The Wild, the Innocent, & the E Street Shuffle |
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Released: September 11, 1973 Peak: 59 US, 33 UK, -- CN, 60 AU Click for codes to charts. Sales (in millions): 3.0 US, -- UK, 3.5 world (includes US + UK), 4.33 EAS Genre: classic rock |
Tracks:Click on a song titled for more details.
Total Running Time: 46:43 Other Songs from This Era:
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Rating: 4.278 out of 5.00 (average of 29 ratings)
Awards:(Click on award to learn more).
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About the Album“Bruce Springsteen expanded the folk-rock approach of his debut album, Greetings from Asbury Park, NJ, to strains of jazz, among other styles, on its ambitious follow-up, released only eight months later. His chief musical lieutenant was keyboard player David Sancious, who lived on the E Street that gave the album and Springsteen's backup group its name. With his help, Springsteen created a street-life mosaic of suburban society that owed much in its outlook to Van Morrison's romanticization of Belfast in Astral Weeks. Though Springsteen expressed endless affection and much nostalgia, his message was clear: this was a goodbye-to-all-that from a man who was moving on. The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle represented an astonishing advance even from the remarkable promise of Greetings; the unbanded three-song second side in particular was a flawless piece of music. Musically and lyrically, Springsteen had brought an unruly muse under control and used it to make a mature statement that synthesized popular musical styles into complicated, well-executed arrangements and absorbing suites; it evoked a world precisely even as that world seemed to disappear. Following the personnel changes in the E Street Band in 1974, there is a conventional wisdom that this album is marred by production lapses and performance problems, specifically the drumming of Vini Lopez. None of that is true. Lopez's busy Keith Moon style is appropriate to the arrangements in a way his replacement, Max Weinberg, never could have been. The production is fine. And the album's songs contain the best realization of Springsteen's poetic vision, which soon enough would be tarnished by disillusionment. He would later make different albums, but he never made a better one. The truth is, The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle is one of the greatest albums in the history of rock & roll.” AMThe SongsHere’s a breakdown of each of the individual songs. |
The E Street ShuffleBruce Springsteen |
Writer(s): Bruce Springsteen Recorded: May to September 1973 at 914 Sound Recording Studios in Blauvelt, NY Released: The Wild, the Innocent, & the E Street Shuffle (1973) About the Song:This was the first time on record when Bruce was accompanied by the full E Street Band. MG-48 His “idea was to begin with a kind of brass-band sound” MG-48 and the band were definitely “ready to launch into a frenetic R&B peppered with funk, heavily inspired” MG-48 by Major Lance’s 1963 R&B song “The Monkey Time.” Drummer Vini Lopez and bassist Garry Tallent “on the rhythm section are a real groove machine” MG-49 and Springsteen proves “he is not only a talented singer, but also a top-notch rhythm guitarist.” MG-49The song is about Bruce’s teenage years on the New Jersey music scene. Some of the characters were real people Bruce encountered in Asbury Park. It “is an incredible opening tack and it is hard to see why it was not better received at the time.” MG-49 |
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4th of July, Asbury Park (Sandy)Bruce Springsteen |
Writer(s): Bruce Springsteen Recorded: 8/9/1973 and 9/23/1973 at 914 Sound Recording Studios in Blauvelt, NY Released: single (1974), The Wild, the Innocent, & the E Street Shuffle (1973), Live 1975/1985 (live box set, 1986), The Essential (2003), The Essential (2015), Chapter and Verse (2016), Best of (2024) Peak: 9 CL, 7 DF Click for codes to charts. Sales (in millions): -- Airplay/Streaming (in millions): -- radio, 2.08 video, 13.28 streaming Covered by: The Hollies (1975, #85 BB, 86 CB, 45 CL, 27 DF), Air Supply (1985) |
Awards:(Click on award to learn more).
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About the Song:“This beautiful ballad” MG-50 is “imbued with a melancholic atmosphere and dotted with imagery that powerfully evokes a small, old-fashioned seaside resort on the East Coast.” MG-50 “The narrator is whispering sweet nothings to his girlfriend as fireworks light up the ocean.” MG-50 Bruce said, “Sandy was a composite of some of the girls I’d known along the shore. I used the boardwalk and the closing down of the town as a metaphor for the end of a summer romance and the changes I was experiencing in my own life.” MG-50
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Kitty’s BackBruce Springsteen |
Writer(s): Bruce Springsteen Recorded: 6/28/1973, 7/24/1973, 9/23/1973 at 914 Sound Recording Studios in Blauvelt, NY Released: The Wild, the Innocent, & the E Street Shuffle (1973) Peak: 18 CL, 31 DF Click for codes to charts. About the Song:This is “a romantic and poignant vision” MG-52 about New York, “told through the story of a young woman who has abandoned everything, boyfriend included, to join the bohemian community in Greenwich Village and live love’s dream with a seductive young dude from Bleecker Street. Jack Knife, the abandoned lover, expresses his immense sadness at seeing his sweetheart go ‘running nightly, lightly through the jungle.’” MG-52The song “is very different musically from everything Springsteen had recorded up until then, although it does have echoes of the jazzy rock that he had played now and again with a few of his early bands.” MG-52 “The verses alternate between jazzy, soul, and blues-rock groove influences. Instrumentals feature heavily in this piece.” MG-52 |
Wild Billy’s Circus StoryBruce Springsteen |
Writer(s): Bruce Springsteen Recorded: 6/25/1973, 6/26/1973, 6/28/1973 at 914 Sound Recording Studios in Blauvelt, NY Released: The Wild, the Innocent, & the E Street Shuffle (1973) About the Song:This is “another striking glimpse into Bruce Springsteen’s childhood on the Jersey Shore.” MG-53 He said, “It is a black comedy based on my memories of the fairs and the Clyde Beatty-Cole Bros Circus that visited Freehold every summer when I was a kid.” MG-53 The song is populated with fascinating characters such as “a fire-eater, a sword-swallower, pudgy Missy Bimbo, a man-beast in his cage, Samson the strongman, and Tiny Tim, the midget.” MG-53 “The song also centers around the themes of seduction and the isolation that people experience when they live on the margins of society.” MG-53 |
Incident on 57th StreetBruce Springsteen |
Writer(s): Bruce Springsteen Recorded: 9/23/1973 at 914 Sound Recording Studios in Blauvelt, NY Released: The Wild, the Innocent, & the E Street Shuffle (1973), live version: January 1987 as B-side of “Fire” About the Song:“Incident on 57th Street” “is almost unanimously considered one of the first masterpieces by the New Jersey songwriter.” MG-54 It “is a rereading of Romeo and Juliet,” MG-54 more specifically the 1961 musical adaptation West Side Story with two Latin-American protagonists and a Puerto Rican love interest. However, Springsteen said in 1975 that he’d never seen the movie. MG-54The song “broaches the theme of the search for redemption. Springsteen was raised a Catholic, and this is a theme that he would come back to throughout his career.” MG-54 |
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Writer(s): Bruce Springsteen Recorded: 9/23/1973 at 914 Sound Recording Studios in Blauvelt, NY Released: single (1979), The Wild, the Innocent, & the E Street Shuffle (1973), Live 1975/1985 (live box set, 1986), The Essential (2003), Greatest Hits (2009), The Collection (2012), The Essential (2015), Best of (2024) Peak: 4 CL, 1 DF Click for codes to charts. Sales (in millions): 0.5 US Airplay/Streaming (in millions): -- radio, 5.7 video, 36.47 streaming |
Awards:(Click on award to learn more).
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About the Song:Bruce Springsteen released his sophomore album, The Wild, the Innocent, & the E Street Shuffle , just weeks before his 24th birthday. His first album, Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J., had come out just eight months earlier. Nothing from that album hit the charts, although “Blinded by the Light” became a #1 song for Manfred Mann’s Earth Band in 1976.E Street Shuffle didn’t do any better than its predecessor, selling so poorly that Columbia Records planned to drop him if his next album (which ended up being the blockbuster Born to Run) didn’t sell. Over time, “Rosalita (Come Out Tonight)” which became a classic rock staple and concert favorite, used as the last song before the encore for most of his shows from 1974 to 1984. SF The song spins the tale of a singer who is love with the titular character but her parents disapprove. Songfacts.com called it “Springsteen’s musical autobiography” SF because the protagonist shuts down his naysayers when he signs a record deal. Rolling Stone’s Ken Emerson lauded it as “a raucous celebration of desire.” WK It may have been a bit more. Springsteen claimed that when he was 17 he had to see his love interest on the sly because her mom had a court order against him. SF He has called it the best love song he ever wrote. SF George P. Pelecanos of Uncut magazine called it “one of the great rock ‘n’ roll performances, and as close to a perfect song as anyone’s ever recorded.” WK Chris-T-T went so far as to say, “Never mind the Beatles or the Rolling Stones, this is the best rock ‘n’ roll track of all time.” WK |
New York City SerenadeBruce Springsteen |
Writer(s): Bruce Springsteen Recorded: 8/7/1973 at 914 Sound Recording Studios in Blauvelt, NY Released: The Wild, the Innocent, & the E Street Shuffle (1973) Peak: 17 CL Click for codes to charts. About the Song:In “New York Serenade” Springsteen “shines the spotlight on two East Coast antiheroes: Billy, a minor gangster…and his girlfriend Diamond Jackie, a prostitute.” MG-58 It is about “how these characters from outside New York…view the city. For them, it is a kind of fantasy-filled romance getaway, a frenetic city with music blaring in the streets, creating a typically jazzy atmosphere.” MG-58The song “is a magnificent fresco, dreamed up by an extraordinary talented 24-year-old…happy to admit…the inspiration of Van Morrison.” MG-59 |
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Last updated 8/3/2025. |
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