Bruce Springsteen ? Darkness on the Edge of Town ? Half-Speed Mastered Vinyl LP

$

32

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1. "Prove It All Night"
   Released: May 23, 1978
2. "Badlands"
   Released: August 1978
3. "The Promised Land"
   Released: October 1978

Darkness on the Edge of Town is the fourth studio album by Bruce Springsteen, released in the late spring of 1978. The album marked the end of a three-year gap between albums brought on by contractual obligations and legal battling with former manager Mike Appel. Although the album did not produce high-charting singles it nevertheless remained on the charts for 97 weeks. A steady seller in Springsteen's catalogue, it has been certified triple-platinum by the RIAA.

Although slightly less enthusiastic than those for Springsteen's previous album Born to Run, reviews for Darkness on the Edge of Town were unanimously positive. Critics notably praised the maturity of the album's themes and lyrics. It remains one of Springsteen's most highly regarded records by both fans and critics and several of its songs have become staples of the singer's live performances.

In September 2010 a documentary film chronicling the making of Darkness was first shown at the Toronto International Film Festival. Quoting Springsteen as saying “More than rich, more than famous, more than happy – I wanted to be great”, reviewer Stephen Whitty of the Newark Star-Ledger commented: "For many fans, that long journey pulled onto the Turnpike here." In 2003, Rolling Stone Magazine ranked it at 151 on their list of the greatest albums of all time.

Background

Recovering from legal troubles and the stress of the breakthrough success of Born to Run, Springsteen released a somewhat less commercial album in Darkness on the Edge of Town. In terms of the original LP's sequencing, Springsteen continued his "four corners" approach from Born to Run, as the songs beginning each side ("Badlands" and "The Promised Land") were martial rallying cries to overcome circumstances, while the songs ending each side ("Racing in the Street", "Darkness on the Edge of Town") were sad dirges of circumstances overcoming all hope. Unlike Born to Run, the songs were recorded by the full band at once, frequently soon after Springsteen had written them. Steven Van Zandt received a credit for production assistance for helping Springsteen tighten the arrangements from Born to Run's epic sound.

Though the album failed to generate any substantial hit singles ("Prove It All Night" made it into the Top 40 in the U.S. at number 33, and follow-up "Badlands" just missed, peaking at number 42), Darkness was critically well-received and claimed the number one slot on NME album of the year. In 2003, the album was ranked number 151 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time. The cover shot and inner sleeve photo were taken by photographer Frank Stefanko inside Stefanko's Haddonfield, New Jersey, home. Springsteen says, "When I saw the picture I said, 'That's the guy in the songs.' I wanted the part of me that's still that guy to be on the cover. Frank stripped away all your celebrity and left you with your essence. That's what that record was about." 

A reissue box set was released in November 2010. This had initially been planned for 2008, to mark the 30th anniversary of the original album's release, but was delayed, presumably due to Springsteen's numerous other 2008 projects. By January 2009, Springsteen's manager, Jon Landau, was saying the project was still in the works: "When we can find six weeks to sit down and finish it I'm sure we will." A documentary entitled "The Promise: The Making of Darkness on the Edge of Town" was produced for the box set. The documentary premiered at the Toronto Film Festival in the fall of 2010 and aired on HBO on October 7, 2010.

During the Darkness sessions, Springsteen wrote or recorded many songs that he ended up not using on the album. This was to keep the album's thematic feel intact, even at the expense of not having hits on it. According to Jimmy Iovine, Springsteen wrote at least 70 songs during the sessions and 52 of those songs were recorded with some not fully completed.

Some of the unused material became hits for other artists, such as "Because the Night" for Patti Smith, "Fire" for Robert Gordon and The Pointer Sisters, "Rendezvous" for Greg Kihn, "This Little Girl" for Gary U.S. Bonds, and several tracks for Southside Johnny (including three songs for the Asbury Jukes' Hearts of Stone album). Other songs such as "Independence Day", "Point Blank", "The Ties That Bind", and "Sherry Darling" would turn up on Springsteen's next album, The River, while still others became bootleg classics until surfacing on Springsteen's compilations Tracks, 18 Tracks and The Promise.

Critical reception

In a contemporary review for Rolling Stone, Dave Marsh viewed Darkness on the Edge of Town as a landmark record in rock and roll because of the clarity of its production, Springsteen's unique guitar playing, and the programming, which he said connects the characters and themes in a subtle, but cohesive manner. Marsh remarked that the subject matter of the songs fulfills the hype that previously surrounded him: "What they've always said was that someday Bruce Springsteen would make rock & roll that would shake men's souls and make them question the direction of their lives. That would do, in short, all the marvelous things rock had always promised to do." Robert Christgau gave the album an "A–" in a less enthusiastic review for The Village Voice and wrote that Springsteen's versatile narratives and remarkable characters on "Badlands", "Adam Raised a Cain", and "Promised Land" showcase "how a limited genre can illuminate a mature, full-bodied philosophical insight". However, he felt that more impressionistic, overblown songs such as "Streets of Fire" and "Something in the Night" reveal Springsteen to be "an important minor artist or a very flawed and inconsistent major one".

In a retrospective review for AllMusic, William Ruhlmann said that Springsteen began to fully realize his characters as working class on Darkness on the Edge of Town, whose "hard truths in hard rock settings" made for a less accessible work than Born to Run. Rolling Stone later wrote that the album was the E Street Band's best performance and reflected the unrefined sound popular at the time.

Track listing

All songs written by Bruce Springsteen.