Unrequited Infatuations

by Stevie Van Zandt

  Remember I said that the process of record production is basically four things: composition, arrangement, performance, and sound.

  Drums are the core of the Sound part. They must sound great for everything else to sound great. The drums are also the key to the performance part of the equation. Since overdubbing became the norm in the late ’60s, the essential factor in whether a take is a keeper or not is the drums. Everything else can be redone.

  When Rock recording started, nobody had the patience or budget to do take after take, waiting for a drummer to play in time or remember the important drum fills. That’s why there were so many session drummers, even for acts like the Beach Boys (Hal Blaine), the early Kinks (Bobby Graham), and the Four Seasons (Buddy Saltzman).

  One of my trademarks in the early days as a Producer was to make every attempt to record the real band. This one was a challenge.

  I had become obsessed with the African music of Babatunde Olatunji, Sonny Okosun, and Fela Kuti, so I took my eye (and ear) off the sacred snare drum sound I had gotten so right on the first album. My bright, crisp, perfect snare became just another African tom-tom.

  It worked, though, and was part of the production experience (and experimentation) that would make the first three Jukes albums very different from one another.

  If the song “This Time It’s for Real” was a mission statement, the rest of the album went back to the mission. Writing Soul-based Rock long after it was fashionable.

  The album continued to acknowledge and pay tribute to the Jukes’ musical heroes. With Southside equally enthusiastic about the idea, and with the proud, fatherly approval of Steve Popovich and his boss Ron Alexenburg, we reunited the Drifters, the Coasters, and the Five Satins.

  Popovich even found Richard Barrett to play on “First Night,” my first Doo-Wop composition. Barrett had played piano on the very first Girl Group hit, the Chantels’ “Maybe” (and, somehow, bass and drums also—on a two-track recording!). He had worked with Frankie Lymon and Little Anthony and cowritten “Some Other Guy” with Leiber and Stoller, the song the Beatles were playing in the only film clip I’ve ever seen of them at the Cavern Club.

  On the first Jukes album I had written with specific artists and styles in mind, and I continued that idea on the second.

  “Some Things Just Don’t Change” was in the style of Holland-Dozier-Holland (or Smokey Robinson) writing for the Temptations. “She’s Got Me Where She Wants Me” was straight Curtis Mayfield and the Impressions. “First Night” drew on Doo-Wop in general, though it leaned on Jerry Butler’s “For Your Precious Love.”

  My cowrites with Bruce, including “Love on the Wrong Side of Town” and “Little Girl So Fine,” were among my favorites. The huge room gave us a nice fat sound. I found “Without Love” on a recent Aretha Franklin album and did one of my favorite string arrangements, with a sixteen-piece string section, on it. They sounded great.

  The room sounded so good I didn’t even double the horns.

  While Bruce was tangled up in his management lawsuit, we couldn’t go into the studio or tour. And Bruce was out of money.

  He told us at rehearsal at his house in Holmdel, after which he went to make his usual two-hour phone call with Jon.

  There was a general grumbling within the band. We were at subsistence level, getting maybe $150 or $200 bucks a week. Amazing when I think about it now. And some of the guys had been getting outside work, big session respect, and serious offers.

  We voted on whether to break up.

  When the first three guys voted to leave, I stopped the voting and made a speech. Not exactly Mark Antony, but I needed to buy some time. “Give me a week,” I said.

  I went to my go-to guys, Popovich and Barsalona.

  Pops came back to me twenty-four hours later.

  “I got it,” he says. “Ronnie Spector and the E Street Band on my new label Cleveland International.” I always laughed when he said the label name out loud. You can’t be Cleveland and International, I’d tell him. “I’ll pay double scale for a two-song double session. That’ll hold you for a few weeks.”

  Beautiful.

  Popovich even had the song. Billy Joel had written a tribute to Phil Spector and the Ronettes, “Say Goodbye to Hollywood.” It hadn’t been a huge hit. Billy was still a year or two from having everything he did be a success. But it was perfect for Ronnie.

  The day before the session, Billy’s wife and Manager stopped me in the CBS hallway. “Who gave you permission to do this? Of course you’ll need Billy there. What time are you starting?” I hadn’t met Billy yet. He turned out to be a really great guy, but I don’t suffer bullies gladly, then or now. And I am big on gender equality.

  “Billy won’t be needed, thank you,” I said and kept walking.

  She left in a huff. Maybe a minute and a huff (sorry, Groucho).

  An hour later Pops called. “What the fuck did you say?!?” She had called him to curse me out, and not just me but him, Johnny, Bruce, Walter Yetnikoff, Phil Spector, and probably Garibaldi, Fiorello La Guardia, and Pope John II while she was at it.

  “Can she stop the record?” I asked.

  “No,” he said.

  “Then fuck her and her uppity fucking spoiled brat Long Island fucking condescending attitude,” I suggested.

  Truth is, she wasn’t wrong. I should have invited Billy to the session, at least to watch. Of course, after our hallway encounter, I couldn’t give her the satisfaction. How poor Billy lived with that horror is beyond Buddhism.

  And so it transpired that the original Magnificent Seven gathered to make a little history with one of our childhood fantasies and make about a month’s salary, which would keep the E Street Band intact until I got to Frank Barsalona.

  That was my third string arrangement. I was getting better and better.

  Life has its moments.

  I wrote the B-side, “Baby Please Don’t Go,” which Nancy Sinatra would do a great version of a couple decades later.

  The session ended the talk of the E Street Band breaking up. I guess that’s what was meant by me occasionally being “unintentionally destabilizing.”

  Right around that time, Ronnie and I had a brief affair. Early on, she wanted to go to Puerto Rico. On the day we arrived, outside by the pool, we ordered our first drinks of the vacation.

  I did some research later and found out there are two kinds of alcoholics. The ones that just drink a lot are bad enough. But then there’s the kind whose blood has a chemical reaction with just one drink. She was one of those. Terrible. Freaky to witness. Instant change of personality. It’s Jekyll-and-Hyde time.

  And did I mention we were in Puerto fucking Rico? Which I already despised because the taxi driver tried to hustle me for a couple hundred from the airport, and I’d caught the blackjack dealer dealing seconds and bottoms from a mechanic’s grip (remember, I was a gambler), and now I had a girlfriend who couldn’t stand up or speak coherently.

  Scared the living piss out of me. It remains one of my top ten nightmares of all time.

  We made it home, and I got her help and put her on tour with the Jukes. Johnny was on the wagon at the same time.

  She ended up OK, and our involvement gave her some much-needed confidence that put her back onstage, where she’s enjoyed an entire second career ever since.

  To this day, however, whenever she sings “Say Goodbye to Hollywood” live, she introduces it as “the song Bruce Springsteen produced for me.”

  I’m the invisible man.

  What are you gonna do?

  twelve

  The Punk Meets the Godfather

  (1978)

  Focus on the Craft, the Art takes care of itself.

  —THE UNWRITTEN BOOK

  I had been chasing Maureen ever since our Bottom Line gigs in 1975. I finally caught her on New Year’s Eve, 1977.

  On our first date, I dragged her to the seen-its-best-days Capitol Theatre in Passaic, New Jersey, for a Jukes concert. Every girl’s dream of a r
omantic New Year’s! But I felt obligated since it was their first theater gig, a major rite of passage, and I was still their Manager.

  After she visited my world, it was time for me to visit hers. What I couldn’t have known is that she was about to expand my understanding and perspective of Art from sketch pad to CinemaScope.

  Maureen took me to my first ballet at the Metropolitan Opera House.

  After playing joints my whole life, I felt like I was walking into the Palace of the Gods. The red plush velvet seats—not ripped and worn and stained like the Fillmore’s—the massive velvet curtain, the incredible chandelier that went up as the lights went down. And then…

  Tchaikovsky!

  What a divine discovery. My first real experience with classical music was ballet music at its most exhilarating. Melodic. Dynamic. Enlightening. Supreme. Delicious. A brand-new trip.

  The latest epiphany.

  The ballet was full-length, my preference ever since. I need a story to be fully immersed and satisfying, no matter how metaphorical or adolescent it might be. Swan Lake. The Sleeping Beauty. The Nutcracker. Coppélia. La Bayadère.

  I fell in love with Maureen, and with ballet soon after. We caught the end of the last great era, Baryshnikov, Kirkland, and the most extraordinary human being ever to grace a stage, Rudolf Nureyev. I’ve never felt such charisma from a stage before. He just exuded Greatness.

  Maureen’s influence wouldn’t stop with ballet. She would turn me on to Impressionist Art, too, and we would immediately fuse the two. We began writing “Impressions,” set pieces that opened on tableaus of impressionist paintings. The dancers would come to life, perform a short scene, and end up back in the positions of the painting. Like too many of my ideas, I didn’t have the machine in place to finance or sell it, which left me with no practical reason to finish it.

  What ballet and impressionism shared was that they opened me up to a bigger artistic vista. After experiencing a few amazing ballet performances, being a Rock star could never regain first place in my imaginary goals.

  I began to see myself less as a performer and more as a Producer. An Irving Thalberg of Rock, overseeing the big picture as well as the granular details, able to creatively realize something that would thrill, inspire, and enlighten audiences. My comfort zone remained on stages and in studios. It was where I started and where I could do what I knew best. But I was thinking big! Bigger! Biggest!

  It would take me thirty-five years to even get close to my new daydreams. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves.

  Popovich had temporarily saved the E Street Band, but his fix wouldn’t last forever. There was only one solution.

  I went to the Godfather.

  I told Frank that it was time to make the move. I’d seeded the garden, mentioning his name several times to Bruce, telling him Frank stories and about how well we were doing with the Jukes, so it wouldn’t be coming out of the blue.

  “Talk to Bruce,” I told Frank, “or maybe Jon Landau. He’s someone Bruce trusts. Or Peter Parcher, his lawyer. Whatever. But we need you right now.”

  “What can I expect?” Frank asked.

  “We need some gigs until this legal problem is settled,” I said. “I’m sure Bruce could use some lawyer money; we’re broke. We can’t record, so the main thing we need is your juice.”

  “What else?” said Frank, always thorough in those days.

  “Well,” I said, “I guess if you really want to provide a little extra comfort, you might want to consider grabbing Bruce’s new guy at William Morris, Barry Bell. He replaced Sam McKeith, who signed Bruce, and Bruce seems comfortable with him.”

  Half the band was ready to rebel. The Promoters thought we were damaged goods. The record company was down to a few guys who were keeping the faith. The agency couldn’t help. And even the press was moving on to the next potential big thing. We were going no-fucking-where if we stayed where we were.

  “We need you to pull the strings of the Promoters until we can get a new record done. Bruce needs your sponsorship, gabeesh? He needs a rabbi. Your endorsement will stop the bleeding. And the entire industry will have to give us a second look, including his own record company.”

  “OK,” Frank said.

  I’m not even sure Frank had seen an E Street show. I had taken him to the Stone Pony, where he’d seen Bruce jam, so he’d gotten a glimpse of his charisma. Maybe that was enough. Otherwise he was taking my word, and whoever else’s, that we were something special and going somewhere.

  I think the amount was a hundred grand. A lot now, a fucking lot then. A lifesaver. And Frank generously brought over Barry Bell, who is still with us.

  Next thing you know, we were back on the road. We saw lots of half-empty halls, but we were alive and doing what we did best. And by June ’77, we were back in the studio to make the new album, Darkness on the Edge of Town.

  And a dark experience it was.

  There’s a documentary, directed by Thom Zimny from Barry Rebo’s footage, that more or less covers it, but suffice it to say it wasn’t pretty. The intense life-and-death struggle of Born to Run, reaching for greatness, continued unabated.

  We all briefly became drug addicts on this one. Except Bruce. He was the only guy I knew who never did drugs. He had his own vice, which was mentally beating the shit out of himself.

  I had a drug dealer friend who was making runs to South America. While coke is never completely uncut because of the chemical process of making it, what he brought me was as pure as it could be. At the time, conventional medical wisdom said cocaine wasn’t addictive, but I noticed after a while that I couldn’t get out of bed without reaching for the vial. I only used for a year before quitting—almost a year to the day, in fact. Still, it helped the band get through the album. Lots of bathroom visits.

  As if Jon’s new role as Manager wasn’t complicated enough, his unique set of skills, knowledge of culture, and experience with psychoanalysis made his other new role equally invaluable as he redefined the role of the Record Producer.

  Not that he wasn’t musical. He was and is very musical. But the E Street Band largely produced themselves, and I would be taking more responsibility for the music and sound over the next few records.

  His far more important role and unique value was in helping Bruce analyze and discover the bigger picture. The themes he would be talking about and his artistic identity.

  Bruce even having artistic aspirations was already odd. Very few Rockers were thinking that way. Jackson Browne maybe, and… who else?

  Even the Beatles didn’t think about such things until they were liberated from having to reproduce their songs live, which resulted in Revolver. Then their imaginations were free to take them to wonderful new bizarre places as varied as “Eleanor Rigby” and “Tomorrow Never Knows.”

  In spite of his game-changing accomplishments, Bob Dylan didn’t seem to have any artistic pretensions at all.

  Was Bruce being influenced by the early writers like Landau and Paul Nelson and Greil Marcus, who were suddenly recognizing and celebrating this new Artform and treating it seriously as such?

  Our third generation was the first to inherit Rock as an Artform. The first two generations were working strictly off instinct and traditional definitions of showbiz success. Evolving through some organic inclination.

  And because we inherited it, we immediately took it for granted. There were very few thinking of what we do as Art back then, and that’s true to this day.

  But Bruce was. And Jon. Conversations we thought might’ve been self-indulgent turned out to be quite fruitful after all.

  Jimmy Iovine was still engineering, but from his experience with Born to Run, he knew that he’d have tons of downtime during Jon and Bruce’s endless conversations. Maybe more than before, since Jon had brought in a wonderful character named Charlie Plotkin to help with the mix. Charlie had some big hits with Orleans (fronted by John Hall) and would do a Dylan album and other things later.

  Bruce, Jon, and Cha
rlie had two things in common. They liked to take their time, and they loved to talk. This was a deadly combination for the rest of us. Jimmy, who had attention deficit disorder even worse than me, would have never made it through alive if he hadn’t stayed busy. When Bruce, Jon, and Charlie left to talk, Jimmy would tell me to get him when they came back and run down to Studio 2, where he was producing Patti Smith.

  I had met Patti once at a party. Jimmy brought her. I was eating an ice-cream cone, and she walked right up to me and knocked it out of my hand. “You shouldn’t be eating that shit,” she said. It was like talking to Anybodys from West Side Story! I would grow to like her by getting friendly with her guitar player Lenny Kaye, who was completely responsible for her being in the Rock world.

  The songs on Darkness were among Bruce’s best so far, and I was proud of my contribution, which was a significant part of the arranging of the songs, but overall the sound of the record was a disappointment to me. I’ve gotten used to it now, but at the time it sounded stifled, choked to death, and flat, as if it was recorded with close mics in a padded room. Which it was. Nothing close to how the band actually sounded. When the record was reissued in 2010, I begged Bruce to let me remix it. “Are you out of your fucking mind?” he said. “People have been listening to it this way for thirty-five years—we’re gonna change it now?!?”

  Somewhere during this period, Bruce opened a vein of creativity that had waited years to be spiked. Suddenly, it was as if every song he had heard in his entire life was channeled through him, was rearranged at a molecular level, and came spilling out in song after song. After having only a few outtakes for Born to Run, he suddenly was writing forty, fifty, sixty amazing songs per record, and just as quickly rejecting them.

  No one had ever done this before.

  You’re making an album, you write ten good songs and you put it out.

  There was no exception to that rule.