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Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J.

The debut: a cheap studio, a rejected first delivery, and two songs written in a hurry to answer the label.
Bruce Springsteen, 1973

Released
5 January 1973
Recorded
7 June to 26 October 1972
Studio
914 Sound Studios, Blauvelt, New York
Label
Columbia
Producer
Mike Appel, Jim Cretecos

Springsteen and his manager Mike Appel recorded the album at the low-priced 914 Sound Studios to save as much of the Columbia advance as possible, and cut most of the songs in the last week of June 1972. Appel and John Hammond preferred the solo tracks and Springsteen the band songs, so the album was split into five of each. Columbia president Clive Davis heard the delivery in August 1972, felt it lacked a hit single and turned it down.

Springsteen quickly wrote Blinded by the Light and Spirit in the Night and recorded both on 11 September 1972 with a four-man band: Vini Lopez on drums, Harold Wheeler on piano, Clarence Clemons on saxophone, and himself on guitar and bass. Columbia accepted the revised album, released on 5 January 1973. Both singles failed to chart. Lester Bangs hailed him in Rolling Stone as a daring new artist, and the record first reached the British chart in June 1985, when the Born in the U.S.A. tour arrived there.

Track listing

  1. Blinded by the Light5:02
  2. Growin' Up3:05
  3. Mary Queen of Arkansas5:20
  4. Does This Bus Stop at 82nd Street?2:05
  5. Lost in the Flood5:14
  6. The Angel3:23
  7. For You4:39
  8. Spirit in the Night4:58
  9. It's Hard to Be a Saint in the City3:13

Personnel

More from Bruce Springsteen

The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle (1973), Born to Run (1975), Darkness on the Edge of Town (1978), The River (1980), Nebraska (1982), Born in the U.S.A. (1984), Tunnel of Love (1987), The Ghost of Tom Joad (1995), The Rising (2002)

Sources

  1. Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J., Wikipedia
  2. Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J., Discogs