My Seventies Music

Tag: Bruce Springsteen

  • Nils Lofgren – “No Mercy” And “Keith Don’t Go”

    Nils Lofgren album "Night After Night" (1978)

    I don’t know a lot from Nils Lofgren, just two songs really, “No Mercy” and “Keith Don’t Go”.

    Nils Lofgren, who has had a long solo career, also worked with Neil Young in the Seventies, as well as playing in Bruce Springsteen’s E Street Band for 25 years.

    But I didn’t know that until just now…

    Actually I first got to know his 1979 track “No Mercy” (from the album “Nils”) a year or so later through a band I used to write some songs with in Bamberg, Germany, who played it.

    I still remember hearing it the first time crammed into a tiny cellar with just enough room for the band, their equipment and a couple of other people, i.e. right up close!

    Here it is, “No Mercy”, recorded in 1979 (with lyric subtitles in German, how fitting):

    And here is a live version of “No Mercy” twelve years later on German television in 1991:

    The other Nils Lofgren track I am familiar with actually came out a year earlier in 1978.

    It’s from his fourth album “Night After Night”, and is called “Keith Don’t Go” (Keith being Keith Richards of the Rolling Stones):

    Nils Lofgren also plays this one on the acoustic guitar, so here is “Keith Don’t Go” unplugged:

    Which do YOU think sounds better, electric or acoustic?

    Paul

  • Jackson Browne – “The Load Out”/”Stay”, “Running On Empty”, “Take It Easy” and “Tender Is The Night”

    In the late Seventies Jackson Browne wrote a song about being a rock musician on tour called “The Load Out”, which morphed into “Stay”, and featured David Lindley on slide guitar/lap steel guitar (and a falsetto voice on the chorus).

    I don’t really remember “The Load Out” part too much, but “Stay” (Oh won’t you stay Just a little bit longer Oh, Please please stay Just a little bit more…) has stuck in my mind all these years.

    In 1978 Jackson Browne and David Lindley, together with supporting artists, played “The Load Out” and “Stay” live in England at the BBC Television Centre in the Shepherds Bush Theatre in London:

    Another track by Jackson Browne I really like, but either didn’t know or had forgotten it was by him, is “Running On Empty”:

    For some reason I connected that song with Bruce Springsteen, and now I see why: the two are friends and have often sung the song together, as here:

    Jackson Browne co-wrote “Take It Easy” with Eagles member and neighbour Glenn Frey, which was a hit for that group. Here is his version:

    Like so many others, when the Seventies ended, Jackson Browne went on to produce more great music, such as “Tender Is The Night” in 1983, here in a live version from 1986 on German television’s Rockpalast (looks a bit like a long haired Tom Cruise 🙂 ):

    Night night, sleep tight…

    Paul

1764447370