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Today on Bruce Springsteen Sings the Alphabet, we flip the record. Side two, track one, and the song Bruce fought hardest to keep off the album.
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No Surrender took three days at the Hit Factory in October 1983 and still never made it as a single. In fact, it almost never made it on the record. Bruce thought it was too naive for a record full of people whose lives weren’t working out.
Steven Van Zandt, already backing out of the E Street Band, told him he was wrong and more or less bullied it onto the album. Fourteen years later Bruce still wasn’t sure, but we are. It’s an all-timer for Rob, it opened the show we saw together in Dallas in 2023, and JB thinks it might be the first pop punk song.
We talk about why this song and Bobby Jean are really about Bruce and Steven and why you could hand every person in the arena a guitar and this song still wouldn’t be too big.
Watch the Flores brothers sing No Surrender with Bruce and have more fun at a Bruce show than anyone before or since, Houston 2014: https://youtu.be/53g8PQCnr-c
Here is our episode of Set Lusting Bruce with Jesse Jackson: https://youtu.be/bj3BypdWMCw?si=8KyPVVanSY9sagYg
How many drums and guitars do you give No Surrender? Leave your rating in the episode comments at alphabeticalspringsteen.substack.com.
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Chapters
02:14 Basic Facts!
17:23 The music
27:23 The lyrics
36:01 Ratings
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