Oh baby, this town rips the bones from your back

 Continuing my trip up Rolling Stone's list of the 500 Greatest Albums Of All Time...

...I've never listened to Bruce's album (but know some of the tracks well), whereas I have experienced Radiohead's album a couple of times (but couldn't recognise any of the tracks).  My going-in position is that Bruce could probably have covered the worst of The Velvet Underground on the rest of his album and he'd still stand a good chance of winning the round.

#21 : Born To Run - Bruce Springsteen (1975)

Bruce Springsteen spent everything he had — patience, energy, studio time, the physical endurance of his E Street Band — to ensure that his third album was a masterpiece. His reputation as a perfectionist begins here: There are a dozen guitar overdubs on the title track alone. He was also spending money he didn’t have. Engineer Jimmy Iovine had to hide the mounting recording bills from the Columbia paymasters. “The album became a monster,” Springsteen told his biographer, Dave Marsh. “It just ate up everyone’s life.”

But in making Born to Run, Springsteen was living out the central drama in the album’s tenement-love operas (“Backstreets,” “Jungleland”) and gun-the-engine rock & roll (“Thunder Road,” “Born to Run”): the fight to reconcile big dreams with crushing reality. He found it so hard to translate the sound in his head — the Jersey-bar dynamite of his live gigs, Phil Spector’s Wagnerian grandeur, the heartbreaking melodrama of Roy Orbison’s hits — that Springsteen nearly scrapped Born to Run for a straight-up concert album. But his make-or-break attention to detail — including the iconic cover photo of Springsteen leaning onto saxman Clarence Clemons, a perfect metaphor for Springsteen’s brotherly reliance on the E Street Band — assured the integrity of Born to Run’s success. In his determination to make a great album, Springsteen produced a timeless, inspiring record about the labors and glories of aspiring to greatness.Bruce Springsteen spent everything he had — patience, energy, studio time, the physical endurance of his E Street Band — to ensure that his third album was a masterpiece. His reputation as a perfectionist begins here: There are a dozen guitar overdubs on the title track alone. He was also spending money he didn’t have. Engineer Jimmy Iovine had to hide the mounting recording bills from the Columbia paymasters. “The album became a monster,” Springsteen told his biographer, Dave Marsh. “It just ate up everyone’s life.”

Our fifth (and final) visit with The Boss - I'd heard "Born To Run" (the track) a few times over the years and was also aware of "Thunder Road" and "Jungleland" and liked them, so was hoping the rest of the album was going to be like that.  And it kinda is and it kinda isn't - the style is the same old Bruuuuuce, but none of the other tracks really stood out for me - maybe "Night" is the best of the rest.  The description above didn't really do it any favours because I found myself imagining how great they would have sounded live and it wasn't really transferring onto the album - and in places it did feel like he'd overworked them.  I'm not sure I'll be running back to the album, but I did enjoy listening to it (as I have most of his efforts on the list) and I also suspect if I was to spend time with it, I'd grow to like it more with each listen.  And it's a cool album cover as well

The album's Wikipedia entry tells us he really did overwork it - "All in all, the album took more than 14 months to record, with six months alone spent on the song "Born to Run" itself. During this time Springsteen battled with anger and frustration over the album, saying he heard "sounds in [his] head" that he could not explain to the others in the studio".  It was viewed as his "last-ditch effort at a commercially viable record" but when it finally arrived, it was well received by critics although the record company didn't do him any favours by overhyping both him and it, which Bruce wasn't happy about.  But, it all worked out OK for him in the end, I guess.  The album sold well in the US, but not so well over here (which isn't a huge surprise) - and it's absolutely mad to think it's now 46 years old!

Bruce's Wikipedia entry is just massive - I've tried previously to extract snippets and it won't surprise you that I'm going to fall back on the "he seems like a nice guy" line.  I love the fact that one of his sons is a New Jersey firefighter - it doesn't feel like you can get much more real than that.  "Customers also listened to" The Who, The Clash, The Rolling Stones and Thin Lizzy - a surprisingly UK based selection there.

Five albums from Bruce on the list feels fair, although personally I would have put Tunnel Of Love (if only for the track "Spare Parts" which is just fantastic, and even more so live) on there instead of The Wild, etc.  I can appreciate that people think this is the greatest Bruce album, but the favourites for me on the list were Born In The USA and Nebraska - which feel like the best of the two sides of Bruce to me.

#20 : Kid A - Radiohead (2000)

A new, uniquely fearless kind of rock record for a new, increasingly fearful century, Radiohead’s fourth album, released in October 2000, remains one of the more stunning sonic makeovers in music history. The band had the freedom to do whatever it wanted after its 1997 alt-rock breakthrough, OK Computer [see No. 42]. “Everyone expected us to become this U2 type of band, with that stadium credibility,” bassist Colin Greenwood said in 2001.

Instead, frontman Thom Yorke gorged on albums by avant-techno innovator Aphex Twin and other artists on the Warp Records roster, inspiring him to put down his guitar and embrace the glacial beauty of abstract electronics, glitchy beats, and the challenge of free-form composition. “It was difficult for the others [in the band], ’cause when you’re working with a synthesizer it’s like there’s no connection,” Yorke said in 2017. What emerged was at once scary and enveloping, pitched between deep alienation and profound tenderness — from the womblike ambient flow of “Everything in Its Right Place” to the free-jazz implosion “The National Anthem” to the gizmo-groove paranoia of “Idioteque.”

“I find it difficult to think of the path we’ve chosen as ‘rock music,’ ” Yorke told Rolling Stone in 2000. “Kid A is like getting a massive eraser out and starting again.”

Our fourth (and final) visit with Radiohead and they've all been very different efforts so far.  No-one was entirely sure where they were going to head after OK Computer, but I'm not sure many people envisioned they were going to go wherever Kid-A is.  There was a lot of head-scratching in the media and in various homes of people who'd just bought the album - was this, in fact, the most beautiful and ethereal music ever produced?  Or was it, in fact, a BLOODY AWFUL RACKET.  Go on, guess which one I think...

I've tried, I really have, but I just don't get it.  And yes, I'm sure the problem lives with me, but I don't care.  I can't even say "track X was OK, I guess" because I really didn't think track X was OK.  Sorry!

The Wikipedia entry for the album includes the following - "Several critics felt Kid A was pretentious or deliberately obscure" and that pretty much hits the nail on the head for me.  I think they stand by what they did, but they were almost hoping for "failure" and you can't say they went out of their way to market it - "Rather than agree to a standard magazine photoshoot for Q, Radiohead supplied digitally altered portraits, with their skin smoothed, their irises recoloured, and Yorke's drooping eyelid removed. Q editor Andrew Harrison described the images as "aggressively weird to the point of taking the piss ... all five of Radiohead had been given the aspect of gawking aliens"".  They were probably as surprised as the next man when people bought the thing but people really did - over 3 million globally (my suspicion is that quite a few of those albums haven't been played more than once though).  The critics weren't convinced at the time and it's not entirely clear that they're convinced now, but given its position on this list, there are plenty that love it, and they obviously love it a LOT.

Radiohead's Wikipedia entry is a dense read - they're serious fellows, I'll have you know.  They fall into the "decent enough chaps" bracket as well though and they obviously believe in what they do and if they have encouraged some people to broaden their musical horizons over the years, that can only be a good thing.  "Customers also listened to" Beck, The Flaming Lips, Spiritualized and Blur - all artists that can be challenging when they're in the mood to be so.  

So, if I said there were two sides to Bruce, how many sides are there to Radiohead?  This album and In Rainbows are close enough for me to be considered on the same side (although I find In Rainbows far more bearable) but The Bends and OK Computer aren't really all that similar - and they're far and away the high points of their career for me and I'm always happy to revisit them.

And yes, in case it's not clear, Bruce won the round.

#23-22 - two very different albums
#19-18 - two guys telling it like it is, fifty years apart