BRUCE BEFORE THE BEATLES

Springsteen's "The Promise" (2010): A Roots Reverie

The Promise was released in 2010. I wrote this essay for my readerless blog, Wayne's Words, on the Blogger platform in 2011. 

It was early New Year's Eve, and I played Bruce Springsteen's "The Promise" for the friends with whom we spend that night—and sometimes only that night—each year. They recognized the familiar prelude to "Thunder Road" that opens the album, and marveled how well it worked instead as the introduction to the version of "Racing in the Street ('78)" that opens "The Promise."

Soon they were filled in on the back story of "The Promise": That these 21 completed songs (not demos), over two discs, are part of the bounty of about 40 recordings Springsteen made in 1977 and 1978 for the album that would become "Darkness at the Edge of Town." That essential transitional album, finally released in 1978, was his first since "Born to Run" in 1975 made good on Springsteen's claim to greatness. The delay was caused by lawsuits over management contracts, music publishing and other i…