Bruce Does the E Street Shuffle

A Rare Springsteen Photograph by Peter Cunningham

I might have mentioned my first job after college was as associate editor of CBS Records’ Playback magazine, which published twice a month. It had a square format, as an answer to Warner Brothers Records popular and witty Circular. Our monthly issue came with a 7-inch, 33 1/3 rpm disc (like British singles), to which the public could subscribe. I was hired by the late Bob Sarlin, a newspaperman before he became a music and then advertising executive. Bob died in January 2021, after some years of poor health following a stroke. I owe him a lot.

Bob knew his way around bureaucracies, how to leverage corporate necessities such as expense accounts. He was eager to use our travel budget for our first issue, so he went to Cambridge, Mass., to interview Columbia’s next big thing, a singer named Andy Pratt. I stayed home and got Bruce Springsteen. The first Playback disc had Pratt’s “Avenging Annie” on one side, Springsteen’s “Blinded By the Light” on the other, with the full “Binded” lyrics …