Bruce Springsteen – the unreleased tracks from Chapter and Verse reviewed

1 The Castiles – Baby I

(Recorded 2 May 1966, at Mr Music, Bricktown, NJ; written by Bruce Springsteen and George Theiss)

There’s a reason why juvenilia like this tends not to get released as part of artists’ official catalogues, instead becoming bootleg staples: precisely because it’s juvenilia. Springsteen was 16 when it was recorded. That said, Baby I is a pretty charming garage band rave-up, the kind that would fit snugly on to a compilation called something like High in the Garage: New Jersey Punk Vol IV. No marks for originality – the Castiles need your tender touch, they need your loving so much, and the central riff on the verse could have been taken straight from the Them catalogue, but then that’s true of virtually all US garage bands across 1965 and 1966. After recording this song and another Springsteen/Theiss original, That’s What You Get, Springsteen wouldn’t go into the studio again until February 1970. And listening to That’s What You Get – a slightly less competent piece of garage juvenilia, you can see why he chose Baby I for Chapter and Verse.

2 The Castiles – You Can’t Judge a Book by the Cover

(Recorded 16 September 1967, at The Left Foot, Freehold, NJ; written by Willie Dixon)

The Castiles’ show at The Left Foot – a teen club in the recreation centre of St Peter’s Episcopal Church – was recorded in its entirety by its priest, Rev Fred Coleman. And like the two studio tracks, it’s part of the Apocrypha of Springsteen. The Castiles were a hardworking group – before splitting in 1968 they played the best part of 120 shows – and their bar band set was a selection of covers. The covers, though, weren’t just the hits of the day, but a melange of underground staples – versions of Moby Grape’s Omaha, Fire and Purple Haze by Jimi Hendrix, the Yardbirds’ Jeff’s Boogie, the Kinks’ See My Friends, and even Suzanne by Leonard Cohen. In all honesty, the full show is every bit as uninteresting as you might expect a 50-year old, extremely lo-fi recording of teenagers playing cover versions to be. The version of You Can’t Judge a Book by the Cover, extensively cleaned up from the circulating recordings, is a good choice to represent the show, because the Willie Dixon song has been a staple of bar band sets since time immemorial. File under: you’ll listen once, but probably not twice.

3 Steel Mill – He’s Guilty (The Judge Song)

(Recorded 22 February 1970, at Pacific Recording Studio, San Mateo, California; written by Bruce Springsteen)

The roots of the E Street Band lie in Steel Mill, which saw Springsteen teaming up with Vini Lopez, Danny Federici and Steve Van Zandt, though the latter joined after this recording. You wouldn’t call He’s Guilty awfully sophisticated lyrically: it reads more like a local newspaper court report than one of the epic shaggy dog tales Springsteen would go on to write during the early 1970s. It’s hard to read it as a protest against The Man, given the accused was apparently “speeding, running down his mother / Stabbing his wife then strangling her lover”. It’s a fair cop, guv. But it’s a dynamic piece of hard rock, with a terrific organ solo from Federici prodded along by a twitchy, nervous guitar line, and a the kind of expertly arranged multipartite construction that would become familiar in later Springsteen songs. This was one of three songs Steel Mill recorded at the behest of legendary San Francisco promoter Bill Graham (along with Goin’ Back to Georgia and The Train Song), which led to him offering them a record deal with his new label. They turned him down.

4 The Bruce Springsteen Band – Ballad of Jesse James

(Recorded 14 March 1972, at Challenger Eastern Surfboards, Highland, NJ; written by Bruce Springsteen)

The Bruce Springsteen Band was very much the E Street Band in embryo – though Federici had disappeared for a bit, Lopez and Van Zandt were in place, joined by Garry Tallent and David Sancious. It was a short-lived group, playing its first show in June 1971, and its last in June 1972, before the E Street Band made its debut in October 1972. Springsteen had tired of Steel Mill’s hard rock, and was listening to Van Morrison and Joe Cocker’s Mad Dogs and Englishmen and wanted to create a rock and soul hybrid. Ballad of Jesse James tends towards the rock than the soul, but it’s pretty great: a loping, Stonesy riff, slide guitar colouring it, and Sancious’s piano giving the soul a distinctly E Street feel. Springsteen’s voice is now the one we would come to know from the rest of his career, a yearning holler, and if the lyric isn’t great, it’s functional, and the song opens up the exploration of American mythology that would be such a key part of his career.

5 Bruce Springsteen – Henry Boy

(Recorded June 1972, at Mediasound Studios, New York; written by Bruce Springsteen)

Springsteen went on a writing jag in 1972, honing the voice that would he would introduce to the world on Greetings From Asbury Park, NJ and The Wild, The Innocent and the E Street Shuffle. He was in and out of studios demoing the songs – including the famous session with John Hammond in May that resulted in his CBS deal. A month after that he recorded Henry Boy which is, pretty clearly, a dry run for Rosalita, with much of Springsteen’s topline vocal melody replicated for that early classic (it would be interesting to know if it predated Blinded by the Light, because there are some elements from that present, too). Here, finally, we get the storytelling, wordy Springsteen of the first three albums, and his use of geography as an indicator of identity, something that would crop up again and again throughout his career (has any major writer used locations so often?): “Well the North side is for diamond-studded women subtly selling their wares / And the West side is for debutantes and would be millionaires / Oh the East side is for lost boys who know their moves too well / The South side is for gamblers, Henry, the train stops once for hell.” It’s minor compared to what would come later, but it’s the standout of these five tracks, nonetheless.