In April 1982, Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band assembled at Power Station studio in midtown Manhattan to recored the follow-up to the New Jersey singer/songwriter's Billboard chart-topping fifth album, The River. Springsteen had already demoed the songs at home on a four-track Tascam 144 portastudio and was excited to flesh the sparse acoustic recordings out with his crack collaborators.
"The songs were the opposite of the rock music I'd been writing," he recalled in his 2016 memoir Born To Run. "They were restrained, still on the surface, with a world of moral ambiguity and unease below. The tension running through the music's core was the thin line between stability and that moment when the things that connect you to your world, your job, your family, your friends, the love and grace in your heart, fail you. I wanted to the music to feel like a waking dream and to move like poetry. I wanted the blood in these songs to feel destined and fateful."
After two months in the studio, in June 1982 Springsteen began mixing both the acoustic and full-band sessions.
