A celebration for “Bruceologists” - Springsteen’s seven “lost albums”

The Czech and American flags flanked the stage at Prague-Letňany Airport on Sunday. Bruce Springsteen was in Prague – his only concert in Eastern Europe. It was a cloudy evening, 22 degrees Celsius – and during the seventh song, rain began to fall – it was "Rainmaker."

In the title character of the charlatan, it is easy to recognize Donald Trump, the narcissistic America-re-great-man who became president because of the fears of many US residents about the future, and whom Springsteen is working on during his European tour.

"It's really bad," Springsteen sings, as people follow the rainmaker as he shoots into the clouds - even when he says "white is black, and black is white / Night is day and day is night." When the song ends, it pours with rain, as if at least Springsteen has mastered weather magic and can tear open clouds: rain on Trump's parade.

Something has changed with Bruce Springsteen: Between the announcement of his box set “Tracks II: The Lost Albums” in early April and its release next Friday, the 75-year-old songwriter has gone from being perhaps the most important musical narrator of America with his concerts to a kind of cultural champion for the endangered US democracy.

When the Boss entourage enters the home stretch at San Sebastián Stadium on Saturday (the tour concludes on July 3 in Milan), Springsteen's fans are in for the greatest musical haul of all time: 83 songs, 74 of which have never been heard before – on seven CDs or nine vinyl records. Since the last E Street Band album, "Letter to You," was released in the fall of 2020, there have only been "Only The Strong Survive" (2022), a collection of soul oldies, and a - essentially superfluous - "Best of" (2024). June 27th will be a celebration for "Bruceologists," as the New York Times calls the archaeologists among Boss fans.

These are seven albums that were "lost" to Springsteen between 1983 and 2018. "Lost" means they were almost finished, but then abandoned in favor of other projects that seemed more urgent to the artist. "Some of them were even close to being mixed," explains Springsteen.

This refutes rumors of lethargic, empty career phases. He was actually always working, says the songwriter, whose star rose in early 1973 with "Greetings from Asbury Park, NJ" (and some PR via a new Bob Dylan) and who then became the new star of rock 'n' roll with "Born to Run" in 1975.

Bruceologists are also pleased with the few officially known tracks—that the versions included here of the poppier "Janey Don't You Lose Heart" and the essentially Little Richard Wilde-esque "Stand on It" both have a country heart. That "My Hometown" features a home organ this time, and that "Johnny Bye-Bye," the flip side of the hit "I'm on Fire" about the untimely death of Elvis Presley, is significantly longer—with a fair amount more folk in it.

The oldest recordings, the 18 lo-fi pieces of the "LA Garage Sessions 83," are close to the sparse folk dramas of the solo album "Nebraska" (1982), recorded in just one day and considered by many to be Springsteen's narrative masterpiece. They were actually the material for a "Nebraska II" that never came to be.

In these pieces, Springsteen once again walks in the shoes of Nobel Prize winner John Steinbeck. Here, too, are tales of lost Johnnys and Jimmys, of guilt, shame, and loneliness, of tortured souls like those in "Fugitive Dream" and "Unsatisfied Heart"—both about a family man whose dark past catches up with him and who, fearful of losing everything, almost commits murder.

The protagonist of the folk novella “Richfield Whistle” is a rehabilitated convict who almost loses his little happiness because he is attracted to the America of money.

And in "The Klansman," the first-person narrator recalls learning about the Ku Klux Klan. His father had instilled the ten-year-old with the poison of misanthropy: "When the war between the races / wraps us in a fiery dream, / it will be a Klansman / who cleanses the land. / That, son, is my dream!"

Did the protagonist accept the Klan as a "friend," as his father suggested, did he refuse, did he leave, did the lyrics begin a confession? Springsteen doesn't reveal everything about his heroes; the listener's imagination is welcome to fill them. That's what good short stories are like.

From a contemporary perspective, when Trump has ICE (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) hunting down and deporting illegal immigrants from Latin America, "Inyo" is arguably the most political album among the "Lost Seven." It was created in the 1990s, immediately after Springsteen's second solo album, "The Ghost of Tom Joad" (1995), and draws on the songwriter's perspective on the dramatic border and history: the Mexican Revolution against the Díaz dictatorship in the early 20th century.

Songs like “The Lost Charro” and “Ciudad Juarez” are characterized by the sweetness and sadness of mariachi music, a folksy, sweet Mexican sound, carried by guitars and spiced with strings and brass.

The combatant "Adelita" fires her rifle over her fallen comrades, "until the gunpowder turns her hand black," and until she falls in the fight to liberate her homeland. "Adelita, my love, my wife, my comrade, my life," Springsteen's protagonist sings tenderly to a waltzing rhythm, and the memory of the warmth of her body and the knowledge of her photo in his breast pocket keeps him riding for Pancho Villa.

The song tells how freedom is won, what it means, that it is always at stake, everywhere. Springsteen demonstrates, instills in our ears, that beyond the Rio Grande live people who deserve compassion, empathy, and respect, not malice, hatred, and violence. In these songs, there is an equal footing; there is no looking down on the American caricatures of Mexico from "Speedy Gonzales" cartoons, stealing the day under giant sombreros until the siesta turns into a fiesta.

The country album "Somewhere West of Nashville," which remained in the trunk, was created concurrently with "Tom Joad" (1995). "Faithless" is the soundtrack to a "spiritual Western" that was never filmed – eleven tracks that were created after his last solo album, "Devils and Dust" (2005). "Perfect World" is a collection of E Street Band songs. The complete "Streets of Philadelphia" sessions (1993) showcase Springsteen's delicate approach to hip-hop and synth rhythms. He won an Oscar for the core song in 1994.

If you consider these sludgy beats to be the most unusual Boss sound of all time, listen to the 2019 album "Twilight Hours." Gentle breezes of summer evening jazz waft through, tender and melancholic love songs of quiet cafes, September kisses, and romantic twilight hours. "I love Burt Bacharach and those kinds of songs and songwriters," Springsteen confessed on the music website "Stereogum." "I never had a Sunday love," sighs the lonely man in "Sunday Love," which has a good chance of one day being counted among the ten best Springsteen songs of all time.

"Come on now, follow this dream / wherever it takes you," Springsteen sings for all restless hearts, including his own. "Tracks II" begins with this piece, titled "Follow That Dream." The box set ends with the love song "Perfect World" from the "lost" E Street Band album of the same name. "The passing days absolve us of all sin," Springsteen sings. And: "In the cool of the evening, the losing team wins." That sounds almost political again... prophetic.

Since Springsteen began his "Land of Hope and Dreams" tour in mid-May, the situation has escalated. Democratic Party politicians have been assassinated, and "No Kings" demonstrations have taken place in hundreds of cities against Trump. After Springsteen's diatribe, Trump threatened him to just come home first, and then we'll see what happens to him.

Whatever happens then, however this opposition will escalate, and whether Springsteen's vision of the "land of hope and dreams" will triumph over Trump's brutal America of anger, axes and division: in history and the (non-propaganda-based) history books, the fighters for freedom and its defenders have always been portrayed in a positive light.

Six more sleeps, and then Bruceologists can get their hands on the "lost albums." They probably won't be the last Springsteen treasures. For example, "Electric Nebraska," the E Street Band version of the solo album "Nebraska," is still missing. And as we now know, nothing is lost.

Bruce Springsteen - “Tracks II: The Lost Albums” (Legacy Records) Seven CDs or nine vinyl albums;

Bruce Springsteen; “Lost And Found: Selections from The Lost Albums” (Legacy Records) a CD/double vinyl with 20 songs from “Tracks II”

Bruce Springsteen & The E-Street Band live: June 27, Gelsenkirchen – Veltins Arena; June 30 and July 3, Milan – San Siro Stadium.