In His Tracks

The Boss, a Zen Buddhist monk, and the "Other Two" walk into a bar...

When I was growing up, I never had any sense of how a song was written. As far as I knew, the lyrics and music came to a songwriter fully formed, a divine gift from above.

A band would then record this miracle, after which it would get played on the radio and end up on records, tapes, and CDs.

But that changed for me when Bruce Springsteen’s Tracks came out in the fall of 1998. This set of 66 songs was mostly unreleased material that Springsteen had recorded throughout his career to that point. These songs didn’t “make the cut” for any of his studio albums.

Hearing them was revelatory for me for two reasons.

One, they embodied the remarkable breadth of Springsteen’s work. So many of the songs were truly great, particularly those recorded from 1975-82. And Bruce didn’t think any of them fit on his albums!

Two — and this is what really knocked me out — I heard lyrics and music from other songs of his pop up in these songs. In essence, he was providing rare insight into the unseen work that powers the creative process.

For example, the line “I wanna go out tonight / I wanna find out what I got” from the iconic song “Badlands” is also in the outtake “Iceman.”

In another case, he used most of the same lyrics in two outtakes with completely different music: “Mary Lou” and “Be True.”

And he used the same music with different lyrics in the 1974-75 tour staple “A Love So Fine” alongside the outtake “So Young and in Love.”

There are other examples as well.

So for me, the epiphany was that songwriters can write, edit, re-write, edit some more, try out lyrics with one melody, then another, mixing and matching before ultimately finding the magic combination to create a miracle.

Less divine intervention, more sweat stains.

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The Best…

…Book I Read This Week

Deliver Me from Nowhere: The Making of Bruce Springsteen’s ‘Nebraska’ (Penguin Random House, 2023) — By Warren Zanes

Speaking of Springsteen…

If the success of a book is the number of notes a reader takes, then for me, Warren Zanes’s Deliver Me from Nowhere is a smash.

(The title itself is a reused Springsteen lyric which I believe appears in three of his songs: “Open All Night” and “State Trooper” and the outtake “Living on the Edge of the World.”)

Zanes, a former guitar-playing prodigy who became a historian and writer, chronicles the making of Springsteen’s most unusual, most uncommercial, most unlikely album: Nebraska.

Released in 1982, Nebraska’s recordings were never meant for public consumption. Springsteen recorded them on a home four-track machine, sitting on the edge of his bed in a rented farmhouse in Colts Neck, New Jersey. (He recently returned to that house for an interview on CBS Sunday Morning.) They were intended as demos to later be reworked as full-blown numbers for an album with the E Street Band.

But when Springsteen found that a bigger sound with the band didn’t make these songs better, he decided to release the demos themselves as his new album. But how, in 1982, could he turn amateur recordings from a cassette tape into a professionally produced album? With great technological difficulty, as Zanes explains.

Springsteen’s release of these haunting songs in their original, imperfect form is not exactly a new story. But Zanes approaches it with a musician’s ear and a historian’s eye, aided by a fresh interview he did with Bruce in 2021.

What resonated most with me was actually Zanes’s description of Springsteen’s life after he released Nebraska. Depression had taken hold of him to a point where friends feared for his safety. He had just released a stark album filled with stories of killers and ghosts, for which he did no promotional interviews and did not tour. He had pointedly and intentionally made himself invisible.

Yet, in hindsight, we know that he was two years away from the incandescent commercial success of Born in the U.S.A. and his rebirth as one of the most famous popular artists of the 20th century.

Zanes writes that in the aftermath of Nebraska — before reaching that cultural zenith — Springsteen was “in the in-betweens.”

In a much smaller way, I see myself in that place now.

I know where I’ve been and I know where I am. But I don’t know exactly where I’m going. There’s a freedom in the not knowing — in this in-betweenness — that’s exciting, confusing, unnerving, and inspiring.

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…Pocket-Sized Book I Read This Week

How to Relax (Parallax Press, 2015) — By Thich Nhat Hanh

By upbringing and cultural pressure, I was trained on the mantra that “work comes first.” I’ve largely lived that approach for most of my life.

Missing family and social events because of business obligations. Monitoring work developments on nights and weekends. Keeping my email inbox close to zero. Struggling to unplug during vacations.

I’m sure we can all relate to some degree.

But in recent months, living outside a traditional business existence, I’ve had an opportunity to reflect on questions regarding the nature of work and the value of my time. Within that process has been an attempt to be kinder to myself.

So when I saw the pocket-sized book How to Relax at the checkout of a local bookstore, I couldn’t resist picking it up.

Written by the late Zen Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh, the book is a compendium of simple, short entries about breathing, meditation, and staying in the present.

Needing a book to teach you “how to relax” is admittedly kind of nuts, but the truth is that I could use the help.

This little book includes simple tips, like thinking the word “in” when you inhale and “out” when you exhale. This allows you to return to your body, to be present, to help block out the noise.

Building blocks like this form the foundation of more advanced concepts explained as “Stopping” and “Letting Go of Worrying.” But I’m still working on the breathing part.

Sometimes on recent walks, I’ve opted to concentrate on my breath rather than listening to music or a podcast. When I do this, it’s amazing how keenly I can feel my body and sense the environment around me.

But for now, I can’t sustain that state of mind for very long before a thought of the past or a worry about the future intrudes.

Like anything else, being present takes practice. I hope I have the patience to keep at it and pull down some of the structures and strictures that I’ve built in my mind.

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…Series I Watched This Week

The Other Two (2019-pres.) — Created by Chris Kelly & Sarah Schneider
Airing on HBO, streaming on Max

On the subject of grappling with self-worth and self-acceptance, I bring you The Other Two, a comedy series now in its third season on HBO/Max.

The show centers on siblings Brooke (Heléne York) and Cary (Drew Tarver), who live in the shadow of their teenage younger brother, a Bieber 1.0-like pop sensation known as Chase Dreams (Case Walker).

Brooke is a former dancer, messily bumbling her way through life. Cary is an aspiring actor who mostly waits tables. When the series begins, they’re both in their late-20s, frustrated and unfulfilled, and thrown into further confusion when their little brother’s song “Marry U at Recess” becomes a YouTube mega-hit.

Also in the mix are their mother, played by Molly Shannon with zany midwestern earnestness, Chase’s sycophantic manager played by Ken Marino, and Wanda Sykes as Chase’s wry and cynical PR chief.

The show skewers show business and all of the trappings it bestows on vacant confections like Chase Dreams, while the desperate strivings and insecurities of those adjacent to — but firmly outside of — the spotlight are unseen and unknown.

If the show, created by former Saturday Night Live writers Chris Kelly and Sarah Schneider, weren’t so funny, it would make you cry. Fortunately, the trials of Brooke and Cary provide plenty of laughs.

Thanks to reader Hirsh S. for the tip.