Bruce Springsteen Adds "Darkness On The Edge Of Town" Reissue To Stacked 2009

As if Bruce Springsteen wasn't busy enough, what with the five-star Working on a Dream out next Tuesday and a Super Bowl halftime performance set for February 1st, the man from E Street also revealed he's in the planning stages of a deluxe reissue for his classic 1978 album Darkness on the Edge of Town.

Like the 30th anniversary release of Born To Run, the reissued Darkness "would involve remastering that record, doing the kind of super-creative reconstruction and documentary of how it all came about and finding usable live footage from that point in time," Springsteen's manager told Billboard.

Besides finding the footage, the only thing that could delay this reissue's release is finding a six-week gap in Springsteen's schedule "to sit down and finish it." The promotional blitz for Working will kick off with the Super Bowl performance, followed by some European concerts and then a tour of the States this summer, so finding a spare six weeks to devote to Darkness may happen later than sooner, but we remain optimistic.

Before Brucemania officially sweeps America, be sure to check out the new issue of Rolling Stone, as Springsteen invites writer David Fricke into the studio to talk about his new music, the first song he ever recorded and life with the E Street Band. Plus, we have more web-only Bruce features right here:

• Inside Bruce Springsteen's Rolling Stone Shoot
• Bruce Springsteen: The Vintage Photographs
• Bruce Springsteen: The RS Covers
• Album Review: Bruce Springsteen's Working on a Dream

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Song Stories

“Piano Man”

Billy Joel | 1973

Billy Joel’s first hit, “Piano Man,” was – ironically – an autobiographical lament about how his first album wasn’t a hit. When Cold Spring Harbor didn’t take off, Joel briefly became a lounge pianist in Los Angeles, and this song, about that experience, expressed his frustrations and fears at the time: “And they sit at the bar and put bread in my jar/And say, ‘Man, what are you doing here?’” “It was all right,” Joel said later, about the gig. “I got free drinks and union scale, which was the first steady money I’d made in a long time.”

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