Lost and found: Springsteen treasures come to light
A new album set of unreleased tracks by Bruce Springsteen is a treat for fans.
Way back in 1998 Bruce Springsteen released a motherload of unreleased songs in a four CD set called, Tracks. Featuring 66 songs culled from Springsteen’s archive, the material featured demos, unreleased material and B-sides.
Now, here we are, all these years later and Springsteen has delivered a veritable holy grail for fans of more unreleased material in the form of Tracks II: The Lost Albums.
As the title suggests, this time around Springsteen has taken a giant leap. Unlike the first volume, this isn’t a collection of demos and obscurities. These are fully formed albums that were – sometimes inexplicably – finished and left on a shelf.
For context, this is the equivalent of Springsteen releasing the same amount of work that covered the release of his debut LP Greetings From Asbury Park New Jersey in 1973, running through to Tunnel of Love in 1987.
Included in the set are 74 songs fans have never heard before, alongside alternate versions of a handful of others rounding it up to 83 tracks in total.
These recordings crack open hidden chapters of Bruce Springsteen’s career, offering a look inside the creative life of a man who’s been writing America’s soundtrack for five decades.
“The lost albums were full records — some of them even mixed and ready to go — that just never saw the light of day,” Springsteen explained recently. “Being able to record at home, whenever I wanted, let me chase down whatever sound or story came into my head. I’ve played this music for myself and a few close friends for years. Now it’s your turn.”
What follows is a parallel ride of what we thought we knew of Springsteen’s evolution. When he was focusing on being a dad in the 1990s, his audience assumed he’d largely downed tools. This wasn’t the case. He often believed the completed record might not fit the mood of the times, or he was working on an adjacent project that did see the light of day.
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The collection begins with a double album, LA Garage Sessions ’83. Stark and lo-fi, it’s essentially a bridge between the much-acclaimed Nebraska and Born in the U.S.A records. Here Springsteen is still immersed in the writings of American novelist Flannery O’Connor, along with Terrence Malik’s film Badlands, while working out how to program a drum machine.
The album opens with a reworking of Elvis Presley’s Follow That Dream that sits alongside other top-shelf material such as his own Sugarland, County Fair, Fugitive’s Dream and alternate versions of the Chuck Berry-influenced Johnny Bye Bye, Shut Out the Light and a more fragile reading of Born In The U.S.A.’s My Hometown. Elsewhere, he’s just having fun as we hear traces of Buddy Holly in Little Girl Like You.
When Jonathan Demme’s Streets of Philadelphia film was released in 1993, Springsteen picked up an Academy Award for writing the song of the same name. Sonically different to anything the artist had released before, it set Springsteen off on a journey that eschewed a traditional band and saw him working with drums loops and icy synths. Fans took to calling it his “hip-hop” record.
Minus the title track, Streets of Philadelphia, the album features 10 tracks. It’s as good a record as fans would want to hear. It stayed unreleased because Springsteen had already released three “relationship” albums in a row, Tunnel Of Love, Lucky Town and Human Touch.
Highlights on Streets Of Philadelphia include Blind Spot, Maybe I Don’t Know You and the closer Farewell Party. For completists there’s also a more primitive version of Secret Garden, which later found fame on the Jerry McGuire soundtrack.
In 1995, Springsteen opted to release The Ghost of Tom Joad. At the same time he was working with co-producer Ron Aniello on an unreleased album, Somewhere North of Nashville.
“The sessions completely overlapped each other,” he tells us in the box’s liner notes. “(The recording) was to lighten up The Ghost of Tom Joad sessions really.”
Somewhere North of Nashville is the first in the series to have a band feel, and includes contributions from E Street Band members Danny Federici, Garry Tallent, Max Weinberg, Patti Scialfa, Soozie Tyrell and Charlie Giordano. They’re assisted by pedal steel guitar player Marty Rifkin, who is strongly featured. It’s largely a rollicking affair. Delivery Man is about a crazed truck driver who crashes with his cargo of live chickens. There’s the “romp” that is Detail Man and a couple of old favourites in new form as Springsteen re-visits Janey Don’t You Lose Heart and presents the original version of the title tracks, which was eventually re-recorded for the Western Stars album in 2019.
‘The lost albums were full records — some of them even mixed and ready to go — that just never saw the light of day’
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Almost to prove what a fertile time it was, the next LP, Inyo, was cut by Springsteen and Aniello during The Ghost of Tom Joad Tour between 1995 and 1997.
A companion album of sorts to both Tom Joad and Devils & Dust, Inyo is here for serious Springsteen fans who aren’t waiting on a Springsteen sugar rush rock song. Full of richly textured border tales, Inyo is a heavy – and rewarding – ride. Spirits are raised by the odd mariachi feel. Adelita paints a vivid portrait of the female supporters of soldiers during the Mexican-American War. One False Move is the story of a cocaine smuggler. These are essentially studied story songs that deal with the plight of Mexican-American immigrants and Native Americans.
As Springsteen explains: “This was all just miscellaneous writing I was doing with no sense of where it might end up or what it might end up being, except I knew I was enjoying writing in this vein. So, I did it and continued to do it for quite a while. This particular record and Devils & Dust, they all kind of came out of The Ghost of Tom Joad.”
Recorded between 2005 and 2006, Faithless is the intended soundtrack for a “spiritual western” that never got produced. The title track is a sombre affair, and there are four instrumental pieces that serve as the foundation of the album’s origin story. All God’s Children is a rollicking highlight and there’s elements of gospel and country all tying the piece together. Backing vocals come courtesy of E-Street alumni Patti Scialfa, Soozie Tyrell, Lisa Lowell, Michelle Moore, Curtis King Jr. and Ada Dyer.
Perfect World is a record that was made intermittently by Springsteen between 1994 and 2011. Three songs – I’m Not Sleeping, Idiot’s Delight and Another Thin Line – were co-written by long-time friend Joe Grushecky. A worthy addition to the cannon, Perfect World doesn’t quite “hang together” as an album as others in the collection do.
Some of the tracks are songwriting exercises that eventually led Springsteen to the song that he was always meant to write and officially release
As Springsteen admits, “That’s the one thing on this (project) that wasn’t initially conceived as an album, but it was something I put together.”
Rain in the River was released as a single prior to this collection’s release and you can understand why it almost made Springsteen’s Wrecking Ball album from 2012. Eagle-eyed fans might recognise the title track, which was recorded by John Mellencamp on his 2023 album Orpheus Descending.
Fancy a little orchestral mid-century noir? Chronologically at least, the final LP in the series, Twilight Hours, was recorded between 2010-2011 and the 2017-18 Western Stars sessions.
Western Stars is a standout in Springsteen’s later career, so expect the same major seventh sonic bliss from Twilight Hours. You can sense the ghost of Glen Campbell and the influence of Jimmy Webb (with a hint of Bacharach) all over the work. There’s lush orchestration and a certain cinematic quality throughout. This is Springsteen, at times, channelling Frank Sinatra. It’s an outlier in the Springsteen pantheon, but his own Lonely Town is well worth a visit. Forced to pick a singular highlight in the collection, we’d opt for High Sierra.
Given the nature of the exercise, not everything on these seven LPs is essential listening. Some of the tracks are songwriting exercises that eventually led Springsteen to the song that he was always meant to write and officially release. But, if you’re a Springsteen completist, then you have no option than to dive in deep.
Also available is a highlights collection Lost And Found: Selections From The Lost Albums, which comes as a two-LP vinyl set or single CD and includes a personal introduction from Springsteen himself.
Tracks II: The Lost Albums is out now on vinyl and CD through Sony Music.