Next in the order of Bruce Springsteen’s studio records should be Darkness On The Edge Of Town. Rest assured, I’m not skipping Darkness, but I am skipping three other studio albums. Instead of doing reviews for The Ghost Of Tom Joad, Human Touch and Lucky Town, I am instead reviewing three live performances – Hammersmith Odeon, London ’75 (from the Born To Run 30th anniversary boxed set), Live In New York City ‘01 and London Calling. Since the Hammersmith Odeon concert happened in between Born to Run and Darkness, I’m just filing the review where it belongs in chronological order. The Darkness review will be up in next week’s batch.

If you read the last review in this series, about Born To Run, you probably noticed that I liked that record quite a bit. I wrote that I think it’s the best record of all time, so it should come as no surprise that I think Bruce Springsteen’s best touring days came after the release of that album. Many people subscribe to the opinion that Springsteen and The E Street Band were even more impressive after the release of Darkness On The Edge of Town, but I don’t think anything can compare to Springsteen’s performance at the Hammersmith Odeon in London in 1975.

Born To Run is the best album ever written. It contains within its eight tracks the two best rock and roll songs ever written and three other songs that are damn close. The album cover is the best album art ever put on a record. This review does not reflect my bias of Bruce Springsteen and The E Street Band, but rather my honest opinion about what I (and many others) consider to be the record that saved rock and roll music.

When a 25-year-old Springsteen released Born To Run in 1975, he was almost ready to hang up his hat on music. Columbia Records did not approve of the cult following that Greetings From Asbury Park, N.J. and The Wild, The Innocent & The E Street Shufflecreated; they signed Springsteen with the very specific idea that he was going to sell as many records as Bob Dylan. They wanted his face on billboards on the highway, and they wanted his name on top of the Billboard singles charts every week. Springsteen has said that the only thing that made him write Born To Run was that he never wanted to have a 9-to-5 job in his life. In Dave Marsh’s biography of Springsteen, Marsh writes that Springsteen was finally going to call it quits if Born To Run didn’t succeed. Well, the record didn’t just succeed – it went down as one of the most important records ever released, and Springsteen filled an empty void as America’s beloved and adored rock and roll superstar.