Left of the Dial

Off the Old Block

"Your father threw out his back," Top Management informs the offspring, as though they hadn't noticed the heavily-medicated daze I'd been in for the previous twenty-four hours, or how I'd been hobbling around like Quasimodo. "So you girls are going to need to be his hands and legs for him."

They look at her blankly. She sighs.

"What I mean is, I need you to do whatever it is he'd normally do at this time of night to get the younger ones ready for bed." She pauses. "What's he normally do at this time of night?"

The Bean grins, a wicked gleam in her eye. She turns to the 3-year-old. "Move it, maggot!" she bellows.

The Great Crayon-Pencil War of 1953

So I step on something hard in the middle of the hall and emphatically do not curse (at least for the purposes of this story).

I look down and see half a crayon. I kick it out of the way and notice another half crayon near—but not in—the trash can.  I walk out towards the living room, limping slightly, because crayons are far harder than you'd think and also because I crave sympathy or at least a bit of drama. I notice another half crayon near the front door, and some crayon powder nearby. I look at the 3-year-old happily sitting in the sun on the front stoop. 

"Hey," I say. "Are you breaking crayons in half?"

He looks up at me. "Yes," he says softly. 

This throws me. I'm not used to honesty, other than when people tell me how I look. "Well," I say, thinking quickly. "Don't do that anymore." 

Having thus dispensed my daily Mike Brady-like fatherly wisdom, I look over at the 11-year-old. "Why would he do that?" I ask, shaking my head. "Why would someone break crayons in half? What was he thinking?" 

"Well," the Bean replies. "It goes back to The Great Crayon-Pencil War of 1953. There was a dispute over territory and one thing led to another and when the battle lines were drawn, he felt he simply had no choice but to side with the pencils." 

My mouth drops open. She smiles. "Can I have the leftover cheesecake for lunch?" 

[She later reported the cheesecake was delicious.]

Radio Silence

Things have been a bit quiet here on Left of the Dial. One reason is because I've been blogging over at a new blog, Reason to Believe, with old friend and regular Left o' the Dialian DT. The new blog is pretty much entirely devoted to music, at least for now, so I might post less music-related stuff here. Then again, maybe not, since that would just leave funny or sweet family stories and, honestly, we simply don't have much such material these days. 

Hm. Probably time to throw them all into Thunderdome and see what happens. Bet there'd be some funny and sweet stories then. 

A Good Question

The toddler walks in with his new acquisition.

ME: You have a battleaxe?

He nods grimly with a small satisfied smile. His little fists loosen slightly before tightening up again on the axe handle.

I play along.

ME: Don't chop anybody's head off with it.

He looks down at it, then slowly back up at me. He tilts his head quizzically, a disappointed look on his face.

HIM (sadly): Why?

Wreck on the Highway

Death, as a topic, was no stranger to Bruce Springsteen by the time he recorded his fifth album, 1980's The River. Already on his first album, 1973's Greetings from Asbury Park, NJ, death features prominently on at least two tracks. But "Wreck on the Highway," The River's final song, dispenses with the earlier romantic view of death for a much more matter-of-fact take on the subject, an almost (but not quite) documentarian viewpoint.

Compare and contrast the opening lines to the earlier songs:

The ragamuffin gunner is returnin' home like a hungry runaway

and

Princess cards she sends me with her regards

Barroom eyes shine vacancy, to see her you gotta look hard

with

Last night I was out driving

Coming home at the end of the working day

I was riding alone through the drizzling rain

On a deserted stretch of a county two-lane

When I came upon a wreck on the highway

The flowery, poetic language is replaced by flat, largely monosyllabic words. The scene is set with perfect clarity but with nothing extra—it is what it is.

There was blood and glass all over

And there was nobody there but me

As the rain tumbled down hard and cold

I seen a young man lying by the side of the road

He cried Mister, won't you help me please

In addition to being heartbreaking and horrifying, the ambiguity of the writing right here is especially powerful: is the narrator hit by the horrible scene before him, by this sight of this terribly injured driver in need of help and his own inability to provide the kind of assistance so clearly required, by the fact that this guy needs help and it’s up to the narrator, since he’s the only one on this lonesome road? Or when he says there was nobody there but him, does he mean he looks at the injured driver and sees himself?

A brief instrumental interlude follows, the move into the relative minor imbuing the section with an extra haunting, melancholy feel, as if any additional push in that direction were needed.

An ambulance finally came and took him to Riverside

I watched as they drove him away

And I thought of a girlfriend or a young wife

And a state trooper knocking in the middle of the night

To say your baby died in a wreck on the highway

Why? Why’s he think this? Why’s he imagine the state trooper delivering that news? Did the young man die during the instrumental break? Was it clear he was going to die? Were his injuries so severe there was little chance of his pulling through? Is the narrator assuming the worst or is he simply imagining it? Is it all in his head? And can it possibly be mere coincidence that the name of the album and the name of the hospital are so clearly related?

Sometimes I sit up in the darkness

And I watch my baby as she sleeps

Then I climb in bed and I hold her tight

I just lay there awake in the middle of the night

Thinking 'bout the wreck on the highway

That’s an amazing ending in and of itself, but taken in the context of Springsteen’s other album closers, a huge departure. His first album had closed with desperate bravado against a slinky rock beat, and his next two with romantic longings set to lush, sometimes jazzy, sometimes progressive music. His fourth album, often considered (justifiably) his first fully adult collection, ended on a howl of defiance and fierce statement of purpose.

And then we come to this. His narrator, awake in the middle of the night, tormented by what he’d seen and what he fears is to come in his own future, alone even as he's holding his loved one. In his earlier songs the narrator's witnessed a spectacularly public death and tried to save a girlfriend from suicide. Here there's nothing quite so obviously dramatic. Instead, we're left with a narrator, isolated even when with others, quietly obsessed with his own mortality after being the lone witness to a single car accident.

It's all mirrored by the music, which is the most country song he'd yet recorded, carried by Danny Federici's organ and Garry W. Talent's simple but melodic bassline. No sax, no guitar solos, just a bit of quiet piano and some restrained guitar arpeggios.

A final whispered "oh," and the song's over.

Only then it's not. After a brief false ending, the instrumental middle section comes back, carried mainly by the bass, repeating until it fades out, a strange, atypical and utterly effective ending.

Wreck on the Highway

Perspective

He's got it. But, I'm guessing, at least kind of wishes he didn't. 

I wonder if there's anyone who can watch this without getting at least choked up.

Racing in the Street

And now we come to the final two songs in what are, to my mind, the finest four song run I’ve ever heard live, the centerpiece of Bruce Springsteen's September 19, 1978 concert in Passaic.

We start with Roy Bittan’s gorgeous piano introduction, proving once again, as if any further proof were needed, of how unsurpassed he is as a rock and roll pianist. Beautiful and just a bit sad, it gives little hint of the song to come. Until he transitions into what many consider Bruce Springsteen’s best song, “Racing in the Street.”

When Danny’s organ comes in after the first verse and chorus, it’s an awesome moment, simultaneously managing to make the music both warmer and more melancholy, something which should be impossible in theory but somehow isn’t in execution.

To kick off the second verse, Max Weinberg begins to click his snare evenly, the metronomic effect imparting a threatening sense of one’s inexorable mortality, a feeling echoed in the tiny changes Springsteen’s made to the lyrics, changing the first “summer’s here” to “summer’s hanging on.”

The song proceeds perfectly, building to a rousing instrumental section, before coming down unexpectedly for the final, subdued verse. Although the narrator has won both the race and, more important, the girl, it’s far from triumphant, as even victory and love have, to their surprise and disappointment, proven insufficient to conquer the difficulties in life. Racing and love beat them back for a while but couldn’t shut them out forever.

Springsteen’s voice in the final chorus is initially determined before dropping down resignedly. And tellingly he once again changes the original “summer’s here,” but this time it’s to a grim “summer’s gone.”

There are a few moments of Roy’s solo piano, before he’s joined by Bruce’s haunting harmonica. They duet briefly until joined by Danny’s soulful organ and Max’s subdued snare. Max adds his heartbeat-like bass drum and then some arpeggiated guitar enters. Garry’s bass and Clarence’s tambourine chime in and without even noticing it’s now the entire band. What had been verging on despondent has become something else, a quiet sense of community. They all may be feeling the same overwhelming and bleak emotions but at least they’re feeling them together.

Meanwhile, Roy has subtly transitioned from his simple yet gorgeous initial chords to some of the loveliest and most searching playing of his career, building, building, always building, intertwining with the guitars lines majestically, twisting in and out but always coming back, always returning to the pack.

And then they all drop out, leaving Roy on his own once again, playing something reminiscent of but not quite identical to his solo introduction. Subtly it begins to change. And Springsteen begins to talk.

Racing in the Street_plus (Passaic 1978)

By 1978, Springsteen already had a reputation for the stories he told in concert. Sometimes intense and dramatic, some hysterically funny, often surprisingly personal, many were far, far longer than audiences of the time were used to. And yet none lasted a moment longer than necessary, Springsteen keeping his listeners in the palm of his hand, a master storyteller at work.

That’s not what happens here. In just over a minute he gives a little backstory to the next song’s origin and then tells briefly of something related he later encountered. Almost but not quite imperceptively Roy follows him until in perfect sync they move into the next song. And as they begin the song in tandem and the audience moves along with them, you get one of those experiences that remind you, this, this is why human beings create art, for moments of pure catharsis like this. 

Prove It All Night

One of the things which often gets overlooked in discussions of Bruce Springsteen is what an outstanding musician he is. He doesn’t have the voice of Marvin Gaye or the chops of Eddie van Halen or the compositional skills of Stevie Wonder. But he’s far more complex and subtle a musician, as a performer, composer and arranger, than his most popular songs might lead one to believe.

Take this performance of “Prove It All Night,” from the September 19, 1978 Passaic show. This is the introduction he gave the song every night on the Darkness on the Edge of Town tour, an introduction which is not only utterly unlike the album version, but unlike almost anything else in rock and roll. Dave Marsh once described it as sounding like “an unholy alliance between the Yardbirds and Bob Dylan,” a great description, but one which has never seemed quite right to me. For twenty years I’ve tried to figure out a more apt one and failed, until recently it struck me: it sounds like the Allman Brothers covering Television. It’s got the uniquely slinky post-midnight menace of “Marquee Moon,” but features the kind of extended guitar and keyboard interplay at which the Allmans excelled.

And what guitar. Springsteen is no Hendrix, in terms of sheer technique, but he’s much better than most casual fan probably realize, and here he plays like a man possessed, making the guitar, as John Lennon said of his own abilities, “howl,” his initial introductory note, nearly a minute and a half in, positively screaming, and leading Roy Bittan’s piano comping to suddenly become syncopated, as though the unexpected arrival of the guitar has thrown the keyboard off balance. As Springsteen’s solo continues, showing his characteristic love of bent notes and triplets as well as an odd fondness for a legato approach, the band ramps up and up until exploding into the song proper. An insanely fierce rendition of the song ensues, finally collapsing, exhausted. 

Prove It All Night (Passaic 1978)

 And then things get really good. 

The Promised Land

So my seven loyal readers may have noticed that I like music. Although over the past few years I’ve rediscovered a love for the album as a work of art, for a long time I listened to almost nothing but live shows. And of the hundreds and hundreds of concerts I’ve listened to—almost all recordings as, perhaps oddly, I’ve never been all that big a fan of the actual live experience live—I’ve never heard one better than the show Bruce Springsteen gave in Passaic, New Jersey on September 19, 1978. Broadcast live, the show was only a few months after Darkness on the Edge of Town had been released.

The previous three years had been difficult ones for Springsteen, as his career had hinged on the success of the Born to Run album, an album which was incredibly hard to record. Once released, the album was tremendously successful, of course, but more trouble ensued, as he was seen by many as nothing more than an overhyped product of the record industry. And then he and one of his best friends in the world, his manager, found themselves entangled in legal troubles, a lawsuit between them prohibiting Springsteen from entering a recording studio, rendering him unable to record a follow up. When that was finally resolved, things didn’t get any easier, as Darkness on the Edge of Town proved every bit as difficult to record as Born to Run had.

But eventually, after three years, they got the album they were looking for—although it took recording 70 songs to find the 10 that ended up on the record—and the band went on tour. So. That’s what you’re hearing here: an artist finally, finally let loose, with a successful album before an adoring crowd in his home state.

And even by the standards of this amazing show, there’s a four song run which is as good as any I’ve heard in the thousands of hours of concerts I’ve heard. Today we’re starting with the first song of that run, the sixth song of the night.

With the exception of the new introduction, there’s nothing particularly different about the arrangement, as compared to the studio version—although the intro itself is wonderful and a great example of Springsteen’s qualities as an arranger. As the song transitions from the introduction into the body of the song, the bands speeds up slightly, giving a sense of unstoppable momentum, something which will continue through the song.

I’ll be coming back to this song at least two more times, eventually, but for now, that’s about all I have to say about that. Just a great performance of a great song, with Springsteen’s harmonica solo at the end especially inspired, and the band playing like a bunch of guys clearly feeling their oats.    

The Promised Land (Passaic 1978)

Hoods

The two middle girls return from a long walk. “There’s someone outside who wants to speak with you,” the older one says.

I go out and see a woman standing there. “Hi,” she says. “Your girls were standing at the intersection over there, and they threw something at my car. It hit my window. There’s no damage but I thought you should know.”

I thank her and ask her to wait a moment. I pop back into the house. The girls are standing side by side, perfectly still, on the other side of the room. “Is this true?” I ask.

“Yes,” they both say.

I point towards the door. “Let’s go.”

Without waiting for further instructions, they go outside and apologize quite nicely, the 13-year-old stoic, the 11-year-old’s voice shaking. The woman accepts their apology and tells them they shouldn’t do things like that. I apologize to her again and thank her for being understanding.

I go inside and even though it’s the middle of the afternoon, I send both girls to bed, and tell them they’re not allowed to read or talk, that they just have to lay there. Without a word, they hang up their jackets and go.

I wait nearly an hour before I go in. “I am so sorry, Daddy,” the younger one says, trying and failing not to sob. The older one sits up straight, as though at her arraignment, and says, “It was my idea and I take complete and total responsibility.”

I hold up my hand. “What did you throw?” I ask.

“These little berries that were on the ground.”

I nod grimly, although inside I’m very relieved. That’s it? Just berries?

“Was that the first car you’d thrown them at?”

“No. Just the first one we hit.”

Inside I resolve to step up the number of catches we have in the backyard.

“Why did you do it? What were you thinking?”

The younger one opens her mouth to try to explain but no words will come. She just shakes her head.

The teenager also shakes her head as she says, “It just…it just seemed like a good idea at the time.”

I nod as I stand up. “I’ll be back.”

I wait another hour before returning. The 11-year-old is clearly tormented by her actions and would do just about anything to go back in time and change the past.

I sit down and say, “When your oldest and best uncle was about, I dunno, 12? He and a bunch of the neighborhood kids were playing at someone’s house on the next block. Like a lot of the houses in the New England area we grew up in, it had a gravel driveway. For some reason your uncle and some of the other boys grabbed a handful of rocks and threw them at a passing car. The car screeched to a halt. All the other kids instantly ran away, but not your uncle. He just stood there and waited for the driver. The driver made him give his name and address and then he came and talked to Grandma and Granddad. Your uncle apologized and, as I recall, was given a pretty hefty punishment. But the driver, despite being unhappy about having pebbles thrown at his car, was impressed that your uncle had stood his ground and admitted culpability, and he told your grandparents that. Grandma and Granddad, although probably not admitting it at the time, were impressed too.”

I look at them, and motion for the younger to come sit on my lap. “You guys made a mistake, a big one. But you admitted it and you apologized even without being told to. And I’m guessing you’ve learned from this and won’t be doing it again?”

The older nods seriously while the younger buries her face in my chest as she tries to stop crying.

I tell them they can have dinner in a little while, but that’s it. The rest of the evening and night they’re just going to stay in their beds without talking. And in the morning everything’ll reset.

And I leave and I stop in the hall and I look at what they’d been wearing, the hoodies they’d been wearing, now hung up neatly in the closet.

I think about what might have happened if things had just been a little, and not really all that much different. If they’d been boys instead of girls. If they’d been just a few years older, each. If the hoodies had been grey and black instead of pink and cream. If we’d lived in Florida instead of California. Most of all, of course, I think about what might have happened if they’d had dark skin and hair rather than pale skin and blonde hair. I think about how this is what kids do, they do stupid things—and this dumb little thing they did, throwing something at a passing car, is literally one of the dumbest things they’ve ever done in their entire lives and it wouldn’t have even made the Top 20 dumb things I’d done by their age, not even close.

And if those series of facts, virtually none of which they had anything to do with but which were just the luck of the draw, were each just a tiny bit different, they could very well be lying in the morgue right now and their killer free forever—because, after all, throwing something at a car is without question far more threatening an act than walking down the street with a bag of Skittles. And I think about how insanely lucky I am and how it’s just not fair. 

 

American Skin (1 Shot)

 

12 years after originally written and performed, now with the ghost of Trayvon Martin as well as Amadou Diallo hanging over it, still just as sadly applicable as ever.

 

The Blame Game

Ramble On

Restraint. Knowing when to lay out. Knowing what not to play. As Miles Davis famously advised Charlie Parker, sometimes it’s best to just “take the horn out of your mouth.”

Which brings us to, incongruously, John Bonham.

Bonzo. Led Zeppelin’s monster drummer. The man who, more than any other, raised the bar on what it meant to be a rock and roll drummer. Of his peers and predecessors, only Keith Moon was as influential (although his stock has dropped precipitously since his death, while Bonham’s has, if anything, continued to rise) and only Ginger Baker as technically advanced.  Bonham’s technique, his style, his sheer overwhelming volume and speed and most of all power, were mindblowing at the time and, perhaps because of his remarkable influence continuing to this day, don’t sound dated.

From the first very, he amazed. Literally: the first track off their first album has Bonham doing things with the bass drummer never before heard in rock and roll. Check out the bass drum triplets he starts playing about five seconds in here—since you’re probably listening on little computer speakers it might be a bit hard to pick up, but for drummers at the time, what he was doing with the bass drum was astonishing. 

Good Times Bad Times outro

Later he, more than any other drummer, would go on to popularize that bane of 70s concert going experiences, the interminable drum solo. Sure, he was a star and a stud…but really? 30 minutes for a drum solo? That’s how long the entire Beatles concert at Shea Stadium was. Even the great Bonzo couldn’t make a solo of that length transcendent.

But when you have a drummer as powerful and inventive and plain musical as Bonham, you overlook such trivialities. (Also, you head for the beer stands.) I mean, you could go through any Led Zeppelin album and find who knows how many amazing Bonham moments. The way he takes songs like “Misty Mountain Hop” or “The Song Remains the Same” or “Trampled Under Foot” or “Kashmir” or “Achilles Last Stand” which are already moving forward like a crazed elephant and somehow manages to shove things up a few notches is just unsurpassed. But just check out these intros:

Bonham intro #1 

Bonham intro #2

Bonham intro #3

Bonham intro #4

There's little there that's terribly difficult—but that's one of the points. Simplicity is often best and usually more difficult. And play any or all of those for any serious rock fan who grew up in the 70s or 80s and probably even later and they’ll be able to tell you the name of the song those come from, sing the riff that’s just about to kick in and likely even pinpoint where each song belongs on each album. How many other good drummers have that many signature moments in their careers? ‘cuz those four examples? Are just from two albums. Crazy.

Which brings us, in my meandering way, to “Ramble On.” Off their second album, the song’s notable for several things: it’s perhaps the earliest rock and roll song with Tolkien allusions—especially ironical, given that making Lord of the Ring references is shorthand for mocking geeky prog rock groups, while Led Zeppelin is generally the coolest of the cool when it comes to rock bands, and yet they’re by far the most prominent offenders. It’s good to be the king.

Then there’s lovely bass playing by Led Zeppelin’s secret weapon, John Paul Jones, contributing the most melodic, catchiest element of the music, as well as the odd percussive sound during the verses, Bonham tapping on something which has never been conclusively identified.

And finally we have the point of all this, which is Bonham’s playing. Check it: 

Ramble On

Notice how tasteful and tasty his playing is? That five note drum riff he plays each time his drums enter? The way he plays half a measure, then pulls his snare out for the next half measure, filling the space with a quartet of syncopated bass drum kicks, and then comes back in on the snare double time for a measure. And then he does the whole pattern again. Chorus over, he again lays out for the verses. 

When it comes to the brief instrumental solo section he plays it straight, with a nice smattering of syncopated semi-ghosted notes on the snare before a tiny fill leads into him dropping out for the final verse. Another few runs through the chorus and we’re out.

See what he did there? Or rather what he didn’t do? Four and a half minutes and the world’s greatest rock and roll drummer, the spiritual (if not literal) inspiration for the muppet drummer Animal, the most notorious wildman in the most notorious rock and roll band of wildmen, doesn’t even really play a single drum fill. Instead he simply sticks (no pun intended) to his pre-composed drum part. That is, to quote Luke Skywalker, improbable. And yet there 'tis. 

It’s this side of Bonham which often gets overlooked in the justly deserved praise for his power. It’s the fact that Bonham wasn’t just an insanely powerful drummer—although he most certainly was that. But he was also a monster musician sharing an unlikely philosophy with the likes of Steve Cropper, Paul McCartney and Miles Davis: just because you can play something, it doesn’t mean you should. 

Darkness on the Edge of Town

Bruce Springsteen ruined me. For a while, at least, I had a had time listening to other artists, even ones I loved, such as David Bowie, because no one else seemed to have the passion Springsteen had. Where other musicians sang their songs, Springsteen screamed his lyrics like they were poison he had to expell. The difference, it felt to me, was that Springsteen meant every word with every fiber in his being and other musicians, well, they were performing.

That was nonsense, of course…to some extent. After all, upon hearing Darkness on the Edge of Town, Springsteen’s fourth album, Pete Townshend, no stranger to passion himself, said, “When Bruce Springsteen sings on his new album, that's not 'fun', that's fucking triumph, man.”

Mainly I think I learned to appreciate a certain emotional distance from most of my favorite artists; after all, I don’t think Nick Drake or Elliott Smith meant their songs any less than Springsteen, they simply had a different way of showing it. 

Nick Drake: "Day Is Done"

Elliott Smith: "Say Yes"

And there were other artists who showed it every bit as passionately as Springsteen…but with a few exceptions, such as Howlin’ Wolf, I tended to dislike those other artists as being embarrassingly emotive. (The exact same thing which turns so many otherwise perceptive listeners off from Springsteen himself.)

But then there’s the final song on Darkness on the Edge of Town, the title track. If Darkness isn’t Springsteen’s finest album—and it very well may be—it’s certainly neck and neck with it. The song itself has never gotten the sort of radio play that a few of the other tracks, such as the singles “Badlands” and “Prove It All Night,” have, and maybe not even as much as a few of the album’s deeper cuts, such as “The Promised Land” and “Candy’s Room.” And it’s not the best song on the album—but it’s no shame to lose to “Racing in the Street,” a serious contender for Springsteen’s greatest song ever.

But it remains not only a masterpiece on its own terms, it’s something of a calling card for Springsteen, being featured prominently on every major tour, solo or band, E Street or otherwise, since its initial release. Despite it clearly being a work of fiction—marriage was, at that point, a very, very long seven years away for Springsteen, although it’s interesting that in later years he would sometimes change the line to “I lost my faith when I lost my wife”—the final verse, at least, captures a key element of Springsteen’s success, as gauged by looking back over the past 40 years. When he screams

Tonight I'll be on that hill 'cause I can't stop

I'll be on that hill with everything I got

you believe.

Almost alone amongst artists of his stature, Springsteen's not only still releasing new material, rather than coasting on past successes, but trying new approaches and, even more nearly unique, observing and chronicling life as an older man with every bit as critical and astute an eye as he had as an angry young man. What drives a guy who’s reached the heights of fame and fortune he has to keep pushing like that? Looking at his peers, both those slightly older and those slightly or even considerably younger, it’s plain to see how easily one can succumb to the temptation to rest on one’s laurels—and no slight intended, as that’s exactly what I would do if I had even a fraction of wealth.

The answer, it seems to me, is to be found, at least in part, in this song.

Darkness on the Edge of Town

 

They're still racing out at the Trestles

But that blood it never burned in her veins

Now I hear she's got a house up in Fairview

And a style she's trying to maintain

Well if she wants to see me

You can tell her that I'm easily found

Tell her there's a spot out 'neath Abram's Bridge

And tell her there's a darkness on the edge of town

 

Everybody's got a secret Sonny

Something that they just can't face

Some folks spend their whole lives trying to keep it

They carry it with them every step that they take

Till some day they just cut it loose

Cut it loose or let it drag 'em down

Where no one asks any questions

Or looks too long in your face

In the darkness on the edge of town

 

Some folks are born into a good life

Other folks get it anyway anyhow

I lost my money and I lost my wife

Them things don't seem to matter much to me now

Tonight I'll be on that hill 'cause I can't stop

I'll be on that hill with everything I got

Lives on the line where dreams are found and lost

I'll be there on time and I'll pay the cost

For wanting things that can only be found

In the darkness on the edge of town

Shock and Aw...

So I’m working in the boys’ room, which doubles as my office. Someone knocks on the door. I can hear little voices peeping, so as I unlock and open the door I'm already looking down.

The Golden Weasel, a bizarrely confident and assured 5-year-old, walks past me without saying anything, her arms full of matchbox cars. The 3-year-old, sometimes called Ham both for his thespian qualities as well as his body shape, trots in behind.

She dumps the cars on the bed as Ham begins trying to climb over the still raised bedrail.

I say, "Are you...coming in to play?"

The Golden Weasel smiles at me beatifically. "Yes."

I laugh. "I'm so sorry, buttercup, but...no. Not right now."

She looks at me, shocked. Without a word, she grabs the cars and leaves. Ham follows her faithfully.

I sit down to type this when there's a knock at the door, a single rap, low down.

I get back up and unlock the door. Ham comes in past me, goes right to a bookshelf and grabs 2 of the 4 cars off it and walks out.

Wondering if I'm going to have to get up yet again to unlock the door, I say to him, "Are you going to need the other cars?"

He turns and looks at me, confused. "No."

Because why on earth would he? 

Not the actual event but merely a remarkable recreation.

Jungleland

Wherein Bruce Springsteen goes prog.

That’s right, I said it. Bruce Springsteen, hero of meat and potatoes rock and roll, comes up with one of his most beloved songs, featuring multiple distinct sections, abrupt tempo shifts, long instrumental passages, unexpected modulations and an overtly melodramatic storyline. In other words, prog.

Oh, sure, it wouldn’t seem to have a lot in common with ELP or King Crimson, musically. And lyrically it’s got nothing in common with Yes since the lyrics are comprehensible.

But it’s not far off from what Genesis was doing its last few years with Peter Gabriel—in fact, given the radically different backgrounds of its creators, it really is like the American cousin of Selling England by the Pound’s “Battle of Epping Forest.”

 

The Battle of Epping Forest

Both take scenarios thoroughly steeped in their own local mythologies—Robin Hood’s old stomping grounds as a setting for a gang war versus the New Jersey Turnpike and a more mundane urban street scene—and craft a relatively straightforward narrative around them, both shot through with violence and ending in death. 

There are more than a few differences, of course: for one thing, Peter Gabriel’s lyrics play up the absurdity for comedic effect, and the variety of voices he utilizes only emphasizes that. Springsteen, in contrast, is aiming for high tragedy, complete with heart-breaking catharsis.

But even the names—the Magic Rat and the Maximum Lawman, Liquid Len and Bob the Nob—are of a piece. Both feature slower, softer instrumental intros which burst into uptempo rock and roll. (Well…something kind of approaching some sort of rock and rollian, rock and rollesque approximation, in the case of Genesis.) Both feature prominent keyboard parts as the dominant instrument overall, but “Jungleland” makes outstanding use of Clarence Clemons’ saxophone for its long, arduously composed and recorded solo, the most memorable part of the song—no small feat, given the gorgeous piano and violin intro, or the fine guitar solo.

And coincidence that the only time Springsteen released a song like this was in 1975, during the height of prog, when it was pretty much the most popular genre going at the time? And he wouldn’t do anything even remotely approaching it for 35 more years? I say thee nay.

Which isn’t to say it’s not great, of course. ‘cuz it is, and I say that as someone who admits he’s got a fondness for prog. “Jungleland” is epic and sprawling and gorgeous and ambitious and moving and sums up the entire Born to Run album perfectly. It’s the last gasp of a tenacious young kid willing, happy, desperate to try anything, to toss the kitchen sink and anything else he can find into the pot, hoping to discover the ideal medium for his message. He’d find it when recording his next album, and things would pretty much forever be far more stripped down and direct. So enjoy this last gasp of Bruce Springsteen figuring out who he is.  Once he figures that out for sure, things might get even better, maybe, but there’s nothing quite like the rush of a young artist exploding into full promise. 

 

Jungleland

 

New York City Serenade

“New York City Serenade” is perhaps the oddest album closer in the first half of Bruce Springsteen’s catalog. The longest (although just barely), it eschews what had already by this point, still early in his career, become a fairly standard and straightforward storytelling approach—one which he would streamline much, much further in the years to come—instead opting for a series of vignettes, almost character pieces.

The track opens with over a minute and a half of David Sancious improvising on the piano and, not surprising, given his brilliance as a player, brilliantly.

New York City Serenade

Springsteen’s acoustic guitar suddenly jumps in, his jazzy interjections combining a little flamenco with some blues.

And then we’re into the first verse, wherein we find Billy and Jackie down by the tracks. In what’s now thought of a Springsteen cliché, they’re in a car, but there are two things notable about this: on his first two albums, cars—in stark contrast to subsequent releases—are barely even featured, possibly because Springsteen himself had apparently not yet owned a car. The other interesting feature: the car isn’t moving, but is parked, static, a place rather than a vehicle. But the placement, by the train tracks, is also interesting, trains connoting movement, escape and even the rhythm which laid much of the foundation for rock and roll--perhaps ironic, then, that this track is in many ways musically one of the least rock and roll he would record. (Rock and roll being such a large tent, of course, it’s impossible to deny that it IS rock and roll—and if it’s not rock and roll, it’s hard to put a label on just what it is.)

The rest of the first verse is a series of descriptions and phrases which, really, don’t add up to much:

Billy he’s down by the railroad tracks

Sittin’ low in the back seat of his Cadillac

Diamond Jackie, she’s so intact

As she falls so softly beneath him

Jackie’s heels are stacked

Billy’s got cleats on his boots

Together they’re gonna boogaloo down Broadway and come back home with the loot

It’s midnight in Manhattan, this is no time to get cute

save the final couplet:

It’s a mad dog’s promenade

So walk tall or baby don’t walk at all

“Mad Dog” being the name of Vini Lopez, the original E Street Band drummer, it seems likely this is something of an in-joke. But it’s more than that. It feels like a fine description of the music industry Springsteen was still trying to find his footing in. For his first album he’d been shoehorned by the record company and his producers into going the then lucrative singer-songwriter route, which decidedly mixed results. On this, his second album, he’d stretched out musically, heading in a much more soulful, even jazzy direction. Most of all, his music became far more assertive—walking tall, one might say.

The next verse shifts focus to a prostitute who’s too discerning to take on just any customer:

Fish lady, oh fish lady

She baits them tenement walls

She won’t take corner boys

They ain’t got no money

And they’re so easy

but who might, he hopes, be persuaded to give the singer a chance:

I said “Hey, baby

Won’t you take my hand

Walk with me down Broadway

Well mama take my arm and move with me down Broadway”

It’s interesting that on the record he changes the lyrics up slightly, singing “Hey, baby, I’m easy, won’t you take my hand,” a chance which seems to undercut his chances and, really, makes little to no sense.

Then he’s back to his sales pitch:

I’m a young man, I talk it real loud

Yeah babe I walk it real proud for you

Ah so shake it away

So shake away your street life

Shake away your city life

Hook up to the train

And hook up to the night train

While this song doesn’t have a chorus—and never even uses the actual title—we move into the song’s bridge:

But I know that she won’t take the train, no she won’t take the train

Oh she won’t take the train, no she won’t take the train

She’s afraid them tracks are gonna slow her down

And when she turns this boy’ll be gone

So long, sometimes you just gotta walk on, walk on

How’d this happen? How did we go from him trying to get her to give him the time of day to him suddenly blowing her off? An argument could perhaps be made that she was originally standoffish out of a fear of rejection, but the text doesn’t really support that assertion.

And then we’re into the third and final verse:

Hey vibes man, hey jazz man, play me your serenade

Any deeper blue and you’re playin’ in your grave

Save your notes, don’t spend ‘em on the blues boy

Save your notes, don’t spend ‘em on the darlin’ yearlin’ sharp boy

Straight for the church note ringin’, vibes man sting a trash can

Listen to your junk man

Listen to your junk man

Again, these lines sound good one by one, but they don’t really add up. The two things which jump out the most are the ideas of advising a jazz man to hold onto his notes, not to waste them on the blues but, rather, to save them for the church, implying gospel is inherently superior to the blues—an idea which was far from unique to Springsteen.

The other thing is the admonition to pay heed to the junk man. Here the junk man seems to assume the role of the fool, the wise man openly in disguise, the idiot who’s the only one brave and insightful and treasured enough to speak the truth. In other words, after going through jazz, blues and gospel, we come to...rock and roll. Because what’s the junk man doing? The only thing a poor boy can do.

He’s singin’, he’s singin’, he’s singin’

All dressed up in satin, walkin’ past the alley

He’s singin’, singin’, singin’, singin’

It’s a nice detail, the junk man being dressed in satin.

And that's it. When we get to the end we find what we've got is, really, a jumble of lyrics with some nice bits which just don’t add up to much. There’s no through-line, there’s no clear progression and lyrically, the three separate vignettes don’t build to a dramatic conclusion. Looked at on paper, it’s hard to argue this might not be the weakest song on his first two albums.

But the music.

Rock and roll is not poetry. John Lennon asserted that rock and roll never got better than “a wop bop a loo bop a wop bam boom.” Because the fact of the matter is that some things in life, the most important things, can’t usually be put into words clearly, that there are some things felt crystal clearly but which just cannot be translated properly. And “da doo doo doo, da da da da” or “da do ron ron ron, da do ron ron” or “sha la la la la” or, yes, “a wop bop a loo bop a wop bam boom” is the closest we can get to the heart of the matter.

So the words here are fine but aren’t up to his standards. So what? Doesn’t matter. Because the music is as glorious and gorgeous as any he would ever go on to make, and the performance somehow presides over the marriage of these sub par lyrics and the magnificent music combine to create an absolutely transcendent recording, as lovely and powerful as any rock and roll ever committed to tape. And when Springsteen wails the final lines, as his cries of singing give way to wordless howls and the Big Man’s sax twists in and out of David Sancious’s piano, while Sancious’ string arrangement floats over the top, lifting and sweetening without overpowering or being cloying, and when the entire thing finally, inevitably, exhaustedly draws to a slow, serene, blissful close, it’s like dawn breaking after a tumultuous but magical night and it could not possibly be more right and more extraordinary and more simply and utterly perfect.

Listen to your junk man. He’s singin’. 

 

Follow That Dream

So here's a piece I wrote for a graduate class I took a few years back. I've been meaning to post it for, well, a few years—in fact, I'd actually forgotten that I hadn't. So here it is, occasionally funky formatting and all.     

 

• Follow That Dream •

Tracing the story arcs of characters in the songs of Bruce Springsteen

 

            Bruce Springsteen has a history of revisiting certain subjects over the years, most notably cars, driving, and the open road. This has led to more than a little criticism—

 

 “Springsteen has glued together a badly imagined shantytown of ‘blue collar’ images and buzz-words—‘mill,’ ‘car,’ ‘street,’ ‘girl’—meant to touch a suburban generation that only knows the ‘working class’ through sitcoms and ‘nostalgia’ films and old black-and-whites in granddad’s wallet.” (John Lombardi, Esquire Magazine, December 1988)

 

—and even parody, as in the Bob Dylan song, “Tweeter and the Monkey Man” on the first Traveling Wilburys album. What such critics miss is the way in which those subjects change with each album, from a symbol of romance, freedom, and power on Born to Run, to desperation, longing, and escape on Darkness on the Edge of Town, to isolation and emptiness on Tunnel of Love, and even to death and pointless murder on Nebraska.

              So too has Springsteen revisited certain characters over the years. In some cases it’s been not a literal sequel as much as a reusing of archetypes, although as Springsteen himself pointed out, many of the characters on subsequent albums may indeed be the same as on earlier, even if they’re not named:

 

 “I’ve tried to keep my eye on the ball, to keep a clear view of those things. And I try to be consistent with the characters. The guy on ‘Beautiful Reward’ is the guy on ‘Born to Run.’ Hey, that’s where life has taken these people. I always try to make sure the stuff I’m writing is inclusive in that sense. That it’s broad enough. It’s partly about me but for it to work right it’s got to also be partly about you. If it’s just one or the other something’s missing.” (“Ambition, Lies, & the Beautiful Reward: 
Bruce Springsteen's Family Values,” Interview by Bill Flanagan, Musician, November 1992)

 

             But while he has often followed characters from album to album throughout his career, actual direct sequels are rarities in Springsteen. In fact, there are only a few times in which Springsteen seemed to do a literal update. In this instances, his song choice is most notable indeed: “Thunder Road” and “Rosalita,” two of the most beloved songs—in fact, possibly the two most beloved songs to his most devoted of hardcore fans—in his entire canon. It is, of course, impossible to know for sure why Springsteen chooses to revisit certain characters. But what does become clear, upon examination, is the result: it adds depth and extra meaning to the songs themselves, both the originals and the sequels. The new songs start off in a world which has already been established, enabling the listener to fill in many of the blanks easily, and characterization can thus be focused on, as the need for exposition is greatly reduced. Given the right circumstances—the correct songs and the proper framing—the results can be stunningly powerful.

 

*****

 

             “Thunder Road” is, without question, one of Bruce Springsteen’s greatest and most important songs—as well as one of his most popular. According to Wikipedia:

 

 In 2004, it was ranked #1 on the list of the “885 All-Time Greatest Songs” compiled by WXPN (the University of Pennsylvania’s public radio station). Rolling Stone magazine placed it as #86 on its “500 Greatest Songs of All Time.” The song came in at #226 in Q magazine’s list of the “1001 Greatest Songs Ever” in 2003, in which they described the song as “best for pleading on the porch.”

 

Among other things, “Thunder Road” is one of Springsteen’s very first songs to make explicit themes—the power of the automobile and the freedom of the open roads—which would come to dominate his music for the next decade and beyond.

 

Thunder Road

Although never even released as a single, it would become a staple of AOR radio in the 1970s and 1980s, and Springsteen would go on to release multiple versions of it, from the piano-based live version on Live 1975-1985, to the 1979 No Nukes version on his video anthology, to his acoustic guitar rendition on MTV Unplugged in 1993. Springsteen himself acknowledges the song’s power, while seeming a bit mystified by it:

 

 

 “I’m not sure what that song has. We played it the other night at the Sony studio, when we were taping a European show, and it just felt all-inclusive. It may be something about trying to seize a particular moment in your life and realizing you have to make very fundamental and basic decisions that you know will alter your life and how you live it. It’s a funny song because it simultaneously contains both dreaming and disillusionment.” (“Human Touch: Bruce Springsteen reflects on his music, life with and without the E-Street Band, and the glory of rock & roll,” Neil Strauss, Guitar World, October 1995)

 

             In August 1976 Springsteen began playing a new song in concert, “The Promise.”

 

The Promise

Speculation immediately began as to the song’s “meaning,” speculation which was later to prove decisive in determining the song’s fate. The main interpretation was that it was about the contentious lawsuit between Springsteen and his manager, Mike Appel.  In an interview with Paul Nelson, Springsteen denied that it was about the Appel situation, per se. “I wrote it before the lawsuit,” Springsteen claimed. “I don’t write about lawsuits.” (Bruce Springsteen: The Rolling Stone Files, 70) He did, however, much later admit on the Charlie Rose show that “The Promise” was indeed a continuation of the “Thunder Road” narrative, when responding to a question as to why it wasn’t on the Tracks album:

 

 

 “Basically, I went back and I listened to it and we never really got a good recording of it in my opinion. It’s been a favorite song of a lot of..a lot of people mention it. It sort of was the sequel to “Thunder Road” in some fashion, it referred back to those characters. But I went back and we sort of had a very plodding, heavy-handed version of it. I couldn’t quite live with it, so maybe another time.”

 

             One of the keys to Darkness on the Edge of Town is the hope to be found in each and every one of its songs. While its pervasive sense of pessimism is the album’s most prominent feature—indeed, following the youthful romanticism of Born to Run, it feels like its defining feature—that nugget of hope contained in each song is the key to the album. In many of its most popular songs—most obviously “Badlands” and “The Promised Land”—the optimism is unmistakable, but even the album’s most somber songs, the ones which upon first examination seem devoid of any spark of hope, reveal themselves to have at the very least a glimmer. “Factory,” for example, may very well be the starkest, most desolate song on the album, yet even it contains the line

 

             Factory gives him life

 

Coming as it does hard on the heels of the previous line

 

             Factory takes his hearing

 

it is, at the very least, a mixed blessing, to be sure. Nevertheless, as compromised and difficult a life as it may be, the fact remains that the factory does give him something—and not just anything, but specifically life. What’s more, the song ends with the promise

 

             And you just better believe, boy, somebody’s gonna get hurt tonight

 

Even after all the workers have been through, years and even decades of back-breaking, grueling, (almost) thankless and unrewarding work which has taken its toll, the men are still fighting, not just metaphorically, but literally, an act which in and of itself proves that they’ve not acquiesced, surrendered or given up. It’s not ideal…but nor is it nothing. It’s not ideal, but it is still something.

             That stands in stark contrast to “The Promise,” perhaps the bleakest song Springsteen had written up to that point, and thirty years later, still one of his grimmest songs. The narrator runs down a list of his friends and acquaintances:

 

             Johnny works in a factory and Billy works downtown

             Terry works in a rock and roll band

             Lookin’ for that million-dollar sound

 

It’s interesting to note the way “The Promise” begins here, with a recitation of the narrator’s friends, as opposed to the only characters in “Thunder Road”: just the singer and Mary. No one else is named in the earlier song, and there’s barely even a mention of another human, in fact, save Roy Orbison’s disembodied voice singing about loneliness. The only other people who get brought up are Mary’s lovers, for whom she idly and vainly makes crosses, until the end of the song:

 

             There were ghosts in the eyes

            Of all the boys you sent away

            They haunt this dusty beach road

            In the skeleton frames of burned out Chevrolets

 

            They scream your name at night in the street

            Your graduation gown lies in rags at their feet

            And in the lonely cool before dawn

            You hear their engines roaring on

            But when you get to the porch they’re gone

            On the wind

 

So are they even real? Are they ghosts? Are they merely metaphorical? Whatever they are, they’re not physical, tangible presences like Mary and the singer, no more able to touch or be touched than Roy Orbison’s voice floating in the background.

             There may be one additional character in the initial song, but it’s not human: it’s Thunder Road itself, the only other proper name in the song, and which exhibits some decidedly human traits:

 

             Lying out there like a killer in the sun

             Hey I know it’s late we can make it if we run

             Oh Thunder Road, sit tight take hold

             Thunder Road

 

Is the singer directing Thunder Road to take hold? Is he telling Mary to grab onto Thunder Road? Is he telling her to grab onto him in order to keep that killer in the sun from snatching her? Whatever the answer, the result is that Thunder Road itself becomes an actor in this drama, and one which shows up in the sequel.

             Acting, in the sense of taking action, is notably missing from “The Promise.” The narrator’s friends may have jobs to which they go, but he himself isn’t exactly ambitious

 

             I got a little job down in Darlington

             But some nights I don’t go

             Some nights I go to the drive-in, or some nights I stay home

 

This isn’t the romantic rebellion of a guy stuck in a job he hates, who’s willing to throw it all away for a shot at something bigger and better, and it’s not a former grad student filled with what he imagines is intellectually-viable existential ennui: this is a man who’s learned the ugly truth of what the world is really like. As Springsteen himself said in Philadelphia on December 9, 1980, “It's a hard world that makes you live with a lot of things that are unlivable.”

             So sometimes the singer goes to his job and, well, sometimes he doesn’t. And when he doesn’t, it’s not to run off to the beach—or even some sleazy hot sheets motel—with a girl, it’s to go to the drive-in, apparently alone: certainly there’s no mention of Mary or any other female. Unless he doesn’t go to the movies either, on those nights when he can’t even be bothered to do that. And yet the listener doesn’t get the impression that the narrator’s what would later be termed a “slacker,” a guy who’s voluntarily, even happily, dropped out of society, seeing it for the receptacle of inherently shallow set of values it is. The narrator of “The Promise” is man who has learned, to his crushing disappointment, that despite what he was always told growing up, this is the reality of the adult world. This, we discover, is a man who tried the best he could to play the game the way he was taught in school, and learned the hard way that the game is a fake, that it’s rigged, that the American dream is a con, a shell game, and that guys like him, from his socioeconomic class, are always the marks.

 

             I followed that dream just like those guys do up on the screen

             And I drove a Challenger down Route 9 through the dead ends and all the bad scenes

             And when the promise was broken, I cashed in a few of my dreams

 

             Like the singer of “Racing in the Street,” and so many other Springsteen songs, the narrator of “The Promise” views cars as, among other things, a means to freedom. And as a symbol of rugged American self-reliance, both singers actually built (or, more accurately, rebuilt) their own cars themselves. From “Racing in the Street”:

 

             I got a sixty-nine Chevy with a 396

             Fuelie heads and a Hurst on the floor

             She's waiting tonight down in the parking lot

             Outside the Seven-Eleven store

             Me and my partner Sonny built her straight out of scratch

 

So too the singer of “The Promise”:

 

             Well now I built that Challenger by myself

 

But unlike the singer from “Racing in the Street,” whose car continues to be a means of support, both financially and spiritually:

 

             And he rides with me from town to town

             We only run for the money got no strings attached

             We shut 'em up and then we shut 'em down

 

the singer of “The Promise” has lost his car:

 

             But I needed money and so I sold it

 

But the loss of his car is more than merely an inconvenience. It symbolizes his loss of faith and hope later in the song.

 

             All my life I fought this fight

             The fight that no man can never win

             Every day it just gets harder to live

             This dream I’m believing in

             Thunder Road, oh baby you were so right

             Thunder Road there’s something dyin’ on the highway tonight

 

How far the speaker has come since the Born to Run album. Then the highway was an escape. From “Born to Run”:

 

             Sprung from cages out on highway 9

 

and “Thunder Road” itself:

 

             Well the night's busting open

             These two lanes will take us anywhere.

 

The road signifies freedom and unlimited possibilities, and any fear Mary feels isn’t so much fear of the open road or its chances, but her own reticence, her hesitation to leave the safety of home—and perhaps her doubts about the long-term prospective of the singer. It may not have been an easy path to freedom:

 

             The highway's jammed with broken heroes on a last chance power drive

 

but the fact that it’s jammed means it’s clear that everyone knows what the highway is: it’s the way out. Furthermore, note who it is on the highway—broken heroes—and they’re not merely fleeing but on “a last chance power drive.” Even the language implies strength and a vital desperation, compared to “The Promise,” where death, whether physical or spiritual, awaits. It’s not even clear just what’s dying—it’s ambiguous, as though it’s too dark and murky to be able to tell for sure. But that something is dying there, there’s no doubt. 

             The narrator of “Thunder Road” had seemingly limitless beliefs in himself and life’s possibilities:

 

             Show a little faith, there’s magic in the night

 

but by “The Promise” any such illusions have been stripped away and he’s learned that even if you seem to have won, it’s not enough:

 

             I won big once and I hit the coast

             But somehow I paid the big cost

             Inside I felt like I was carryin’ the broken spirits

             Of all the other ones who lost

 

             When the promise is broken you go on living

             But it steals something from down in your soul

             Like when the truth is spoken and it don’t make no difference

             Something in your heart goes cold

 

As with many of the other songs on the Darkness on the Edge of Town album, “The Promise” takes the singer far from the east coast of the first three albums. But whereas the Utah desert of “The Promised Land” had its share—maybe more than its share—of trials and tribulations, the region of “The Promise” has nothing to offer but rundown dives without even the devastating power of a tornado:

 

             I followed that dream through the southwestern flats

             That dead ends in two-bit bars

             And when the promise was broken I was far away from home

             Sleepin’ in the back seat of a borrowed car

 

Even here, so far from home, so broken-hearted, it comes back to cars. But how things have changed, how far he’s fallen: he’s in a car, but he’s not racing it, nor is he cruising—he’s sleeping, apparently homeless. But not just homeless: despite being reduced to living in a car, it’s not even his car—he actually has to borrow a car to sleep in.

 

             Thunder Road, for the lost lovers and all the fixed games

             Thunder Road, for the tires rushing by in the rain

             Thunder Road, Billy and me we’d always say

             Thunder Road, we were gonna take it all and throw it all away

 

The listener never actually finds out what promise was broken, not literally, but it doesn’t really matter. The very ambiguity attached to that mystery enables the listener to identify all the closer with the concept, for who hasn’t had a promise broken and felt the accompany devastation of betrayal? The singer doesn’t overly romanticize the reality of the harm done: he admits it’s not life-threatening, that the damage isn’t physical. But he insists that it robs a piece of your soul, with the strong implication that if it’s not a fate worse than death, it’s not far from it, at best. And yet the singer is “merely” wounded, and not even dead. He lacks the strength to even throw it all away—perhaps because he feels it was already taken from him or perhaps because he’s just a shell of the man he used to be. Either way, he’s a man who’s been pushed beyond his limits. And, unlike other Springsteen characters who find that out beyond their furthest limits they have still more as-yet-untapped resources of which they’d never even dreamt (such as the singers of “Darkness on the Edge of Town” and “The Promised Land”), the narrator of “The Promise” has no such resolve. He has been beaten and can do nothing more than lie in the dark, listening to the melancholy, woeful sound of cars driving past him in the rain—driving past him, away from him, leaving him behind, again and again and again, and the existence of the rain implying he’s no longer in the southwest but is instead right back where he started from, in the northeast again, but with a decidedly untriumphant homecoming—as he, carless and bereft, is impotent, powerless, unable or unwilling to act.

             Which may just give a clue as to what the broken promise was: perhaps it was the promise the narrator of “Thunder Road” felt was made by those two lanes, and which he, in turn, then tried to sell to Mary. “We’re pulling out of here to win” is not just an exultation, it’s a promise, a guarantee that good times and good fortune lie ahead. And indeed, the narrator of “The Promise” seems to have won, at least once, and that apparently a big win. But what the narrator seems to find out is either that one big win doesn’t make one a winner or perhaps that it doesn’t guarantee future wins. In any case, it makes that closing promise of the earlier song a lie. That is the promise which has been broken and which has, in turn, so utterly broken his spirit.

             It’s fascinating to note that while Springsteen himself admits “The Promise” is a sequel of sorts to “Thunder Road,” that there’s no mention of Mary. Whether she decided to stay on the porch and forced the narrator to travel on alone, or whether she’s the cause of the narrator’s crushed spirit is unclear: there’s no textual evidence to support either view. But her very absence looms large either way, especially as through the rest of his career Springsteen would continue to use the name Mary again and again, in more than a dozen songs, and even more than that if one were to count the number of times “Maria” pops up in his work. It is as though the Mary of “Thunder Road” became a prototype for The Springsteen Female, almost an archetype to which he returns times and again. Yet in “The Promise” itself she’s notable mainly by her glaring omission, especially when limned against the dramatic appearance of Thunder Road itself in the chorus. 

             “The Promise” is one of the finest songs Springsteen wrote in the 1970s, with a beautiful melody and unexpected yet still logical chord changes, and a complex lyric. But it’s also an utterly pessimistic song, lacking any of the optimism to be found in even the grimmest of songs on his first four album. While there’s no doubt that the way song was already being viewed vis-à-vis the Appel lawsuit was a major, perhaps even the major, reason for the song’s exclusion from Darkness on the Edge of Town, it is this unrelentingly harsh viewpoint which makes the song more fitting for later Springsteen works such as Nebraska and merits exclusion from the album, regardless of its high quality. Additionally, it is hard to discount the idea that Springsteen himself back away from casting such a negative light on “Thunder Road,” a song which had already begun to take on a mythical, almost mystical quality, as he himself would admit. It’s one thing to write and sing such a bleak sequel in concert; it is something else entirely to go on and release it on an album.

 

*****

 

             In virtually any list of The Most Important Bruce Springsteen songs, “Rosalita” holds a unique position. The song is large and rather unwieldy for an artist known largely for his straightforward rock and roll, and it is wild and passionate but lacking the depth for which Springsteen, a writer renowned for his complex lyrics, is known. And it’s the only song from his first two albums to have played a significant role on some tours—such as both his Born in the U.S.A tour as well as The Tunnel of Love Express—which virtually ignored his earliest records. As Jimmy Guterman writes, “The lyric is simple—I’m going to be a rock and roll star, I’m going to transcend my Jerseyness and you should be my girl.” Springsteen himself spoke of “Rosalita” this way in his book “Songs”:

 “‘Rosalita’ was my musical autobiography. It was my “getting out of town” preview for Born to Run, with more humor. I wrote it as a kiss-off to everybody who counted you out, put you down, or decided you weren’t good enough. The lyrics also took a peek into the future—‘Someday we’ll look back on this and it will all seem funny.’ Not that it would all BE funny, but that it would all SEEM funny. Probably one of the most useful lines I’ve ever written.”

             Anyone who grew up in the New York/New Jersey/New England area in the 1970s or 1980s will have had little choice but to be familiar with “Rosalita (Come Out Tonight),” as it was a staple on rock radio, as well as in other Springsteen mainstays such as Philadelphia and Cleveland. Seven and a half minutes of barely controlled chaos, it’s one of the most irrepressible Juliet and Romeo love songs in the rock canon—although, unlike Shakespeare’s play, the ending is left unresolved: the lovers are alive but remain separated, the singer camped out below Rosie’s bedroom window, still calling for her to come out tonight. 

Rosalita (Come Out Tonight)

 

             Springsteen ended every single concert with this barnburner from the time he wrote it back in 1973—as Guterman wrote, “You’d end your shows with it too if you had thought of it”—until about halfway through the Born in the USA tour, when it became more sporadic. The song returned for the first half of the Tunnel of Love Express tour, with a horn section and a slightly altered melody. Since then it’s been an occasional presence, but one that Springsteen clearly came to consider something of an albatross, especially as in concert it would often balloon to as much as fifteen minutes.

             One result was that Rosalita—both the song and the girl—are beloved but seemed encased in amber, unchanging and eternally perfect, the happy ending presumed but always just out of reach. And the song is really more about the narrator’s quest to win the girl than the girl herself—no matter how many times one may have heard the song, the listener still knows virtually nothing about Rosie, except that the singer will do anything to be with her, despite the strenuous objections of her parents. 

             Of all his songs to revisit, the sprawling behemoth that is “Rosalita” would hardly seem likely. It’s a young man’s song in more ways that one. Not only is the narrator clearly a young man, with the passion and apparent depth of a young man, but the structure itself screams that it was someone barely out of his teens. It’s got multiple verses, multiple bridges, sections that don’t fit any particular mold, every rock chord the key could accommodate, an acappella singalong section and an energy level that’s off the charts, propelled by great guitar, raucous sax and drumming that leads the listener to wonder if the drummer, Vini “Mad Dog” Lopez, snorted rocket fuel immediately before the take. All of which makes it perhaps the most unlikely of his early songs for the older, more mature Springsteen to go back to. And yet on “Long Time Comin’,” Springsteen, as unpredictable an artist as American rock and roll has produced, did exactly that.

             “Rosalita” opens with a statement of purpose:

 

             Spread out now, Rosie, doctor come cut loose her mama’s reins

             You know playin’ blindman’s bluff is a little baby’s game

 

Immediately the listener knows exactly what this song’s about: the singer is being denied access to his girlfriend by her overbearing parents, and he finds this situation intolerable. The next two lines lay out the rest of his basic philosophy:

 

             You pick up Little Dynamite, I’m gonna pick up Little Gun

             And together we’re gonna go out tonight and make that highway run

 

And with those opening lines, the entire song is laid out in microcosm: parents are oppressive and overbearing, friends are what you need to have a good time, and the open road promises freedom.

             The rest of the song only expands upon these assertions, as the narrator runs down where each friend is and what he or she is doing:

 

             Dynamite’s in the belfry playin’ with the bats

             Little Gun’s downtown in front of Woolworth’s tryin’ out his attitude on all the cats

 

             Jack the Rabbit and Weak Knees Willie, you know they’re gonna be there

              Ah, sloppy Sue and Big Bones Billie, they’ll be comin’ up for air

             We’re gonna play some pool, skip some school, act real cool

             Stay out all night, it’s gonna feel all right

 

Compare the vibrancy of these friends, exemplified by their names, and their actions with the way the parents are presented:

 

             Papa’s on the corner waitin’ for the bus

             Mama she’s home in the window waitin’ up for us

             She’ll be there in that chair when they wrestle her upstairs

             ‘Cause you know we ain’t gonna come

 

Although it’s not spelled out, the implication is that Rosie’s father is waiting for the bus to take him to work on the night shift, while her mother is merely sitting. Not playing with bats in a belfry, not trying to impress the guys down on the corner with a surfeit of attitude and most certainly not shooting pool. Just…sitting. And trying to keep her daughter from the fun that awaits. Or so the singer seems to believe.

             In stark contrast to the opening of “Rosalita,” “Long Time Comin’” couldn’t possibly open much differently.

 

Long Time Comin'

Instead of a raucous electric guitar call to arms, we get a gently strummed acoustic guitar at a much more moderate tempo. And whereas the earlier song announced from the fourth word that it was directed to Rosie, the sequel doesn’t mention her by name until well into the third and final verse, although the flowers the singer’s carrying can safely be presumed to be a present for her.

 

             What’s more, the setting of “Rosalita” is urban. This is clear from context: the rest of The Wild, the Innocent and the E Street Shuffle, from the opening track, “The E Street Shuffle,” through to the gorgeous finale, “New York City Serenade,” is set in the New York/New Jersey area, ranging from the boardwalk of “4^th of July, Asbury Park,” to the Bleeker Street of “Kitty’s Back,” only veering away briefly for “Wild Billy’s Circus Story.” But it’s also clear just from “Rosalita” itself, as Springsteen sings of waiting at the bus stop on the corner, hanging out in front of Woolworth’s, and skipping school in favor of the pool hall. 

             “Long Time Comin’,” on the other hand, begins far from the city:

 

             Out where the creek turns shallow and sandy

            And the moon comes skimmin’ away the stars

            The wind in the mesquite comes rushin’ over the hilltops

            Straight into my arms

             Straight into my arms

 

This pastoral opening couldn’t be more different from the earlier work, and whereas “Rosalita” laid out its intent right in the first line, this opening shows little hint of the conflict to come. The rest of the verse subtly introduces the song’s main theme:

 

             I’m riding hard carryin’ a catch of roses

             And a fresh map that I made

             Tonight I’m gonna get birth naked and bury my old soul

             And dance on its grave

             And dance on its grave

 

Although it won’t be made obvious until the next two verses, Springsteen quietly sets up the theme with his birth and death imagery, subjects with which the rest of the song will be concerned.

             But it’s worth noting the preponderance of nature in this first verse. It’s not just that the song is set outside the city, nor is the country a passing mention; Springsteen spends considerable time singing about the creek, the moon, the stars, the wind and the hills. And not merely to set the mood—while the middle verse seems to be set back in the city, he returns to nature for the final verse. “Rosalita,” on the other hand, barely makes any reference to nature at all and when it is noted, briefly in the final verse, it’s in a derogatory fashion, a passing mention at the unfortunate circumstance of a car (that symbol of freedom) being “stuck in the mud somewhere in the swamps of Jersey.” In “Rosalita” nature is a place of (mild) danger, of mud and swamps, where your beloved automobile (even if it is a dud) gets trapped, much as Rosie is trapped by her parents. Yet in the sequel, the wind rushes straight into the singer’s arms like a lover, an echo of the way “Rosalita” ended:

 

             Hold on tight, stay up all night ‘cause Rosie I’m comin’ on strong

             By the time we meet the morning light I will hold you in my arms

 

But unlike the world of “Rosalita,” in this world nature is not an irritant or obstacle, and isn’t even just an idyllic backdrop: it’s lovely, friendly and welcoming—a mirror to the different manner in which family will come to be viewed.

             Unlike “Rosalita,” “Long Time Comin’” has not a single mention of cars or trucks or motorcycles. The narrator does mention riding hard and while it’s never specified, given the rest of the opening verse, one gets the impression that he just might be riding a horse—and what could be much further from the stereotypical Springsteen mode of transportation?

              Whereas “Rosalita” announced its presence and point with authority right from the very beginning, “Long Time Comin’” backs into its major argument, lightly touching upon its theme of family in the first verse and only addressing it head-on in the second.

 

             Well my daddy he was just a stranger

             Lived in a hotel downtown

             When I was a kid he was just somebody

             Somebody I’d see around

             Somebody I’d see around

 

This father bears little resemblance to Rosie’s parents: her overprotective mother standing guard at the window, ready to repel intruders, and her hard-working father, off to man the night shift and disapproving of her boyfriend, whom he can’t understand. The narrator’s father is here just a cipher, not a tangibly oppressive presence, just a malign shadow, just some other ghost out on the street to whom he doesn’t even stop and politely speak when they pass on by. And whatever the faults Rosie’s parents may have—traits which, one suspects, the singer would perhaps view differently nowadays—they had a home and a job, while the narrator’s father appears likely to have at most one and possibly neither, hence the hotel residence.

             But here’s where “Long Time Comin’,” already a lovely song, begins to pick up emotional power, as we contrast the singer’s relationship with his father to his own identity as a father:

 

             Now down below and pullin’ on my shirt

             I got some kids of my own

Well if I had one wish in this god forsaken world, kids

             It’d be that your mistakes would be your own

             Yeah your sins would be your own

 

Again the contrast with the earlier song could not be more stark. Whereas in “Rosalita,” the singer crowed of possessing God’s favor:

 

             My tires were slashed and I almost crashed but the Lord had mercy

 

Here he proclaims this world a god-forsaken one and wishes—not even prays—that the sins of the father would not be visited upon the sons, leading the listener to intuit that perhaps the singer’s father was not such an insignificant presence after all: perhaps they had next-to-no contact on a daily basis, but the father’s actions, certainly past and possibly present, indeed maybe his very existence, has left lasting scars, and the singer devoutly hopes his offspring won’t know the same pain.

             What had seemed a lovely, almost bucolic song in the first verse—albeit with some slightly ominous overtones, with its references to a metaphorical funeral—has turned quite a bit darker here, as family is brought up and presented as a burden. Even as the world is god-forsaken, the singer laments the notion of his sins having a deleterious effect on his children, compared to “Rosalita” where God’s mercy is clear and the concept of  “sin” absent—indeed, given the ebullient tone of the song, virtually laughable.

             But the third verse marries the tone and ideas of the first two verses together, as again the listener is brought back to the country:

 

            Out ‘neath the arms of Cassiopeia

             Where the sword of Orion sweeps

             It’s me and you, Rosie, cracklin’ like crossed wires

             And you breathin’ in your sleep

             You breathin’ in your sleep

 

And here, at long last, we get to see Rosie again, after so very long, and we discover that what had been unresolved—would the lovers get together?—has been most definitely resolved, and for quite some time: certainly long enough for the two of them to have children. Most encouraging of all, the Rosalita who lit the seemingly unquenchable thirst in the singer of the earlier song may be older, may be a mother, but she’s still got the spark that nearly drove the younger version of the singer out of his mind with desire, as things between the two of them are still electric. And this despite the fact that she’s actually asleep, a huge change from our last glimpse of her, standing at the window, high up above, ungettable, almost unapproachable, certainly unattainable—but most definitely wide awake. Here she’s asleep, and the change in action brings with it possible connotations of old age, being worn down, beaten, exhausted. But not this time, as Rosie and the singer still have that sexual tension between the two of them as strong as ever, despite the fact that we have certifiable evidence that they have, in fact, consummated their relationship (leading one to conclude that her tongue was not, in fact, the only lover he would ever need). Yet here they are, still as randy as ever after all these years, which leads to her slumber being viewed with nothing but positive connotations: security and contentedness and if exhaustion is in there as well, it’s the exhaustion every mother knows, a very real weariness, but a pleasant one, most unlike that of the men walking through the factory gates in the rain.

             Nature and Rosie even begin to reflect each other, as the spark that is Rosie and the fire burning nearby mirror the other:

 

             Well there’s just a spark of campfire burning

 

And the kids that had been pulling on his shirt earlier have also dropped off to sleep:

 

             Two kids in a sleeping bag beside

 

And then comes one of the most beautiful and intimate lines Springsteen has ever written:

 

             I reach ‘neath your shirt, lay my hands across your belly

             And feel another one kickin’ inside

 

In another context—“The River,” for instance—it would be easy to see this move as a precursor to the singer feeling trapped, or cutting and running, as the singer of “Hungry Heart” did. But here we see a man determined not to be anything like his father was and who, whether he realizes it or not, is already far different, as his attitude towards his children is never less than protective (but not, one suspects he would argue, overprotective, as Rosie’s parents had been) and always loving, even tender. And yet he’s still determined to improve:

 

            I ain’t gonna fuck it up this time

 

After each verse the singer repeats the same basic line twice:

 

             It’s been a long time comin’, my dear

             It’s been a long time comin’ but now it’s here

 

It’s a nice chorus when heard the first time two times, but after the third, and repeated as it is, it takes on extra weight, gaining momentum and importance as the song progresses, and by the end the listener realizes just what it is which has been so long in coming and which is finally here: maturity and understanding and true adult love, the ability of the narrator to love and be loved, to realize the way he was brought up affected him, how he’s determined to do better by his own children, and the ultimately limited extent to which he’ll be able to do so.

             On December 11, 1996 in Columbus, Springsteen introduced “Long Time Comin’” as having been written for the Ghost of Tom Joad album, but explained why it didn’t make the cut: “Too damn happy!” he said, and laughed.

             Only Springsteen could consider a song as nuanced and complex as “Long Time Comin’” happy. Because it’s not a happy song, per se. It is layered, aware of the difficulties of parenthood, of the hardness of the world, of how desperately parents want to protect their children and how, as Springsteen would say on the Devils & Dust tour, they can’t possibly. None of which leads to “happy.” What it does lead to, in the case of “Long Time Comin’” is instead deep, adult joy, a joy borne of the deepest love, never ignoring or denying the difficulties of family, but able to look past them or perhaps even amplified by them. It is one of the greatest songs Springsteen has written in the past decade and a half and perhaps of his entire career.

 

*****

 

             It’s instructive to compare and contrast “Rosalita” and “Thunder Road,” as both are, when stripped down to their most basic essence, about a guy trying to get a girl to run away with him. The difference is in how the two young men approach the situation. The singer of “Rosalita” says, in effect, hey, look, I know this awesome little place down around San Diego. I scored a record contract, so why don’t you run away with me? It’ll be great! Whereas the singer of “Thunder Road” basically says, there’s nothing but losers in this town. It’s gotta be better somewhere else—I’m sure of it. Come on, let’s go. But he’s got no set destination in mind, simply “somewhere other than here.” And while he certainly would seem to be the more mature, more grounded of the two narrators, he’s lacking the material career prospects Rosie’s guy has. So while the song “Thunder Road” is by virtually any yardstick the more mature, sophisticated work, in the end, it is the narrator of “Thunder Road” who is the more childish of the two narrators, lacking the clear vision and definite goal the singer of “Rosalita” has. He doesn’t want to get someplace specific, he merely wants to get anywhere else. Rosie’s guy wants to go mainly because he’s in love with her. Mary’s would-be suitor wants to go because he hates where they are.

             It’s also instructive to compare and contrast the history of the two sequels. “The Promise” was written soon after “Thunder Road,” about a year and a half later, but then remained unreleased for an additional 22 years—and when it was released, it was semi-buried on 18 Tracks, a compilation which sold a fraction of what even a lesser-selling original Springsteen album would be expected to sell. “Long Time Comin’,” on the other hand, wasn’t written until roughly 20 years after “Rosalita,” and then had to wait another decade to be released—but when it was, it was a highlight of Devils & Dust, an acclaimed and successful album of new material. So one sequel was written relatively quickly after the original, while the other wasn’t written for decades. The first was hidden and only saw the light of day in a way and time unlikely to gain it major attention and was only released because of demand from a fairly small (but devoted) group of hardcore fans, while the other came out because it finally fit an album. But the grim message of “The Promise” would have fit on The River, or Nebraska (even if its tone wouldn’t have) or The Ghost of Tom Joad. Yet still it remained unreleased, as compared to “Long Time Comin’” which merely had to bide its time.

             And in the end, these four pieces are linked not just by the extreme popularity of the original pair of songs, “Rosalita” and “Thunder Road,” but by the fact that in their sequels the listener discovers the power of the promise: how in “The Promise” a vow being broken leads to utter destruction, while in “Long Time Comin’” the vow being kept leads to ineffable joy.

Paul Evans once wrote, “…with Springsteen’s growing older we see a chance that we missed with Elvis—that of a great American rocker confronting age with grace.” (The Rolling Stone Album Guide, 665.) Fifteen years after Evans wrote that, it’s clear that we have, in fact, a great American rocker not just confronting age with grace but continuing to grapple with the biggest of questions and in doing so turning out some of the best work of his entire career: which is to say, some of the greatest rock and roll ever, made all the more powerful for revisiting earlier works, updating, and even improving upon them—not a risk most rockers would care to take. But then, Bruce Springsteen isn’t most rockers. He’s one of the true American masters.

 

 

 

 

Mirrors

It’s about 9 o’clock. Top Management’s still working. The two boys are taken care of, one asleep, the other in his sleeper watching Thomas the Tank Engine. I go in to read to the three youngest girls. The Bean, lying on her bed, sees me and takes off her headphones. As I pick up Return of the King and start flipping through to find where we left off last night, during the Battle of the Pelennor Fields, I say, “so what were you listening to?”

She says, “Brian Eno. The Plateaux of Mirror.”

Even if we hadn’t had her DNA tested, I do believe I’d be pretty confident she’s mine. 

 

It's Hard to Be a Saint in the City

Hit with the dreaded “New Dylan” label before his debut album was released, it’s not hard to see why Bruce Springsteen was thusly tagged. His songs were bursting with the sort of free flowing lyrical ideas and wordplay that Dylan had introduced to rock and roll a decade earlier. The results were generally delightful, ranging from the touching and effective (“Growin’ Up”) to absurdly funny (“Blinded by the Light”) to somewhat self-defeating (“For You”).

But Springsteen tended to apply his seemingly stream of consciousness lyrics to straightforward narratives in a way Dylan seldom did outside his talking blues. And in a few of those cases, such as “Spirit in the Night,” his antecedent seems less Dylan than Chuck Berry, with the outlandish names or even going back further, to Woody Guthrie.

But on the final track—“It's Hard to Be a Saint in the City,” one of the least noted of the album's songs—Springsteen seems to reach back even further still. 

It's Hard to Be a Saint in the City

I had skin like leather and the diamond-hard look of a cobra

This is just about straight out of the Bo Diddley songbook, harkening, of course, to his classic “Who Do You Love?” But then things take a turn for the slightly cosmic.

I was born blue and weathered but I burst just like a supernova

When it comes to bragging, other than outright stating you’re a deity, it’s nearly impossible to top comparing yourself to a supernova. Where can you go from there? What can possibly live up to a supernova?

I could walk like Brando right into the sun

Ah, yes. Marlon Brando. That’s what.

Now we go past Bo Diddley and back to the early blues, as the song, despite its more modern references, is basically a one-sided version of The Dozens, the game of trading insults and/or boasting of one’s own prowess, maybe most familiar these days for its prevalence in hip-hop.

Then dance just like a Casanova

 With my blackjack and jacket and hair slicked sweet

Silver star studs on my duds like a Harley in heat

When I strut down the street I could hear its heartbeat

The sisters fell back and said "Don't that man look pretty"

The cripple on the corner cried out "Nickels for your pity"

Them gasoline boys downtown sure talk gritty

It's so hard to be a saint in the city

The title stands out there. Where'd it come from? How did we get here? Other than the line which immediately precedes it, it’s the first time we’re not focusing on the narrator and how badass he is—even the ladies of the night and the cripples are awed by his very presence. What’s so hard? The narrator's so tuned in, he can even hear the street’s heartbeat. It seems, so far, as though he’s living the life…relative to his surroundings.

And as to those…

I was the king of the alley, mama, I could talk some trash

I was the prince of the paupers crowned downtown at the beggar's bash

I was the pimp's main prophet I kept everything cool

Just a backstreet gambler with the luck to lose

Now it starts to make a bit more sense. Note that even in this made-up world of his, he’s not the king of rock and roll, or even England—or, as Elvis Costello would later crown himself, of America—but the king of the alley, talking trash…as he’s doing here. The prince and the pauper? He’s the prince of the paupers. Earlier he compared himself to a supernova, or Marlon Brando. (But I repeat myself.) But look at how much more realistic he’s getting as the song progresses. He opened big, went bigger...but now, when going for grandiose, his dreams are, sadly, far more grounded.

And when the heat came down it was left on the ground

The devil appeared like Jesus through the steam in the street

Showin' me a hand I knew even the cops couldn't beat

I felt his hot breath on my neck as I dove into the heat

It's so hard to be a saint when you're just a boy out on the street

Things continue to get dicier as we go along. First he was a supernova, then the prince of paupers, and now the devil’s breathing down his neck.

And then the bridge appears, and the mask slips away for good.

And the sages of the subway sit just like the living dead

As the tracks clack out the rhythm their eyes fixed straight ahead

They ride the line of balance and hold on by just a thread

But it's too hot in these tunnels you can get hit up by the heat

You get up to get out at your next stop but they push you back down in your seat

Your heart starts beatin' faster as you struggle to your feet

Then you're outa that hole and back up on the street

Suddenly, the assured braggadocio is gone, replaced by something close to panic. Where he had been an astrophysical entity, now he’s not even a prince, treated more like one of his former subjects, a pauper, and even though he's going through the classic decent into hell, he's no classic mythological hero—he's barely even a hero in his own eyes any more, manhandled until he can break free and escape.

And them South Side sisters sure look pretty

The cripple on the corner cries out "Nickels for your pity"

And them downtown boys sure talk gritty

It's so hard to be a saint in the city

And once freed from the underworld he goes back to the earlier refrain…but why? Comfort? Unable to think clearly enough to come up with something else? The bragging is gone and doesn’t return. Instead, he laments—or, perhaps, simply states—the plain fact of the difficulty of being a saint in the city. No more bravado, no more dozens. At the end of an album stuffed to the breaking point with wordplay, what he leaves us on is the just the facts, ma'am. Just the plain and simple reality: life in the city is hard, you’re beset on all sides, so you’d damn well better develop a tough shield, an impenetrable persona, or you're not going to make it. They'll get you. They'll win. 

Springsteen opened his debut claiming he was going to stare straight into the heart of the sun, over his mother’s admonitions, just for the fun of it. By the end of the record, he’s relieved to still be alive, and realistic about the chances of being the kind of person that, his boasts to the contrary, he’d like to be. The world's too challenging for that. You're lucky to just get by. 

He’d soon change styles, leaving this type of excessive wordplay and even the more fanciful music behind. But already on this first album, he’s setting up one of his major themes: the hardness of the world and what it does to people just trying to make their way in it.   

Eno and Stipe Lean

So I finally, finally found some Brian Eno Top Management will like. 

Homeboy really needs to sing more often. 

Don't Worry Baby

There’s just so dadgum much great music out there that sometimes some of it, no matter how wondrous, gets overlooked. I was music-crazy from the time I was in middle school, so I heard about Nick Drake, for instance, literally decades before I ever actually heard him—I wanted to, I always meant to, but he was a little hard to locate back when dinosaurs ruled the earth and there was always so much other stuff to listen to, or relisten to for the billionth time. There was a new REM import to acquire or an early and unofficial Springsteen live recording or the second side of Low, still waiting to be deciphered. 

I then went nearly 10 years between really listening to new music, either because familial obligations kept me from listening to almost anything, or because I went through years-long periods where all I’d listen to was classical or jazz.

And then when I did start actively seeking out and enjoy new music again, well, there’s just so much of it—as well as older masterpieces I’d never heard before, such as the aforementioned Nick Drake—that, well, you realize one day that you haven’t heard “Don’t Worry Baby” since the previous century. But you took the girls to the beach and you brought along a Beach Boys collection and a week later it’s still in the car and on the way to the dentist you turn on the stereo and out comes a song absolutely unsurpassed in its amazingness, so gorgeous, so lush, so complex yet minimal that you listen to it a dozen times in a row and, yeah, no, it's just...wow.

That's what this stuff comes down to sometimes. Sometimes you just sit back and listen for the three hundredth time and think: wow. 

So let’s say you’re crusing down the highway in southern California with the Beach Boys blasting and you’re singing along and it’s fine that other drivers can see you singing...but do you think they can tell, without hearing you, that you’re singing falsetto? 

 

Space Oddity

So I stopped Top Management dead in her tracks today. Literally. Well, literally stopped her in her tracks—not so much, fortunately, the dead part.

We were out on our morning walk, pretty much the most sheerly pleasant part of our day. We have about a dozen different routes we cycle through, and this was one of the less strenuous and just plain prettiest. We say hello to distant neighbors walking dogs or watering their flower gardens or hustling their late children off to school. We hold hands until my palm gets too sweaty and Top Management subtly removes her hand and dries it off on her jeans. I retaliate by waiting until we're passing someone—preferably a male—and then casually resting my hand on her ass.

Anyhoo. We're on our walk and somehow talk turns to the recent illegal but amazing adaptation of David Bowie's "Space Oddity" someone did, turning it into a children's board book. It was gorgeous and oh so spot on. "Except for getting the end wrong," I said. "Obviously."

Top Management looks puzzled. She'd only looked at the first few pages as, like me, only even more so, perhaps, she likes to have "her" version of stories and songs, without having someone else's images implanted in her bizarrely retentive memory. Since she had even gotten to the halfway point, she didn't realize that the illustrator had erroneously interpreted the song's ending. In his version, there's a mechanical failure, and Major Tom is stuck up in space, forever.

"Well...yeah," she said. "That is what happens. His ship malfunctions and he's stranded in space. Ground Control to Major Tom, your circuit's dead, there's something wrong."

"No," I said. "No. Though I'm past one hundred thousand miles, I'm feeling very still, and I think my spaceship knows which way to go. The circuit's dead because he turned it off. He looked down at earth from up above there and he decided to stay. And he's okay with that. He feels like he's finally home."

That's when she stopped, right in the middle of the street we were crossing.

"You used to listen to that song every day."

"Yeah."

"Every single day."

"Yeah?"

"As you were getting ready for school."

"Sophomore and junior year of high school, yeah. Ruined the tape, I listened to it so many times."

Her mouth dropped open. "And you listened to that song...and you thought he willingly decided to leave his wife down below on earth so he could die alone in space."

"Uh..." I said, suddenly realizing I was on thin ice. "Well...yeah. I mean, he still loves her and everything..."

She started to laugh as we began walking again. "You listened to that song hundreds, maybe thousands of times. And that's what you got out it. That was the interpretation that resonated with you." She shook her head. "If you had told me that part of the story when we first started dating..."

"...what?"

She shrugged. "Probably nothing." Improbably, unexpectedly, undeservedly, she stands on tiptoe and gives me a kiss. "I like a challenge."

 

I mean, come on! Listen to that! Clearly he decided to stay up there! ...right? How beautiful is that? 

 

Second Thoughts

"I'm DOOOOO-ooooone!" the five-year-old calls from the bathroom. 

I go in and she's cheerily singing a song Nick Jr's Moose sings between shows. I cannot help but clinically observe that she has taken a dump the size of Rhode Island. That kids as a matter of course pop out stool samples which would seem to have come from a professional linebacker never ceases to amaze.

"Oh, wait," she says, smiling up at me beatifically. "Was this the potty you said not to use because it was clogged?" 

economic terrorism

It's considered impolite to post too large an excerpt of a piece. But I'm doing it anyway. Because this so perfectly captures the terrifying insanity taking over our great nation. It flies in the face of tradition, precedent, common sense and decency. The policies the hostage-takers are insisting on are foolish and contrary to ethics or morality.

The ones driving the bus are the same ones who took the largest surplus in US history, turned it into the largest deficit in US history (although the deficit really isn't all that important, as these things go, hysteria to the contrary—simply getting our economy back on track would take care of it without brutal cuts to services for the poor and the elderly), and are now holding a gun to the country's head, saying "do things which are ignorant and counter-productive way or we'll make things go from bad to horrific."

As I've pointed out time and again, I love my conservative friends and family, maybe because, in part at least, they understand that in life you have to compromise. This is something most of us learn by the time we're five years old. The current GOP believes that's a stupid idea. The result is going to be a seriously lessened nation. 

The notion of "it can't happen here" is a dangerous one.  

Josh Marshall made an interesting point in passing yesterday, asking whether conservative Republicans could achieve massive spending cuts through “old-fashioned majority votes.” Josh answered his own question: “Of course not.” The cuts on the table were only made possible by Republicans “threatening the health” of the United States.

I think this arguably one of the more important realizations to take away from the current political landscape. Republicans aren’t just radicalized, aren’t just pursuing an extreme agenda, and aren’t just allergic to compromise. The congressional GOP is also changing the very nature of governing in ways with no modern precedent.

Welcome to the normalization of extortion politics.

Consider, for example, the Republican decision to reject any and all nominees to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, regardless of merit, unless and until Democrats accepted changes to the agency’s structure. Traditionally, if the GOP wanted to alter the powers of the CFPB, it would write legislation, send it committee, bring it to the floor, send it to the other chamber, etc. But that takes time and effort, and in a divided government, this “old fashioned” approach to policymaking probably wouldn’t produce the desired result.

Instead, we see the latest in a series of extortion strategies: Republicans will force Democrats to accept changes to the agency, or Republicans won’t allow the agency to function. Jonathan Cohn wrote a good piece on this a couple of weeks ago, noting the frequency with which this strategy is utilized.

Republican threats to block nominees to the consumer board are of a piece with their opposition to Don Berwick, Obama’s first choice to run the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services; to Peter Diamond, whom Obama tapped to sit on the Federal Reserve Board; and most recently to John Bryson, Obama’s nominee to take over the Commerce Department. It’s nothing short of a power grab by the Republican Party — an effort to achieve, through the confirmation process, what they could not achieve through legislation. And it seems unprecedented, at least in modern times.

Republicans effectively tell the administration, over and over again, that the normal system of American governance can continue … just as soon as Democrats agree to policy changes the GOP can’t otherwise pass.

The traditional American model would tell Republicans to win an election. If that doesn’t work, Republicans should work with rivals to pass legislation that moves them closer to their goal. In 2011, the GOP has decided these old-school norms are of no value. Why bother with them when Republicans can force through policy changes a series of hostage strategies? Why should the legislative branch use its powers through legislative action when extortion is more effective?

It’s offensive when it comes to nominees like Cordray, but using the full faith and credit of the United States to force through desired policy changes takes this dynamic to a very different level. And since it’s working, this will be repeated and establishes a new precedent.

Indeed, it’s a reminder that of all the qualities Republicans lack — wisdom, humility, shame, integrity — it’s their nonexistent appreciation for limits that’s arguably the scariest.