Moonlight Motel<\/a>” the other day, I’m grateful for a song that isn’t about the lyrics at all.<\/p>\n“The Fever” isn’t about the lyrics, and it’s only partially about the music, which simmers and smolders for most of its seven-and-half minutes.<\/p>\n
“The Fever” is about the performance. An early outtake from the recording sessions for Bruce’s second album (so early that it pre-dates every single song that actually made the album), I’d be tempted to call it the E Street Band’s finest moment on vinyl, but this track is so early that the band hadn’t even acquired their name yet.\u00a0Every single musician on the track gets a turn in the spotlight, and every single one of them makes the most of it.<\/p>\n
“The Fever” is a song out of time, even at<\/em> the time. A throwback to late-night R&B soul ballads, “The Fever” sounds completely unlike anything we’ve come to associate as the E Street sound. (That’s probably at least in part due to the song’s pre-E Street origins–a copy of the original lyrics dated 1971 resides at the Hard Rock Cafe in Sydney.) “The Fever” is sultry, languorous, and somehow simultaneously loose and taut.\u00a0\u00a0It sounds like the kind of song you’d hear in a movie soundtrack, at a smoky club or a seamy casino (like in the 2007 film, Lucky You<\/em>.)<\/p>\n