Bruce Springsteen – The Wild, The Innocent And The E Street Shuffle (Slipcase, 1STEP, SuperVinyl)
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Lead Vocals, Guitar, Harmonica, Mandolin - Bruce Springsteen [click here to see more vinyl featuring Bruce Springsteen]
Backing Vocals – Clarence "Nick" Clemons, Danny Federici, David L. Sancious, Garry W. Tallent, Vini "Mad Dog" Lopez
Accordion – Danny Federici
Bass, Tuba – Garry W. Tallent
Congas, Percussion – Richard Blackwell
Drums – Vini "Mad Dog" Lopez
Piano, Electric Piano, Clavinet, Organ – David L. Sancious
Saxophone – Clarence "Nick" Clemons
Arranged and written by Bruce Springsteen
1LP, slipcase
Limited to 7.500 numbered copies
Original analog Master tape : YES
UD1S (UltraDisc One-Step)
Heavy Press : 180g SuperVinyl
Record color : black
Speed : 33 RPM
Size : 12'’
Stereo
Studio
Re2LPs, Boxcord Press : Record Technology Incorporated
Label : Mobile Fidelity
Original Label : Columbia
Recorded 1973 at 914 Sound Studios, Blauvelt, New York
Engineered by Louis Lahav
Produced by Jim Cretecos, Mike Appel
Photography by David Gahr
Design by John Berg, Teresa Alfieri
Originally released in November 1973
Reissued in 2023
Tracks:
Side A:
- The E Street Shuffle
- 4th of July, Asbury Park (Sandy)
- Kitty’s Back
- Wild Billy’s Circus Story
Side B:
- Incident on 57th Street
- Rosalita (Come out Tonight)
- New York City Serenade
Awards:
Rolling Stone 500 greatest albums of all time – Ranked 345 / 500
Reviews:
"Bruce Springsteen expanded the folk-rock approach of his debut album, Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J., to strains of jazz, among other styles, on its ambitious follow-up, released only eight months later. His chief musical lieutenant was keyboard player David Sancious, who lived on the E Street that gave the album and Springsteen's backup group its name. With his help, Springsteen created a street-life mosaic of suburban society that owed much in its outlook to Van Morrison's romanticization of Belfast in Astral Weeks.
Though Springsteen expressed endless affection and much nostalgia, his message was clear: this was a goodbye-to-all-that from a man who was moving on.
The Wild, The Innocent & the E Street Shuffle represented an astonishing advance even from the remarkable promise of Greetings; the unbanded three-song second side in particular was a flawless piece of music.
Musically and lyrically, Springsteen had brought an unruly muse under control and used it to make a mature statement that synthesized popular musical styles into complicated, well-executed arrangements and absorbing suites; it evoked a world precisely even as that world seemed to disappear. Following the personnel changes in the E Street Band in 1974, there is a conventional wisdom that this album is marred by production lapses and performance problems, specifically the drumming of Vini Lopez. None of that is true. Lopez's busy Keith Moon style is appropriate to the arrangements in a way his replacement, Max Weinberg, never could have been. The production is fine. And the album's songs contain the best realization of Springsteen's poetic vision, which soon enough would be tarnished by disillusionment. He would later make different albums, but he never made a better one. The truth is, The Wild, The Innocent & the E Street Shuffle is one of the greatest albums in the history of rock & roll." AllMusic Review by William Ruhlmann
Since nobody was going to make his legend for him, it was up to Bruce Springsteen to do it himself. The iconic New Jersey poet laureate wasn’t exactly iconic in 1973. In fact, unless you lived on the east coast of the United States or had a particularly powerful AM radio, you probably had no idea who Springsteen was. But if you frequented
some of the small clubs along the eastern seaboard, tuned into progressive rock stations late at night, or were on the lookout for the next Bob Dylan, then Springsteen was already a saviour in waiting.
Springsteen had already released his debut album, Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J., earlier in 1973. In order to bring his mix of rock, soul, and folk to life, Springsteen assembled the first version of what would become the E Street Band. Although Springsteen performed most of the instruments on the relatively stripped-down LP, the most important cast of characters contributed to the fuller arrangements: bassist Gary Tallent, keyboardist David Sancious, drummer Vini ‘Mad Dog’ Lopez, and saxophonist Clarence Clemons.
For his first series of tours as a solo artist, Springsteen brought along organist Danny Federici to round out the ensemble. This was the band that he brought into the studio for his follow-up, The Wild, The Innocent, and The E Street Shuffle. Instead of emphasising his singer-songwriter side as he did on his debut album, Springsteen decided to flesh out his sound and kickstart his own myth with The E Street Shuffle. His verbose lyrical style remained intact, but Springsteen and The E Street Band were aiming for something broader and more cinematic for their second studio album.
The frenetic pace of the album comes right out of the gate on ‘The E Street Shuffle’. Much in the same way that ‘Tenth Avenue Freeze Out’ would detail the band’s (somewhat made-up) origin story two years later, ‘The E Street Shuffle’ brings you right into Springsteen’s world, rounded out by characters who either dance or scuffle as the summer heat beats down. Sancious and Clemons add a potent R&B edge to the sound, with their clavinet and horn mix edging Springsteen closer to the Motown sound than he would ever get.
Slowing things down after the blistering glee of ‘The E Street Shuffle’, Springsteen keeps his Jersey-centric persona going by taking the listener back to Asbury Park. Lopez alternates between half-time and common time during the chorus. It gives the song a woozy and dream-like feel that’s complemented by Federici’s accordion. At the centre of the track is Springsteen unspooling an observational tale about all the people you could see from the top of a Ferris wheel in Asbury Park: greasers, stoners, homeless people, and factory girls just waiting to get swept off their feet. ‘4th of July, Asbury Park (Sandy)’ is Springsteen at his most romantic, idolising his hometown just before he decided that he needed to escape from it.
One of Springsteen’s most underrated traits is his mastery of the guitar. For The E Street Shuffle, there’s no Little Steven or Nils Lofgren to take the lead. It’s all Springsteen, and his stinging lead guitar attack can best be heard on the intro to ‘Kitty’s Back’.
Starting off as a slow-burning hard rock track, Springsteen lights up the fretboard with impassioned squeals, not unlike the kinds of tones that Neil Young got out of his guitars. But Springsteen can’t help himself from taking ‘Kitty’s Back’ through a plethora of speeds and styles, creating a sense of whiplash between street-corner jazz, dirty soul, and shuffling rock music. The E Street Band aren’t quite turning on a dime like their next incarnation would on Born to Run, but the twists and turns that make up ‘Kitty’s Back’ are as mind-bending and jazzy as the group would ever get.Bringing back the carnival atmosphere of ‘4th of July, Asbury Park (Sandy)’, ‘Wild Billy’s Circus Story’ almost acts as a reprise. While he was fine-tuning his storytelling skills, Springsteen was still biting off more than he could chew in the early days. ‘Wild Billy’s Circus Story’ finds Springsteen jumping at the chance to detail as many characters as possible without really saying much of anything. If nothing else, ‘Circus Story’ does include a bit of foreshadowing with its final line: “All aboard, Nebraska’s our next stop.” Springsteen wouldn’t get to Nebraska for another decade, but the sombre tone of ‘Circus Story’ helps set the stage.
For side two of The E Street Shuffle, Springsteen and The E Street Band stretch out to extended lengths. It’s not loose jamming or finely-crafted progressive rock compositions, but somewhere in between. ‘Incident on 57th Street’ lays the foundation for what Springsteen would explore on songs like ‘Jungleland’ and ‘Darkness on the Edge of Town’: street life, with all the excitement and drama of a classic Hollywood film. The blend of Shakespeare and West Side Story is pure Springsteen, even if he would get less obvious in his inspiration on future tracks.
There’s no time to rest once the final twinkling piano notes of ‘Incident on 57th Street’ end because the listener gets immediately thrust into one of Springsteen’s greatest songs, ‘Rosalita (Come Out Tonight)’. It had taken him two albums to do it, but Springsteen had finally found his voice on ‘Rosalita’. With multiple parts and a storyline for the ages, Springsteen spits out the song’s lyrics with ferocious energy and palpable excitement. Making himself the hero of his own modern fairytale, Springsteen wraps every iconic part of his image into one song: he’s just a man with a flat tire in the swamps of Jersey looking to escape, and you can come with him if you’re willing. You better, because the record company just gave him a big advance.
More than any other song in his pre-Born to Run catalogue, ‘Rosalita’ is the iconic harbinger of things to come for Springsteen and the E Street Band. Clemons gets to trot out his impassioned sax playing, and the explosive harmonies in the chorus were just waiting for Little Steven to step in and sing them. Springsteen was getting ahead of himself a bit on ‘Rosalita’, but you can’t blame him for dreaming and aiming high. Had you heard The E Street Band tear the roof off of a venue by playing ‘Rosalita’ back in the day, it was probably impossible to ignore the fact that Springsteen was going to be huge.
Since no song could match the giddy triumph of ‘Rosalita’, Springsteen tries his hand at one of his first real epics to close out The E Street Shuffle. Unfortunately, ‘New York Serenade’ isn’t quite up to the levels of ‘Jungleland’ or ‘Drive All Night’. Sancious gets to show off on the lovely and occasionally frightening piano intro. Still, Springsteen has clearly stretched himself and his band beyond their collective means as the ten-minute track unfurls.
"It’s possible to get swept up in the grandeur of ‘New York Serenade’, but it’s equally possible to get bored as the song continues on and on without ever seeming to get to its conclusion.
It was clear that Springsteen was ready to make the leap into the rock and roll stratosphere on The Wild, The Innocent, and The E Street Shuffle. The trouble was that it wasn’t quite a time for him to make that leap. He didn’t quite have the right songs or the right band, or the right level of stardom to justify his epic scope at the time. Springsteen needed just a little bit more desperation to craft what would become his breakthrough masterpiece, Born to Run. When placed against an album like that, The Wild, The Innocent, and The E Street Shuffle inevitably feels like a practice run.
But what a crazy run it is. Placing all the elements of what would make Springsteen an iconic rock star in one place for the first time, The Wild, The Innocent, and The E Street Shuffle remains an engrossing look at what was to come for Bruce Springsteen and The E Street Band. Although it’s more innocent than wild, The E Street Shuffle feels like a fully justified reach from a man who takes it upon himself to write his name into the history books." Farout Magazine Review by Tyler Golsen.
UltraDisc One-Step : Instead of utilizing the industry-standard three-step lacquer process, Mobile Fidelity Sound Lab's new UltraDisc One-Step (UD1S) uses only one step, bypassing two processes of generational loss. While three-step processing is designed for optimum yield and efficiency, UD1S is created for the ultimate in sound quality. Just as Mobile Fidelity pioneered the UHQR (Ultra High-Quality Record) with JVC in the 1980s, UD1S again represents another state-of-the-art advance in the record-manufacturing process. MFSL engineers begin with the original master tapes and meticulously cut a set of lacquers. These lacquers are used to create a very fragile, pristine UD1S stamper called a "convert." Delicate "converts" are then formed into the actual record stampers, producing a final product that literally and figuratively brings you closer to the music. By skipping the additional steps of pulling another positive and an additional negative, as done in the three-step process used in standard pressings, UD1S produces a final LP with the lowest noise floor possible today. The removal of the additional two steps of generational loss in the plating process reveals tremendous amounts of extra musical detail and dynamics, which are otherwise lost due to the standard copying process. The exclusive nature of these very limited pressings guarantees that every UD1S pressing serves as an immaculate replica of the lacquer sourced directly from the original master tape. Every conceivable aspect of vinyl production is optimized to produce the most perfect record album available today.
Ratings :
AllMusic : 5 / 5 ; Discogs : 4.09 / 5 ; Encyclopedia of Popular Music : 4 / 5 ; Goldmine : 5 / 5 ; MusicHoundRock : 4 / 5