The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle by Bruce Springsteen
"The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle" is the second album by Bruce Springsteen and the as-yet-unnamed E Street Band, and is described by Allmusic as "one of the greatest albums in the history of rock & roll." It was released in 1973. The album includes the song "Rosalita (Come Out Tonight)," the band's most-used set-closing song for the first 10 years of its career. As with Springsteen's first album, it was well-received critically but had little commercial success at the time. However, once Springsteen achieved popularity with Born to Run, several selections from this album became popular FM radio airplay and concert favorites. In 2003, the album was ranked number 132 on Rolling Stone magazine's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time. While Allmusic refers it to: "flawless piece of music" and of the album as a whole as "one of the greatest albums in the history of rock & roll"! On November 7, 2009, Springsteen and the E Street Band played the album in its entirety for the first time ever in a concert at Madison Square Garden.
On his second album, 1973’s <i>The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle</i>, Bruce Springsteen ignored whatever desires his label or his management may have had about turning him into a “new Dylan”. Springsteen’s experiences recording, performing and promoting his scaled-down 1972 debut had given him more confidence in what worked for him, and what didn’t. For his follow-up, Springsteen switched his creative strategy, assembling a real band to accompany him in the studio—a collection of musicians that would soon become the first incarnation of the legendary E Street Band. With <i>The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle</i>, Springsteen—who’d been leading and playing in rock ’n’ roll bands since he was a teen—would use those new players to help craft an album that could reflect his already-infamous live performances. Lyrically, the album would cover some of the terrain Springsteen had explored on his debut. He was still writing about the Jersey Shore, using it as the setting for a series of intricate, rambling epics that feature unexpected key changes and tempo shifts, all populated by revolving cast of renegades, misfits and weirdos. These are people who didn’t fit in anywhere—except with each other—and their stories are told on such standout tracks like “Wild Billy’s Circus Story”, “4th of July, Asbury Park (Sandy)” and “The E Street Shuffle”. <i>The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle</i> also featured lengthy compositions that could command an audience’s attention, and make them remember the name of the band who stopped them from going to the bar to get another beer (“Kitty’s Back”, “Rosalita”). Meanwhile, “Incident on 57th Street” and “New York City Serenade” show the big city <i>noir</i> side of the Boss. They’re the kind of songs that could only be written by someone <i>not</i> from New York City—deeply romanticised sagas of life, love, bad choices and tragic endings.
