'Further up the Road' compiles images from Frank Stefanko, who shot 'Darkness on the Edge of Town' cover
Stefanko has a longstanding working relationship with Springsteen: he's the man behind the covers for Darkness on the Edge of Town and The River. He also took cover photo for Springsteen's autobiography, Born to Run. Further up the Road will include a number of images from two unpublished shoots with Springsteen, one that took place in 2004 and another from this year.
Wall of Sound plans to print 1,978 copies of Further up the Road. The first 350 of these will be available as a deluxe edition for $630, while the remainder will make up a collector's edition for $380. Pre-order starts May 8nd. Stefanko will sign every copy and Springsteen penned the book's introduction.
In Born to Run, Springsteen praised Stefanko's work. "Frank's photographs were stark," he wrote. "His talent was he managed to strip away your celebrity, your artifice, and get to the raw you. His photos had a purity and a street poetry to them. They were lovely and true, but they weren't slick … We had other cover options but they didn't have the hungriness of Frank's pictures."
Eric Meola, another photographer fortunate enough to photograph Springsteen for the Born to Run album, also applauded Stefanko in a statement. "I love the 'in-your-face' immediacy of these images; their stark innocence and how they appear to be photographs that don’t try to be something they are not," Meola wrote. "As Bruce entered the vernacular of American music and its psyche, Frank found his world. And in this book, he shares it with us."
