My Bruce Journey - Part 23

'My jacket's on I'm out the door and tonight I'm gonna burn this town down'


Magic was officially released on 1 October 2007 but by then anybody could download a bootleg version.

Before even that was available there were endless discussions about whether the tracks would be any good based simply on the song titles.  Lots of dislike of ‘Girls In Their Summer Clothes’ if I remember, before anyone had even heard it.  Oh! and the controversy over the cover art work - the consensus of opinion being that Bruce looks like a convict.

The artwork thing comes up with each new album.  The question of why Bruce’s advisors can’t produce a decent cover is baffling.  But presumably Bruce thinks they are OK.  Lets face it none of us like it when a bad photo of ourselves gets a public airing, although Facebook has forced us all to be a bit less vain. You know what I am saying. You can’t rely on your friends to filter out the bad pics of you. In fact they probably put them out there on purpose!

So the album is finished and Bruce and his staff are discussing the finishing touches.

‘Ok Bruce what about the cover art? What do you think about this photo?’

‘ I think its f-----g awful but stick it on the album cover anyway’

Somehow I don’t think that’s the way it goes but I guess he cares a hundred times more about the music than what goes on the front cover.

Anyway by far the biggest outcry was over the words. Bruce Springsteen - Magic. Where were ‘The E Street Band’?  Well actually there is a sticker on ours which gives them a mention but as the CD was heralded as the first album with the band since ‘The Rising‘ many people expected Bruce Springsteen and The E Street Band.

I think only ‘Live 1975-85 actually mentions them on the cover.  I assume he’s not going to change anything at this stage in his career so we will just have to get used to it.

No no no! I don’t think that was the biggest gripe after all. It was the production.  Now I either like something or I don’t.  Not sure whether the guitars are too high up in the mix or you can’t hear the drums or there’s too much base or … well I could go on and on.  Anyway it sounds OK to me.

I couldn’t resist listening to ‘Radio Nowhere’ as soon as it was available and I loved it, just loved it - still do. I was determined not to listen to any more of the album until I got the genuine article but ‘Bushman Hat Productions’ sent us an advanced copy about a month beforehand - oh the temptation!

I resisted until a week before when we played it once in the car on a long journey home from visiting family.
I liked it straight away.

We settled down on Saturday 29 September 2007 for our first proper listen.  I love this album.  It is my favourite of the trilogy of E Street Band albums since the reunion.  Don’t get me wrong I love ‘The Rising’ but on balance there are more songs on ‘The Rising’ that I don’t like.  More about ‘Working On A Dream’ later of course.

Mike would choose ‘The Rising’ as his favourite hands down.  In fact it is his favourite Bruce album - closely followed by ‘The River’.

The thing that struck me most about ‘Magic’ when I first heard it was that nearly every song had a saxophone solo - only short in some cases but there nevertheless.  I wondered whether he thought that it might be Clarence’s last tour and he wanted to use him more.  As it turned out it wasn’t Clarence that I should have been thinking about and now when I listen I hear Danny more and more.

In any event he didn’t play many tracks from ‘Magic’ on the tour so Clarence didn’t get chance to practice much!

There isn’t a track on this album I dislike.  I love the melodies which are easy to sing along to and I especially like the lyrics on a lot of the songs.  A particular favourite is ’Livin’ In The Future’ 'Then just about sundown you come walking through town your boot heels clickin’ like the barrel of a pistol spinning’ round’ - just fab isn’t it?

It’s apparently an album about bad times in the country, politically, but it doesn’t really come across that way to me.  Some people think it is about personal bad times and it signalled a break up between Bruce and Patti.

Patti’s ’Play It As It Lays’ was released only a couple of weeks before.  I played this almost as much as ’Magic’.  She is almost certainly writing about a bad period in a long term relationship.  One that the protagonist in the songs (herself ?) is working through.

Put the two albums together and you might wonder but in any event she decided to stick with it ’I tried to pull a thread between who we once were and who we’ve become and if we’ve lost a little along the way that’s all right that’s OK and I’m just going to play it as it lays’

So given that I like the album so much I was really looking forward to the tour. The O2 here we come.