Baby we were born at last — Springsteen to release a trove of 70 ‘unheard’ tracks
More than 70 never-before-heard songs are set for release, revealing a hidden chapter in the rock legend’s career.
For decades Bruce Springsteen has played a secret treasure trove of unreleased songs just for himself and close friends. Now they are to be shared with the world: more than 70 “never before heard” tunes are set for official release this year.
Springsteen, 75, said yesterday (Thursday) that Tracks II: The Lost Albums were seven full records he had created between 1983 and 2018 but for various reasons had never released.
The unreleased songs were described this week as being the result of Springsteen exploring “new forms, new genres, new sonic modalities”.
The American singer-songwriter, with one of the most gilded careers in rock history, said that over a period of time he had “built up a small collection of full albums”, many getting to the point of being mixed.
He said they had not been released because “for one reason or another, something I felt was missing or they didn’t feel complete at the time”.
Springsteen said that over the years he had “played this music to myself and often close friends”.
During the pandemic Springsteen said he had decided to “finish everything that I had in my vault” and began preparations for what is now destined to be one of the music events of the year.
He suggested that public knowledge of his unreleased back catalogue would dispel notions about purportedly less productive periods in his career. “I often read about myself in the Nineties as having a lost period and really I was working the whole time,” he said.
Tracks II: The Lost Albums, which is due to be released by Sony Music on June 27, includes 82 unreleased tracks - 74 of which have never been heard in public - that were created between 1983 and 2018.
Springsteen’s superstar status through a career beginning in the early 1970s and through albums including Born to Run and Born in the USA was confirmed four years ago with the sale to Sony of his master recordings and publishing rights for a reported £376 million. It is assumed the unreleased albums form part of the deal.
The sale trumped similar deals for rights to the works of Bob Dylan and David Bowie, with Springsteen’s music already generating more than £10 million a year.
The unreleased music is due to be released in a nine LP or seven CD box set along with digital formats. A smaller companion set, Lost and Found: Selections from The Lost Albums. will feature 20 of the new tracks.
One of the new albums, LA Garage Sessions ‘83 has 18 songs from the time when Springsteen was creating Born in the USA, the 24th bestselling album in musical history. Some of these tracks have been heard on bootlegs. His 1990s sessions when he recorded his Oscar-winning song Streets of Philadelphia, which was used in the 1993 Jonathan Demme film, Philadelphia starring Tom Hanks, are also included.
The Streets of Philadelphia Sessions is expected to reveal a “hip-hop edge” to Springsteen’s music after his use of synthesisers and a drum machine to record his Oscar-winning song.
In his memoirs Springsteen suggested the lyrics on the unreleased songs were not complete, writing: “I had to come to terms with the fact that after my year of work, writing, recording, mixing it was going on the shelf. That’s where she sits.”
Other new albums include Faithless, from an uncompleted film project, Somewhere North of Nashville, which has a country feel, and Twilight Hours.
Springsteen said another release, Perfect World, had not initially been conceived as an album, telling The New York Times it was “something I put together”.
The Times
