Exclusive: Springsteen on Unheard 'Darkness' Tracks

On November 16th, Bruce Springsteen will release his sprawling The Promise: The Darkness on the Edge of Town Story 3-CD/3-DVD set, which features a remastered version of the classic 1978 album, a feature-length documentary about its creation and hours of live footage, but the real highlight may be a collection of 21 previously unreleased tracks recorded during the Darkness sessions. These songs, collectively called The Promise (The Lost Session: Darkness on the Edge of Town), will also be released as a separate 2-CD set.

Behind the scenes of Springsteen's Darkness sessions

"Rather than being a record of outtakes, it's a separate record. It's a fully realized, separate piece of our history," Springsteen says in The Promise trailer above — the first of several exclusive items about the release you"ll see on RollingStone.com in the coming weeks.

"It was sort of a collection of material that ... the one thing it had in common was that it didn't get on the record, which meant it was probably a little more maybe genre-based soul music, garage rock. Amazingly, when we put it all together, you realize it holds up as a double record pretty well."

Watch the video above to hear Springsteen talk about the collection and hear excerpts of the unreleased tracks "Ain't Good Enough For You," "Racing in the Street ('78)" and Springsteen's studio version of his hit collaboration with Patti Smith, "Because the Night."

RollingStone.com will have much more exclusive Darkness material in the coming weeks — and don"t miss Brian Hiatt"s Q&A with Bruce in the next issue of Rolling Stone.

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Song Stories

“Help Me”

Joni Mitchell | 1974

Joni Mitchell wrote and recorded this song for her album Court and Spark, but she had to switch from her regular band to make the song sound exactly the way she wanted. "I had attempted to play my music with rock & roll players," she told Rolling Stone. "They’d laugh, 'Awww, isn't that cute? She's trying to teach us how to play.'" Mitchell switched to a jazz band, Tom Scott’s L.A. Express, and scored the biggest hit of her career in the process.

More Song Stories entries »

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