Springsteen’s critics misread his appeal. Absent from their analysis was class. The young heroes in “Thunder Road” and “Born to Run” are in flight from a very specific condition. Marsh recounts an interview in which Bruce explained, “I know what it’s like not to be able to do what you want to do, because when I go home, that’s what I see. It’s not fun, it’s no joke. I see my sister and her husband. They’re living the lives of my parents in a certain kind of way. They got kids; they’re working hard. These are people, you can see something in their eyes ... I asked my sister, ‘What do you do for fun?’ ‘I don’t have any fun,’ she says. She wasn’t kidding.”
An intensely private figure, Springsteen rarely sat for interviews, particularly in the early years. But when he did, politics was never far from his mind. “I don’t think the American Dream was that everyone was going to make it or that everyone was going to make a billion dollars,” he later said (as captured in the anthology, Bruce Springsteen Talking). “But it was that everyone was going to have an opportunity and the chance to live a life with some decency and a chance for some self-respect.”
It’s been 40 years since “Born to Run” first captivated the popular imagination. In many ways, we’re living in a comparatively prosperous decade: Downtown Freehold has been restored to its original splendor, and the Asbury Park boardwalk is lined with upscale bars and restaurants catering to an upwardly mobile crowd. Yet Americans still grapple with the same concerns that animated a young Bruce Springsteen. The place and condition of one’s birth continue to define the outer boundaries of possibility. All of which makes the music as meaningful as it ever was.One of my first posts ever from almost 10 years ago was on its 30th anniversary, and still holds true today:
I've always said the title track is THE greatest single of the last 30 years - shambolic Phil Spector sounds falling down the stairwell, with words that should mean everything to a small town boy like me. Why every band in the world hasn't tried to reproduce this sound is a mystery to me, but fuck em. The piano echo on "Backstreets", the anguished singing taking me back home, and "Jungleland" unfolding piece by piece until you're in the middle of the street in the middle of the night in the middle of who the fuck knows what. Overblown? Yes. Dramatic? Certainly. Over the top? Isn't fucking everything when you're young, when you've found something to believe in, like Bruce did with the actual power of rock n roll? And really, shouldn't it be? You got your whole fucking life to be bored to death; anyone can be boring at any moment. It'd sure be nice to reach for something so great and unattainable these days; its all we can seem to do to get thru the day while hoping we "get" the White Stripes coolness, or Modest Mouse's emo-ness, or Wilco's...well, whatever it is that makes people like Wilco. On Born to Run, Bruce threw it all the table - love, youth, hope, at least HOPING for excitement if nothing else. You can almost picture Bruce picking you up in a '70 Chevelle and hittin the Dairy Queen, trying to to talk to chicks, getting ignored, driving up and down the only road in town, no money, no friends, but fuck, there's gotta be something else out there better than this. I felt the same way back in high school, standing round in French's parking lot, sipping a Big Gulp while dudes 10 years older tried to get girls to take them to the prom. yeesh. Christ, look at me blathering bout Bruce. I don’t want no lovefest here, but hey, sit in your room tonight, turn all the lights off, and put on Born to Run. Born to Run will never, ever let you down.I will now rank the songs in order:
Born to Run
Backstreets
Jungleland
Thunder Road
Night
Meeting Across the River
She's the One
No comments:
Post a Comment