Thirty-five days before Bruce Springsteen's 15th studio album releases, I thought we should take a drive down Route 9 to where it all started, roll down the window and let the wind blow back the hair and all.

When people first heard Bruce Springsteen's 1973 Greetings From Asbury Park, N.J., they said that he was the next Bob Dylan. But, with all due respect to Bob, that would be too simple. I can see what they were trying to say, though. Each song was a saga bursting with words. Springsteen, on this record, has always been guilty of trying to fit too many words into each bar of music. Check out these lines from his opening song, and one of the more well known tunes from Springsteen's early days, "Blinded By The Light":

Go-cart Mozart was checking out the weather chart to see if it was safe to go outside/
Little Early-Pearly came by in her curly-wurly and asked me if I needed a ride/
Oh, some hazard from Harvard was skunked on beer playing backyard bombardier.

His redemption is that the stories he told needed every single one of the words he chose for his sagas. One word less, and they would be choking for breath.

Early and first-time listeners of this record didn't really know that two years later, they wouldn't be hearing this folk-rock Springsteen sound again till about 20 years later. If they had known, they would have paid more attention. "Greetings" was a commercial failure, despite a relatively above-average critical response.

In retrospect, it's a difficult record to get into. Though much easier to grasp if you were already a Springsteen fan weaned on Born To Run (1975) and Born In The USA (1984), the fact that only Garry Tallent and Clarence Clemons from the now permanent E Street Band play here may be somewhat of a damper, too (what, no Little Steven? No Mighty Max?).

It's difficult for the reasons stated earlier - when you have what's amounted to a song poem of Chaucer proportions set against minute musical maneuvers, where does your attention go? It's just too much for a good time rock tune. Without patience, this record may be lost on the most saintly of rock fans.

While the faster tunes - "Does This Bus Stop At 82nd Street" and "For You" and the aforementioned "Blinded By The Light" - are jammy numbers with a tight sound grounded, but not inhibited by, garage band roots, Springsteen's soul in the early 1970s are better manifested through the ballads ("Mary Queen Of Arkansas", "The Angel", and "Lost In The Flood"). Bruce has never sounded so poignant, so lost - yet you get the feeling that he's found his emotion through this music. From "Mary Queen Of Arkansas":