On a recent stroll through the DV archives, I was startled to note that no one had ever covered Bruce Springsteen’s 1988 EP Chimes Of Freedom. Not because it’s a milestone release in the man’s catalog—more like a footnote. Not because we’re compulsive completists—oh hell, you’re never going to buy that, are you?

But really, OCD aside, there is a perfectly sound rationale for reviewing this relatively inconsequential four-song EP of performances from Springsteen’s 1988 Tunnel Of Love Express Tour, issued hurriedly to help publicize the Human Rights Now! tour supporting Amnesty International that took place that fall. On the latter six-week, six-continent tour, Springsteen and the E Street Band were co-billed with Sting, Peter Gabriel, Tracy Chapman and Youssou N’Dour.

To be sure, the first three songs on the EP are superb. “Tougher Than The Rest” is one of the best songs off of 1987’s Tunnel Of Love, a sweeping, steely affirmation of love from a determined suitor. “Be True” is a hard-driving, much-beloved outtake from 1980’s The River that the band made a staple of the Tunnel tour, often playing it second or third on the set list. And “Chimes Of Freedom,” besides to being a rare cover of Springsteen’s own idol Bob Dylan, is delivered with tremendous passion and sincerity.

All of which is good and fine and more or less beside the point.

The magic of “Born To Run”—in the estimation of some music writers, this one included, the greatest rock and roll song ever recorded—is that it is both a furious, multi-crescendoed rock and roll fever dream, and a stunningly evocative piece of American poetry. Those amazing words, matched to that full-tilt musical stampede, knock me out every single time.

On the Tunnel tour, though, Springsteen was determined to try something different.  Just this once, the apex of the evening would arrive not in the form of a full-on, adrenaline-soaked rampage, but in the quietest, most solemn moment of the performance.

Springsteen would come out to the front of the stage alone, under a single spotlight, with only his acoustic guitar and harmonica rig, and begin strumming a gentle sequence of chords. The crowd would typically hush—this was a decade before setlists started popping up in the Internet after every show—and try to puzzle out the unfamiliar song’s identity as he doubled the guitar melody on harmonica. And then he would sing the first line, and the entire stadium would hush in reverence, except for the scattered few compelled to exclaim in awe. “Dude,” you can almost hear the quiet ones whispering to one another, “he’s doing it acoustic.”

Stripped of the weight and bombast of its wall of sound studio arrangement, the acoustic “Born To Run” becomes a kind of hymn, a solemn meditation on the dreams and fears and blind determination that looms large in each of our lives at some point in our youth. The music becomes a footnote and the sheer, compelling beauty of each line becomes the complete focus.  Springsteen sings them in a gentle, firm voice whose natural grittiness only underscores the humanity, the fierce yet humble dreams of the narrator. The use of both harmonica and Springsteen’s own wordless vocalizations as substitutes for the familiar sax and guitar solos gives the entire performance a haunted quality, a sort of sadness-brimming-with-hope steeliness.

Chimes Of Freedom might be a footnote in the Springsteen catalog, but it’s a spectacular one, containing one of the most remarkable performances of one of the most remarkable songs in rock history. Trust me on this one: if you like Bruce even a little, you have got to have this EP.

Rating: A

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