43 Years Ago - Darkness on the Edge of Town

[Mileslong 4809]

So many memories, parking on some streets out in the boonies which would later be warehouses. We called them backstreets, get some beer from a beer store across the tracks where they didn’t check ID’s. Open the trunk and blast this album singing every word

 

[Post Oak 20559]

Darkness on the edge of town is probably one of my top5 Springsteen songs.

Like with many other songs he paints a picture with his words and I can see it and I can feel it.

Gonna be a Boss day today.

[GhostOfTomJoad 9508]

Brilliant fucking album. Few better to have coming through your speakers on a long drive at night through the middle of nowhere.

[smwhorn 485]

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-album-reviews/darkness-on-the-edge-of-town-197342/

Dave Marsh review in RS.  

 

[GhostOfTomJoad 9508]

The Promise is really an excellent documentary of the making of the album. Bruce was beyond broke, owed his record company close to a million bucks, had been out of the public eye for almost 3 years, and still feeling the backlash of being a product of media hype after his breakthrough album, Born to Run. 

He changed his sound, his writing style, his production...and basically started over from scratch. In 3 years the heroes from Thunder Road have gone from screaming off with "it's a town full of losers and we're pulling outta here to win" while celebrating the freedom & promise of heading off down that open road, to declaring "she sits on the porch of her daddy's house but all her pretty dreams've been torn/He stares off alone into the night with the eyes of one who hates for just being born." I think this is the album where Bruce's depression and mental health issues first really began to be captured on vinyl.

To top it off, he records and gives away two surefire hits, Fire and a half-finished Because the Night. A guy pushing 30 that still needed a roommate to make rent didn't want to include any hits on the album that might take away from the deeper message he was trying to convey, even though he didn't truly know how to articulate it. It was 3 years and another album and tour before he had enough money to buy a brand new car for the first time in his life.