By now, those of you with any interest will have probably seen Springsteen and the E Streeters doing ‘Purple Rain’ as a tribute to Prince at the start of their show the other night. I wouldn’t go as far as to say he makes it his own (as if!) but it’s a pretty decent effort all the same. There’s a few versions of it online at the moment but this one’s probably the best – mixed, as it is, from various different fans’ recordings.
Even better is the audio version (link below) that his Bossness has made available as a free download on his website. More than makes up for the dodgy sound on the youtube clips. It’s probably only a matter of time before the audio is mixed in too.
Wonder if Bruce is running the band through ‘Me and Mrs Jones’ as I type..
Excellent!
Nice guitar work from Nils “The Man” Lofgren!
I’m not a big fan of the E Street Band – I much prefer my Bruce with an acoustic strapped on and 16 other acoustic musicians standing behind him. But I love it when he does stuff like this.
SO he’s done Rebel Rebel, Take It Easy and now Purple Rain – would have liked to hear him doing Tarkus
I’m a big fan of Bruce but I thought this rendition was really flat ,not out of tne ,just lacking modulation. Guess he didn’t rehearse it much – Nils on the other hand is excellent.
I thought it was a little flat too but the audio download is a lot better. I saw Mike Scott sniffily dismissing it earlier on Twitter, saying that Bruce and Nils need to listen to it another 50 minutes before they try it again. They did it again last night – wonder was it any better.
In fairness Mike Scott knows the terrain.
I’m with Mike
For my money its spot on. There’s a pro shot video available now. Hopefully linked below!
https://youtu.be/UF576If2U8o
That’s quite an achievement: an arrangement that’s faithful to the original yet sounds unmistakably like the E Street Band. Hmm. Perhaps the original did too and we never noticed (although I do remember thinking at the time that the woo-ooh-ooh coda owed something – in spirit if not in the style of execution – to the multiple whoa-oh-ohs in Springsteen’s repertoire). It’s particularly impressive given that it was probably put together with no more than a couple of run-throughs at soundcheck.
And, yes, Nils nailed it good and proper.
Better than the original… (ducks quickly, leaves country…)
Loved it. A warm and fitting tribute.
I thought it was OK for an rush job. Nice guitar from Nils, too.
What I want to know is why Little Steven still persists with that fucking rag on his head. As we saw on The Sopranos, in real life he has such a lovely, luxuriant head of hair and it seems such a shame to hide it from view like that.
Come on Steven! Give the fans a treat and show us your ‘do
“…for an rush job”? What kind of talk is that?
needs to change from head scarf to cummerbund
There was a guy who worked in a record store in Perth who adopted one of those Little Steven-style head coverings as he lost his hair. He became well-known for it and it was his identifying feature.
He’d been in a few punk/new wave bands in the 70s/80s and made some records which were quite well-known on the WA indie scene, so I suppose for someone like that losing your hair would be the unkindest cut of all.
Eventually after many years he was persuaded to jettison the scarf, but he did it in a very clever way. He invited people to make donations which would be paid to a local Telethon appeal and ended up raising several hundred dollars. Then he publicly removed the scarf at a gig.
Now he gets around without the scarf and he looks fine. No one gives him a second glance. All those years of anxiety for nothing, really.
If 1960s sitcoms (the sort Slartibartfast knew nothing of) were any reflection of reality, every woman’s most ardent desire was for a mink coat, and the absolutely worst thing that could happen to a man was to go bald.
Thankfully, those days seem to be long past.
These days blokes tend to go for the more sensible shaved look, rather than the Friar Tuck or the Bobby Charlton comb-over style of yesteryear