On Secret Albums Recorded by Famous Bands Part 1: Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band

Backing Gary U.S. Bonds on “Dedication” and “On the Line”

I’m not entirely sure what this blog/email list is going to be just yet, but I figure that until a style evolves I can write about some things I’m a fan of. My journey to being a Springsteen fan was long and circuitous. When I was a child Born in the USA made Bruce omnipresent. He was immediately adopted by all of the people I had, at a very young age, developed a dislike to - the yuppies, the preppies, the jocks, the Reaganites.

Don’t ask me why I was eight and sick of the dominant rock bro culture, but it wasn’t until my early twenties that I gave Bruce Springsteen a fair shake and discovered that his work really spoke to me. Just big sweeping anthems about the kinds of feelings that consumed me when I was young, even if I didn’t understand them and was unable to put them into words.

The sweeping guitars, the screaming sax of the Big Man, the pounding piano and pulsing organ, the metronomic drum work of Wax Weinberg, this was a big enough sound to embody every feeling I had. “I want to die with you Wendy on the streets tonight in an everlasting kiss.” What young man can’t relate to that?

Also I just want to be clear about what I mean by “secret albums.” I don’t mean side projects from several members of a band, like The Blue Stingrays: Surf-n-Burn which is a killer surf rock from the early 1990s featuring then-past and present members of Tom Petty’s Heartbreakers band (it’s still worth giving a listen). 

And I don’t mean supergroups, although I could spend a lot of time talking about The Traveling Wilburys or The Highwaymen (and I might some day).

“Secret albums” are those rare records from the full lineup of a famous band either backing another musician they happen to be a fan of, or an album in a completely different style recorded under a different name. The idea being that this is work that only a group’s most obsessive fans would likely even know about.

I think the reason I love these albums is that it’s just fun to listen to a group of great musicians cut loose and try something they’re not necessarily known for or that they are aware might never reach an audience.

By 1981, Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band had made the jump from local Jersey Shore heroes to rock stars with the back-to-back triumphs Born to Run, Darkness on the Edge of Town, and The River. Then came a four-year pause (aside from Springsteen’s solo outing Nebraska) before Born in the USA became the unwitting anthem of the triumph of Reagan-era optimism, ironically on the back of an upbeat rocker that criticized the treatment of Vietnam vets by the government and the country. Springsteen did not care for Reagan.

But although they weren’t releasing music, that didn’t mean Springsteen and the E Street Band were laying idle. While their image as ”Just hard-working neighborhood guys who who happen to have a cool job” was largely a PR hype, the truth is that Bruce and the E Street band did like to work, and never lay back and rested on their laurels.

The Gary U.S. Bonds albums weren’t even the first time E Street backed another artist. Rolling Stone tells this story pretty thoroughly, but in 1977 Springsteen was in a nasty lawsuit with his ex-manager Mike Appel that sidelined the band. At a meeting they voted to split up but Steve Van Zandt, one of the great hustlers in the history of rock, got Cleveland International Records to agree to pay them double scale to back Ronnie Spector’s comeback project – a cover of the then-unreleased Billy Joel album Say Goodbye to Hollywood. A song that Joel later revealed, as it happened, had been strongly influenced by Spector’s work.

Give it a listen. It’s jaw-dropping great:

So from 1980 to 1984, other than touring in support of The River the E Street Band seemingly lay idle. But this is a band that likes to work that is famous for its four hour shows because it’s led by a man who likes to work. To underscore this point, Springsteen recently announced that he’s going to release a box set of five entire albums that he recorded starting in 1988 and never released.

And so enter Gary U.S. Bonds.

While his name might only strike a nostalgic chord today, in the early 1960s Bonds was so big that the Beatles opened for him on a 1963 European tour. He had a string of huge hits, from “New Orleans” to “Twist, Twist Señora.” Bonds was a big influence on a young Bruce Springsteen, and one of his hits, “Quarter to Three,” is a long-standing staple of E Street Band concerts often coming at the end of the show as part of an oldies medley.

By 1980, Bonds’ career had stalled and then slipped into reverse. There’s not a lot out there about how Springsteen and Bonds hooked up – although the story I’ve heard was that Springsteen and Bonds happened to meet at an Atlantic City bar.

Regardless, in 1981 Gary U.S. Bonds released the album Dedication which was produced by Springsteen and Van Zandt, and featured several covers, including The Beatles’ “It’s Only Love” and the only version I’ve ever liked of Bob Dylan’s “From A Buick Six.”

It also featured three unreleased Springsteen originals that had originally been written for The River – “This Little Girl,” “Your Love,” and the title track, “Dedication.”

Bonds was backed not just by Bruce, Van Zandt, and the E Street Band, but also legendary R&B singer Ben E. King as well as members of Southside Johnny’s Asbury Jukes, another Jersey Shore group that Van Zandt once belonged to and which Springsteen wrote for and members of E Street recorded with.

“This Little Girl” became a hit single, making it to number 5 on Billboard’s mainstream rock charts and bringing Bonds all the way back into the spotlight.  

The album was such a critical and commercial hit that Springsteen and members of the E Street Band reunited for 1982’s On the Line, a real scorcher of an album that featured seven Springsteen originals. By this time, Columbia Records – probably wondering why their prize rock star was recording uncommercial ballads for them and hits for EMI – forbade him from making a credited appearance on the record, relegating Bruce to background vocals.

The single “Out of Work” — a sly critique of the Reagan Economy; Bruce really did not care for Ronnie — was another hit for Bonds, if to a lesser degree than “Little Girl,” and by Fall of 1982 Bruce was ready to release, and refuse to tour in support of, the spare, beautiful solo album Nebraska.

Meanwhile, in January 1982 recording had already begun on the 1984 smash Born in the USA, the title song almost appearing in demo form on Nebraska. The rest of that story has been covered in many books, and what’s german to this point is that Bonds and Springsteen never collaborated again on another album although they’ve performed live together from time to time.

These albums are, as of this writing, not currently available except on used physical media and YouTube playlists (I’ve linked the first song videos for both albums below). Which is a shame because even if you’re not a Springsteen obsessive – or maybe even especially if you’re not – they are well worth a listen. Especially On the Line, which features two searing Big Man sax solos.

DEDICATION:

ON THE LINE: