Published in 1978 it is now the subject of hype in the UN sure of American rocker

Brief turnover of battery in the attack on "badlands" is engraved forever in obviously selective ear of a true fan of Bruce Springsteen. "badlands" is the first of the classics that comprise "Darkness on the Edge of Town", fourth album of the "Boss" - and often the favourite said true fans, at the same time as that which revealed in France. Published in 1978, it is now the subject of hype in the (UN) sure of American rocker.

This rhythmic intro returned immediately to mind when you watch "The Promise: Darkness on the Edge of Town Story", a documentary about the gestation of the album. It shows Springsteen exhaust for days to get the sound of drums he has in mind, an obsession that eventually even worry about his group, the producer and the technicians. But it is the strength of the film to show how this not yet thirty years musician is inhabited by his project, which sees it to lock up several months on a farm in New Jersey turned into a recording studio.

At that time, Springsteen did nothing released for three years and "Born to Run", the album that saw him become an icon ("I saw the future of the rock'n roll", wrote a journalist of "rolling stone" after a concert) and to cover the same week "time" and "Newsweek." A dispute with his ex - manager prevents recording, but it has accumulated a treasure, dozens and dozens of songs that he will patiently decant, clean up and sort. It is this process that brings the documentary, the artistic adventure and personal quest for a musician which is (re) discover the personality and sensitivity, from the image of rocker bourrin some lend him ("Born in the USA", song poorly understood, he is wrong...). One is literally struck by the maturity of ce type, whose fiction and poetic vision is not far from that of a Dylan.

Power and sensitivity

These long weeks in studio is from the album "darkness", and many other mature songs, of which 21 are included on the double album "The Promise". There are unpublished, some have become anthems of the concerts of the E - Street Band ("Fire"), early versions of classics ("Racing in the Street") and even curiosity, his version of "Because the Night", which Springsteen did not (it is not of love song on his album) and it provides to Patti Smith. A double CD of course less coherent than the original, but impressive album power and sensitivity. In short, the true Springsteen.

And as with the "Boss", nothing is ever enough, Sony has also cooked up an impressive 3 CD box and 3 DVD (that we could not view). In the program, side CD, the "darkness" remastered Edition and double the unreported. Side DVD, in addition to the documentary, a concert recorded in 1978 in Houston, and surprising return, resumed full 2009 album Lighthouse by the E-Street Band on stage in Asbury Park, New Jersey resort and unavoidable in the springsteenienne mythology reference. If this box rich but obviously reserved for collectors, this buzz will, hopefully, a salutary effect: encouraging those who, poor them, have never tasted in "Darkness on the Edge of Town" to be rub. They will not regret.