years later on Born to Run, a quiet repetition that’s often lost in the drama of the iconic portraits.
Bonus MP3! Enjoy this cooled-down soul-vamp version of “The E Street Shuffle” from February of 1975, including an intro in which Bruce recounts the mythical first meeting of Scooter and the Big Man.
In 1973, as I recall, people seriously thought a look such as this was “cool,” or “sharp” as we would say. “Ooh”, the girls would say, “he is so cute.” Was this before or after afro dos?
I have a friend who is afraid of Bruce Springsteen because he is almost aggressively masculine, especially for a musical type. This album cover would send her straight to therapy, as those bedroom eyes and that pensive lip-touching are clearly provocative.
This “friend,” does her name rhyme with “tally”?
vendela went to school with a tally wacter. not sure what that has to do with the e street shuffle. maybe more than i’d like to know.
Sally, some people have argued Springsteen is a very “complete” man because he is not only masculine, but embodies the feminine as well (see pensive lip touching, supra; the famous Clarence Clemons “soul kiss” and sexual ambiguity detailed in ‘88 by Esquire; 8,000 songs written about love + romance). Some commentators have complained that the iconic Liebowitz imagery of Born in the U.S.A. established him as a swaggering male much more than the slightly shy but unabashed protagonists of songs previous (which we’ll get to a few “Cover Me”s down the line).
Well worth reading is the interview Bruce did with the Advocate, even touching on gay marriage waaaay back in 1996. It’s an excellent and insightful look at a person, not a “masculine male.” Crucial reading on the “explicitly homoerotic” Bruce is Cheryl Duckworth’s essay comparing Walt Whitman and the Boss. Many of these essays are compiled in Racing in the Street, edited by June Skinner Sawyers, a comprehensive and essential reader containing dozens of essays by George Will, Lester Bangs, Dave Marsh, Greil Marcus, Nick Hornby, Dave Barry (!!), and many others (and even fiction by T.C. Boyle!).
What’s interesting is after all that Springsteen still comes across to your friend, and to many others, as a “man’s man,” which means that our notions of masculinity are likely much more complicated than Snickers commercials would have them.
Prof: Ha! No, it’s not me. My very real, non-imaginary friend is also afraid of John Cougar Mellencamp for the same reason. What I think she’s actually getting at and not saying is that they’re both very blue collar men, and perhaps being attracted to a blue collar man makes her feel like Christie Brinkley in the “Uptown Girl” video.
An additional note: I’ve never found Bruce to be all that attractive, but this cover is dreamy.
Is the rest of that 2/75 show available for download somewhere? ‘Cause that version of “The E Street Shuffle,” it rocks.
D, you can be looking for a pair of CDs in the mail from me soon—maybe by the end of the week. It’s a great show, with early, pre-album versions of Born to Run-era songs (like “Thunder Road” back when it was “Wings for Wheels,” and so on).
Excellent. Thanks.