Perhaps no artist in the history of rock and roll has proven quite as prolific as a songwriter as Bruce Springsteen. And we’d also argue that few artists have ever been as meticulous in making sure the stuff he releases delivers a coherent message within an album.
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Those two aspects of Springsteen’s artistic approach led to a backlog of unreleased material that seemed like it might never make its way to the light of day. When it did, on the humongous 1998 box set Tracks, it was a revelation to even the most diehard Boss fan.
Material Building Up
Ever since he first started building a fan base, it was well-known among the Bruce Springsteen faithful that there were far more songs lying around than he had actually released. Springsteen live shows were often peppered here and there with these hidden gems. Also remember the ’70s and ’80s were the prime era for bootleg recordings, and Bruce’s unreleased stuff was highly coveted.
Springsteen tended to write far more material than he needed, so he could pick and choose through it all and come up with the story he wanted to tell on each album. For example, he wrote and recorded around 70 songs for Born in the U.S.A. in 1984 over the course of almost three years.
For a time, there just wasn’t an outlet for such recordings. That started to change in the ’80s, when top artists began releasing so-called “box sets” of their material. Many of those focused on largely unreleased stuff. (Bruce’s buddy Bob Dylan was a pioneer in this arena). Come 1998, as Springsteen was in between major album cycles, the timing was right.
Compiling Tracks
Springsteen had an ace in the hole when creating Tracks in engineer Toby Scott. He’d been on Bruce’s team for more than a decade by then. In the ’80s, Scott began compiling a database of all the songs that Springsteen had written and/or recorded but not included on any official release. That made the process of knowing what was out there much more streamlined.
What caused some issues was the time between Springsteen’s decision to do the collection and the scheduled release date was relatively short. The hustle began as Bruce started to go through all the songs with Scott. Once the tracks for Tracks were chosen, the mixing process was so involved it required multiple professionals working in several different locations.
Although nobody divulged the specifics, Springsteen did add some newly recorded overdubs to certain songs here and there. When everything was finished, Tracks contained 66 songs spread over 4 CDs. It was released in November 1988 to great fanfare.
A Treasure Trove
Sequenced roughly chronologically, Tracks made it abundantly clear the songs that hadn’t made it onto Springsteen albums weren’t mere throwaways. Many of them sounded like ready-made hits, such as the chiming “Loose Ends” and the effortlessly catchy “Janey, Don’t You Lose Heart.” Others, like “Iceman” or “Shut Out the Light,” represent Springsteen at his most profound and probing.
The scary thing about Tracks: As successful as it was, it didn’t even scratch the surface. Springsteen has since based outtake collections on albums like Darkness on the Edge of Town and The River, revealing many songs that hadn’t even made it to Tracks.
Springsteen has hinted in interviews a second volume of Tracks might be in the works someday, suggesting he has entire finished albums that no one has ever heard. If that’s the case, we can thank the first collection for paving the way so that we could dive deep into the wildly productive songwriting career he has amassed.
Photo by GARFIELD/Gamma-Rapho via Getty Images
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