Bruce Springsteen revealed he was not fully happy with his blockbuster 1984 album Born in the U.S.A., claiming it wasn’t the record he’d planned on making.
The Boss reflected on the 30-million-selling album in a new interview with Rolling Stone to promote his upcoming Tracks II: The Lost Albums box set, which comes out Friday.
In the box set liner notes, Springsteen says he “wasn’t happy” with Born in the U.S.A. and felt it didn’t “connect” in the same way as his previous work.
Bruce Springsteen Says ‘Born in the U.S.A.’ Wasn’t the Album He Was ‘Interested in Making’
“It was a record I put out. It became the record I made, not necessarily the record that I was interested in making,” Springsteen said when asked about those claims. “I was interested in taking Nebraska and making a full record that had somewhat that same feeling. If you hear ‘My Hometown’ and you hear ‘Born in the U.S.A.,’ they were sort of the bookends I intended. And the rest of the stuff was … just what I had at the time. Those were the songs I wrote. Those were the songs I recorded.”
He continued: “From conception to execution, it was not necessarily the record that in my mind I had planned on, but that’s the way creativity works. You go in the studio, you have an idea. It’s not necessarily what you come out with. So that was just the situation of that record for me personally.”
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When writer Andy Greene suggested that Born in the U.S.A. sounds like a “cohesive” set of “dispatches from various people left behind by Reagan’s America,” Springsteen responded: “I guess, it was to a lot of other people too. I suppose maybe I was looking for something darker. But outside of that, the themes of Nebraska are in there — in ‘Downbound Train,’ they’re in there, they’re disguised somewhat into pop music.”
‘Tracks II’ Offers Insight Into Bruce Springsteen’s Pivotal Career Moment
Tracks II contains L.A. Garage Sessions, an entire album Springsteen recorded between the sparse, lo-fi Nebraska and the bombastic, stadium-ready Born in the U.S.A., providing some insight into his creative headspace during a pivotal moment in his career.
“I enjoyed the recording and the experience of Nebraska, and thought I might continue in that vein with a small rhythm section, still very lo-fi, and a new group of songs,” Springsteen told Rolling Stone. “At the time I wasn’t sure where I was going with Born in the U.S.A. I had half the record, but I didn’t have the other half. And so it was just a record that happened in between those two records.”
The tireless rocker has already finished Tracks III, another five-album set of previously unreleased music, though he doesn’t have a release date in mind yet. Springsteen will also get the big-screen treatment with Deliver Me From Nowhere, a biopic about the making of Nebraska. The film stars Jeremy Allen White as the Boss and is scheduled for an Oct. 24 release.
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From scrappy Dylan disciple to one of the leading singer-songwriters of his generation, the Boss’ catalog includes both big and small statements of purpose.
Gallery Credit: Michael Gallucci
