{"id":7437,"date":"1988-04-14T11:00:00","date_gmt":"1988-04-14T18:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/estreetshuffle.com\/?p=7437"},"modified":"2026-02-08T20:03:15","modified_gmt":"2026-02-09T04:03:15","slug":"matr-lou-reed-and-bruce-springsteen-street-hassle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/estreetshuffle.com\/index.php\/1988\/04\/14\/matr-lou-reed-and-bruce-springsteen-street-hassle\/","title":{"rendered":"Street Hassle"},"content":{"rendered":"

On Memorial Day weekend in 1977, Bruce Springsteen finally settled his long-running legal dispute with Mike Appel that had prevented him from recording a follow up to his 1975 album\u00a0Born to Run.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Road-weary (the band had been on the road for almost two solid years) and with a solid stash of new material, it only took four days for Bruce to return to the studio and begin recording\u00a0Darkness on the Edge of Town.<\/em><\/p>\n

The Darkness recording sessions started at Atlantic Studios in New York City, but Bruce wasn’t happy with the studio’s acoustics. By the end of the summer, the band had moved operations back to The Record Plant, where\u00a0Born to Run<\/em> was recorded.<\/p>\n

Bruce and the band recorded at The Record Plant throughout the autumn and winter of 1977, but they weren’t the studio’s only clients at that time: Lou Reed was also in the building, one floor above Bruce, recording his landmark album\u00a0Street Hassle.<\/em><\/p>\n

The centerpiece of\u00a0Street Hassle<\/em> was its eleven-minute title track, a dark, gritty and brutal musical monologue of a street painting. The song is composed of three vignettes, and each sounds for all the world like an alternative character’s take on a Bruce Springsteen song.<\/p>\n

Chapter 1, “Waltzing Matilda” (the first three minutes or so) is sung from the point of view of a woman picking up a male prostitute that could easily be Spanish Johnny; Chapter 2, “Street Hassle,” features a drug dealer disposing of the body of a woman who drank some seriously unholy blood.<\/p>\n

And then there’s Chapter Three, “Slip Away,” which begins at the 9-minute mark with a forty-second spoken-word guest monologue about love and pain and death that ends with the words:<\/p>\n

“Tramps like us, we were born to pay.”<\/p>\n

And that guest-star? He’s uncredited, but listen below (or skip ahead to the nine-minute mark if you must), and you’ll surely recognize him.<\/p>\n