Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J.

Background

Springsteen and his first manager Mike Appel recorded the album at the low-priced, out-of-the-way 914 Sound Studios to save as much as possible of the Columbia Records advance and cut most of the songs in a single week.

There was a dispute not long after the record was recorded—Appel and John Hammond preferred the solo tracks, while Springsteen preferred the band songs. As such, a compromise was reached—the album was to have five songs with the band ("For You", "Growin' Up", "Does This Bus Stop at 82nd Street?" "It's Hard to be a Saint in the City", and "Lost in the Flood") and five solo songs ("Mary Queen of Arkansas", "The Angel", "Jazz Musician", "Arabian Nights", and "Visitation at Fort Horn").

However, when Columbia Records president Clive Davis heard the album, he felt that it lacked a hit single. As such, Springsteen wrote and recorded "Blinded by the Light" and "Spirit in the Night". Because pianist David Sancious and bassist Garry Tallent were unavailable to record these songs, a three-man band was used—Vini Lopez on drums, Springsteen on guitar, bass, and piano, and the previously missing Clarence Clemons on saxophone. These two songs bumped "Jazz Musician", "Arabian Nights", and "Visitation at Fort Horn", leaving a total of seven band songs and two solo songs. The album was originally slated to be released in the fall of 1972, but it was moved back to early 1973 to avoid the pre-Christmas crush.

Both "Blinded by the Light" and "Spirit in the Night" were released as singles by Columbia, but neither reached the US charts. Manfred Mann's Earth Band released a version of "Blinded by the Light" on their album The Roaring Silence, which reached number one on Billboard's Hot 100 on 19 February 1977 and #1 on the Canadian RPM chart the same day. This recording of "Blinded by the Light" is Springsteen's only number one single as a songwriter on the Hot 100. His best showing on the Hot 100 as a performer was in 1984, with "Dancing in the Dark", which peaked at number two for 4 weeks. Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J. first charted in the United Kingdom on June 15, 1985, in the wake of Springsteen's Born in the USA tour arriving in Britain; it remained in the top 100 for ten weeks.

On November 22, 2009, Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J. was played in its entirety for the first time by Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, at the HSBC Arena in Buffalo, New York, to celebrate the last show of the Working on a Dream tour.

Critical reception

In a contemporary review for Rolling Stone, Lester Bangs hailed Springsteen as a daring new artist who sets himself apart from his contemporaries with songwriting that either have a serious meaning or showcase his uninhibited gift for verbose, overloaded lyrics and rhyme schemes. "Some of [his words] can mean something socially or otherwise", Bangs said, "but there's plenty of 'em that don't even pretend to, reveling in the joy of utter crass showoff talent run amuck and totally out of control". Peter Knobler wrote in Crawdaddy that "he sings with a freshness and urgency I haven't heard since I was rocked by 'Like a Rolling Stone' ... the album rocks, then glides, then rocks again. There is the combined sensibility of the chaser and the chaste, the street punk and the bookworm." Creem magazine's Robert Christgau said Springsteen's songs are dominated by the kind of mannered emotional transparency and "absurdist energy" that made Bob Dylan "a genius instead of a talent". In a 1981 review, he wrote that despite the grandiloquent, unaccompanied "Mary Queen of Arkansas" and "The Angel", songs such as "Blinded by the Light" and "Growin' Up" foreshadow Springsteen's "unguarded teen-underclass poetry", while even the maundering "Lost in the Flood" is interesting.

In All Music Guide to Rock (2002), William Ruhlmann gave Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J. five stars and said that it combined the mid-1960s folk rock music of Bob Dylan, accessible melodies, and elaborate arrangements and lyrics: "Asbury Park painted a portrait of teenagers cocksure of themselves, yet bowled over by their discovery of the world. It was saved from pretentiousness (if not preciousness) by its sense of humor and by the careful eye for detail ... that kept even the most high-flown language rooted." In 2003, the album was ranked number 379 on Rolling Stone's list of the 500 greatest albums of all time. They ranked it 37th on their list of greatest debut albums.

Track listing

All songs written by Bruce Springsteen.

As with every album to follow, Springsteen recorded more songs than he could fit onto the album. Many of the outtakes have been released throughout the years on various bootlegs however never have been given an official release. Most are in a raw, demo form featuring just Springsteen and were not fully completed. Demos such as "Mary Queen of Arkansas", "Growin' Up", "Does This Bus Stop at 82nd Street?" and "It's Hard to Be a Saint in the City" were released on the Tracks boxset.

Personnel

1. Blinded by the Light

2. Growin' Up

3. Mary Queen of Arkansas

4. Does This Bus Stop At 82nd Street?

5. Lost in the Flood

6. The Angel

7. For You

8. Spirit in the Night

9. It's Hard to Be a Saint in the City