Bruce Springsteen Reveals 'Tracks III' Is Already Finished
(PR) Bruce Springsteen recently appeared on SiriusXM's E Street Radio for an in-depth conversation with Jim Rotolo to celebrate the release of Tracks II: The Lost Albums.
During the conversation, Bruce and Jim discussed all seven records featured in his new project. Bruce revealed that Tracks III is finished and ready to go and shared that "High Sierra" is one of his favorite songs on the new project. He also insisted that Streets of Philadelphia is not a hip-hop record.
The full special is available here and some excerpts are below: Siriusxm's E Street Radio Is Available To Subscribers In Their Cars On Channel 20 And Anytime On The Siriusxm App.
Bruce Springsteen discusses Tracks II: The Lost Albums & says Tracks III is done
Jim Rotolo: Is there any of the songs there maybe on Perfect World or maybe one of the other albums that you would've loved to have done with the E Street Band?
Bruce Springsteen: You know, I mean, any of them I could have done with the band at the time, but at the time I was recording pretty much on my own, you know, and those songs were songs I was considering for an E Street Band album, the songs I wrote with Joe, which is why they sound like they do, but that album never happened.
Jim Rotolo: Okay. Alright. Max had said recently that he talked about the box set and he said that you had brought him in to play drums, to go over some of the drum machines or replace it with him.
Bruce Springsteen: Absolutely, yeah.
Jim Rotolo: Which he paid compliment to some of the other great drummers you had brought in and recorded, and I know that the other band members have been brought in as well. Roy, I think more so than maybe any other of the band members. I know Steve's featured in one vocally. You even have Tom Morello on one of the songs on Perfect World.
Bruce Springsteen: Yeah. Yeah. He plays on "Another Thin Line."
Jim Rotolo: Well, Bruce, this is amazing. The fans are going to love all this. Seven albums, 80 plus songs. I think the last question I have for you, is there anything left in the vault now?
Bruce Springsteen: Oh, yeah. There's a Tracks III that's finished and you know, so that basically clears out the vault with very few exceptions, you know, but while I was doing this group of albums, I put this as Tracks II because all these were complete albums. Tracks III is a little bit more like the original tracks in that it's a collection of things going all the way back to greetings and all the way up to, you know, not that long ago, so that's pretty, that's mixed and ready to go at some point, you know, so hopefully in the not too distant future, there will be a Tracks III.
Jim Rotolo: Wow. You just blew the whole entire E Street Nation's mind away with that.
Bruce Springsteen: That's great.
Bruce Springsteen on Streets of Philadelphia Sessions
Jim Rotolo: Moving forward into the Streets of Philadelphia sessions, you record that song for, that was for the film.
Bruce Springsteen: Yeah, of course. Yeah.
Jim Rotolo: And so, at that point, you're in Los Angeles and you're, according to the essays, you're listening to some West Coast hip-hop at the time, and you sort of were inspired by the beats?
Bruce Springsteen: That's been a little over exaggerated. Basically, I was listening to some hip-hop, and so I used the drum loop on Streets of Philadelphia, which I then had, I think Gary Mallaber, come in and replicate, you know, but Jonathan Demme used the demo when I sent him the actual recording. He had gotten attached to the demo, and if you see the movie, you're hearing the demo of Streets of Philadelphia, not the actual record, finished record, but after that, I said, "Gee, I like the idea of recording to a loop," and so basically, we went out, we collected a variety of CDs that had a whole library of drum loops and I went through them and I would choose a particular one for that. "I can write to that. I can write to that. I can write to that," and then created some of my own with an actual drummer, you know, so that's kind of how that record, it's been described over the years as a hip-hop record, which it is not really. Basically, it's a drum loop, synthesizer record that ends up being very sort of trance like and dreamy for a lot of the songs, you know.
Jim Rotolo: Right, so was that different for you as far as writing songs, listening to loops? I know you've written many of your songs on piano or on guitar, but now you're writing based on what you're hearing as far as the beat loops?
Bruce Springsteen: Yeah. You know, and I'm sitting down at a synthesizer, and I probably have maybe the loop playing or maybe not and I'm writing like that, you know, I'm basically writing on the synthesizer for that record.
Jim Rotolo: Okay, and it was a completed album. I believe it was even scheduled to be released in sometime of spring?
Bruce Springsteen: I don't know if it was scheduled to be released, but we certainly went all the way to finishing it with the idea of releasing it and at the last moment, I changed my mind.
Jim Rotolo: You just didn't think it was the right time for you?
Bruce Springsteen: It was the fourth record that I would've made about sort of relationships, I thought, and that was a very dark record also and when I got there, I wasn't sure the timing was right. I'm very conscious about the conversation, the creative conversation that I'm having with my audience, and I just wasn't sure if that was what I wanted to follow the previous records with, and so I put it aside for the moment.
Jim Rotolo: Yeah. I've heard it. I love it. It's wonderful. It's such a different place for when you think of your music, but you know, again. The characters that are in those songs, you know, that heartbreak and that longing for love is there again as it is with some of the other albums that you've written as well.
Bruce Springsteen on Tracks II: The Lost Albums
Jim Rotolo: And then we get to what you had said earlier Perfect World, which is a collection of songs that sort of didn't have a home that you created one for.
Bruce Springsteen: Right. Yeah, that's the one where, the three songs I wrote with Joe Grushecky and where Joe would send me some lyrics and I'd write music to them, and then there was a series of other songs I had. One is an outtake from Wrecking Ball, "If I Could Only Be Your Lover."
Jim Rotolo: That almost made it to the album, you said?
Bruce Springsteen: Yeah. That was very close to getting on Wrecking Ball, but we had a bunch of, bunch of other songs and I really liked that song. It's one of my favorites, and so I had those songs around that seemed to fall into the shape of an album and in the box set, I wanted to give folks some rock music, and so that's where that came from.
Jim Rotolo: Right, and that's where "Rain in the River" finally lands, which makes sense when you listen to the sequencing of that album. Did you ever think, recording any of these songs, was there any particular song that stands out that just kind of floored you? Going back and listening to it and saying to yourself, "Wow, I can't believe I recorded that."
Bruce Springsteen: Yeah. I like "High Sierra" a lot. You know, that's one of my favorites just because it's influenced by "Out of the Past," which is one of my favorite movies and it continues the theme that I write about often, which is somebody haunted by their past and that past catching up to them, so that's one of my favorites out of the box set.
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