Audiobook12 hours
E Street Shuffle: The Glory Days of Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band
Written by Clinton Heylin
Narrated by Dan John Miller
Rating: 2.5 out of 5 stars
2.5/5
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About this audiobook
Before he was the swaggering, stadium-packing megastar, Bruce Springsteen was a brooding introvert, desperate to strike a balance between his nuanced songwriting and the heft of his backing band. Clinton Heylin's revelatory biography, E Street Shuffle, chronicles the evolution and influence of Springsteen's E Street Band as they rose from blue-collar New Jersey to the heights of rock stardom. The band's players-most notably saxophonist Clarence "Big Man" Clemons, guitarist "Little" Stevie Van Zandt, and drummer Max Weinberg-became Springsteen's comrades in concert, helping him find the elusive sound and sonic punch that highlighted The Boss's most creative period, including Darkness on the Edge of Town, Born to Run, and Born in the USA. Fans will also learn another side of Springsteen, one punctuated with his clashes with studio executives seeking a commercially viable, radio-friendly album, and his temporary disbanding of the E Street Band to pursue projects like the eerie acoustic of Nebraska. Coinciding with the fortieth anniversary of Springsteen's debut album, Greetings from Asbury Park, drawing on interviews and access to new recordings and shows, Heylin paints a bold picture of The Boss.
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Reviews for E Street Shuffle
Rating: 2.666666577777778 out of 5 stars
2.5/5
9 ratings1 review
- Rating: 1 out of 5 stars1/5This book is meant to "chronicle the evolution and influence of Springsteen’s E Street Band as they rose from blue-collar New Jersey to the heights of rock stardom." (That's straight from the book jacket.) What it really is is a poorly written, thinly sourced, morally bankrupt hatchet job that denigrates and belittles the artist it's meant to celebrate.How did I hate this book? Let me count the ways …1. The book has virtually no original reporting in it at all. Nearly every page has one or more paragraph-length excerpts of interviews of Bruce Springsteen from other printed sources. The author did not speak to Bruce or, as far as I can tell, anyone except Bruce's first producer/manager, who Springsteen ended up suing in the late 1970s to get released from a bad contract, and the original drummer in the band who was fired after punching out another guy in the studio. Naturally, both of those people are portrayed extremely positively; the author takes the side of the producer/manager (Mike Appel) to an almost laughable extent. Seriously, I have read a fair bit about the lawsuit and that whole period and nothing I've read ever claimed that Springsteen was completely blameless in what happened, but this guy makes him seem like some combination of Machiavelli and Lenny from 'Of Mice and Men'.2. The author repeatedly asserts that none of Springsteen's recordings with the E Street Band come close to replicating the magic that they conjure in a live show. Fair enough; that's a common assertion by rock critics and fans all over the world. But the author seems to feel that simply asserting that as his opinion is sufficient; he offers absolutely nothing to try to explain what it is about the live Springsteen concert experience that so thoroughly has captivated and mesmerized fans and critics over the past 40 years. By contrast, Springsteen biographers [[Dave Marsh]] and [[Peter Ames Carlin]] both managed to convey the magic and the mystery that happens when the E Street Band comes together on a stage in front of an audience.3. In the album by album chronology of the book, the author repeatedly mocks and denigrates the process by which Springsteen, his band, and his subsequent producer/manager Jon Landau (who is clearly held in the highest contempt by the author) managed to produce albums that have sold tens of millions of copies and been listed by respected critics* as among the very best rock records ever produced. * A sidetone: Every critic who ever wrote a complimentary review of one of these albums (i.e., disagreed with the author's viewpoint) is a sycophantic fool; writers who voiced reservations or criticism of Springsteen or his albums are portrayed as bravely speaking truth to power.The author criticizes the song choices, the recording process, the sequencing of the songs on the albums, the choice of cover art — pretty much everything. With every album, he has a list of songs that are supposedly so superior to the ones that made the final cut that only an idiot would have left them off the record. Some of these discarded songs, which were later released on a boxed set, are amazing cuts, no doubt about it. But the author curtly refuses to take into account the fact that they were not included because they did not fit the mood or theme of the album being recorded, as Springsteen (you know, the guy whose name is on the record) conceived it.4. Some of the songs that the author holds in highest esteem have still never been released in any official way, either as B-sides of singles or in the compilation set of unreleased songs called "Tracks". So how does the author know these unreleased tracks are so great? How did he happen to hear them? By purchasing illegal bootleg* records of studio sessions that were stolen from Springsteen and then sold to fans. This is where the morally corrupt charge comes in. The author makes no apologies for buying studio bootlegs; indeed, he seems to feel that he and other Springsteen fans are entitled to hear everything the man has ever recorded, whether he himself felt it was suitable for public listening or not. And that's just wrong.* There are two types of bootlegs when it comes to music: There are live bootlegs, surreptitious fan recordings of concerts that are traded or sold among fans, and there are studio bootlegs, which are copies of the tape that is recorded during studio sessions when albums are being produced. Some people think all bootlegs are wrong. I have a more nuanced viewpoint which is important to this review. I have a number of live bootlegs, of Springsteen and other artists, and I don't apologize for it. To my mind, the difference is that those live bootlegs are recordings of public performances; in other words, the music was meant to be heard by fans. Studio bootlegs, on the other hand, are recordings that the artist for whatever reason chose not to release to the public. Some of those unreleased recordings might even be superior to material that was officially released but that is irrelevant; the point is that the artist did not intend anyone to hear them outside of the studio and therefore fans and even self-important writers have absolutely no right to listen to them, let along make someone else rich by purchasing them.5. For a book with the subtitle "The Glory Days of Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band" there is virtually nothing about the individual members of the E Street Band. If they are so important (and they are) why does the author ignore their contributions? The relationships between Bruce and Steven Van Zandt, and between Bruce and Clarence Clemons, are legendary. For all this book tells you about them, they might as well have met via classified ad.6. I left this one for last because I freely admit it's a petty criticism. The book is just poorly written. The author (who is apparently British) uses words like "gotta" and "gonna" and "ain't" repeatedly in the narrative of the book ad apparently without irony. If the rest of the book had been worthwhile, this would have resulted in no more than the occasional eye-roll and a footnote in the review. But the rest of the book is crap, and thus I'm piling on with this final gripe.If anyone reading this is interested in a decent, objective biography of Bruce Springsteen that doesn't shy away from criticizing him or his actions when it's warranted but also manages to explore all the reasons why and how he became one of the biggest and most acclaimed rock and roll singer-songwriters of his generation, I'd recommend [12789068::Bruce] by Peter Ames Carlin. As for this piece of dreck, it's the rare music biography that isn't suitable either for diehard or casual fans.