Coming on October 23rd is Bruce Springsteen's latest album with the E Street Band, titled Letter To You. The 12-track collection is Springsteen's 20th studio album, and was recorded at his home studio in New Jersey. The set's release coincides with the 40th anniversary of “The Boss'” classic double album The River — which was released on October 17th, 1980.
Springsteen said of the new album in the official announcement, “I love the emotional nature of Letter To You. And I love the sound of the E Street Band playing completely live in the studio, in a way we’ve never done before, and with no overdubs. We made the album in only five days, and it turned out to be one of the greatest recording experiences I’ve ever had.”
Letter To You includes nine recently written Springsteen songs — alongside new recordings of three of his legendary — but previously unreleased — compositions from the early-1970's: “Janey Needs A Shooter,” “Song For The Orphans,” and the iconic “If I Was The Priest.”
Interestingly the press shot of the album, which features an expanded version of the album's cover art, sees Springsteen at the entrance of New York's Central Park at 72nd Street and Central Park West, with John Lennon's building, The Dakota, to his right as he faces the path leading to the Lennon memorial garden, Strawberry Fields.
Bruce Springsteen, who's released four acoustically-based solo albums over the years, admits that it's a different process writing for himself versus writing for an E Street Band project: “There's just something — it's a different thought process when I think about writing for that group of musicians, and it tends. . . I think I tend to be more direct in some ways, y'know? I expand, maybe, my scope in some fashion. It's something just about what the band is after all these years that makes me think a little bit differently, so I'm, I'm excited about doing that.”
Drummer Max Weinberg has always maintained that playing in and a group like Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band was exactly what he fantasized about doing when he was 13-years-old: “Well, he's very inspirational to all of us. I'm sure we play better with him than we do with anybody. You wanna play great. You wanna play the best you can. And it's not hard; you get up there and hitch yourself to Bruce's energy, and it pulls you along and you create your own energy.”
The tracklist to Bruce Springsteen's Letter To You is:
“One Minute You’re Here”
“Letter To You”
“Burnin’ Train”
“Janey Needs A Shooter”
“Last Man Standing”
“The Power Of Prayer”
“House Of A Thousand Guitars”
“Rainmaker”
“If I Was The Priest”
“Ghosts”
“Song For Orphans”
“I’ll See You In My Dreams”
