E Street Shuffle: The Glory Days of Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band

by Clinton Heylin

  Unlike Dylan and the Hawks in ’66, he simply refused to review the tapes to help understand why that night’s audience reacted the way they did. As it happens, the audience loved the show both nights. Audience tapes demonstrate them responding to every visual cue, each shift in musical style. Appel, for one, “loved the fact that the London audience got into him big-time, and the advertisements, all the shit, didn’t mean nothing.” But for Springsteen, the curse of Hammersmith would remain in his head long after he returned to the States with tapes of both nights in the hold. Even after returning to London six years later to a media hype that made 1975 look like a roast, he felt some explanation was in order:

  Bruce Springsteen: I’ve always been haunted by the two gigs we played here back in ’75…I was a heap of nerves, and because it wasn’t working, I kinda went inside myself. I saw my whole career collapsing whilst I was playing those songs. It was painful and because I felt guilty ’cause it was me, it was my name and my reputation the audience had come to check out. When I left that stage, I…just wanted to drop the whole thing, my career as a musician, because my self-confidence was shot. I felt crippled. Everything had gotten too out of control and I felt drained…I’ve got absolutely total recall of those shows because the first one was so bad I was ready to blow up fuckin’ Big Ben. I stunk that first night, and although the second show was a good show by any standards, at that time the negative aspect of the London trip—and there were a whole number—came to totally exemplify this huge psychic weight on my head. [1981]

  He only revised his view of that first show in 2005 after reviewing the tapes: “I was wrong. With the keys to the kingdom dangling in front of us and the knife at our neck, we’d gone for broke.” Though his abiding memory of the second show as good “by any standards” was spot on. Two days before the weeklies ran their reviews of the supposed first-night debacle, Springsteen delivered a very different performance, one which represented the way forward for him and his band—if not rock ’n’ roll itself.

  (Actually, only the agenda-driven NME gave a real thumbs-down to “a gutsy, energetic performer of restricted growth, who plays fair guitar; who makes the very most of his (actually limited) voice; who writes fair if wordy songs; who works tirelessly if not always effectively on stage; whose sense of drama is simultaneously incomplete and overdone; who can’t pick musicians; [and] who can’t seem to resist the hype put out in his name by Columbia.”)

  The E Street Band of yesteryear was laid to rest somewhere over Stockholm. After six days on the road, Springsteen returned to play a set stripped of its wilder, more innocent moments. Out went “E Street Shuffle” and “Kitty’s Back,” the two regular concessions to the Sancious era. In their place came a checklist of Invasion influences any semi-educated Brit could relate to: Manfred Mann’s “Sha La La” and “Pretty Flamingo,” The Searchers’ “When You Walk In The Room.” And wrapping up proceedings in style were three fifties rockers known largely to seventies rock fans from the Beatles’ and Stones’ recastings, “Twist and Shout,” “Carol” and “Little Queenie.”

  If much of the second album was sidelined, core first-album songs—“Saint In The City,” “Lost In The Flood,” “For You”—were stripped bare and, in the former two cases, reconditioned for r&b. “Lost In The Flood” was almost unrecognizable, with more twists and turns in its new arrangement than “Born To Run” and “Thundercrack” combined. Weinberg finally came into his own on these numbers, where subtlety was for squares and the boss preferred the sound of broken foot-pedals.

  In March 1977, Springsteen described that second night at Hammersmith as “one of the best shows we ever played…[and yet] when I walked out of that theater in London, I just wanted to go home…back to New Jersey.” How perverse then that he should release the first night—and only the first night—on CD in 2006 (both shows were in the vault and the first show had already been released as a DVD). But maybe such perversity was in his DNA. The Hammersmith shows weren’t the first Born To Run shows Appel had arranged to record. The Roxy radio show had also been taped by Jimmy Iovine, providing a club equivalent for many of the same footstompers (plus the Goffin-King classic, “Goin’ Back,” a delicious one-off). Appel was convinced a live record was the smart move now, an affirmation of the past three years of inexorable growth as a combo, a way of clearing the decks and replenishing much-depleted coffers:

  Mike Appel: Expenses have gone up, but success hasn’t quite caught up with you. There was this great crescendo from the press—writers are falling in love, and they build this and build this, next thing you know he’s on the cover of Time and Newsweek. But in fact the public weren’t paying yet, the promoters weren’t paying yet. They hadn’t caught up with the press. The press was the vanguard. It’s just that the money we were able to earn and command wasn’t commensurate with the amount of press [we got]…[And] we always wanted to do [a live album]. I thought a live album would be good after Born To Run. It would give him time to write the kind of material he would need if he was going to compete with Born To Run. It would also give him money, and also, “You never did one of these and you’re the greatest live act ever.” [But] I couldn’t get him to listen to one tape. He just said, “I don’t want to do it.”

  For the first time, Appel and Springsteen were reading different pages. In fact, Springsteen was convinced Appel just wanted him to reread his back pages. But Appel still insisted on rolling tape at December shows in Toronto, C. W. Post, and Philadelphia, where the band saw out the year with four sell-out shows at one of the great rock venues, the Tower Theater. He thought if he could get Bruce to sit still long enough to check out “Lost In The Flood” from Toronto, its high tide point; the life-affirming “Santa Claus Is Coming To Town” from C. W. Post; or that new arrangement of “Tenth Avenue Freeze Out” set to slow burn, those rap-infused takes of “It’s My Life” and “Pretty Flamingo,” or the final E Street-era outings of “Mountain of Love” and “Does This Bus Stop” (all from the New Year’s Eve show) then he just might reconsider, baby.

  What Appel did not realize was that he had already crossed some ill-defined line in Springsteen’s suspicious mind. He did by 1978, by which time he concluded, “I guess I looked just as guilty to him as CBS. He lumped me in with Time and Newsweek. [Because] he wanted that fame and glory, but I guess he wanted it on his own terms.” Those terms were as unrealistic and unachievable as the sound in his head, something the singer himself acknowledged when pushing his next LP real hard: “I [had] worked a year—a year of my life—on [Born To Run] and I wasn’t aggressively trying to get it out there to people. I was super aggressive in my approach toward the record and toward makin’ it happen—you know, nonrelenting. And then when it came out, I went, ‘Oh, I don’t wanna push it.’”

  Part of what preyed on his mind was an unnameable fear that Born To Run represented the summit of what he had in him. Great as the covers were at the fall 1975 shows, where were the new originals? Back in September, he had actually admitted to Knobler, “Things’ve gotten heavier lately…Just things starting to weigh in…I also haven’t written anything in two, three months.” He began to worry the two might be connected, voicing his concerns to Jay Cocks: “First you write about struggling along. Then you write about making it professionally. Then somebody’s nice to you. You write about that. It’s a beautiful day, you write about that. That’s about twenty songs in all. Then you’re out.” And though the good reviews meant nothing, the bad reviews hurt like a bitch. So what exactly was success “on his own terms?”

  Bruce Springsteen: If you see that girl walking down the street and you say, “Oh my God, life would be ecstasy if she was just my girlfriend,” you’re only thinking of the wonderful parts…Success is like that girl: If only I had that, I wouldn’t have a worry in the world. And then you get it…I was cocky enough to think I was something special—along with, of course, thinking you’re a fraud and worthless, but that’s part of the artistic experience. I had both sides. [2010]

>   Such self-awareness was reserved for the future. The person he now turned on was not the one he saw in the motel mirror. He was sitting across that desk back at the office. The person who had sold his own future to ensure Springsteen had one. In 1978, after successfully extricating himself from the unwavering Appel, Springsteen implied he was the one left spinning: “At a certain point I realized I wanted to be true to myself, and I had to be tougher than I had been. They always know how to get you—they get you while you’re dancing.” As ever, “they” were attracted by the scent of money. For now, Appel was still the first line of defense. But already the whispering campaign had begun taking steps to remove this impediment:

  Mike Appel: We had spoken loosely about [the financial situation] over the years but it was not a pressing concern because there was no money…[But] the lawyers were already involved by [Hammersmith]. There is already a problem for the last quarter of ’75. Trying to figure a way to get Bruce out of his contract, they would say [to him], “You can’t get out of your contracts just by walking out. You have to have some kind of excuse. We basically have to say that Mike [by] being your producer, your publisher, your manager…how could he be all three things, and [still] be trying to get you the best deal with Columbia?” So the attorneys are trying to do everything they can to sour my relationship with Bruce…There was a point, maybe January or February [1976], when he got together with me and he played me some songs, “Rendezvous,” some other[s]. I said, “Gee, they sound great. What are we gonna do?” And he said, “Well, I just want to get things worked out.” I was like, “Okay, well, how are we going to ‘work things out’?” He said, “I’ll get back to you.” But he himself never did get back to me.

  Things didn’t look so clear when waist-high in the black muddy river of commerce. And from now on everything Appel suggested, Landau recommended the opposite. If Appel thought they should issue a live album, Landau thought they should hang fire. If Appel suggested they start work on the next album, Landau felt it was premature. Springsteen himself just wanted to be calling the shots. So when his manager and label began to ask about the next album, he demurred. Only in 1978 would he explain his then-reasoning: “I didn’t want to do another album right away. The whole system is based on the corruption of your ideals, on the watering down of things that are real. If you start worrying about putting out a follow-up album, you get caught up in the machine of the industry.” Nuttin’ to do with writer’s block, then.

  Landau, who had not been there in London, had supposedly “called Bruce up on the road and told him that Appel’s inflexibility toward the press was making Bruce a lot of enemies he didn’t need.” There were now two constituencies, the governing party and the loyal opposition, the latter hoping for an election soon. These days, Appel thinks “Jon was so enamoured with Bruce he just couldn’t live without him, and whatever it took to get him ‘married’ to Bruce he would be willing to do.” He certainly didn’t play Mr. Impartial the day Springsteen called around to his place in LA, when he was working with Jackson Browne on another laborious production, The Pretender.

  Springsteen told him, “[Mike] wants me to sign this new contract, and he made it clear to me that if I sign these new contracts, he will give me a new deal that will be much better for me, and he will distribute this money according to the new deal. But if I don’t sign these new contracts, he is going to hold me to the letter of the old contracts.” He would subsequently claim, “I was very wary of signing [another contract] with him because of the first one that I signed, y’know, which I had taken around and found was real bad.” Yet he expected Appel to take him at his word, the word of a man who had been turned. And Appel knew by whom.

  Landau suggested he speak to Myron Mayer, the attorney he used himself. In his own deposition, Appel implied there was some grand plan behind the critic’s recommendation: “Mayer was Bruce’s, Landau’s, Dave Marsh’s, and Atlantic Records’ attorney, and he was, I guess, telling them he could get Bruce out of all the contracts, which might then free Bruce from Columbia also, since he was really only signed to Laurel Canyon and not directly to the label. Once free, Bruce could sign for a bundle to Atlantic Records and wholly own all the new songs.” It was a strategy that had almost netted Dylan for Atlantic back in 1972. But Appel’s hard-nosed reputation was well deserved, and once he realized that the trust, and therefore the thrill, was gone, there was only ever going to be one way out of this bloody stalemate:

  Mike Appel: I hear from his attorneys through my accountant. My [management] contract is 20% of the gross. He says to me, “Well, I want to give you 10% of the net instead of 20% of the gross. And all the songs that I’d published revert back to Bruce Springsteen. And he didn’t want me to produce at all.” So I’m saying to myself, “This guy is definitely not a nice guy.” I was like, “I have these contracts [already] in place, and you’re offering me this!” Part of you feels, “[How can] Bruce [be] part of these deliberations?” I was miffed. I went back to my father. I said, “Hey, Dad, here’s what they’re offering me.” He said, “How can you trust these guys?” I was very, very upset. Bruce came in one day and we talked in the office, and I said, “I can’t trust your attorneys. And I don’t know how much influence they have over you. It’s like, we’re not the same. It’s not the same team. There’s been this divisive force here. And, frankly I don’t know what to believe anymore….” You say to yourself, “I’ve been at this for three and a half years and I finally get it to this point—and this is what you guys are offering??!!”…Jules Kurz was our attorney…He put me in touch with Leonard Marks. So I went up there. Leonard Marks had said to Jules, “Have Mike bring the contracts with him.” And he [reads them] and said, “Okay, it’s a divorce. You’re never going back.” It was like a knife in my heart: “You mean this is it?”…Bruce couldn’t stand up to the pressures that were around him at the time. And he gave in. I can understand that. Here he was, coming from nowhere, now he’s top of the pops. Not wanting to risk it all. [But] I don’t know why Bruce let them build their case on something he knew was not the case. He didn’t intercede. He let it go down. When they go through everything, they realize it’s like twenty thousand bucks—it’s shoeshine money.

  Mayer was ill-equipped for such hand-to-hand combat. He was an entertainment lawyer who expected Appel to roll over because he assumed that, like every manager, he would be found to have been dipping his hand in the till. In the end, a thorough examination by a forensic accountant found that he owed Springsteen a few thousand bucks—chicken-feed—and the worst he could say about the Laurel Canyon set-up was that it was “a very unprofessional way of doing things.”

  Appel had another edge. He had previously got CBS to advance them (i.e. him) a quarter of a million dollars against future royalties, to keep the whole thing afloat for as long as it took Springsteen to realize that a live album was the way to go, the occasional arena show was not a betrayal, and the bills would keep coming until he decided it was time to record again. In deposition, Springsteen described their conversation about said advance thus: “I said, ‘Michael, how much of that [$250,000] is mine and how much of that is yours? How much do you think I should get?’ He said, ‘Man, you should get at least seventy-five percent.’ And I said, ‘How much, man, am I going to get?’ And he said that depended.”

  With Springsteen the one holding the gun, it was Appel at the sharp end. He did not blink. As he said in his deposition: “He couldn’t [seriously] expect on one hand to throw me out the door, and on the other for me to give him a quarter of a million dollars in advance money from Columbia, recoupable against any and all future royalties, of which, by all right, I had a significant share.” But, of course, he did. Because the one thing the boy from Freehold was not, was reasonable.

  Integrity, a word Springsteen bandied around a lot at this time, did not include honoring contracts, or recognizing the key role another had played in his success. Without Appel there would never have been any pot of gold, just summer nights on the
shore as an oldies act, like his friend Southside Johnny. But every time the manager offered a compromise solution, he was sent away with a flea in his ear: “I told Mayer that I was still willing to give Bruce half the publishing back, retroactive from the first album, but Mayer…said in response, ‘We want Bruce to have all of his publishing.’”

  Mayer, negotiating from a position of profound weakness, overplayed his hand at every turn, contesting a contract that made it impossible for Springsteen to record for CBS without Appel’s say-so, or to nominate a producer without his approval. And it was all there in black and white, if Springsteen had taken the time to read legally-binding documents to which he put his name. But for the bull-headed Bruce it was all a matter of “integrity,” and he expected Appel to take him at his word when he told him that he would see him right.

  Meanwhile, he trusted Landau to explain legal matters to him. But if Landau gave Springsteen the impression he understood these contractual nuances, he was blowing smoke. As Marc Elliot noted, after thoroughly examining all the legal paperwork from the suit, “Landau was obviously telling the truth when he said he didn’t know what the contracts really meant. The 50% Landau found so unfair was actually an incentive offer by Appel to reduce his 100% of the publishing to a 50–50 split, which would in effect have given Springsteen 75% to Appel’s 25% on all mechanical income, another 50% split of the publisher’s share of all performance income, retroactive to 1972 (in spite of the fact that the publishing contract had an automatic extension clause); [and] half the stock of Laurel Canyon, the production company and the management company.”