Perfect Tens Dept. - The Wild,The Innocent & The E Street Shuffle

Medical opinion differs as to the exact time of death of the 'sixties - as an idea, rather than the calendar narrative - with some observing the onset of rigor mortis as far back as '68, or even with The Death Of Hippie in '67 . What we can say with some certainty is that by late '73 the funeral parade had long passed. The British pop scene, as it was still called, was dominated by panto-pop and glam, end-of-the-pier entertainment for the end of an era that mistakenly thought of itself as the beginning of another. Serious Rock had knotted itself into the cat's cradle of prog to satisfy the demands of the Serious Rock Fan, recognised by his lank greasy hair, plutonium-strength acne, and the odor of damp Army Surplus greatcoats.

But hey. This was '73. As a Brit, I wasn't alone in listening to US music almost exclusively. We read Zig Zag and Rolling Stone (a fantastic and essential paper back then), we bought expensive imports with the beer tokens the government kindly gave us, and we wore jeans modeled on the gatefold to After The Goldrush, with patches from mum's rag box and a leather stash wallet hanging hopefully from the belt. But it was an odd year for UK music. Pink Floyd became Grey Floyd, making music for stereo showrooms. Led Zeppelin and Fleetwood Mac lost the plot. The Stones took a step back, not in a good way, the Kinks floundered into camp irrelevancy and everyone woke up after their long Beatles denial. They weren't coming back. Although folk and jazz/rock remained lively, they also remained niche, which was probably essential to their survival.

Proper Rock (and by that I mean proper rock music) continued to flourish and evolve in the US, entirely home-grown, drawing directly and unselfconsciously on a rich heritage that owed nothing to the UK invasion that had liberated it from the Elvis era. The Allmans, CSN(&Y), Lynyrd Skynyrd, Little Feat, New Riders, Zappa, the Dead, The Eagles, Steely Dan, BOC, Joni, Neil, Van Morrison (seen very much as a stateside act), plus too many solo artists to list, with the big MIA of Dylan. And, sneaking a first album into the racks unnoticed at the beginning of the year, somebody called Bruce Springsteen.

I first became aware of him from Pete Scrowther talking him up at the Golden Cross, one of the two places in town you were likely to score, or hear of the night's house party (the other being the Dive Bar, notable for a panoramic Lord Of The Rings mural, sticky floor, and cheap Newky Brown). But the Cross was where what was left of it was at, man. In the late 'sixties, the Diggers had made their Head quarters in the medieval ruins across the street, the "Digger Hole", and in '73 some patchouli still lingered. More importantly, it was where the hot girls lingered, in their charity shop fur coats, black miniskirts and coloured tights, with their long dark hair and red lips and cigarettes. Notably Jane Bayley, whose beauty poleaxed me, and whose eyes I can still see somewhere behind mine. I married one of the other girls eventually, one I wasn't too dumbstruck to talk to. Many, many years later (a lifetime or two) I contacted Jane, and she asked me why I never asked her out. I'm not sure she believed me. Beauty is blind to a mirror.

But yeah. Pete was raving about this album he'd just bought that we'd never heard of. "If anyone's the New Dylan, it's this guy", and as Pete was considered a very cool guy in those days, we - including a couple of others from Shitband, the band I played bass for (that wasn't our name but it should have been) trekked back through the freezing wet streets to his place after closing time to hear the New Dylan. Evidently, no parties that night. That was how you picked up on stuff, not through a pod-brain you gazed at and stroked instead of girls, but through conversation, references in the music papers, random rack flipping and a chance hearing on John Peel. It was enough to grow a network of human connections, a living, organic communal knowledge which was added to almost daily. I'm not saying it was a better way, but that's what I'm thinking. And typing.

Pete's audio set-up was impressive. A standalone turntable (still not a common thing back then) hot-wired through a Mystery Fuse to a guitar amp and a speaker cab the size of a domestic drinks bar, which it also doubled as. We took up positions as laid down in the manual - laid down - and passed the sleeve around, with a couple of poverty roaches, as the tone arm dropped onto one of the few albums I can say changed my life.

None of us spoke, not even when the album was flipped.

There was nothing quite like The Wild, The Innocent & The E Street Shuffle. Maybe echoes of Van Morrison's Caledonian swing, something of West Side Story in its sweeping romanticism, of Dylan in its tumbling, clattering Beat poetry. Yes, but no. Springsteen, the guy from nowhere, had made his own album with the help of the best band in the world also out of nowhere and it was hands down no question the album of the year. Oooff. Who were these guys? Where the fuck was E Street?

Pete didn't have the first album, but assured us that this was the one to break Springsteen worldwide. How could it not? We agreed. It had to. It didn't, of course. Being a Springsteen fan back then was groovy. You could turn people on to him the same way Pete had for us. I can't remember any reviews except for Rolling Stone and  Zig Zag. There wasn't, incredibly, a buzz in the press about him - we had to order the album, and spread the word ourselves.

I made a list of Top Ten reasons why it's a Perfect Ten album, in no particular order, and I just deleted it, because it didn't come close to explaining or evoking or even hinting at what makes this album such a freaking masterpiece. And that is the indefinable magic captured in the groove, and at the heart of it is Springsteen's heart, bursting open with the joy of being in a rock n' roll band, and Vinnie "Mad Dog" Lopez batting the traps, the best drummer he ever had. You only have to listen to the title track and then Tenth Avenue Freeze Out to understand what the Boss lost. E Street is effortlessly, joyously funky and loose; Tenth Avenue a generic clomp nailed to the floor by Max Weinberg's dogged thump. Oh well. That was a couple of years away. Back in the tail end of 'seventy-three, we heard rock and roll future in Pete's front room, and the long walk home through the cold streets glowed with it.

That indefinable magic is still there, locked in the groove. Foreverandmoreagain, the spirit, the spirit, the spirit of rock n' roll, the light that never dies. Give me the beat, boys, free my soul ... I see the fireworks hailing over Little Eden, and I see Jane Bayley's eyes ...

This post dedicated to Ned Youngman, Shitband's guitarist, who was to gift me a ticket to Bruce at Hammersmith Odeon, as a wedding present.