The Magnificent Seven: Live at the Hammersmith Odeon, London 1975
This is the fifth in a series of articles that looks at seven albums the authors appreciate. In terms of criteria: they must be albums listened to only in their entirety…content and form together like houses in motion. They also must have enormous personal relevance: they are corner stones. They may not be cool, but they are us.
Ed. Note > I realize these are counting up (Article #5) but consider this as the Top 3, 2, 1...
#5
Live at the Hammersmith Odeon, London, 1975, Bruce Springsteen and the E-Street Band
This is the critical juncture of this writing project. I know what three albums are my favorite, errr, most appreciated, but the ranking and the “fuck, how can I articulate the absolute depth of my visceral appreciation for music” process obstacle have made this a lot more difficult than I imagined.
Writing for me, regardless of how well I think I am writing or how well-received any piece of composition of mine becomes, has always been difficult. This is largely because of my reluctance to share ultimate and complete forms of identity and truth with wider, more public audiences, e.g. strangers on the internet.
When I think of identity and visceral depth being shared, bared rather, and my attraction to the process of it, I really do form a convergence in thought to Bruce Springsteen.
I will maintain, likely forever, that from 1973-1979, there is no stronger, progressive, unique, bombastic, ethereal, soul-touching, heart-heating, tectonic-plate-shifting, hair-blazing, full-speed, motherfucking purity-releasing pop-music of a white man’s soul like the tunes produced by Bruce Springsteen and the E-Street Band.
I have no qualms about choosing blindness over deafness when faced with that silly-ass hypothetical question. The reason for me was always the same: I couldn’t imagine a life without music. So I, much like you, if you are a good human, love music very, very much. And when I say that the music from Springsteen and E-Street during the aforementioned period is the best American pop-rock in an era where pop-rock was royal radio, take me seriously here.
What makes this piece difficult is because I think I am breaking a rule Emma and I had established when we were first discussing this project four or so years ago: Only featured records, which means no greatest hits, no compilations of any sort.
But I simply cannot continue constructing this project without adding the band and the man that aided my real growing up after my enlightened period as a freshman in college had commenced. And I can’t write about my appreciation without being completely honest about a record that changed my life as subtly as this one. So what if it’s a live compilation? It’s an honest piece, and isn’t there some great line about this very thing from Phil Sey’s character in Almost Famous, Emma?
I had always listened to Springsteen and E-Street since I was a young child. Springsteen, along with Van Morrison, Carol King, Judy Collins, James Taylor, Elton John, and Joni Mitchell (easily could be in this spot with Blue btw), are part of the Momdukes Stereo and Radio Cannon of my early childhood in the break of the 1990s (fuck, that is too real right now).
And it was in the form of Born to Run mostly, though my mother always jammed to The Wild, The Innocent, and The E-Street Band apparently, as that is her fave joint - it, too, was my for a while.
But it wasn’t until I entered high school and started to openly explore different genres of music that I began to individually participate in rock and roll from this era - I was pure hip-hop and DMB until 14. I started moving through Greetings with wide eyes; Wild and Innocent with a head full of steam; Born to Run like a freight train; and Darkness through a gaping gash in my chest (fave Springsteen and E-Street, for the record).
But then, a la The Great Momdukes Marino, in 2005, I was gifted the anniversary edition of Born to Run. Great record. Amazing actually. Along with Bat out of Hell, true American rock operatic. But the set came with a live recording dvd: Live at Hammersmith Odeon, London 1975.
It took me a week or two to find the curiosity to pop it into the player, but when I did, I was actually floored by the power and magnitude and soul and depth with which this band was playing the songs that already contained so much of each in their respective studio iterations.
This is the single greatest live performance to which I have ever lent an ear. Every tune is really that much better, that richer, that much more intense, poetic, magnified, electrified, and completely transformed. My music bucket list after this record played in front of me was to see this band live at all costs. I never have nor will I, because The Big Man is gone, but I will always have the nostalgia for a time not mine in this record. I can tell you that in reference to experience and to feeling, the ultimate in electric joy is in the way that I just want to feel like I do when I listen to this record.
Look no further than “The E street Shuffle,” a track fromWild and Innocent that I never really fancied. The Hammersmith recording is absolutely mind-blowing. The pacing is altered from the jump of the opening piano medley to Silvio’s dynamic guitar solo. It’s my favorite track on the album, because it represents exactly what this band was all about: The reinvention of form and expectation of a genre on the fly. No band could do this the way that this one could. No front-man in the rock music from this era could gut himself for a single tune the way that this man could - and still can.
A strong Springsteen and E-Street record is relatable. I think they are revered as such not so much because of the content of the music, that “everyman” capacity that so many critics have attached, especially of the earlier period, but because an album from this portion of their career is like the events of a day in your life: You roll in high, drop down low, release yourself to something or someone, explode into oblivion, crash back down to Earth, and at the end of the day you “come home to wash-up.”
“Backstreets” is one of the most representational songs of my first major rebirth as a young man. But this version of the tune amplifies the core themes of the track: The idea that your ideals change, that they are no longer the same as they were out on those backstreets of your youth. I remember when I was a runner, my nightly run after working 14 hour shifts at a local pizzeria was kicked off by this song. The chords of the opening piano were the veins and blood enlarging, coursing through my body, respectively. I had felt lost during this period of my life. I had followed my high school girlfriend to a college I didn’t want to attend, because she begged me, and I didn’t have the guts to live my own life. Not so long after the first few months of the semester, she dumped me for some shitbird ball player - I am adding this detail, because I just had a funny conversation about this the other night with friends. I’m not bitter.
I finished the semester and withdrew, heading home to help my mother get back on her feet after she lost her job and take some classes at a local county college. I had felt this song so strongly inside me when I ran at dead midnight, that I thought of myself in the backstreets still, because my dream of leaving my hometown had taken a massive step back. The more I ran to this version of the song, the more I realized that it was about the heart of a younger man in guilt for moving forward being mended by the idea that some people, sometimes friends, are just meant to be left behind in those very backstreets.
And the more I ran, the more I pushed the tune and pushed to finish with the epic of all rock epics, “Jungleland.” “Jungleland” is simply the emotional inner-core to follow all of that, to any and every Springsteen and E-Street song. There is no solo instrument performance in music that I can recall that is as virtuoso, performative, powerful, and searching, aching as Clemons’s saxophone sequence. This single period of one instrument conveys so much about the song and the people writing and performing it, especially Clemons’s himself. All the pain and struggle of a life lived in a “jungle” in one instrument.
The more I realized that the ideals of our youth, being true to the neighborhood, being authentic, not selling out, are as superficial as the feeling of guilt associated with the thought of employing them to the point of maturative departure. This record subtly helped me repair and reset myself, eventually pushing me away from a hometown that has seen many before me stick around too long.
I live in China now, so it worked.
Key Tracks:
“The E-Street Shuffle,” “Backstreets,” “Jungleland,” “4th of July, Asbury Park (Sandy)”
Pat Marino appreciates number one scholar turtle, a new paintbrush and getting wasted in the heat.