Bruce Springsteen > The Promise: The Darkness On The Edge Of Town Story 
The Promise: Darknes on The Edge of Town Story racconta con 3CD e 3 DVD la registrazione al
Record Plant di New York di quell’album ed il successivo tour del 1978, considerato dagli appassionati il più esplosivo della lunga carriera live di Bruce Springsteen.
Il primo DVD intitolato
The Making of Darkness of Edge of Town ricostruisce la genesi del disco, quello che successe al Record Plant , le difficoltà nel trovare il suono giusto (fu fondamentale l’arrivo del tecnico del suono Chuck Plotkin), le tensioni e la stanchezza, il cameratismo tra i musicians and technicians Jimmy Iovine and Thom Panucci, motivations and anger that Springsteen wore after the lawsuit with his former manager Mike Appel had prevented him from working in the studio for more than a year. The film is a journey into artistic creation of that record, the director Thom Zimny \u200b\u200bhas reconstructed the images and footage interspersed with interviews of today's era where the main characters, beginning with Springsteen, speak of Darkness
and that time is so important for the development of rock 'n' roll.
"That record was a turning point, a reflection, a new maturity. It was a lot of great surrender terms with the adult world, with a life of limitations and compromises ma anche una esistenza con capacità di ripresa ed impegno verso la vita. Mi chiedevo come potevo rimanere leale verso le cose con cui ero cresciuto, la mia famiglia, i miei luoghi, i miei amici, il lavoro, la comunità, Born To Run mi aveva portato dappertutto, mi aveva portato il successo e la notorietà ed era stata una grande tentazione ma io non volevo tradire la mia vita interiore. Darkness fu il disco in cui volevo cercare di capire come farlo”. (B.S) Springsteen aveva cominciato a scrivere le canzoni dell’ album in una casa a Holmdel nel New Jersey, avrebbero dovuto costituire l’ossatura del suo quarto album se la causa con Appel non gli avesse impedito di registrare, in realtà le outtakes messe a disposizione da questa ristampa dimostrano come
Darkness sia contiguo in un senso a
Born To Run e nell’altro a
The River e molte canzoni potevano appartenere al disco che doveva esserci tra
Born To Run e
Darkness .
Darkness non nasce come reazione ai problemi legali sofferti da Bruce piuttosto è una reazione al successo che gli aveva procurato
Born To Run e alla paura di sentirsi inghiottire in un mondo distante dalle sue origini. Il nuovo album matura difatti in un microcosmo provinciale e suburbano, nella vita della gente delle piccole cittadine del New Jersey e proprio la comprensione verso la gente comune generalmente tagliata fuori dalla American life (and others) is the dominant image of the disc, the working-class homes in which there were no books, there was no music, there was nothing rock 'n' roll and infiltrated for change of scenery, views and expectations. Springsteen has a vision and is looking for a vision, writes of people trying to break these chains,
Darkness on the Edge Of Town is one of the disks and clearly more complex detectors ever made, a great work of urban folk rock played that helps to survive and never give up.
To make explicit the realistic nature of the work was scaled the exuberant hopes expressed in
Born To Run , needed a sound barest, most essential, most often, and it is here that Bruce, Jon Landau, Jimmy Iovine and Thom Panunzio worked obsessively to create a harsh sound from sharp colors, black and white film where the guitars and drums were prominent compared to the melodies of the saxophone and the orchestral grandeur of the previous album.
"We wanted to reduce the scope, the sound of Born To Run was a kind of wall of sound technique, but now there was this vast field of cinema. There was this atmosphere left and hopefully, we used the term to describe the sound of the disk was sound film, we wanted a sound lonely, disenchanted terminology to mix audio and video, we wanted to give the songs more hardness and less sweetness, a great sense of relentlessness. We wanted a black as coffee. Born To Run For inspiration was Phil Spector and the Brill Buliding, Darkness to the idea was more interior and rural areas. (Jon Landau) The result is a work of art that combines realism with urban American influences of film noir in black and white. A sound becomes livid and urban poetry of ordinary people, be forgotten in many of the smalltown American province and metropolitan suburbs. The exchange rate is less than in the past, radical, when you hand in the cover of Darkness. E’ questione di tonalità, mai foto (Frank Stefanko) sono risultate così rivelatrici rispetto ad un contenuto, c’è quella faccia da operaio che si immagina identica a quella dei personaggi delle canzoni, c’è immedesimazione tra artista e protagonisti della storia, come se Springsteen dicesse
“sì, questa è la mia storia ed è anche quella dei personaggi delle mie canzoni” .
Già dalle battute iniziali di
Badlands si capisce che questa è musica arrabbiata e ribelle ma anche adulta. La chitarra urla, l’organo ulula, le voci ruggiscono, il basso pulsa , la batteria è uno schianto, il suono è fresco e implacabile, nell’oscurità the edge of town you can find the strength to resist. Patti Scialfa, usually sparing of comments, sums it up in shiny white
DVD "I love the image of the lone wolf and sly I see when I listen to this record," .
But it was the decisive intervention by Chuck Plotkin, a sound engineer in Los Angeles, to remove the chestnuts from the fire and put an end to those grueling weeks of recordings. He was the savior of the disk, the one who was able to reduce the 'emphasis of songs mixing with a more concise and modern raising the levels of guitar and drums and transforming
Darkness in an ideal of rock n' roll road,
"a sound electrical evolved from Highway 61 e condensato a livelli esplosivi destinato a diventare standard per un ‘intera generazione a seguire”. (Marco Denti) Darkness on the Edge of Town venne pubblicato il 6 giugno 1978 in un anno in cui si contano almeno una quindicina di dischi imperdibili. Originariamente avrebbe dovuto intitolarsi
The Promise in onore di una delle più belle ballate scritte e poi accantonate, oggi
The Promise è il titolo dell’ intera ristampa, tre CD e tre DVD raccolti dentro il mitico block notes su cui Bruce scriveva appunti, titoli, testi di canzoni, minutaggio dei brani e scalette che offrono il materiale originale e le outtakes, gli estratti del tour del ’78 ed The concert held in camera to
Asbury Park in 2009 with the entire
Darkness. Sumptuous and complete work at a great event and cultural record.
are the outtakes included in the twenty-two of the Lost Sessions CD
Edgle of Town Darkness on the . C 'is a
Racing In The Street truncated the colossal crescendo piano / organ in the final but with a violin, this is a
Factory disguise or
Come On (Let's Go Tonight) a
Talk To Me Heart of Stone finished in
and The Asbury Jukes Southside and other "unknown" bootleg already. Niente di tutto ciò avrebbe però arricchito il disco originario anche se eliminare
Rendezvous, Because the Night e soprattutto
The Promise non deve essere stato facile ma tutto quanto poteva allentare la tensione dell’album e diluire i toni cupi e amari da blue-collar record doveva essere lasciato fuori. “Scarti” come
Gotta Get That Feeling , brano che risuona dello stile di
Born To Run con tanto di assolo di sax, cori newyorchesi doo-wop e scampoli di monumentale wall of sound spectoriano,
Oustide Looking In già orientata invece verso
The River con Bruce che urla alla
Jackson Cage sugli schiamazzi R&B di Clemons and mollacciona
Someday (We'll Be Together) do not fall into the script of Darkness.
perhaps less easy to give up
One Way Street , slow and intimate song by songwriter, with a measured work of Roy Bittan on piano and an input of Clemons tones and romantic
Wrong Side Of The Street the wrong side of road with that load of rock n 'roll from guappi that will be the basis of half
The River. Obviously
help but instead of
The Brokenhearted , breaking hearts and saccharine love-song sung with the pathos of dell'Elvis
Can not Help Falling In Love while
Candy's Boy faces la crepuscolare malinconia delle periferie con Federici che suona il glockenspiel e la nebbia che ingrigisce l’orizzonte.
E’ difficile credere che
Save My Love sia un prodotto di quel periodo ma dall’archivio del 1976-1978 presentato nel DVD c’è una delle prime stesure della canzone così come veniva suonata a Holmdel. Nel CD la versione è un’altra, ha una brillante e squillante veste sonora e induce a credere che sia stata reincisa dallo Springsteen di oggi, cosa che spiega la sua diffusione via rete e via radio.
Ain’t Good Enough For You va molto addietro, a quelle sarabande soul-rock che richiamano lo stile da festa del quartiere di
The Wild The Innocent and the E Street Shuffle mentre
English Eyes grazie al titolo sembrerebbe una soul-ballad del De Ville con la rosa in mano e
It’s a Shame è materia da Asbury Jukes con massiccio dispiego di trombe e sassofoni. Del tutto anonima è
The Little Things (My Baby Does) il cui falsetto sta a Darkness come la simpatia sta a Gasparri,
Breakaway è del genere ballatona col pianoforte e struggimento interiore e
City Of Night un talking sinuoso che chiude le Lost Sessions prima della ghost song
The Way , prodromo di quello che diventerà
Drive All Night .
Ci sono altre outtakes nel secondo DVD riportante sia il concerto che la E-Street Original band with the exception of Charlie Jordan to the place of Danny Federici, Nils Lofgren and the exclusion of 13 December 2009 held at the Paramount Theatre in Asbury Park to "celebrate"
Darkness. These outtakes are extracted from the archives of the period 76/78 and offer an inspired and curly Bruce bare back at Holmdel with a long unkempt band embarked on a primitive version of
Save My Love, in a skeletal
with Candy's Little Boy Steven struggling with maracas and cowbells. From Red Bank comes instead
Something In The Night solo piano and voice studies in New York City black and white with striking
Do not Look Back ,
Is not Good Enough For You, Candy's Room only for piano and a painful
The Promise, this raucous and less refined.
anthology From the last five tracks of these
Thrill Vaul 1976-1978. We are in Phoenix in 1978 in the Darkness tour, it is only two years but seem to Holmdel ten. Magro, spirited, short hair, jacket, dark jeans and boots, dressed as a bad boy of the New Wave, Springsteen is a rock n 'roll punk that communicates with devastating power that stuns the audience of Phoenix with a breathtaking sequence of
Badlands , The Promised Land, Prove It All Night, Born To Run and Rosalita . It 's just a part of the concert, but enough to make understand what is happening this year in rock and who is the saint arrived in the city. The show is hot, a flow of adrenaline, the fans storm the stage and Bruce overwhelming literally locked in a passionate kiss. It 's just a taste of the show reported by the third or
DVD Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band in Houston, Texas December 12, 1978 ill.
was the second time that the E-Street Band passed by Houston on December 12 that year but remains a given that the Texans will remember for a long time because it unleashed one of the north had never seen. There's almost Independence Day debut
and
You Can not Sit Down but of the ladder-based Darkness but with so many titles in the past
(It's Hard To Be A Saint In The City, Spirit In The Night, Rosalita, Fever) and someone from the future
(The Ties That Bind, Point Blank) this show is a 'nuke, Bruce tarantolato is a punk who decided to re-found the rock' n 'roll and the E Street Band a war machine that takes no prisoners. The video recordings are typical of the time, few lights, a few rooms, all very simple but the atmosphere is very excited and show a proof of vitality, vehemence, enthusiasm, and urgent communication outside of the ordinary. There is still the perfect successor after the tour of The River
but this is good because this concert tour and Houston does not differ is a matter of life or death. Who has always been cold and indifferent to Springsteen should see this show, one of many that tour in 1978 became a legend, a tour beginning May 23 at Shea's Buffalo Theatre and ended on January 1 of '79 in Cleveland, a tour that Epic has made the gesture of Bruce Springsteen with the E-Street Band. Three and a half hour show over three hours through soundcheck, a tour de force pushed to the extreme of physical and psychological resistance at the time that was immortalized by some as
legendary bootleg Live In The Promised Land and Piece de Resistance , valuable documents of the mythology that fed the live Springsteen and brought hundreds of Italians in Zurich on that fateful April 11, 1981.
After thirty years it is given an account of this tour, a way to roll back (with a certain nostalgia), at that age that youth (and our Bruce) where it seemed that rock 'n' roll would change the world and life. Maybe it was not the case, but Bruce has kept his promise. MAURO
ZAMBELLINI November 2010
