Using a camera modified with the tubes from a security camera so he could shoot in low light - sometimes just the light of the meters on the control-room console - Mr. Rebo captured an exhausted-looking but determined Mr. Springsteen, dissatisfied with the sound and calling for endless retakes. Yet when Mr. Springsteen got behind a microphone to sing "Jungleland," he had clearly thought through every dramatic inflection, from whisper to howl.

Mr. Springsteen invited Mr. Landau, a rock journalist who had proclaimed Mr. Springsteen "rock and roll future,"to the recording sessions, and Mr. Landau started offering advice. He convinced Mr. Springsteen to leave Blauvelt and move to a first-class recording studio, the Record Plant in Manhattan, where the album was finished.In "Wings for Wheels," Mr. Springsteen describes the album as the most theatrical songwriting of his career. He says he strove to make the songs cinematic, complete with scene-setting introductions, larger-than-life characters and atmospheric interludes. "The initial lyric would have been like a bad B picture," he observes. "The end product was supposed to be like a good B picture imbued with a certain spiritual thing."

# posted by Gerry Canavan @ 8:52 PM  |