Americana Singer-Songwriter Eric Harrison Shares His Favorite Bruce Springsteen Tracks

Americana singer-songwriter Eric Harrison has built his career on creating honest, insightful music, reflecting on important themes in spirited folk hits while drawing comparisons to some of the world’s most legendary rock ‘n’ rollers.

In 2021, the New Jersey-born artist released his latest EP Good Intentions, an eclectic collection of stories about the events that have rocked the nation in recent years. A self-proclaimed protest musician, he challenges the injustice, cowardice, and cruelty of the world through his writing, channeling his thoughts into the five pensive songs that comprise this project. Good Intentions offers tasteful nostalgia, twisting classic rock with rhythms and melodies packed full of personality.

Harrison credits a wide variety of personal inspirations, but above all, he acknowledges Bruce Springsteen as an unrivaled influence. As inspired New Jersey creatives, Springsteen and Harrison never fail to deliver electrifying listening experiences. Check out some of Harrison’s Springsteen faves in his playlist curated exclusively for Musical Notes Global.

“Growin’ Up”

A flawless, melodically and lyrically economical song about… Growing up. Just the right amount of metaphor and Jersey shore imagery. Lots of words but no word cramming. Every syllable serves a purpose.

Bruce has said he was unhappy with the minimal guitar on the first album but I disagree; these songs were very well served by the piano-centric treatment. Besides, guitar players always want to hear more guitar. It’s a pretty standard ritual of mine to lower the faders by at least 2 dB after the guitarist packs up and leaves the studio.

“Fourth of July, Asbury Park (Sandy)”

Hello, World!

To write what you know - after having put in 10,000 hours previously writing what you know…if you have talent then you are going to create something great.

We Jerseyans are sentimental folk. Combine this teen angst boardwalk poetry with accordion and that minimalist dry drumming by Vini Lopez and you have lift off. This is one of several Bruce songs that I cannot sing without getting choked up to the point of being unable to make it past the Madam Marie reference.

Anyone who caught Leonard Cohen on his final tour and got to hear him sing “bird on a wire” in that gruff but tender old man’s voice knows how incredibly affecting it can be to hear a world-weary youthful ballad resung by the songwriter many years later as mortality looms. Listening to Bruce and Danny Federici perform this on the Magic tour to a stadium full of people who knew that Danny was battling cancer…this is why music is my church.

“Rosalita (Come Out Tonight)”

I can’t think of any song that has better captured the joy and longing of youth (except perhaps every other song on this list). When I was a kid in the early ‘80s before soccer games I would lie on my bed, close my eyes, crank up my soundesign turntable and blast the 1812 Overture - I think that dude Tchaikovsky might have been from Bergen County - followed by Rosalita. I would then run out the front door into my dad‘s smoke-filled Oldsmobile 88 ready to score a hat trick and run around the field with my hands in the air like 1978 NASL star Giorgio Chinaglia.

Then we’d get to the game and the coach would put me in at fullback because I was…awkward. But even from behind the 18 yard line I still had the wide open midfield in my eyes and romantic penalty shots in my head. (Getting ahead of myself here; that’s not for a few more albums…)

“Thunder Road”

This is the New Jersey rock ‘n’ roll fan’s Book of Genesis. Love, lust, mortality, fidelity, abandon, joy, rage, sadness… it’s all here, in four minutes and forty-six seconds.

When I was younger I used to read Lester Bangs and Chris Roberts of Melody Maker and agonize over whether rock lyrics should qualify as literature. I don’t care about that anymore; I love what I love and this is fucking poetry. This is another one I can’t get through without crying.

Hot tip to a recent convert who may take a date to a Bruce show: Don’t look at him/her while singing along to “you ain’t a beauty but hey, you’re alright”…if you do, there may cease to be magic in that night. (This advice may or may not be based on personal experience).

There was recently a shocking revelation from the Boss’s management that the first line in this Book of Genesis tells us that Mary’s dress does not WAVE; it SWAYs. That is always how I heard it. To wave is deliberate; to sway is to move subtlely as a result of external forces…like Bruce did after two shots of tequila when that cop in Sandy Hook asked him to step off the bike.

“Jungleland”

To call this song “epic“ is to undersell it. “Incident on 57th Street” was an epic. This is a cry across a darkened American wilderness from the soul of a generation.

Although I wasn’t there from the beginning I have always viewed Bruce’s early artistic path as parallel to that of Tom Waits. While they were on different coasts, both started out as brilliant quirky troubadours, one from the piano barroom and the other from the boardwalk. For Tom (who wrote “Jersey Girl” BTW) that barroom turned into some kind of vintage Cadillac spaceship to Charles Bukowski’s version of Mars. For Bruce, beginning with the album “Born to Run” that boardwalk turned into Giants Stadium. Both are great places to visit, depending on your alcohol consumption and whether Eli Manning is in his prime.

“Badlands”

This is a fan favorite because so many shows begin with it. Whenever I think about a return of the mighty E Street Band I hear Max’s opening stuttering toms and that melody that the Boss admitted 10 years ago to lifting from “don’t let me be misunderstood“ by the Animals.

This is also appropriately the opening song on the “darkness on the edge of town“ album, which pivoted from born to run’s grandiose sound of boardwalk fantasies to the factory floor realities of feeding a family and paying rent while dreaming of a better life.

Bruce Springsteen as “workingman’s hero” is a cliché, but most clichés begin with a truth that is pure and compelling. This cliche qualifies as such, and no song of his embodies that better than “Badlands.”

“Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out”

A superb origin story and a brilliant act of self-mythology to make The E Street Band a big part of Bruce’s identity- a further departure from the image of the lone troubadour with a supporting cast that both the Boss and Tom Waits had cultivated to this point.

As a childhood fan of the New York Yankees I found a wonderful double meaning (possibly expressed here for the first time anywhere) of the autobiographical reference to “Scooter and the Big Man” because it made me think simultaneously of Yankee announcers Phil Rizzuto (aka “Scooter”) and Bill White (a similarly large, cuddly black man), who were almost as beloved to me as were Bruce and Clarence. (“HOLY COW White, you gotta try the cannolis that Cora and I had last night at Carmine’s in Hillside!” packs almost as big a wallop for me as the solo in Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out.)

“The Promised Land”

Boys and girls, back in the days of attention spans that did not require Adderall consumption, songs were collected on circular plastic discs called “record albums” consisting of “side one“ and “side two.” Recording artists put great care into the sequencing and placement of the songs in hopes of keeping your attention and in certain cases rolling out different stories at different times in a manner calculated to maximize their impact.

Side one of “darkness” ends with “racing in the street,” a beautiful piano ballad in which futility and longing compete with hope and determination. It’s unclear which emotion crosses the finish line first, so “The Promised Land” opens side 2 with an energetic and ridiculously catchy anthem about the “rattlesnake speedway” that lies ahead. The opening harmonica channels Woody Guthrie in a way that would have brought Woody to tears. Probably my favorite Bruce chorus.

“The Ties That Bind”

Did I just say that my favorite Bruce chorus is in “The Promised Land?“ What was I smoking when I wrote that 13 seconds ago?!

By far my favorite Springsteen chorus is in “The Ties That Bind.” Or maybe it’s in “Sherry Darling” or “Out in the Street.”

OK, I think I have learned through this exercise that my favorite Springsteen chorus at any given moment is the chorus of the last Bruce Springsteen song I thought of. Except “Mary’s Place” - I would rather eat glass than hear that song ever again in my life. The phenomenon I call LCD Bruce (Lowest Common Denominator Bruce) can be hell or heaven in concert depending on whether you’ve timed your beer consumption well. “Mary’s Place” is my #1 E Street bathroom break song. (“Do You Love Me?” is a close second.)

But I digress. “The Ties That Bind” opens The River - a “ double album“ which back in the day meant a lot of songs and a gift to the fans at the expense of a record company which would make more money if it released shorter albums spread out over time.

By this point Bruce was sufficiently huge and prolific that the record company knew there would be a lot more hits in the can and they should let the dude do what he wants.

I am a firm believer in the power of a 12 string guitar to put a song over the top. The second verse in “out of sight, out of mind” by Wilco where the Rickenbacker enters…The first time I heard that I was a 28-year-old soon-to-be divorcee jogging on the streets of San Francisco while visiting my brother and still too depressed to set about moving out of the dark fixer-upper that I had bought with the aim of creating a marital dream home back in NJ. When that guitar kicked in the sun over Haight Ashbury may or may not have parted the clouds - but it made me a Wilco fan for life.

Jesus, what was I talking about? Oh yes, “The Ties That Bind“… The opening of that song which opens The River is just so ridiculously powerful and joyous and the message is so quintessentially Bruce: You can’t have a rewarding life without dropping your guard and giving of yourself to others.

I rarely like when songwriters get overtly political, even when I agree with their politics. “The Ties That Bind” from 1980 says more to me about what our nation needs 41 years later than “We Take Care of Our Own” or “Land of Hope and Dreams” or that Jeep commercial.