BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN & THE E STREET BAND : WINTERLAND 12/16/78

BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN & THE E STREET BAND : WINTERLAND 12/15/78

Disc One (73:13)

Badlands
Streets Of Fire
Spirit In The Night
Darkness On The Edge Of Town
Factory
The Promised Land
Prove It All Night
Racing In the Street
Thunder Road
Jungleland

Disc Two (83:26)

The Ties That Bind
Santa Claus Is Coming To Town
The Fever
Fire
Candy's Room
Because The Night
Point Blank
Mona - Preacher's Daughter - She's The One
Backstreets
Rosalita (Come Out Tonight)

Disc Three (36:46)

Born To Run
Detroit Medley
Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out
Raise Your Hand
Quarter To Three

Label : Live.BruceSpringsteen.net

Venue : Winterland Arena, San Francisco, California, USA

Recording Date : December 15, 1978

Quality : Soundboard Recording (A+)

Review (Kieran's Thoughts) : If you’ve followed my Archive Series reviews for a while, I imagine that you don’t need any more convincing about why the Darkness Tour is the essential Bruce Springsteen and The E Street Band live experience. With seven shows from ’78 now released, the two shows from Passaic, The Roxy, Houston and The Agora are all essential examples of why the tour is as revered as it is. So, if you’ve never heard the first show from Winterland before you may be wondering what makes it so special? Well, with the year and tour coming to an end and Springsteen and his six bandmates being more than made men after their strenuous efforts in every show, there was nothing to prove and also nothing really stopping them from taking it easy. That’s just not what Springsteen and The E Street Band do, though. The fact that the first night in Winterland sees these seven men going all out to try and top themselves after the likes of The Roxy and Passaic is indicative of their professionalism, and even though I don’t think this tops the first night in the Capitol Theatre, the fact it comes close is the reason why it’s been at the top of everyone’s live downloads wish-list for the entirety of the project. As you would expect, the setlist isn’t massively changed to the one on the Passaic release from this past September and twenty of Winterland’s twenty-five tracks feature in the show from New Jersey, but when it comes to shows from ’78 what was played is inconsequential. The final radio broadcast, alongside The Roxy, The Agora, Passaic and Atlanta, will forever be touted as one Springsteen’s greatest nights based on the quality of playing alone. After playing my “Winterland Night” CD to death in 2015 my initial reaction to this release was “a great moment for the Series, but I’ve already been wowed by this one“. As soon as I heard Bill Graham mention “the chairman of the board” for the first time in about two years, I was more than ready to be wowed again. Audio-wise, it’s not perfect (“The Promised Land”, “Jungleland”, “Fire”, and “Quarter to Three” are all taken from a two-track of the broadcast and are not master-tape quality) and I’d place it fourth in that category of ’78 releases behind Passaic #2, The Roxy and Passaic #1, but given how I can clearly hear Bruce’s raw vocals, the instrumentals of each E Street Band member as well as the audience’s participation when needed, there’s no reason to be disappointed if you’re an audiophile. Each song performance is an E Streeter masterclass and I love how one particular instrument takes priority on each of the twenty-five tracks. Obviously “Badlands” and “Streets of Fire” – I’m so glad to have gotten two releases in 2019 with this one on – are guitar-driven and the blend of Bruce and Stevie’s during the opening song is a beautiful mess. That being said, these two songs feature prominent moments from Clarence, Roy and Danny, while the work of Max and Garry can’t go unmentioned, but their participation is so routinely brilliant at this stage (of the Darkness Tour and these Archive releases) that it may seem pointless to waste time praising them. Mind, I do have to give credit to the work of Jon Altschiller and Adam Ayan as far as being able to hear Garry’s bass playing in the show is concerned. I’ve mentioned in the past that at times you can’t hear him very well in mixes and have to listen extra hard as a result, but in this one he stands out so much during songs such as “Racing in the Street” and “Point Blank” and it’s fantastic. Needless to say, those two also have so much more about them than Garry’s bass spurring them forward. Listen out for the soulful singing of Bruce and that always mesmerising coda in “Racing” that leads into “Thunder Road” and the rare “Baby” section in the much more rock-styled “Point Blank”. In a first set that has arguably five of Bruce Springsteen’s greatest ever songs played, it’s not “Racing” or “Thunder Road”, “The Promised Land” or “Jungleland” that stand out as the highlight of this first hour, no that honour goes to “Darkness on the Edge of Town”, dedicated to Ron Kovic after Bruce mentions his reading of “Born on the Fourth of July”, and the tour’s titular track is sung with an aggression that is so important when we consider how Bruce’s worldview was so impacted by the Vietnam War and the treatment of Vietnam Veterans. We can hear the anger in every drumbeat by Max, every guitar strum by Bruce and Steve and with the dedication to Ron in the back of our minds, the sequence where Bruce sings “I lost my money when I lost my wife, those things don’t seem to matter much to me now” before screaming the song’s most vehement lyrics has perhaps never been more true. “Darkness” has really been my favourite Springsteen song this year, and to hear this version as it draws to a close (regardless of how many times I’ve heard it since 2015) really confirms why it’s above the rest. While it seems somewhat unnecessary to mention that a lot of the song performances in this aren’t the same as in the other releases from the tour, I do feel like it’s important to highlight the inclusions and evolutions of the yet-to-be-released tracks: “The Ties That Bind”, “The Fever” and “Point Blank”, alongside the close to (if not actually) perfect versions of “Prove It All Night”, “Mona” – “Preacher’s Daughter” – “She’s The One” and “Backstreets” provide brilliant examples of Springsteen and The E Street Band in the rough early formative stages of their music and also of them having mastered alternative versions of their songs. The slower intro into “Ties” has always irked me as I feel the song needs to kick in the way it does in the 1980 Nassau and Tempe shows, but with this particular version we can see how the song started and through the ones from two years later we can see how it became its quintessential form. On the other hand “The Fever” is flawless, bringing the second set to an early cool down after “Ties” and “Santa” – which is itself preceded by a slow monologue from Bruce – before great versions of “Fire” and “Candy’s Room” (arguably the archetypal song for the Darkness era) bring the mood all the way back up. Though Bruce’s vocals may be stunning in “The Fever”, the outtake often performed by Southside Johnny is all about Clarence and his booming harmonies to complement his sax work. The Big Man also brings it in a “Prove It All Night” that will be amongst the very best versions of the song in the Series for a long time, but we all know that in ’78, “Prove It” was about two different instruments to the sax, and even doubt can be made about Roy’s being truly important here when Bruce starts playing at 2:57. It’s forceful, blissful and the purest essence of the tour. So about me saying “Candy’s Room” is the archetypal Darkness era song… The ten minutes of “Prove It” aren’t bettered by the eleven minutes of “Mona” – “Preacher’s Daughter” – “She’s The One”, a trio that also sees Bruce belt out “I Get Mad”, but this is great for the passion that’s exuded by Bruce, the first official release of “Preacher’s Daughter” and also to hear Bruce sing “I get no reply” the way he does at 8:33. For a show that nears three hours and fifteen minutes, the fact that just under an hour is taken up by this, “Prove It” and the two songs that follow is a great way to understand how Springsteen truly owned the stage when he was on it and had all of the freedom in the world. “Backstreets” here is undoubtedly better than what we can hear from The Roxy, as Bruce’s enraged declaration of “YOU LIED!” during the interlude really seeks to make the “Sad Eyes” one seem insignificant – isn’t it great to have both in tremendous sound quality though? As for “Rosalita (Come Out Tonight)”, it’s played superbly, though I wouldn’t call it one of the very best. I will say it’s got the best intro of any other version however (yep, even the No Nukes intro consisting of the “Stagger Lee” snippet), and because it’s Christmastime I’ve taken the decision to thoroughly enjoy listening to it again and then write it down below: “This next song, is the saddest song we’re gonna play all night. Matter of fact, we don’t usually even play this song anymore because I can’t get through it without crying. You wanna know why? Well I’ll tell you why. I wasn’t always this useless, empty shell of a man you see in front of you. I was in love once. I had a girlfriend. We ran away from our mother and father and we came to California. And then, she ran away from me. So ever since that day I’ve been looking, I’ve been searching, I’ve been on a nationwide hunt, disguised as a Rock ‘N’ Roll tour. Ya see, now don’t tell nobody this alright, I’m not really, I don’t really play this guitar, see what I really am, is I’m a private detective and I’ve been looking, I’ve been searching. And so if you’re here tonight… Rosie… COME BACK!” Yeah, that Bruce Springsteen is pretty damn good at building into a song. He’s also a master of crafting a setlist as “Rosie” closes the second set with the same electricity that encompasses the half hour long encore compiled of five of his finest crowdpleasers: “Born to Run”, “Detroit Medley”, which seems to get greater every time I hear it, “Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out” with Bruce singing “with my back against the wall” in a way that puts this in the conversation for all-time greatest version, “Raise Your Hand” and a complete “Quarter to Three”, free from a fade-in after coming back from the KSAN broadcasters talking about the perceived to be finished show. Winterland ends the way it begins, on the highest of highs. Expected by many to be the Christmas bonus last year for its fortieth anniversary, the first night from Winterland has been more than worth the year wait – and for some I expect the forty-one years of dreaming for an official release of their favourite show. It was especially worth it seeing as it was released alongside the second Winterland show from the next night, which I’ll be listening to (for the first time ever!) and reviewing hopefully before Christmas Day. So stay tuned to the site for that. Until then, make sure to listen to this legendary show if you haven’t heard it before, and even if you’ve heard it so many times in the past that you weren’t too excited that you saw it was released, trust me, you’ll be having the time of your life seconds into “Badlands”.