The Bruce Springsteen Band had a year-long run from the summer of ’71 to the summer of ’72, but for a while, it didn’t look like they were going to make it past the six-month mark.
At the same time Bruce was forming and performing with his eponymous band, he was falling “in obsession” (as he put it in Born to Run) with a “drug-taking, hell-raising wild child who played by nobody’s rules.” (If you saw Springsteen on Broadway, this was the girlfriend who convinced agents to come see Bruce play and then slept with them.)
Bruce found out about his girlfriend’s infidelities when her roommate ratted her out, and he soon found himself romantically involved with the roommate. Given the circumstances, that wasn’t destined to work out, either.
By the end of the year, Bruce couldn’t take it anymore. As he revealed in Western Stars, “I had a gal in New Jersey who broke my heart, ripped it to shreds, trampled on it, and sent it to me COD in a paper bag. So I was out of there on the first ride west, no looking back.”
What he didn’t say is that he left his band in the lurch.
Finding themselves without a frontman, Steve Van Zandt (who curiously never mentions this episode at all in his Unrequired Infatuations autobiography) recruited Southside Johnny to take Bruce’s place and reclaimed the name of the previous group that most of the band had been members of. Under the name The Sundance Blues Band, the Bruce Springsteen Band soldiered on without Bruce.
For a month.
Because as Bruce admits, “I was going to build a new life in California, three thousand miles away from the pain. But it didn’t take long before my luck ran out and my money ran out. And it just wasn’t gonna happen.”
So Bruce came home to New Jersey, and for a few nights he sat in with the band he’d been the leader of only weeks before. On his first night back with the band, Bruce and the Sundance Blues Band played The Captain’s Garter in Neptune, just outside of Asbury Park. Southside and Steve provided lead vocals for much of the night, while Bruce hung back on rhythm guitar. But when it came time to play Walter Brown’s “Confessin’ the Blues,” Bruce stepped up to the microphone and resumed his former position with the band.
With “Confessin’ the Blues,” the Sundance Blues Band was living up to their name. The song dates back to 1941, when Brown recorded it with the Jay McShann Band.
Over the years, it became a blues standard and inspired covers by rock and roll artists like Chuck Berry and The Rolling Stones, who featured it on their second American studio album.
The Sundance Blues Band version of “Confessin’ the Blues” owes more than a little to Cream, with an arrangement built around a thinly disguised “Sunshine of Your Love” riff.
But while it marked Bruce Springsteen’s return to lead vocals after more than a month’s absence from the Jersey shore scene, his contributions are far overshadowed by the virtuosity of David Sancious, who takes over the spotlight around three minutes into the thirteen-minute performance and never lets go of it.
A week after that performance, The Bruce Springsteen Band would be performing under its original name and leader again. A week after that, they’d essentially move to Richmond, playing at least nine shows there in February–with Bruce still finding time to audition for Mike Appel in New York City.
Over the next three months, Bruce split his time between Virginia with the band and New York City with Appel and Jim Cretecos, until Appel was able to shoehorn Bruce in to see John Hammond at Columbia Records.
We know what happened next. Steve Van Zandt’s phone rang in Richmond, and when he answered it he heard an excited voice: “Stevie, it’s Bruce. Come on back. I got signed!”
Check out Chapter Five of Steve’s Unrequited Infatuations to see where the story goes from there.
Confessin’ the Blues
First performed: January 21, 1972 (Neptune, NJ)
Last performed: September 9, 1972 (Highlands, NJ)
