Bruce Springsteen 24: Chapter And Verse

With a glimpse of mortality following the loss of E Street Band members, and even before he started writing his autobiography, Bruce Springsteen opened his legendary vaults to demonstrate the making of certain key albums in his catalog. Some were also accompanied by live artifacts. He’d already started offering downloads of shows from his most recent tour, but the Bruce Springsteen Archives went further back, selling professionally recorded concerts, complete with aesthetically relevant artwork, from his entire career.

It’s a fairly impressive endeavor, having recently escalated to a new release every month or so, and higher concentration on the previous century. Once his book was published, a companion of sorts was also released. Chapter And Verse doesn’t attempt to condense every musical reference in the pages into an 80-minute program, but it does provide something of a chronological overview, even going back before the fame.

His first band is represented by “Baby I”, a worthy garage rock stomp, and an even louder thrash at “You Can’t Judge A Book By The Cover”. Once he started writing his own songs in the ‘70s, Steel Mill takes over for “He’s Guilty (The Judge Song)”, with a lot of pinched lead guitar and organ; then they evolve into the Bruce Springsteen Band for “Ballad Of Jesse James”, which belies a distinct Van Morrison influence. “Henry Boy” is an awfully busy acoustic demo that predates the first album, and the best parts would form the backbone of “Rosalita” two years down.

“Growin’ Up” is included in the demo version previously heard on Tracks, and from there we go forward with a song per album until this century. The idea seems to be to include the most personally important track from each, and not necessarily the hits. If that’s what you’re looking for, you have other options. This one’s for the diehard fans.

Bruce Springsteen Chapter And Verse (2016)—3