"Greetings From Asbury Park, NJ"

It was Fifty Years Ago Today

CORRECTION [01/05/2025]: The future E Street Band rehearsed in the home of David Sancious’s mother, not grandmother.

On this date in 1973, Columbia Records released two debut albums: Aerosmith and Greetings from Asbury Park, NJ.

The latter was delayed after a scheduled November 1972 release; the label decided it was a competitive holiday season for unknown Bruce Springsteen, a singer/songwriter from the small New Jersey resort city decades past its heyday. Although the album was recorded at 914 Sound Studios in Blauvelt, NY over a six-week period in June and July 1972, Springsteen wrote much of the album in his residence on the second floor of this building on Webb Street at 8th Avenue. (I cannot confirm he was still living there from June 1972 to January 1973.)

The album is an erratic collection in both its song quality and its disjointed, less than cohesive nature. It didn’t set sales records, and the artist’s next three albums are infinitesimally better. The album has too many modernistic, unintelligible lyrics. (The songwriter fortunately abandoned this “scattershot” style shortly.) But it was a decent first impression that launched a monumental career. Months later, Lester Bangs gave it famous faint praise in Rolling Stone (just as that publication started to go downhill), and it became David Bowie’s favorite Springsteen album. It is certainly worth a celebratory listen.

Some fans might not know that the album is something of a compromise, which is one reason it’s erratic. There is a fairly long, complicated backstory to Greetings from Asbury Park, NJ. Springsteen had been leading bands on the Jersey Shore music scene for years. The two best-known, Steel Mill and The Bruce Springsteen Band, had followings in Richmond, Virginia but had difficulty making headway outside of those two areas. Springsteen disbanded Steel Mill, a hard, progressive rock band in the style of Cream and the Jimi Hendrix Experience, in early 1971. He decided to go in the more soul/rhythm and blues direction for which he would become famous. After settling with The Bruce Springsteen Band for the second half of 1971, Springsteen was dissatisfied with the band’s lack of progress by the end of the year. He told the band he was going to visit his family in California indefinitely and that they should take any jobs they needed, releasing them from any commitments. Keyboardist David Sancious and bass guitarist Garry Tallent were offered jobs at a recording studio in Richmond. Since they all thought Springsteen would stay in the San Francisco Bay Area indefinitely, the entire entourage (including Southside Johnny Lyon) moved to Richmond. Springsteen did consider staying in California; an apparently authentic driver’s license from this period has surfaced. However, he returned to New Jersey in late January 1972. He would travel to Richmond to play gigs with The Bruce Springsteen Band but chose not to relocate to Richmond. With the band in Virginia, Springsteen “went solo”, performing alone with his acoustic guitar and piano.

During this period, his manager and eventual co-producer Mike Appel secured an audition for the artist with legendary Columbia Records talent scout John Hammond. On May 2, 1972, Springsteen performed several songs in Hammond’s office. (One of them, “If I Was the Priest”, was finally released in 2020 on Letter to You.) Hammond was beyond impressed, and Appel’s Laurel Canyon Productions signed a production agreement with Columbia. Springsteen would directly sign with the label later. (This was fairly common at that time; KISS and manager Bill Aucoin had a similar arrangement with Casablanca Records at first.)

There was a problem. Springsteen wanted to put a band together again. His band was in Virginia. He was keen to hire Jersey Shore saxophonist Clarence Clemons of Norman Seldin’s Joyful Noyze. John Hammond and Appel liked Springsteen the solo artist. Springsteen and Appel’s partner/co-producer Jim Cretecos wanted it to be a band act.

Several songs were recorded. Some, such as “The Angel” and “Mary Queen of Arkansas”, were solo. Others, e.g., the morbid“For You” and rollicking “It’s Hard to Be a Saint in the City”, were band-oriented, with the Virginia cohorts traveling north that spring and summer to record tracks. There were other songs recorded, mostly solo, that were earmarked for the album. But Springsteen (and Cretecos) didn’t think there was enough band material.

Another industry legend, Clive Davis, got involved. He sided with the band faction. Springsteen got his wish. Two additional, band-oriented songs were recorded late: “Blinded by the Light” and “Spirit in the Night”. They became the album’s first two singles. (The latter was released in late 1972.) Since Sancious and Tallent were busy in Richmond, Springsteen played bass guitar and session player Harold Wheeler played piano. Clemons joined the sessions for these tracks. And the album was finished. (“Blinded by the Light” remains Springsteen’s only #1 US hit as a songwriter, thanks to Manfred Mann’s Earth Band’s 1976 cover version. He does not have one as a recording artist.)

There still wasn’t a cohesive band, so Springsteen hastily organized the band that, by mid-1974, would become known as the E Street Band. (E Street is in nearby Belmar; the band rehearsed in Sancious’s grandmother’s house on that street. 1975’s “Tenth Avenue Freeze-out” probably refers to the street in Belmar, too. A large monument now stands at the intersection of E Street and Tenth Avenue. Asbury Park does not have an E Street or Tenth Avenue. ) Sancious was reluctant to leave his job in Richmond, so Springsteen and Danny Federici played all the keys at first. (Sancious would eventually join the touring band in mid-1973.) Tallent, Clemons, and drummer Vini Lopez, all of whom played on the album, rounded out the lineup. Miami Steve Van Zandt would join in ‘75. He is on the first album, uncredited, punching the amplifier that produced the feedback sound at the beginning of “Lost in the Flood”. For their first official gig, on October 28, 1972, the band opened for Cheech and Chong at Hollister Field House at West Chester College (now University) in Pennsylvania. The comedians’ management , angered that an extra opening act was added without their knowledge, yanked them offstage prematurely.

It was an inauspicious start, much like the album’s eventual lukewarm reception, but it was a start.

And Greetings from Asbury Park, NJ was a solid start, artistically if not commercially (at first).

In the 1970s, the release date was the shipping date. No one bought it that day. There was no one uniform date it was available to all, as street dates did not become a practice until around 1983. Stores would display “product” whenever they received it and processed it.

But today’s as worthy of celebration as any other in the context of this album.

Today, none of this would have been possible. Assuming an artist like Springsteen could capture the music industry’s attention (such that it still exists today), two flop albums (as his second also bombed) would be more than enough to tank a career. (Actually, albums aren’t really sold much anymore. But for years when they still were, perhaps as early as the 1980s, an artist with two bombs would not get a chance to record a third, at least not with the same label.)

These days, Springsteen’s work, especially in concert, is not consistently what it used to be, and he has become too strident a partisan on behalf of his preferred side of the false political dichotomy rending his (and my) country in two. Somewhat predictably, he was a mouthpiece for his tribe during the unprecedented, beyond unfortunate policy fiascos of the past three years. None of this diminishes his importance as an artist, and 2020’s Letter to You, which also includes first album outtake “Song to Orphans”, is his best in album in years. (Western Stars, recorded years before its 2019 release, is also excellent.)

Anyone with any interest in Springsteen’s song craft, or even the better cultural highlights of the past half century, could do worse than giving Greetings from Asbury Park, NJ an anniversary listen.

Tonight at Langosta Lounge on the boardwalk in Asbury Park, local artists will perform its songs live. The event is free and commences at 8PM EST.

The Columbia art department incorporated this old postcard into the album’s cover art.

The city is celebrating today.