GROWIN' UP

03 May 1972 demo version

Well I stood stone-like at midnight, suspended in my masquerade
I combed my hair till it was just right and commanded the night brigade
I was open to pain and crossed by the rain and I walked on a crooked crutch
Well, I strode all alone into a fallout zone and came out with my soul untouched
I hid in the clouded wrath of the crowd, when they said "sit down" I stood up
Ooh, ooh, growin' up

Well the flag of piracy flew from my mast, my sails were set wing to wing
I had a jukebox graduate for first mate, she couldn't sail but she sure could sing
I pushed B-52 and bombed 'em with the blues with my gear set stubborn on standing
We broke all the rules and I strafed my old high school, never once gave thought to landing
I stayed in the clouded warmth of the crowd but when they said "come down" I threw up
Ooh, ooh, growin' up

Yeah

I took month-long vacations in the stratosphere and you know it's really hard to hold your breath
I lost everything I ever loved or feared, I was the cosmic kid in full costume dress
Well my feet they finally took root in the earth but I got me a nice little place in the stars
I swear I found the key to the universe in the engine of an old parked car
I hid in the mothered breast of the crowd, but when they said "pull down" I pulled up
Ooh, ooh, growin' up

Info

The above lyrics are for the demo of GROWIN' UP that was recorded during Springsteen's first studio audition session for CBS Records. The recording took place on 03 May 1972 at CBS Studios in New York City, NY, and was later published on the Tracks box set in 1998 and the 18 Tracks collection in 1999. It features Springsteen solo on vocals and acoustic guitar. See the album version for more details about the song and the events surrounding this audition.

This 03 May 1972 demo version of GROWIN' UP was also included on the Chapter And Verse compilation album.

To promote the Chapter And Verse album, the 03 May 1972 demo version of GROWIN' UP was posted on Bruce Springsteen's VEVO YouTube channel on 30 Sep 2016. The video starts with contemporary Springsteen talking about that 03 May 1972 demo in an interview-like setting followed by the demo playing over synchronized footage of the live Aug 1972 version of the song intercepted with a montage of photos and video snippets spanning Springsteen's career. In the introduction, Springsteen said: "The take that John Hammond produced of 'Growin' Up' was just my audition tape for Columbia Records. And uh... went into a studio in midtown, there were some very professional looking engineers and producers, guys still wore white shirts and a tie and uh, uh... There was one microphone in the middle of a huge room and, uh, I went out and played and sung into it."

The 03 May 1972 Audition

Bruce Springsteen's first "formal" studio audition for CBS took place on 03 May 1972 at CBS Studios in New York City. Produced by John Hammond and engineered by Phil Giambalvo, the session consisted of 12 songs (two of them played twice, making a total of 14 tracks); session log information survives and it has been verified that the below-listed recordings encompass the complete session. This so-called "John Hammond Demo Session" was assigned the job number 79682; Hammond's voice is heard on the recording of the audition reading off the session number, "Bruce Springsteen, Columbia Pop audition, job number 79682, Mary Queen Of Arkansas, take 1".

The master Scotch magnetic tape reels from the audition were on display as part of the From Asbury Park To The Promised Land exhibition at the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame And Museum in Cleveland, OH, along with boxes labeled with running orders:

Four tracks from the "John Hammond Demo Session" that were previously officially released in other versions were included on the Tracks box set in 1998. These are: MARY QUEEN OF ARKANSAS [take #2], IT'S HARD TO BE A SAINT IN THE CITY, GROWIN' UP, and DOES THIS BUS STOP AT 82ND STREET?.

In his 2012 book E Street Shuffle: The Glory Days of Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band, Clinton Heylin wrote that over the years Hammond would come to insist that their demo was "better than any tape Bruce has made since, because Bruce is [now] so uptight about perhaps overshadowing somebody else in the band." In 1981, he would send Springsteen a copy of the tape as a reminder of what might have been. Springsteen's response was Nebraska.

Tracks

In the liner notes of his Tracks box set, Bruce Springsteen introduces the box set as follows:

During long intervals between my record releases, as I was spending more and more time in the studio, when I met a fan out on the street I was often asked, "What are you guys doing in there?" I regularly pondered that question myself.

What we were doing in there was making a lot of music, a lot more music than I could use at any one time. As a result, my albums became a series of choices — what to include, what to leave out? I based my decisions on my creative point of view at the moment — the subject I was trying to focus on, something musical or emotional I was trying to express. In certain instances, as on Darkness on the Edge of Town, Nebraska, and The Ghost of Tom Joad, these choices crystallized the album I was making. On some of my other records the reasons I had for choosing one song over another, in hindsight, feel a good deal less significant. One of the results of working like this was that a lot of music, including some of my favorite things, remained unreleased.

This collection contains everything from the first notes I sang in the Columbia recording studio, my early and later work with the E Street Band, through to my music in the 90s. It's the alternate route to some of the destinations I travelled to on my records, an invitation into the studio on the many nights we spent making music in search of the records we presented to you. I'm glad to finally be able to share this music; here are some of the ones that got away.

- Bruce Springsteen, September 1998

Bruce Springsteen's albums were thematically linked even if they were not strictly concept albums; so some tracks that didn't fit the theme of the album ended up orphaned, not necessarily because they didn't meet his high standards, but because, he says, they didn't fit in with the tone or themes he mined for each set. Many of these unreleased studio outtakes got under the hands of bootleggers. Discussing that issue in 1984, Springsteen told Rolling Stone's Kurt Loder, "We record a lot of material, but we just don't release it all. [...] I always tell myself that some day I'm gonna put an album out with all this stuff on it that didn't fit in. I think there's some good material there that should come out. Maybe at some point, I'll do that."

During a break in The Ghost Of Tom Joad Solo Acoustic Tour, Springsteen thought that "if it's gonna be a year or longer in between records, I have all this music that I know is very good that I never released and I should release some of it whether it was just a CD or something. In that period of time, I should put something out because people would like to have it and I'd like to see it get out." He told Toby Scott (his audio archivist and recording engineer), "send me all the archives, send everything that we recorded". Scott then went to work gathering the potential material from Springsteen's massive audio library (located, along with Sony's sound archives, in the high-tech Iron Mountain facility near Buffalo, NY). "For a week or so," he told Billboard in a Nov 1998 interview, "I just listened to everything that I'd done that we hadn't put out. I made some very brief notes in a notebook, and then I just put it away. It was something that I could do at some point when I get to that place in a new project where I'm not sure how long it's going to take and it would be nice to sort of fill the gap so the fans wouldn't be so long without hearing any music from me".

Springsteen told Mark Hagen in an interview for Mojo magazine published in January 1999, "So it began just with that idea and we listened to about 250 songs, maybe more, I made quick notes in a notebook and put it away. A year went by, more maybe, and I came off the Tom Joad tour and I began to write acoustically again and I wrote about half a record. Then I got stuck and said, 'Well, I'm going to put this aside for a while.' Then I wrote half of an electric record, and hit the same place. So I thought, instead of waiting for another year to put something out I'll put some of this music together. So once again I went back to the archives." According to interview comments made by engineer Toby Scott (Springsteen's audio archivist and recording engineer), it was in February 1998 during solo sessions being conducted at Thrill Hill Recording (Springsteen's home studio) in Colts Neck, NJ, that Springsteen told Scott that the time was right to proceed with the long-anticipated box set of archived, unreleased studio takes. Thrill Hill Recording served as the main operational center for all Tracks project activities. Note that the "Thrill Hill Recording" name is used for whatever home studio Springsteen is recording at, whether it's in Rumson, NJ, Colts, NJ, or Beverly Hills, CA.

Springsteen told Billboard that the songs were culled from between 200 and 300 tunes. According to Toby Scott, the number was down to about 128 songs by late June 1998. It was then narrowed down yet again in July to about 100 songs that were prepped for the Tracks release. Although the project was originally projected to be a 6-disc set, there was a commercial decision made later in the summer to reduce the size of the release to a 4-disc (66-track) set. The package was delivered to Sony in mid-September in order to facilitate the mid-November 1998 release schedule.

Unreleased songs from the Greetings From Asbury Park, NJ sessions were not included on the box set due to ongoing and still-unresolved court proceedings involving most of these unreleased 1972 recordings. The court battle wasn't resolved until in 2001 (April 2001 in the UK and June 2001 in the U.S.), and those recordings are now free for release at any time. The opening four tracks of the box set — which were culled from Springsteen's 03 May 1972 Columbia Records audition — were not part of the court proceedings.

On 16 Jul 1998, Springsteen attended a convention for Sony Music Entertainment Inc. in Miami, FL, where he officially announced that a box set was the works and he played a tape of three songs: WHERE THE BANDS ARE, LOOSE ENDS, and I WANNA BE WITH YOU.

The Tracks box set was released on Columbia Records on 10 Nov 1998. It was issued on both compact disc and audio cassette formats. It's a 4-disc (or 4-cassette) set consisting of a total of 66 tracks (almost 4.5 hours long), 10 of which were heretofore unavailable single B-sides, 6 were demos and alternate versions of already-released material, and 50 (48 studio and 2 live) were never-before-released songs recorded during the sessions for Springsteen's many albums. Some tracks were treated with a recent touch-up here or there to give the older recordings a fresh polish.

• Disc 1 consists of material from 1972 to 1980, including Springsteen's very first Columbia Records audition for legendary A & R executive John Hammond. This disc also features additional songs most of which recorded for (but never released on) Springsteen's first four albums.
• Disc 2 consists of material from 1979 to 1983, taken primarily from the recording sessions of The River, Nebraska, and Born In The U.S.A.. Springsteen describes this disc as "almost the completely other album from 'The River'."
• Disc 3 consists of material from 1982 to 1987, taken primarily from the recording sessions of Born In The U.S.A. and Tunnel Of Love.
• Disc 4 consists of material from 1989 to 1998, taken primarily from the recording sessions of Human Touch.

Bruce Springsteen -- Tracks

18 Tracks

18 Tracks is a Bruce Springsteen compilation album released on Columbia Records in 1999. The album compiles 15 tracks from the Tracks box set, plus 3 previously unreleased recordings. The collection release was intended for the more casual fans who didn't purchase the pricey 4-disc box set. It also served the purpose as a promotional tie-in for the E Street Band's The Reunion Tour that was announced at the same time of the sampler's release.

Bruce Springsteen -- 18 Tracks

18 Tracks was released on 13 Apr 1999 on Columbia Records. It features 18 Springsteen compositions and clocks at 71:12. The album was released on CD, cassette tape, MiniDisc, and vinyl.

Chapter And Verse

Chapter And Verse is a Bruce Springsteen compilation album released on Columbia Records on 23 Sep 2016 in the U.S. It was officially announced on 28 Jul 2016. The album is an audio companion to Springsteen's autobiography Born To Run, which was published four days later, on 27 Sep 2016, by Simon & Schuster.

The album is a career retrospective consisting of 18 tracks. It spans almost half a century of Springsteen's career, from as early as 1966. According to the press release, Springsteen selected the songs to reflect the themes and sections of the autobiography. The first five tracks have not been previously released.

Tracks 1 and 2 are from The Castiles era, track 3 is from the Steel Mill era, and track 4 is from The Bruce Springsteen Band era. Tracks 5 and 6 are Springsteen solo, from around the time he signed his record deal with CBS. The remaining 12 tracks are compiled from 12 different Bruce Springsteen studio albums, from 1973 to 2012. All song were written by Bruce Springsteen, except tracks 1 (co-written by Bruce Springsteen and George Theiss) and track 2 (written by Willie Dixon). Track 2 is only song on the album recorded live.

Bruce Springsteen -- Chapter And Verse

Chapter And Verse is available as a single-disc CD and as a double-disc LP, as well as digital download and streaming.

Other Official Releases

The 03 May 1972 demo version of GROWIN' UP was also included on Tracks Sampler.

Bruce Springsteen -- Tracks Sampler

CD - Columbia (CSK 41561) - USA, 1998

This is a single-disc advance promotional sampler compiling 15 tracks from the Tracks box set. It was issued in the USA, Australia, and Germany, with the same track list.

Tracks Sampler track list

01- GROWIN' UP
02- RENDEZVOUS
03- HEARTS OF STONE
04- RESTLESS NIGHTS
05- WHERE THE BANDS ARE
06- LOOSE ENDS
07- I WANNA BE WITH YOU
08- BORN IN THE U.S.A.
09- LION'S DEN
10- JANEY, DON'T YOU LOSE HEART
11- SAD EYES
12- TROUBLE IN PARADISE
13- SEVEN ANGELS
14- HAPPY
15- BACK IN YOUR ARMS

Bruce Springsteen -- Tracks Sampler

CD - Columbia (CSK 41561) - Australia, 1998

Bruce Springsteen -- Tracks Sampler

CD - Columbia (CSK 41561) - Germany, 1998

Bootleg Releases

Before its official release on the Tracks box set in 1998, this 03 May 1972 demo version of GROWIN' UP has been circulating on several bootleg releases, including The Early Years Volume Two (Bagel Boys Records) track 07] and The Unsurpassed Springsteen Vol. 3 (Yellow Dog Records) [track 06].

Bruce Springsteen -- The Early Years Volume Two (Bagel Boys Records)

Bruce Springsteen -- The Unsurpassed Springsteen Volume 3 (Yellow Dog Records)

Credits

Thanks Timmy Peterson (Terry at Greasy Lake) and Jake (ol'catfishinthelake at BTX and Greasy Lake) for the lyrics help.

Available Versions

List of available versions of GROWIN' UP on this website:

Page last updated: 02 Oct 2016