springsteen darkness tour album

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How Bruce Springsteen Sealed His Legacy on ‘Darkness’ Tour

Bruce Springsteen was looking to restart his career after nearly three years on the sidelines when the Darkness on the Edge of Town  tour kicked off on May 23, 1978, at Shea Hall in Buffalo, N.Y. By the time it ended seven months later, he had cemented his reputation as one of the most electrifying performers in rock.

The problems Springsteen encountered making Darkness on the Edge of Town  are well-known. The success of Born to Run in 1975 made him a star, but he soon learned that the contract he signed with manager Mike Appel put his lucrative publishing rights in Appel's hands. Springsteen sued to break the contract, and Appel counter-sued, getting an injunction barring Springsteen from entering a studio.

Unable to make the follow-up to Born to Run , Springsteen spent most of 1976 and 1977 on the road. The concerts furthered the E Street Band's reputation as one of the best live acts in the country, as well as further integrating drummer Max Weinberg, pianist Roy Bittan and guitarist Steven Van Zandt – all of whom joined the E Street Band in 1975 – into the band.

In May 1977, two months after the Lawsuit Tour ended, both parties finally came to an agreement, and Springsteen and the E Street Band began the marathon sessions recording Darkness on the Edge of Town . A year later, and 10 days before the album was released, Springsteen returned to the stage.

At the time, three years between releases was practically unheard of. Springsteen has often said that he was worried that the general public had forgotten about him in the interim. With punk and disco capturing the public’s imagination during his layoff, he had no idea how the new material would be received, and channeled that into his performance when he took the stage that night in Buffalo.

"What I remember most was the raw emotion that Bruce presented on stage," Lawrence Kirsch said about that opening night in The Light in Darkness , his 2009 collection of essays about the tour. "I would even say he was a bit tentative and nervous. But by the time he launched into 'Something in the Night' and screamed so his body shook, we knew that he was going to take no prisoners that night, even if it killed him, and us."

Concerts on the Darkness Tour, which usually ran between 2 hours and 45 minutes and three hours, were broken into two sets. The first often opened with a cover of an early rock song, such as Buddy Holly’s "Rave On" or Eddie Cochran’s "Summertime Blues." Springsteen then moved into "Badlands" and most of the other songs on Darkness , including an extended version of "Prove it All Night" that featured a searing introductory guitar solo. The set closed with "Jungleland," after which the band took a 15-20 minute break.

Springsteen usually began the second half with a few songs he hadn’t yet released, like "Fire," "Sherry Darling" or "Paradise by the ‘C’," a spotlight for saxophonist Clarence Clemons . From there, however, he took fans on a roller-coaster ride through his then-small catalog. "She’s the One" often began with a few verses of "Not Fade Away" or Bo Diddley’s "Mona." Then it was " Growin’ Up ," which featured Springsteen making up a story dealing with his own frustrations as a teenager with rock 'n' roll dreams before launching into the final verse.

Then it was on to " Backstreets ," which, as it had during the Lawsuit Tour, included a stream-of-consciousness break down before the coda that became known as "Sad Eyes." The section involved Springsteen describing a betrayal by a lover that could easily be interpreted as his anger towards Appel, which took the already-emotional song to new heights. The second set closed, as always, with "Rosalita (Come Out Tonight)." "Born to Run," "Because the Night" and a cover of Eddie Floyd’s "Raise Your Hand" formed the bulk of the encores on most nights.

A handful of the dates on the Darkness tour – most notably Los Angeles (July 7), Cleveland (Aug. 9), Passaic, N.J. (Sept. 19) and San Francisco (Dec. 15) – were broadcast over radio, and the tapes from those shows remain among the most beloved Springsteen bootlegs.

In addition, the performance of " Rosalita (Come Out Tonight) " from the July 8 concert in Phoenix was filmed and broadcast the next year on an ABC television special called Heroes of Rock and Roll .

By the time the tour ended after more than 110 shows on Jan. 1, 1979 in Cleveland, Springsteen had graduated from theaters and ballrooms to arenas in his biggest markets. He would soon be filling stadiums worldwide on the heels of the success of Born in the U.S.A. , but the Darkness tour remains the favorite of many of his most devout fans.

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The Darkness Tour '78

June 2, 2023 20 Songs, 1 hour, 53 minutes ℗ 2023 Columbia Records, a division of Sony Music Entertainment

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Darkness On The Edge Of Town Tour

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The tour has since become viewed as perhaps Springsteen's best in a storied career of concert performances. Biographer Dave Marsh wrote in 1987, "The screaming intensity of those '78 shows are part of rock and roll legend in the same way as Dylan's 1966 shows with the Band, the Rolling Stones' tours of 1969 and 1972, and the Who's  Tommy  tour of 1969: benchmarks of an era."

The tour ran in one continuous motion, starting May 23, 1978 at Shea's Buffalo in Buffalo, New York and playing halls, theatres, and occasional arenas across the United States and back several times, with a couple of forays into Canada. The first eight shows were played before the  Darkness  album was released on June 2. Big cities, secondary cities, and college towns were all visited. A few shows were cancelled due to sickness but were made up later in the run. The tour wrapped up, after 115 shows, on New Year's Day 1979 in Cleveland, Ohio's Richfield Coliseum.

After a brief, unpleasant 1975 touring experience in Europe after the release of  Born to Run , and with the weaker commercial appeal of  Darkness  compared to its predecessor, Springsteen did not venture overseas on this tour.

Broadcasts and recordings [ ]

One of the reasons the 1978 Tour is so well-remembered, and often viewed as the peak of Springsteen and the E Street Band in concert, is that several complete shows were broadcast live on album-oriented rock radio stations. These included the July 7 show at West Hollywood's The Roxy, broadcast on KMET; the August 9 show at Cleveland's Agora Ballroom, broadcast on WMMS and seven other Midwestern stations; the September 19 show at the Capitol Theatre in Passaic, New Jersey, broadcast on WNEW-FM; the September 30 show from the Fox Theatre in Atlanta, broadcast on about 20 Southeastern stations; and the December 15 show from the Winterland Ballroom in San Francisco, broadcast on KSAN-FM. These broadcasts were mixed by Jimmy Iovine and of high audio quality, and were listened to at the time by a larger audience than attended the concerts. Over the years the stations would play the broadcasts again, and many high-quality bootlegs were made and circulated of these shows.

A syndicated radio interview with New York disc jockey Dave Herman also included live excerpts from a July 1 Berkeley Community Theatre show, including the long "Prove It All Night"; these clips would also be heard on other radio promotional vehicles such as the  King Biscuit Flower Hour .

In addition, in the early 1980s a long music video for "Rosalita" was released to MTV, from the July 8 show on this tour (filmed in its entirety) at the Arizona Veterans Memorial Coliseum in Phoenix, Arizona, that included band introductions and numerous adoring women rushing the stage. It captured the energetic and playful side of Springsteen and the E Street Band in concert, and was the first such introduction many casual fans had. This was later included in the 1989 release  Video Anthology / 1978-88 .

The 1986  Live/1975-85  box set contained nine selections from the 1978 Tour, but fans were generally dissatisfied with them, as the "Backstreets" interlude was edited out, other raps and stories were edited or spliced together from different shows, and the long "Prove It All Night" was missing altogether. Additionally, a few of the tracks from the 1978 contained overdubs recorded at the Hit Factory during 1986.

In 2006, Springsteen manager Jon Landau indicated that a full-length filmed concert DVD from the Darkness Tour might be in the offing, following a similar release for a 1975 Born to Run tour show. Fans speculated heavily about such a possibility. It finally materialized in November 2010 with the release of  The Promise: The Making of "Darkness On the Edge of Town" , an elaborate box set that included a DVD containing a house recording of the full December 8, 1978, show from Houston's The Summit arena.

Several shows were released as part of the Bruce Springsteen Archives:

• The Agora, Cleveland 1978 , released December 23, 2014.
• The Summit, Houston, TX December 8, 1978 , released September 21, 2017.
• Capitol Theatre, Passaic, NJ, September 20, 1978 , released December 22, 2017.
• The Roxy, July 7, 1978 , released July 6, 2018.
• Capitol Theatre, Passaic, NJ, September 19, 1978 , released September 6, 2019.
• Winterland 12/15/78 , released December 20, 2019.
• Winterland 12/16/78 , released December 20, 2019.
• Fox Theatre 09/30/1978, released October 9, 2020.
• Berkeley,July 1, 1978, released June 18, 2021
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• 2 Born In The U.S.A. Tour
• 3 E Street Band

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The Darkness Tour '78 - The Definitive Anthology

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Editorial Reviews

The Darkness on the Edge of Town album was the long awaited follow up to Born To Run . It was released in the late spring of 1978 and came after a three year gap triggered by legal wrangles. To celebrate the launch of the album Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band undertook a major concert tour of North America which comprised 115 performances. The Darkness shows were longer than those in previous Springsteen tours, lasting around three hours and generally comprised 25 songs. These shows have long since been regarded by Springsteen fans as representing The Boss at his creative peak. Each Springsteen concert has its own special highlights so choosing a single night to epitomise the 1978 Darkness tour is an impossible task. Fortunately, five complete shows were broadcast live on radio. These broadcasts were all mixed by Jimmy Iovine and are therefore of first class audio quality. This three disc anthology was created to capture the magic of the Darkness tour by bringing together the very best performances from each of the five live broadcasts. The aim was to produce a composite three disc anthology to conjure up the spirit of one mythical, magical night from 1978 showcasing the Boss at his very best. Included here are the carefully curated highlights from five shows beginning with the 7th July 1978 show at The Roxy, broadcast on KMET followed by the best of 9th August show at the Agora Ballroom, Cleveland, broadcast on WMMS, the 19th September show at the Capitol Theatre in Passaic, New Jersey, which was broadcast on WNEW-FM, the 30th September from the Fox Theatre in Atlanta, which was broadcast live on about 20 South-Eastern stations, and the 15th December show from the Winterland Ballroom in San Francisco which was broadcast on KSAN-FM

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• Language ‏ : ‎ English
• Package Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.51 x 4.92 x 0.91 inches; 5.29 ounces
• Manufacturer ‏ : ‎ Anglo Atlantic
• Date First Available ‏ : ‎ March 31, 2016
• Label ‏ : ‎ Anglo Atlantic
• ASIN ‏ : ‎ B01DO0EXSW
• Number of discs ‏ : ‎ 3
• #36,409 in Pop (CDs & Vinyl)
• #38,119 in Rock (CDs & Vinyl)

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Bruce Springsteen - “The Darkness Tour ‘78” released on streaming

Discussion in ' Music Corner ' started by NunoBento , Jun 1, 2023 .

NunoBento Rock 'n' Roll Star Thread Starter

An old pipe dream has come true: Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band - The Darkness Tour '78 Granted, this is not a full Darkness show, as Bruce should have released 30-40 years ago. It’s the Darkness album, plus the rejected songs from the sessions live from the Darkness Tour, in order. It’s not perfect, but I’m happy to finally be able to listen to the full ‘78 Prove It All Night on Spotify.  

olsen Senior Member

NunoBento said: ↑ An old pipe dream has come true: Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band - The Darkness Tour '78 Granted, this is not a full Darkness show, as Bruce should have released 30-40 years ago. It’s the Darkness album, plus the rejected songs from the sessions live from the Darkness Tour, in order. It’s not perfect, but I’m happy to finally be able to listen to the full ‘78 Prove It All Night on Spotify. Click to expand...

olsen said: ↑ Well that vanished fast Click to expand...

pbuzby Senior Member

There are official 1978 concerts on nugs.net and similar sites, I think.  

pbuzby said: ↑ There are official 1978 concerts on nugs.net and similar sites, I think. Click to expand...

maui jim Forum Resident

Will be listening when available Friday. Thanks for heads up  

NunoBento said: ↑ Not available to stream outside the US, sadly. I subscribed from the UK and had to ask for a refund, as I couldn't use the service. For me (and I guess many people outside the US), this is huge. Click to expand...

qtrules Forum Resident

oh i cannot wait for this to drop on apple music!  

Campaigner Too late to cause a stir

qtrules said: ↑ oh i cannot wait for this to drop on apple music! Click to expand...

Pigalle Forum Resident

poidog Senior Member

If you don't have Spotify, you can stream for free on Freegal.  

fishcane Dirt Farmer

I have the Darkness Tour box set, such a great set  

blasting this today and it is incredible. what an excellent collection of songs from this unbelievable tour.  

babyblue Patches Pal!

Yeah, I just noticed this as an upcoming release a few days ago. Got it on Spotify now and looking forward to streaming it on my system this weekend (just got one of those nifty Wiim streamers last weekend). A set like this should have been put out in 1979 at least.  

Bob Dobalina Forum Resident

Need this on CD! (I might even consider a triple vinyl pseudo-bootleg with Xeroxed inserts and swag like the ones I first encountered in Greenwich Village record stores in the Fall of '78...)  

stillrockin Forum Resident

There always has to be one pedant. February 1977 was not the Darkness Tour.  

Dovetail7 Pragmatic Purist

NeonMadman Forum Resident

Streaming is nice and this is a well-selected playlist, but honestly, any fan big enough to want to hear this MUST buy 3–4 of the full '78 shows from Nugs. Absolutely sensational stuff, far greater than can be reflected in any accumulated playlist.  

graveyardboots Resident Patient

stillrockin said: ↑ There always has to be one pedant. February 1977 was not the Darkness Tour. Click to expand...

Spitfire Senior Member

Is this release streaming only? No CD or download option?  

Spitfire said: ↑ Is this release streaming only? No CD or download option? Click to expand...

squonkduke Forum Resident

It's just a small bunch of songs taken from all the already released 1978 shows available on Live Springsteen: Listen to the entire Bruce Springsteen live concert catalog | Live music catalog  

Taxman Senior Member

I was listening to this playlist on Qobuz and it was pretty great as far as I got. I wonder why wouldn’t SONY want to release this. At the very least it would whet fans appetite to buy the full shows. It seems like SONY is leaving money on the table.  

joe1320 Forum Resident

Taxman said: ↑ I was listening to this playlist on Qobuz and it was pretty great as far as I got. I wonder why wouldn’t SONY want to release this. At the very least it would whet fans appetite to buy the full shows. It seems like SONY is leaving money on the table. Click to expand...

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Bruce Springsteen is on new Zach Bryan album 'The Great American Bar Scene,' out July 4

Set 'em up, Bruce Springsteen is on the new Zach Bryan album.

"The Great American Bar Scene" drops Thursday, July 4. The new album has an air of mystery at this point, but the country star shared late Tuesday, July 2, what appears to be the liner notes. They state that Springsteen and John Mayer are guests on the work.

The song is “Sandpaper,” a smoldering country burner about desire and the passing of time that recalls the Springsteen classic, “I’m on Fire.” Listen to it below.

“Grab your beers through tears and fears, the Great American Bar Scene,” writes Bryan in the notes.

More: Bruce Springsteen and E Street Band soaked in new 'Waitin' on a Sunny Day' video: Watch

The Boss joined Bryan, 27, on stage March 27 at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, where they performed “Sandpaper” with Bryan's band.

They were then joined by Maggie Rogers for the Bryan hit “Revival,” and the Boss, 74, played a guitar solo.

Bryan, an Oklahoma native and a Navy vet, was wearing a Springsteen tour T-shirt.

Bryan’s The Quittin’ Time Tour was a hit in New Jersey. Two shows at Prudential Center in Newark broke that venue's attendance record, with 18,641 fans on March 14 and 19,151 fans on March 15.

As a preview for the album, 23 bars across the United States played selected tracks from “The Great American Bar Scene” starting on June 24. One of the bars was Barnacle Bill's in Rumson. A single from the album, a rustic ballad called “Pink Skies,” was released May 24.

Springsteen and the E Street Band are currently touring Europe. The next show is Friday, July 5, in Hannover, Germany.

More: Bruce Springsteen flies nearly 3,000 miles to join Zach Bryan on stage in Brooklyn

More: Jessica Springsteen jumping for a spot on Paris Olympics U.S. Equestrian team

This story has been updated. Subscribe to app.com for the latest on the New Jersey music scene.

Chris Jordan, a Jersey Shore native, covers entertainment and features for the USA Today Network New Jersey. Contact him at [email protected].    

This article originally appeared on Asbury Park Press: Bruce Springsteen is on new Zach Bryan album 'The Great American Bar Scene,' out July 4

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Zach Bryan makes — and breaks — his own myth on 'The Great American Bar Scene'

Zach Bryan's fifth album in five years, The Great American Bar Scene , features love songs, thorny anthems, autobiographical lore and even a mini-arc that directly invokes classic Bruce Springsteen songs. Keith Griner/Getty Images hide caption

This essay first appeared in the NPR Music newsletter.  Sign up  for early access to articles like this one, Tiny Desk exclusives, listening recommendations and more.

Zach Bryan is an avid learner, always taking pains to credit his sources. Now a stadium-level star who hears his accounts of 21st century unrest sung back to him by thousands of people every time he performs, he began his music-making life as a Naval petty officer uploading phone videos to YouTube and just wanting to do his idols proud. Even as he found his fan base with original compositions, Bryan has always aligned himself with the peers and elders whom, in his first viral hit, “Heading South,” he identified as his “kind.” His earnest social media posts extolling the genius of Jason Isbell or the Turnpike Troubadours reinforced his image as a sort of male Brandi Carlile , always extending a hand to others even as his own charisma burned a path toward the top of the charts.

On The Great American Bar Scene, his fifth album in as many years within a steady stream of EP’s, singles and live albums, Bryan continues to uphold the community he values above all. He colors his lyrics with references to songs by Tyler Childers and Johnny Cash ; brings in the young Canadian troubadour Noeline Hofmann to share vocals on her ballad “Purple Gas”; and gives guest slots to not only John Mayer (predictable) but his fellow Oklahoman and songwriter’s songwriter John Moreland . Often a lonely voice within his own tales of botched romance and anomie, as a performer, Bryan shares space to make the point that legacies only grow through cross-pollination. And on Bar Scene , one influence-turned-friend casts a benign shadow on all the rest: the Boss himself, Bruce Springsteen .

The Boss shows up as Bryan’s duet partner on “ Sandpaper ,” a love song that ties together yearning and refusal in ways so similar to Springsteen’s own 1984 hit “I’m on Fire” that it almost seems like a writing exercise Bryan assigned himself. It’s an arrogant form of homage, but the younger man earns it — here and throughout The Great American Bar Scene , Bryan makes his case as Springsteen’s favored son by enacting his own version of the slippery authenticity that allowed the greatest rock star of the 1980s to emerge from scrappy roots to become a generational spokesman, reaching a peak with Born in the U.S.A. — an album celebrating 40 years of cultural currency this summer. I’m using the word “slippery” deliberately here. Bryan’s art builds on Springsteen’s method of cleansing old stories of the markers that could make them feel dated and reanimating them in new settings, not just with new clothes but with different voices and particular outcomes.

Examples of this abound in Springsteen’s work, especially from the late 1970s into the mid-1980s. In “State Trooper,” which appears on 1982’s Nebraska and is name-checked by Bryan in Bar Scene ’s title track, the iconic Western desert outlaw haunted by vultures’ cries becomes a working man-turned-car thief tormented by the yammering voices on talk radio; “Glory Days” finds a knight stripped of his armor in the form of a high school baseball player drinking himself ever further past his prime.

Most notoriously, Born in the U.S.A. 's titular anthem reanimates the tragedy of the wounded soldier that runs through American culture from Whitman to Hemingway to Michael Cimino’s The Deer Hunter , adjusting it for the Reagan era, when dominant conservative forces were actively working to bury the damage caused by America’s interventions in Vietnam. Like all of those other anti-war patriots, with this song, Springsteen milks the allure of nationalist rhetoric only to defuse it with a story that shows its poisonous effects.

As a mega-hit, “Born in the U.S.A.” made history by being misunderstood: The porousness of its relationship to patriotism made it seem like a nationalist anthem when it was really a protest song. This frustrated Springsteen, who publicly rejected Reagan’s advances and released a John Sayles-directed video humanizing veterans as resilient but suffering. Some stand in line at a payday lender, others laugh at a bar but display their injuries, still more lie buried in generic, white stone-marked graves. Like the song itself, Sayles’ video captured the deep alienation many people experienced as they realized Reagan’s Morning in America only shone brightly on a select few. Conservatives’ misappropriations only reinforced its point, that the slogans blaring forth in the public square were often so much noise pollution, covering up the cries of pain from those unable to forget their realities and join in.

The nearly forgotten story of the 'Born in the U.S.A.' remixes

Over 40 years, it’s become clear that “Born in the U.S.A.” matters precisely because it so well represents that disconnect . Springsteen captured a prime quality of the 1980s, the decade he spent as rock’s crossover king: the persistent feeling that the era’s shiny party aura was covering up a stench. The mercenary yuppie optimism much of popular culture reinforced covered up devastating inequities, not only among the mostly white working men Springsteen spoke for but for Black Americans demonized by the “crack epidemic,” queer people dying of AIDS and anyone else who didn’t or couldn’t buy into it. Born in the U.S.A. hit like a victory party, but it lasted because its real business was acknowledging the hangover. Putting America’s most treasured tales in the mouths of men who spoke in broken sentences, Springsteen deglamorized its mythos while retaining its allure. He wasn’t the first to do this — he owed a debt to the great blues singers, country greats like Merle Haggard and his beloved girl groups and soul stars. But as a white man with the force of rock supremacy behind him, Springsteen was able to embody something that was strong but vulnerable: the illusory American dream.

Bryan’s songs are evolving toward a similar powerful slipperiness, in a different way for a different time. He has frequently insisted that his music is not political, going so far to say on X recently that people who take sides in political discussions “don’t have anything interesting to do or say.” It’s telling that his duet with Springsteen doesn’t go anywhere near the working man, and certainly not near any war zones; instead, it returns to the moment when working-man’s bard Bruce became sex symbol Bruce with a few synth flourishes (also audible in Born in the U.S.A. ’s “Dancing in the Dark”). “Sandpaper” casts the rock patriarch in a mysterious role; I’m reading it as an older version of Bryan, reflecting years later on the loss of a woman who left him raw and yet still rapt. (This song is an odd case of a Bryan metaphor being a little off — I’m really not handy, but does sandpaper actually “bind”?) It’s an unexpected casting on an album that, despite Bryan’s insistence, does resonate in ways that recall Born in the U.S.A. ’s complicated impact.

American Anthem

What does 'born in the u.s.a.' really mean.

Nineteen tracks long, with a signature spoken-word intro that allows Bryan to place the album within the arc of his career, The Great American Bar Scene has room for several different varieties of storytelling. There are plenty of love songs, the usual Bryan kind in which his inadequacies fail his partner’s expectations. There are thorny anthems like the John Mayer feature “Better Days.” And there are plenty of chances for Bryan to play into his lore with autobiographical references to his discomfort with fame and his pleasure in a thriving relationship with podcaster Brianna LaPaglia. Bryan’s also included a mini-arc that directly invokes classic Springsteen songs, especially from Nebraska , whose sound most closely resembles Bryan’s subdued, acoustic approach; on these songs, he clearly adapts others’ personae to tell stories of mild outlawry and fading masculine prowess. They’re exquisitely crafted, but I find them less interesting than the ones that display Bryan’s unique form of slipperiness: the way he manages to humbly and almost imperceptibly make a broken myth of himself.

This is something Springsteen has rarely done. Despite the rock star status that makes people care very much about his personal life, he’s always been a folkie fiction writer, casting himself within tales that very clearly don’t reflect events from his own life. This is what connects him to Bob Dylan , another giant who, even when he does skirt openly confessional songwriting, prefers to remain masked and anonymous. Springsteen’s rise, in fact, marked a major turn away from the openly confessional singer-songwriter era. That turn would extend into the 1990s and beyond, among male rockers at least; the heroes of grunge, for example, obscured their own stories within cryptic word salads. Bryan’s stardom follows a turn back toward the personal led by Americountry success stories like Isbell and Chris Stapleton . He wants to be recognized. What makes his music slippery — and both more interesting and, despite his protestations, political — are the bigger stories he doesn’t quite so clearly articulate.

Foremost among them is his experience as part of a military family. Born on a naval base in Japan, Bryan himself enlisted at 17 and served eight years before being honorably discharged to pursue his musical career. He did tours in Djibouti and Bahrain, apparently not seeing combat, but still entering into that experience as the American presence abroad is facing increasing global scrutiny. The sense of dislocation in his songs is tangled up with his memories of service and mixed feelings about leaving it behind in favor of music. “I was supposed to die a military man, chest out too far with a drink in my hand,” he sings in the new song “Northern Thunder,” one of his most succinct complaints about the difficult life of the touring musician. His discomfort with having left that path permeates the song, but elsewhere he notes its cost, citing a young soldier wrecked by his first tour in “American Nights” and evoking the instability of the military lifestyle in family sagas like “Bass Boat.”

Bryan believes in the men who served, whom he considers brothers, comparing them favorably to the swaggering pretenders he meets in the music world: “Now everyone I know’s an outlaw, country to their core,” he sings in “Bathwater.” “But the only outlaw I’ve known served in the Corps.” The haunting presence of these enlisted men lends gravitas to Bryan’s tales of bar and road life; their stories are the ones that ground and torment him, even if he’s hesitant to lay them open. Their mostly silent witness adds complicated depth to the restlessness at the heart of Bryan’s writerly persona: There is a feeling of unfinished business within his songs, of regret and anger at crises and sacrifices that go unacknowledged.

This thread intertwines with his references to a sometimes troubled childhood and the ever-present threat of alcoholism to form a picture of American working-class life (mostly white and rural, though not necessarily so) that fights against the sentimentalizing impulse that can also surface in Bryan’s writing. He hasn’t yet reckoned with the power structures that mire his characters in their limbos; that’s one difference from Springsteen, who always made sure to identify the people (police officers, fathers, drug lords) and institutions (marriage, industrial capitalism) that made exercising free will a dicey proposition for his anti-heroes and heroines. If Bryan gets there, he might write an album like Springsteen’s underrated classic The Ghost of Tom Joad , which showed how the folk impulse to fight for a people, and not just individuals, could work within rock and roll.

Where Bryan stands now still proves powerful. For all of its wordiness (he invokes his own notebook collection more than anyone since Eminem was Slim Shady), Bryan’s lyrics reach for what has not been spoken, not in the cathartic spirit of protest, but in a more personal vein. His music does the same. Even as he’s built out his songs to translate for a mass audience, Bryan continues to leave plenty of space within his sound, working with his band and occasional co-producers to retain the feel of a live performance or of demos instead of beefing up the mix. He sings very close to the mic, only pulling out the full power of his tenor for the odd chaotic moment. (A jarring one: the final harmony on “Memphis; The Blues,” his duet with Moreland, who is a master of restraint.)

No longer do most tracks feel like solo ventures recorded on a phone, but Bryan has resisted committing to a style or genre even as he’s grown his sound. There’s a Celtic feel to a few tracks here, a bit of honky-tonk, a fair amount of folkish indie in the vein of Bon Iver and Bright Eyes . Yet The Great American Bar Scene still sounds huge, just as Born in the U.S.A. once did, because it fully engages with the aesthetics of its pop moment. The 1980s demanded that Bruce go massive. The 2020s require that Zach stay in scale. Maintaining his distance from clear genre markers, stubbornly insisting on his own point of view, Bryan stands alongside innovators from many different corners of the poly-genre spectrum: early Billie Eilish , Alex G , Lil Yachty , Charli XCX .

Where that point of view gets political is in the silence, too. In a recent New York Review of Books essay, Marilynne Robinson asks readers dismayed by America’s current political disarray to look backward for a moment at one source of the trauma : “the gross maldistribution of the burdens and consequences of our wars.” Referring specifically to the 4,400 American lives lost in Iraq, which have not yet been honored by a national memorial, she connects the seemingly inarticulate grievances of many living Americans to this and other major losses rarely acknowledged in public discourse. “Our foreign entanglements have passed through permutations that make them truly baffling,” she writes.

Bryan, who’s written songs in the past reflecting his own confusion over exactly what he was fighting when overseas, makes music for the baffled: those who want to believe in things like family, love, America, but who have been shell-shocked and carted around in darkness and are now just trying to find a way back. He doesn’t have to name a party affiliation to make this clear. It’s right there in The Great American Bar Scene ’s song “Boons,” an ode to country living that’s also a dirge about it — its isolation, the way it makes people anonymous. “Let me die out in the boons,” Bryan murmurs as he plucks a circular guitar chord and a chorus of Sufjan Stevens -esque angels lifts his voice a little higher. Forget me, he says. You won’t be able to forget me, the song insists.

Correction July 10, 2024

A previous version of this story misspelled Noeline Hofmann's last name.

• Bruce Springsteen

Rare Bruce Springsteen 1978 Tour Jacket

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. Photo taken by Andrea Klein, who was the art director for the Darkness album cover. The tour jackets were made for band, crew and management.

Somewhere on the road during the 1978 Springsteen Darkness Tour.

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Ted Williams was the greatest hitter ever, but there was bad luck and darkness in his family life, and other thoughts

Picked-up pieces while wondering why MLB doesn’t go back to having players wear their own team jerseys and hats at the All-Star Game . . .

▪ The death of Claudia Williams was announced Wednesday by the Red Sox, with the permission of her husband of 17 years, Eric Abel. Claudia was Ted Williams’s last surviving child.

Boston’s Splendid Splinter was the greatest hitter who ever lived, but there was a lot of bad luck and darkness in his family life.

The slugger’s only sibling, brother Danny, died of leukemia at the age of 39 in 1960. Ted’s eldest daughter, Bobby-Jo, was estranged from her dad in his final years and died of liver disease at the age of 62 in 2010. Ted’s only son, John Henry Williams, died of leukemia at the age of 35 in 2004. And now we learn that Claudia Franc Williams died at the age of 52 in December.

Ted had two granddaughters, Sherri and Francine, children of Bobby-Jo Williams and her first husband, Stephen Tomasco. Sherri died at the age of 46 in 2015.

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Francine has a son, Michael, and a daughter, Falon, Ted’s great-grandchildren.

Claudia Williams was smart, headstrong, athletic, and fiercely independent. In a 2004 biography of Ted Williams, author Leigh Montville reported that teenage Claudia thrice applied to Middlebury and was rejected three times. When Ted found out, he made a call that got his daughter a letter of acceptance. Unhappy with that method, Claudia rejected Middlebury and went to Springfield College.

“Claudia was her father’s daughter,” her husband told the Globe on Thursday. “I can honestly say Ted and Claudia were the most principled people I have ever known . . . they wore their hearts on their sleeves, and they spoke their minds just as boldly.”

Claudia was a marathoner and, according to ESPN , nearly qualified for the 2000 Olympics as a triathlete. Like her dad, she had no problem fighting back with the media.

In the hours and days after Ted Williams’s death, it was learned that Ted’s remains would be stored in a cryonics facility (Alcor) in Arizona. Many of Ted’s teammates and friends were distraught and his eldest daughter, Bobby-Jo, sued in an effort to have Ted’s ashes scattered in the ocean off Florida as he’d declared in his 1996 will. Bobby-Jo’s daughter, Francine, had visited with the slugger in January 2001 and told author Ben Bradlee Jr. ( “The Kid,” 2013 ) that her grandfather told her he wanted to be cremated.

Claudia and John Henry answered Bobby-Jo’s complaint with a handwritten pact they’d signed with their father in November 2000, agreeing that they’d all be frozen. Bobby-Jo dropped her complaint in 2002.

None of Ted’s children were at Fenway on July 22, 2002 , when the Red Sox honored Williams on a non-game night 17 days after his death.

“Bobby-Jo would later say she regretted not attending and seizing the moment to make a public plea for getting Ted’s remains out of Alcor,” wrote Bradlee. “Dom DiMaggio served as her surrogate.”

Before 20,000 at Fenway, DiMaggio inspired a standing ovation when he said , “I was saddened when Ted passed on, but I am considerably more saddened at the turmoil of the current controversy. I hope and pray this controversy will end as abruptly as it began, and that the family will do the right thing by honoring Ted’s last wishes as to his final resting place. And may he then finally rest in peace.”

Claudia didn’t want to hear any of that. She fiercely defended the decision to have her father’s and brother’s remains sent to Alcor, and planned to do the same herself. Asked directly on Thursday, her husband said, “The only response, though, is the one we’ve given with each loss . . . it is a private family matter.”

In her 2014 memoir, “ Ted Williams, My Father ,” Claudia wrote, “I can tell you that my family chose cryonics out of love . . . [Cryonics] was like a religion. Something we could have faith in.”

When I wrote a column celebrating the 50th anniversary of Ted’s last at-bat and casually mentioned the bad-taste jokes (“because of his son’s kooky decision to have his remains frozen”), Claudia responded with a letter to the Globe , stating, “Show respect to my father and our family by respecting our right to make certain private decisions.”

Fair enough.

RIP, Claudia Williams.

▪ Quiz: Name six Red Sox who started in left field for the American League All-Star team since Ted Williams retired in 1960 (answer below).

▪ Imagine Alex Cora managing the Yankees next season.

▪ How is it that Cleveland has been the host city for six baseball All-Star Games (1935, ‘54, ‘63, ‘81, ‘97, 2019), but Fenway Park has only had three (1946, ‘61, ‘99)?

▪ The Jets are irresistible. They haven’t been in the playoffs in the last 13 seasons, they have a 41-year-old quarterback who played less than five minutes last season, and their head coach — Robert Saleh — is front-runner to be fired first this season.

▪ Bill Belichick’s name is going to come up early and often if Mike McCarthy gets off to a bad start in Dallas. Here’s hoping Bill is back in the league quickly, and I’m not ruling out the Giants, or even the Jets.

▪ Sorry, not going to lose any sleep wondering if Jaylen Brown’s feelings are hurt for not being on the US Olympic team.

▪ Jarren Duran was tremendous during his mic’d-up inning when the Red Sox played at Yankee Stadium on Sunday night. The Sox outfielder came across as extremely humble and likable.

▪ Been on a small minor league tour and saw several Red Sox prospects playing in Manchester, N.H. — the Double A Sea Dogs were at Delta Dental Stadium last weekend — and Worcester’s Polar Park. WooSox outfielder Nick Yorke hit a couple of homers against Rochester on Wednesday, and closer Ryan Zeferjahn struck out a pair and picked up the save.

Rochester is the Triple A team of the Nationals and features No. 2 overall pick Dylan Crews and second baseman Darren Baker, son of Dusty Baker. During the 2002 Angels-Giants World Series, Darren Baker was the 3-year-old batboy for the Giants who almost was steamrolled by Giant base runners scoring on a double by Kenny Lofton. Darren was scooped up and saved by J.T. Snow, who finished his career with the Red Sox in 2006.

▪ Hats off to Dominique Moceanu for her pre-Olympic message regarding medals and mental health . The retired American gymnast was part of our 1996 gold medal-winning Magnificent Seven at the age of 14.

“As someone who was directly coached by Bela & Marta Karolyi . . . I experienced the intensity & demands of their decades-long influence firsthand,” she posted on X. “The methods led to successes on the competition floor but often at the cost of athletes mental & physical health . . . ”

▪ Canada hasn’t been represented in men’s Olympic basketball for 24 years, but that’ll change when Jamal Murray and Shai Gilgeous-Alexander start in the backcourt for Team Canada this month in Paris.

▪ New York Post headline when the reeling Yankees lost their first one in St. Petersburg on Tuesday: “Flop At Trop.”

▪ It’s official: J.D. Martinez is Adrian Gonzalez. Seriously. These guys must be related. The 36-year-old Mets DH this past week told the New York Post he’d rather take a pass on playing afternoon games.

“All the day games, it’s a little bit tougher every time when you get older,” he said. “I don’t want to say protect me, but I am not in my 20s anymore . . . the older you get, you don’t have that twitch and it takes you a little longer to wake up in the mornings.”

▪ Nationals righthander Kyle Finnegan is the clubhouse leader in pitch-clock violations this season. He was sanctioned nine times in his first 37⅓ innings, which amounted to once every 64 pitches. This was called to everybody’s attention when he was tagged with a violation that resulted in a walkoff loss to the Rockies in late June. According to the Wall Street Journal , Finnegan has more pitch-clock violations than almost half of all big league teams.

▪ In case you missed it, Globe correspondent Maria Jose Gutierrez Chavez reported that Hub native and former Colby hockey player Tracey Roberts was an unofficial puck consultant for Pixar’s “Inside Out 2.” Roberts’s dad, Arthur, played hockey at Boston College and Tracey played on the boys’ junior varsity team at Tabor before playing for the Mules in the late 1980s.

▪ The decimation of the vaunted Pac-10/Pac-12 football conference will be complete Aug. 1 when UCLA, USC, Oregon, and Washington go to the Big Ten; Arizona, Arizona State, Colorado, and Utah go to the Big 12 (which now has 16 schools); and Cal and Stanford go to the ACC. Only Oregon State and Washington State remain. They will operate largely as independents, playing six or more games in the Mountain West.

▪ Here’s hoping fraud Deion Sanders flops big time in the Big 12. According to CBS Sports , 61 percent of the 72 scholarship players Colorado signed in 2023 are no longer there. The Buffaloes added 40 players from the transfer portal this year, most in the country. Nobody is safe. Except Deion’s sons of course. He’s using Colorado to launch their NFL careers and everybody’s OK with it.

▪ Arch Manning, the third generation of Manning QBs, is slated to start the season on the bench for Texas. Quinn Ewers will be the Longhorns’ starter. Regarding his decision to ignore the wildly popular transfer portal, Manning told The Athletic , “I’m going to stick it out and play there [at Texas] eventually.”

▪ Congrats to Oxford’s Geoffrey Esper for finishing second at Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest on July 4. A 49-year-old electronics teacher at Bay Path Regional Vocational High School in Charlton, Esper was one of the favorites to take the crown vacated when perennial champ Joey Chestnut was bounced for signing with a competing food company . Esper downed 53 hot dogs and buns in 10 minutes and received $5,000 for being runner-up to Chicago native Patrick Bertoletti, who swallowed 58.

▪ The New York Times Sunday Arts & Leisure section had an amazing, detailed, numbers-driven, sports-like four-page spread regarding “ How Big Is Taylor Swift Really? ” In areas of hit singles, album sales, pop star arc, relative eras, touring, and awards, Travis Kelce’s girlfriend was stacked up against the likes of The Beatles, Michael Jackson, Britney Spears, Madonna, Beyonce, Drake, Springsteen, and other gods of “modern” music. The field was formidable, but the Times concluded, “The length of Swift’s career has allowed her into The Beatles’ vaunted ballpark . . .”

▪ Congrats to Wellesley High grad Tommy Harding, PR guy for the Stanley Cup champion Florida Panthers.

▪ Pass Go! and collect $200 if you knew that Peter Tork of The Monkees later became varsity baseball coach at Pacific Hills School in Santa Monica, Calif.

▪ RIP, Shelley Duvall , who famously swung a Carl Yastrzemski-model Louisville Slugger in the 1980 movie “The Shining,” finally hitting Jack Nicholson’s character in the head.

▪ Quiz answer: Yastrzemski (1967, ‘71, ‘72), Jim Rice (1978, ‘83, ‘85), Carl Everett (2000), Manny Ramirez (2001, ‘02, ‘04, ‘05, ‘08), Jason Bay (2009), Jackie Bradley Jr. (2016).

Dan Shaughnessy is a Globe columnist. He can be reached at [email protected] . Follow him @dan_shaughnessy .