Speaker 1: All right, everybody, welcome back to the Shirley You Can't
Be Serious podcast. We have just ended our series on
the best golf Comedies of all time, and now we
are about to begin a new series.
Speaker 2: We are starting one of the coolest six week deep
dives that I can think of. It's going to be
all about the summer of nineteen eighty four.
Speaker 1: We have frequently talked about what year is the most
eighties year of all eighties years, and Jason, I think
you have said nineteen eighty four.
Speaker 2: I am spiking the football. It's nineteen eighty four.
Speaker 1: Okay, So if we go back in times in nineteen
eighty four, from a kid in nineteen eighty four, I
could have gone to the movie theater and watched Sixteen Candles,
h Grimlins, Top Secret, Romancing the Stone, Red Dawn, Revenge
of the Nerds, Beverly Hills, Cop Police Academy. I mean
these are the most iconic of iconic Terminator, the Last Starfighter,
I mean Last Last. I mean, it's the most iconic
eighties movies.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and you're talking music wise, You're talking about When
Doves Cry by Prince, You've got what's love got to
do with it? From Tina Turner. You've got Footloose, You've
got Against a Lodge, You've got the Van Halen albums.
I mean, you've got Huey Lewis Sports. That whole summer
was amazing.
Speaker 1: So our attempt today will be to take you back
to that time as we begin by comparing two albums
that were at the top of the charts in the
summer of nineteen eighty four, Huey Lewis and The News Sports.
Speaker 2: And Bruce Springsteen's Born in the USA.
Speaker 1: Two super iconic albums. Yeah, so here we are. We're
comparing these two incredible albums of two guys whose names
are followed with and the band. Right, you've got Huey
Lewis and The News, and you've got Bruce Springsteen and
the East Street Band. Yes, right, they both got sexophone players.
They're both gravelly voiced, not traditional of the time sounding guys,
but they were killing it at the time.
Speaker 2: That's exactly right.
Speaker 1: And these albums were their biggest success of their recording
career up until that point.
Speaker 2: Yeah, biggest sellers for sure.
Speaker 1: Okay, this episode, our executive producers are Chris and Jeanie Alexander.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Chris and Jeannie are some of my oldest friends
in the world. Chris was the best man at my wedding,
he was in the nursery with me at my church.
And Jeanie is one of my wife's oldest friends, her
college roommate, and so we ran around together at ou
and some of my dearest friends in the world. Chris
and Jennie, thank you so much for being Patreon and
just supporting our podcast. We love you, guys and are
very very thankful.
Speaker 1: Genie came up in the youtubo episode, right.
Speaker 2: She knows her stuff, man, she knows her stuff. She
is a big YouTube fan.
Speaker 1: Well, if you want to be an executive producer of
our podcast, be sure and visit our Patreon page. It's
as cheap as a cup of coffee a month to
become an executive producer of one of our episodes. To
be sure and go check that out. All right, We're
going to start off this comparison by talking about Bruce
Springsteen and Born in the USA, and the next we'll
talk about Huey Lewis and the news in sports.
Speaker 2: I can't wait.
Speaker 1: Okay, do you have any personal feelings about Born in
the USA?
Speaker 2: So I was one of those kids who thought originally
that Born in the USA is like this big fist
pumping patriotic I love America songs.
Speaker 1: Wrong, I know, I know, right. Yeah, Well, it's not
like they were. I mean, they did everything they could
to fool you about the content of the song. But yeah,
that's I was in revisiting. I'm like, oh, well, big
misunderstanding here.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and so I definitely knew this album. I was familiar,
especially with the videos.
Speaker 1: Huh.
Speaker 2: So for me, I grew up a baseball player. I
love Glory Days. I love that video. The idea of
being a rock star baseball player is very appealing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, talk about reaching your target audience by
being the guy who's just throwing some balls at a
board at the local park. He nailed it. He nailed
his blue collar demographic.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 1: Before we get going, I just want to point something out.
We have been talking to each other now for a
couple of years, face to face, and one of the
reasons that I can do that is because you don't
have nose hair. Have you been talking to people and
like you can't even concentrate on what they're saying because
of their nose hair.
Speaker 2: Absolutely, they like tucked you.
Speaker 4: It dangles, yes, it wiggles, it's it's a total distraction. Absolutely,
And so let me let me say, if you are
one of those guys, we have a product that is
supporting the podcast that you need to check out. Is
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Speaker 2: It is an amazing product. It trims your nose hair.
It's not embarrassing. You just stick it up there. It
takes care of it.
Speaker 1: You're not gonna look at people and bother them, right,
And I'm one of those guys who's self conscious about
my nose hair. So somebody that you're gonna see me
and I'm gonna be like yanking them out and wincing
in pain, don't do that. There is a special thing
that they make and they've also just released. In addition
to the weed Whacker, they have just something called the lawnmower.
If you have other areas of your body that you're
looking to trim up. And I'd like to point out
that a giraffe is easier to see in the planes
than it is in the forest. So that's that's wonderful. Yes,
yes it is.
Speaker 2: So it's very it's very good around sensitive areas if
you know what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they have also an entire shavekit called the Ultra
Smooth Package package. You get the idea.
Speaker 2: So who doesn't want their package Ultra Smooth?
Speaker 1: Right? Right? So don't forget to go to manscapes dot
com and use the promo code fan sided twenty to
get twenty percent off your order and free shipping.
Speaker 2: Whack it.
Speaker 1: Perfect time. So let's talk history of mister Springsteen, shall we?
Speaker 2: Yes, let's go.
Speaker 1: Okay. So September twenty third, nineteen forty nine, Young Bruce
Springsteen is born in Long Beach, New Jersey. His family
is a blue collar family, scraping by. His dad goes
through multiple jobs. He's a prison worker, he's a bus driver,
he works at a factory. And knowing this kind of history,
to say that Bruce is kind of political in his
songs might be a bit of an understatement. Yeah, he
definitely is, and we don't get political on this podcast,
but you can certainly tell that his upbringing formed his politics,
which then formed the stories behind a lot of these songs.
But interestingly, Bruce himself never worked in a factory, never
worked on a highway, never had a real job in
his life. He was always a musician, yeah, and he
was inspired to do that back in nineteen fifty five
ish six, maybe when he saw a guy on TV
swinging his hips and girls screaming their heads off, mister
Elvis Presley. Yes, yeah, So he decides at that moment,
I've got to be a rock and roll star, and
he convinces his mom to rent him a guitar. They
do not have enough money to buy a guitar, so
she rents him a guitar for something like twenty five
bucks a week. And he's terrible. I mean, he's just
a little kid. He's like he's six seven years old
at this point, and so she rents him this kind
of crappy guitar, and it quickly becomes a parent that
he needs to get rid of the guitar, like there's
that he's not learning to play it. And so he
knows at some point that he's got a part with
this thing that he's treasured for these two weeks, right,
and so he goes out in the backyard and does
a concert for his you know, nine and ten year
old friends and swings his hips and shakes his booty
and plays not chords and everybody's laughing and loving it,
and he's like, someday, someday nice. So someday comes. A
few years later, at the age of sixteen, he tells
his mom this, by the way, we've hit the British
invasion at this point. Okay, you got the Beatles, you
get the Stones. Yeah, And so he tells his mom,
if you can get me an electric guitar, I can
get a job. He and his dad didn't really get
along very well. He and his mom got along much better,
and Christmas Day she ends up buying him a cheap Japanese,
fairly tunable, one pickup electric guitar a Kent. Yeah, I've
never heard of it either.
Speaker 2: I'm sorry, Kmarts something like that.
Speaker 1: And it is the greatest Christmas present he has ever got.
Speaker 2: I heard him talk about this. He said, the immense
investment that it took to buy this guitar. He said
it cost sixty dollars and he had never seen sixty
dollars in one place at one time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it blew his mind, right, and so he's determined
to make this a success. He immediately joins up with
a band called the Castiles, and they pretty quickly record
a forty five couple of songs. Okay, he and one
of the other band members right as they're driving to
the recording studio.
Speaker 2: Nothing like pressure.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well, you know, hey work for any excess, right Yeah.
And by the time he's eighteen, the Vietnam War is
in full bloom and he gets his draft card, right,
and so he has to go to the local doctor,
and his dad in his past when they would have
their fights, he's like, boy, I can't wait till the
army gets a hold of you. They're going to make
a man out of you. And that was kind of
before all of Vietnam was happening. And so he comes
back from his doctor visit. His dad's like, well, hot
to go, and he says, well, I'm afore F, which
means he failed it, like he deliberately gave him answers
that he knew would cause him not to be draftable.
His dad's response is, well, I think that's probably good. Yeah.
So a year later, his family decides to move out
to California for better job prospects, and Bruce stays in
New Jersey. He thinks, if I can play at these
clubs in Asbury Park, I can make a name for myself,
and so he stays. Unfortunately, at that time, the clubs
in Asbury Park only wanted bands that were playing top
forty music, and Bruce is trying to write original stuff.
They weren't really interested in original work. The exception to
this rule was this place called the Upstage Club, and
it's this place that welcome musicians playing original music. And
so you could go in start playing at nine, probably
not get done play until five am, and you'd get
a whopping five dollars.
Speaker 2: See per hour. That would be yeah, not very much.
Speaker 1: Not very much, right, And I don't know what it
was back then. I don't know what minimum wage was
back then, but that's not even an hour of minimum
wage now, right. And so if you happen, though, to
get a job there as a club musician, then one
night of play could get you fifteen dollars woo. Yeah.
So one of the club musicians was this kid named
Steve van zandt little Stevie van Zant. He managed to
get a job as a club musician there, and that's
where he and Bruce ultimately cross paths. So Bruce has
several bands during this time, one called Earth, one called Child,
one called Steel meal one called the Doctor Zoom and
the Sonic Boom, and so that's how he and Steve
crosspaths in nineteen seventy two. So just a couple of
years later he's been playing the music scene. This guy
named Mike Appel notices him and thinks he's got potential,
and Mike has him sign in like parking lot sign
on the hood of a car, a management agreement. Mike's
claim to fame up to that point is that he
had written a song for the Partridge Family. That was
his big connection with the music industry. But it's bigger
than anybody else had that. Bruce knew, so he was like,
you know, why not. So he's a twenty one to
twenty two year old kid signing this multipage agreement with
this guy. Yep. But Mike Appel does get Bruce an
audition with John Hammond, who's one of the key management
at Columbia Records. Bruce goes in and sings Mary Queen
of Arkansas.
Speaker 2: Bruce Springsteen Columbia Pop Audition job number seven nine eight two,
Mary Queen of Walkin Saw Take.
Speaker 3: One, Mary Queen margin song, It's not Tooly Dream.
Speaker 1: And John says you belong on Columbia Records. So they
go through this and at some point John Hammond pulls
Bruce aside and he says, listen, this deal that you've
got with Michaeppel is not a good deal. You need
to try to get out of it. But out of loyalty,
Bruce stuck with Mike. He would regret that decision. Yeah, yeah,
So Columbia thought that Bruce was kind of a folk singer.
He has very Bob Dylan style. I mean, if we
want to talk about word smith ory, if that's a word,
he's got it right. I mean, he has an amazing
way to find those words that trigger nostalgia, emotion, just
an amazing ability with words. But he wanted to record
a rock record. He didn't want to be a folks singer.
He want to be a rock singer. Right.
Speaker 2: I can see where people would be like, hey, this
guy reminds me about Dylan. Yeah, there are similarities there.
I'm glad that he decided to go, let's make a
rock and roll record.
Speaker 1: Right. So what he decides to do is go back
to Asbury Park, pick up some friends from Jersey that
included Vinnie mad Dog Lopez, Gary Tallent Danny Federici and
Dave Sanchez and future most Important person in the World Clarence.
Speaker 2: Clemens Flashback Bill and Ted episode.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so here's the story on Clarence Clemens, right, Yeah,
So Clarence Clemens had been playing in the same area
of town that Bruce had been playing in Kay for
a while. He had gotten easy jobs as soul musician
and it was you know, black and white were very
separate at that time, and he didn't really want to
play that. He was a rocker. He wanted to play
rock music. He ended up with this other band and
was playing rock music covers with them, and a girl
in the band was like, you've got to meet my
friend Bruce. You guys would get along so well and
you need to play together. And so he'd heard that
for several months, but they were always playing at the
same time, never got a chance to meet each other.
And one night, this big storm happens. I think it
knocks out the power at the club that Clarence is
playing at, and he thinks, Okay, I'm going to go
down and see if I can meet this Bruce guy.
So it's pouring down rain, lightning, wind is horrible. He
walks the few blocks down to the club. He opens
the door, and as he opens the door, the wind
like blows the door. Okay, so that's his perspective on it.
But I can imagine the perspective of everybody inside the
bar when this six foot four giant black man at
this white club opens the door to thunder and lightning
blasting behind him, and it looks as like he's ripping
the door off, throwing it down the street. And so
he comes in and he's like, I want to sit in,
and Bruce says okay, and they fall in love with
each other.
Speaker 2: That's fantastic. Let's talk about how they got the band name,
the EA Street Band. Okay, one of the guys in
the band lived on Eas Street.
Speaker 1: Yes, I don't remember who it was. It was Dave Santius,
but I don't really, I'm not sure one of those
guys lived on East Street. So why not call it
the East Street Fan.
Speaker 2: I'm just here to pass on knowledge. It's a great
band name, the Eas Street Band. Yeah, I mean, as
long as there's somebody before it. Huey Lewis and the
East Street Band. Hey, I grew up in a town
where he had a street b Street, C Street, I
swear yeah, D Street, so I understand.
Speaker 1: There you go. And their first album was appropriately called
Greetings from Asbury Park, New Jersey. Of course, immediately comparisons
start getting made between Bruce and Bob Dylan and music
reviews right, but the critics kind of tear it up
and it's not a big commercial success. Later that year
they come out with their second album, which is called
The Wild, the Innocent, and the East Street Shuffle. And
this one actually got rave reviews by the critics, so
they really loved it. But it's long and not remotely commercial. Yeah,
nothing is going to be getting played on the radio,
which means you're not going to have a lot of
album sales. Yes, so record company of course starting to
scratch their head a little bit and tap their fingers. Fortunately,
Bruce has the ability to put on an incredible live show.
He is notorious even still for doing like three hour
long shows that are full energy the whole time. He
would do these live shows and his fan base keeps
on growing and growing, and at some point, this music
critic from Rolling Stone magazine named John Landau comes in
to see one of his shows, and after seeing his show,
he writes and Rolling Stone. I've seen the future of
rock and roll and it is Bruce Springsteen.
Speaker 2: That's fantastic. I think we need to put a pin
in that guy's name because he's going to show up later.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yes, he is, importantly Yes, So at that point,
Bruce is really struggling, but he writes and records this
song called Torn to Run. Everyone sees the potential for
this to be an incredible hit, Like it's his style
is not one that's radio friendly, but this song definitely is.
And Micah Pell even like sneaks copies of this song
to pro Bruce Springsteen radio stations there in New Jersey.
And the following continues to grow and grow, but he
doesn't have an album to go along with it, and
then his team starts to fall apart. Mad Dog leaves,
he's replaced by this guy named boom Carter, but then
Dave Sanchez, who is probably the best musician in the group,
leaves and he takes boom Carter with him. So he's
lost two drummers and his best musician in a span
of just a few months. And then he runs across
this guy who I think is a key to the
album that we're going to talk about in just a bit.
His name is Max Weinberger. Okay, so you've heard the
name Max Weinberger before, Yeah, because you probably have seen
him on Conan O'Brien, right, right, So that guy was
the replacement drummer that ended up being the drummer for
the East Street Band. He had been playing with this group.
He's just in college at the time and still living
at home, but he had been playing for this group
called the Jim Morino Band that was a support for
Springsteen's band at Seaton Hall. So when Bruce puts out
an ad of hey, we need a new drummer, he's
all about it, right, And this is what it says
in the newspaper ads. It says no junior Ginger Bakers.
So Ginger Baker was the drummer for Cream and he
was notorious for like these really long drawn out, big, nice,
blamey solos. And they were like, we don't want that guy.
We want straight and narrow drumming. Max is a guy
who likes simplistic and ordered drumming. Right. He is in
a big show. Vote. By the way, I sent you
a video where it's Max Weinberg in a drum off
with his son, Jay Weinberg, and Jay's the he's the
drummer for Slipknot. That's not Max Weinberg kind of drumming.
That's that's big, big, showy drumming. Yes, And they do
a swing song in this drum off and it is fantastic. Yeah, yeah,
you should check it out anyway, So he answers the
Village Voice ad he knows he's going to keep his
drumming condensed contained, and Bruce offers them the job at
one hundred and ten dollars a week, and so he
quits college just a few credit shy of degree and
joins the eas Street band.
Speaker 2: Good choice.
Speaker 1: So they go to the studio. They start trying to
put the album together to go with this song Born
to Run, and Michapel insists on producing, but they can't
make it sound like it is in Bruce's head, and
Bruce is starting to doubt Mike's abilities. So at some
point Bruce has his old friend Steve van Zant come
by and he's like, hey, you want to work with us,
and you know, they're just hanging out initially, it's like, hey,
do you want to help us put this album together?
And it's like sure, and that becomes him becoming a
member of the East Street Band. As time goes on,
right right, he also brings in put a Pen in It,
John Landau, who had said that he was going to
be the future of rock and roll, to help them
get the right sound because they're just struggling. And Landau
ends up breaking down a lot of the barriers that
were slowing down the progress of the album, and Bruce
makes him a co producer with him and Bruce and
Mike Appel, and Mike is pissed.
Speaker 2: He is not pleased.
Speaker 1: Right, he thinks he's being replaced, and as it turned out,
he was right about that. Yep. The record company starts
putting pressure on them because they've been working on this
for months. They've already put out promotions and advertisements and books,
tour and so ultimately they forced this album out. July twentieth,
nineteen seventy five, finished recording Born to Run.
Speaker 2: Okay, So, one of the things I found interesting about
the story behind Born to Run. So Bruce is out
to make this great rock song and he wants something
radio friendly, something to please the record company, and so
he comes up with Born to Run. He thinks, man,
I've knocked it out of the park with this one.
This is a great song, and when he puts it out,
it doesn't really catch fire like he wanted it to. Now,
if you are a long distance runner like you and
I have been in there past, yeah, Born to Run
is a part of your playlist. That's just how it
is if you're a runner, right, and it gives you
extra legs and it's a great song. But at the
time when it came out, it wasn't really.
Speaker 1: That big of a hit. Yeah, it wasn't as big
as he wanted it was. Still it was a career
maker for him.
Speaker 2: It was he thought it would be like the best.
Speaker 1: Song, number one song. Yeah, it didn't even crack the
top ten. It's crazy. Yeah, so it's a success. I mean,
he does have a great deal of success because of
this album Born to Run. A few weeks after it
gets released, they play a sold out show in New
York at this club called the bottom Line Line. There
were reporters there, music critics there, new fan base there,
and he dazzles them all and within a few weeks
he becomes a superstar. He's on the cover of Newsweek
and Time, magazine in the same week. Same week, calls
up his dad. He's like, I'm gonna be on the
cover of Newsweek and Time at the same time, Dad,
and he's like says, like, well, it's better than another
picture of the president.
Speaker 2: I guess I heard him talk about this. He said
that when he called, he was like, basically it was
the equivalent of telling his dad that he had taken
Santa Claus's job at the North Pole.
Speaker 1: So the album reaches number three, but Bruce realizes he
is not making very much money.
Speaker 2: Yes, this is a problem, curious.
Speaker 1: So he hires an attorney in an accountant to check
the books, and he finds out that he doesn't really
own the rights to his own songs. Michappel, his company
owns those and Mike is taking a majority of the
profits for his company. So Bruce sues Mike yep, and
then Mike counter sues Bruce, and Bruce does not record
another album for about three more years. And I mean
he's shooting up like a rocket. Yeah, cover of two
Pinnacle magazines and then Crickets, and then the magazines start
to publish whatever happened to Bruce Springsteen articles, Yeah, that
must be very hard, but he wasn't willing to give
up control of his music, and so they just continued
to fight and he refused to record. Michappel stopped him
from recording with John Landau through the lawsuit, and so
finally on May twenty eighth, nineteen seventy seven, at three
o'clock in the morning, Bruce and Mike settled their lawsuit.
Bruce gives up a lot of money, Mike gives up
control of the music. Bruce makes John Landau his new manager,
and they quickly produced an album, and this album details
the difficulties and lessons from that point in life. And
that album was called Darkness on the Edge of Top.
So he plays countless shows and the three hour long shows,
and a mass is an incredible fan base. He graduates
from theaters into playing arenas, and then he goes and
he plays the No Nuke's Benefit with some giants from
the seventies like Crosby, Stills and Nash and Carly Simon,
but he is the one that steals the show. So
he manages to revive his struggling career. Then, in nineteen
eighty records the album The River that has a song
called The River which was inspired by his sister's planned pregnancy.
Good song, but it also interestingly, up to this point,
as we said, he hasn't cracked the top ten, but
there's a song on this album that breaks that streak.
Speaker 2: He's got a great top forty song that's called Hungry Heart.
Speaker 1: I mean, so good, so great song. So here's it's interesting.
You listen to that song, you're like, man, he sounds younger.
He's a voice a little bit higher. Yeah. Yeah, they
sped up a song. They actually sped up the tempo,
like not just the temple, like, they sped the recording
up so that his pitch actually increased. He's saying it lower.
They sped it up to be higher, faster, and it worked.
Sound great. Yeah. So then we've got some time where
it's very prolific songwriting time for him. But he's like
he's recording with a cheap tape recorder and a guitar
and his garage and like he'll keep these tapes in
his pockets for weeks at a time, and then he
meets this producer named Chuck Plutkin, and he's like, here
are my tapes, and so Chuck pluckin incredibly I mean
he hasn't really done much of until this point. He
engineers these pocket tape kruddy recorder in the garage songs
into professional sounding produced songs for the Vinyl LP. And
that is what you get on the album Nebraska.
Speaker 2: Wow, that's incredible. I've not ever heard this story.
Speaker 1: Yeah. So he goes on a songwriting spree. Yeah, he does,
and puts together something like eighty songs, and they whittle
it down to eleven songs, and he presents those songs
to John Landau and John Lando says, you don't have
a hit, right, right, right? How many times have we
said the same story over and over right? And I
mean eighty songs that he's whittled down to eleven, And
the guy that you've trusted with everything, your manager, your
go to guy, says you don't have a hit. You
to write another song. They have a bit of a battle.
Speaker 2: Yeah, he gets mad at him. He says, look, dude,
I've written seventy songs. If you want to hit, you
write the hit.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And so Lando gets pissed and he walks out. Yep,
Bruce is pissed and he's walking around blowing off steam.
But of course, as all musicians do. He ends up
sitting down with the guitar, strums out a chord, strums
out another chord, and sings and get up in the
evening and I ain't got nothing to say. And to
hear that story behind that song. It elevated that song
on my I Love this Song list because if you
know the story behind a song that he's been working
and working and beat down and has made himself a
prisoner of the career that he longed for and loved,
and these are the words that come out from that song.
Speaker 2: Oh man, so powerful, that's right, it is, It absolutely is.
And the fact that this creativity can come out of
a I mean, he had a two year battle with
his former manager, plus he just had a fight with
his new manager, and he's done all this work and
he had written like Prince levels of songwriting, right.
Speaker 1: Yeah, songs. He'd even considered doing a double album on
the deal, Yeah, with Nebraska and Born in the USA,
all those songs that they were putting together. He had
thought about doing a double album.
Speaker 2: Yes, so most of the songs from the Born in
the USA album were written and recorded in nineteen eighty two.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Yes, like seven of the seven of the twelve, yeah,
were recorded together at the same place, and then they
recorded the other four and then finally ended up recording
the Dancing in the Dark class.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, I thought it was interesting. The name for
the album that he had in mind, Murder Incorporated.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Interesting. Interesting. I don't know what that means, but
right there you go. Okay, and so now he's got
these songs. He feels like they've got a hit, potential
hit on their hand. Little they know what's about to come,
and so they need a cover for the album, right right, yep.
So you know the photographer Ann Leebowitz, Annie Leebowitz, Okay,
she is a world famous photographer of musicians, and the
picture of Bruce's butt comes from her pictures of him
and in front of this flag. Yes, some people thought
that the cover was depicting Bruce urinating on the flag,
but he said, no, that was unintentional. We took a
lot of different types of pictures and in the end,
the picture of my ass looked better than the picture
of my face, and so that's what we went with
on the cover. I didn't have any secret message. I
didn't do that very much.
Speaker 2: Now here's the rumor, right right, Actually this is an
unconfirmed rumor that when she showed in the picture, he said, no, no, no,
see I want to change my clothes, my hair, my face,
and she said, okay, let's take a picture of your butt.
That is not true.
Speaker 1: That's jo Okay, all right, So I'm gonna talk about
James Buckley. James Buckley is one of our top top fans, right.
Speaker 2: James Buckley has become a friend of ours.
Speaker 1: Yes, he's one of our Patreons executive producer. By the way,
check out Patreon if you want to be an executive
producer of an episode. But James is an attorney and
also a drummer, and so I just threw out to him,
I'm like, hey, we're comparing Hue Lewis and Bruce Springsteen.
What are your thoughts? And he gave his opinion on it.
But we started talking about Max Weinberg, right, because he's
a drummer, and he notes, you know, not only does
he gives up the legal career in order to become
a rock musician and then you know, go on to
be the musician for a couple of different late night shows.
But in listening to the album again, I think Max
Weinberg is the key to the success of this album
because you have this loud, popping, hooky drum beat that
goes along with all of Bruce's somber, dark, deep lyrics,
and together you have a balance that strikes a chord
with a swath of people around the country.
Speaker 2: Nice like it a swath a swath. Wow. All right,
before we do track by track, I've got a couple
more things I just want to throw out there while
we're talking about it. Okay, So in the mid eighties,
you had this thing called boss Mania, like people went
crazy for Bruce Springsteen. Yep, Okay, I sent you a
video of a clip from Growing Paints.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, do.
Speaker 2: You remember this?
Speaker 1: Yes? Okay, So just and I remember the episode is
really Oh yeah, I totally remember the episode. I was
a Growing Pains fanatic. So yes, I remember.
Speaker 2: So Mike Seaver and his dad Jason Seaver, huh, go
to a Bruce Springsteen concert together and they it's funny
because they're both really into it. And then on national TV,
Jason Seaver gives Mike a big hug and like this
is my guy and gives him a kiss.
Speaker 1: And it embarrasses.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but they're having such a good time at the
Bruce Springsteen concert. I thought that was really fun.
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay, now I will say this. They have a
big discussion about this and how his dad has embarrassed him,
and he's like, what I thought, we're just having a
good time. There's a big converse that you could that
I could have with my kid at this sure, sure,
And so you kind of get the idea. And then
at the end of the episode, Mike is in this
room with all of his friends and they're listened to
the stereo pretty loud, and Jason comes in and is like,
you guys need to turn it down. We're in the
next room. You know, there's a reasonable level. And it
kind of gives him a wink and walks out the
door and he starts dancing in the kitchen with Maggie.
And the funny thing is is the song that they're
playing on the radio sounds exactly like Footloose, which we
will be covering in our Summer of nineteen eighty four.
Speaker 2: Can't wait for that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, okay.
Speaker 2: So one of the things I wanted to throw out
here this is this is a tidbit that I learned
that was like, WHOA, I can't believe this Okay, Born
in the USA became the first compact disc manufactured in
the United States for commercial release.
Speaker 1: Crazy.
Speaker 2: It was manufactured in Tera Hoode, Indiana, in September of
nineteen eighty four. Before that, CDs had been imported from Japan. Wow,
first CD manufacturers in the US. It was literally born
in the USA.
Speaker 1: Wow. Good one, man, good one. Thank you. So tune
in next week we will cover Born in the USA
track by track as we plow into our Summer of
nineteen eighty four series.
Speaker 2: It's going to be amazing comeback with This.
Speaker 3: Was a big baseball where.
Speaker 1: That scene ball by Boom, but the critics kind of
tore it up. It was not a big commercial success either. Okay,
you want to say it with Obsberg? Yeah, uh, save
that for the outtakes. The okay,