Left of the Dial

Valentine's Day

Context is everything. 

I've found that to be a pretty good rule of thumb, in general, but when it comes to Bruce Springsteen's music, especially so. Springsteen himself seemed to recognize this, as illustrated in a story told by Dave Marsh in his book Glory Days. When Ronald Reagan and others first began misinterpreting the songs on Born in the USA, especially (but not exclusively) the title track, Bruce was bemused but not terribly concerned; surely in the context of his entire oeuvre, the meaning was unmistakable. Only once it was pointed out that Born in the USA had sold more than all his other albums combined had did he realize how many of his fans had no knowledge of his previous work and how easily, therefore, they could misconstrue his artistic intent. 

Which brings us to "Valentine's Day," the gorgeous closer to Tunnel of Love, perhaps his most overlooked masterpiece. Of all the times rock and roll has broached the subject of love—which is to say, pretty much as long as rock and roll has existed—only Bob Dylan's Blood on the Tracks is superior to Tunnel when it comes to entire album-length meditations on the topic. With only a few exceptions, the songs all deal with the difficulties of sustaining an adult relationship. It's only on the final track that the narrator seems to finally realize what he's got and accept that the only path to happiness for him is through the love of his (presumably) wife.

It opens with the singer, as in so many Springsteen songs, driving. True to form, he's driving a big ol' car on the highway at night.  

I'm driving a big lazy car rushin' up the highway in the dark
I got one hand steady on the wheel and one hand's tremblin' over my heart

But unlike the narrator of "Racing in the Street," for instance, or certainly "Stolen Car" or "State Trooper," he's not looking for comfort or saftey in solitude or the open road—this time the road itself is bringing absolutely no peace.

It's pounding baby like it's gonna bust right on through
And it ain't gonna stop till I'm alone again with you

And then, for what was then tremendously rare, Springsteen wrote of fatherhood in unambiguously positive terms: 

A friend of mine became a father last night
When we spoke in his voice I could hear the light
Of the skies and the rivers the timberwolf in the pines
And that great jukebox out on Route 39
They say he travels fastest who travels alone
But tonight I miss my girl mister tonight I miss my home

The bridge is interesting. The narrators ask several (unusally flowery) questions: 

Is it the sound of the leaves
left blown by the wayside
That's got me out here on this spooky old highway tonight
Is it the cry of the river
With the moonlight shining through

But the answer doesn't seem to quite follow logically: 

That ain't what scares me baby
What scares me is losing you

So...he's out on the highway not on business but, apparently, because he's scared of losing her? Meaning, what, that he wasn't due to return home yet? 

We'll get back to that. 

Let's skip, instead, to the final verse:

They say if you die in your dreams you really die in your bed
But honey last night I dreamed my eyes rolled straight back in my head
And God's light came shinin' on through
I woke up in the darkness scared and breathin' and born anew
It wasn't the cold river bottom I felt rushing over me
It wasn't the bitterness of a dream that didn't come true
It wasn't the wind in the grey fields I felt rushing through my arms
No no baby it was you
So hold me close honey say you're forever mine
And tell me you'll be my lonely valentine 

And this is where context becomes vital. Because what finally hit home for the narrator, the huge epiphany he had, was never found when he was actually with her—it all came to him in a dream, when he was miles and miles away from her. So now he's on his way back home to be with her...but he's not there yet. And given that the things that have affected him the most are talking to a friend on the phone and a dream of his girl, it's highly unlikely that these overwhelming feelings of love will last long once they're actually together. The idea of love, his belief in the importance of love, is more powerful than love itself, or at least, than the love he and this woman have for each.

There are several clues that lead to that conclusion. The first is the context of the album: song after song explores just how hard it is to make a relationship work—and even the very few that seem, at first glance, to have things going okay actually reveal, upon examination, serious hidden and potentially fatal flaws in them. ("All That Heaven Will Allow," for instance: again, the narrator is trying to get to the girl but is unable to.)

But the other is right there in the final words. He sweetly asks her to be his valentine. But not his tender valentine or his loving valentine or his gorgeous valentine or his blushing valentine. He asks her to be his lonely valentine. But...what kind of valentine is lonely? Unfortunately, not a truly happy one. 

And yet the keyboard line as the music fades out—one of the extraordinarily rare non-4/4 songs in the Springsteen catalog—is ever so lovely and gentle and soothing that you're tempted to believe things'll work out for them, that they'll live happily ever after. But even there's a hint: he could just as easily have gone with an ascending melody. Instead, it's falling. Beautifully, but inexorably. 

Valentine's Day

My Hometown

Bruce Springsteen has spoken before about how much attention he paid to the sequencing of his albums, the need for strong statements of purpose on "the four corners"—that is, the first and last song on each side of vinyl. While album openers tend to get the most consideration, Springsteen clearly put every bit as much time into thinking about how to close his records. For his six albums he covered an enormous amount of territory, from rock, soul and jazz to prog, country and folk. They include some of his most popular songs ("Jungleland" and "Darkness on the Edge of Town") as well as rarely-played fan favorites ("New York City Serenade") and critical darlings ("Reason to Believe"). With the closing song off 1984's blockbuster Born in the USA, he added pop with a song that went to #6 on the charts and which, as a result of its mass popularity, may be the most overlooked masterpiece of his first seven album closers.

"My Hometown" has several of the classic Springsteen calling cards: cars, fathers and sons, class consciousness, economic uncertainty and the importance and difficulty of hard work. But the most pervasive sense is one of quiet loss. Opening with a pair of scenes from the narrator's childhood—buying a newspaper for his father, and sitting in his father's lap, steering the car as they drive around—it's perhaps the most positive depiction of fatherhood yet in a Springsteen song, free of the angst and tension in "Adam Raised a Cain" or "Indepence Day." 

Of course, that's a relative term, and even here things are far from rosy: the song closes with an identical scene, as the narrator is now the father, driving around town with his own son, allowing him to steer. But it's in the context of conversations the narrator's had  with his boss and with his wife, acknowleding that jobs are scarce and getting scarcer as their town slowly dies, and that their best hope for a decent life likely lies elsewhere, meaning he's going to need to abandon the only home he's ever known.

Sandwiched between those two famililal tableaus are another pair of scenes, one the aforementioned work scene, with the boss warning his workers that their jobs are about to be eliminated, and the other a memory of racial tension back in high school. Interestingly, the scene of racial violence is the only time the title is literally sung, as all other times the narrator actually sings "your hometown." While it's clearly because the other times it's someone talking to the narrator—or the narrator speaking to his own son—the effect is to turn what could otherwise have been a strictly personal meditation into something far more universal.

The mirrored scenes that open and close the song are an effective technique, comparing and contrasting the narrator at eight years old with himself at thirty-five. But the most effective bit is the way he sings "your hometown" one and only one time in the last verse, rather than repeating it multiple times as he had previously throughout the song, allowing the song to gently fade out, the music lovely and gentle but, disturbingly—if like parenthood and life itself—ultimately unresolved.  

My Hometown

Darkness on the Edge of Town II

Darkness on the Edge of Town was the first Bruce Springsteen album I heard when it was new—or, at least, newish; I think it was the summer of 1980 when I heard it for the first time. And for 32 years I've thought the narrator of the title track was related to the narrator of other Springsteen songs such as "Racing in the Streets" and "Adam Raised a Cain" and so many others: guys born into a tough situation struggling against the odds, having a pretty good idea of the score and their chances but not going down without a fight. 

And then the other night a few phrases leapt out at me for the first time and I wondered if I'd had it wrong all these years. And I suddenly realized that it's possible that the narrator is, in fact, a victim of his own vices and weaknesses. Looked at it in a different light, the narrator sounds like he's not so much a guy struggling to beat the odds. No. He's actually a compulsive gambler, and the reason he's lost everything is through his own bad choices brought on by his addiction.

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

 

Darkness on the Edge of Town

 

That's why you can find him in places like Abram's Bridge and on that hill with everything he's got. The blood may have never burned in her veins for the racing, but the implication, therefore, is that it did and it still does for him. He lost his money and his wife and yet he still cannot stop. The compulsion, the addiction is simply too strong. Even with nothing left, he's still chasing that one big win and will forever, no matter what happens, no matter how many times he wins or loses in the meantime. That secret that he just can't face? The secret is this: it's all his own damn fault. 

Reason to Believe

The first song, the title track, off his next album is his most famously misunderstood lyric. But it's "Reason to Believe," the final track on 1982's Nebraska, which is the most ambiguous song Bruce Springsteen ever recorded. Just how ambiguous is this most ambiguous of all Bruce Springsteen songs? This ambiguous: even the artist himself misinterpreted what it was about. 

On November 19, 1984, in Kansas City, Springsteen said, "this is a song about blind faith and its tragic consequences." Which just goes to prove, yet again, that sometimes even the most intelligent, most talented and most thoughtful artists don't actually understand their own work. Because that may be one interpretation of "Reason to Believe"...but it's not what it's "about." Frankly, it's not even an interpretation well supported by the actual text. 

There are five groups of characters in the four verses, and only one is a victimsof an abundance of blind faith. The driver in the first verse, for instance, hit the dog and now he's hoping against hope it'll come back.

Seen a man standin' over a dead dog lyin' by the highway in a ditch

He's lookin' down kinda puzzled pokin' that dog with a stick

Got his car door flung open he's standin' out on highway 31

Like if he stood there long enough that dog'd get up and run

Struck me kinda funny seem kinda funny sir to me

Still at the end of every hard earned day people find some reason to believe

He didn't hit it expecting it would come back. He hit it and now he's hoping it won't be really dead—maybe only mostly dead. Deep down, he knows better, but he can't help hoping he's wrong. The parents baptize their child and the mourners pray for the deceased—and if that's all for naught, what of it? Who or what does it harm? The parents aren't denying the baby needed medical attention, and the dead man didn't seem to refuse treatment in favor of faith. It doesn't change anything for them, not in the time immediately preceding the song and not immediately after the song. 

Take a baby to the river Kyle William they called him

Wash the baby in the water take away little Kyle's sin

In a whitewash shotgun shack an old man passes away take his body to the graveyard and over him they pray 

Lord won't you tell us tell us what does it mean

Still at the end of every hard earned day people find some reason to believe  

As for the groom in the last verse, she agreed to marry him, which is a pretty strong bit of evidence that she was intending to actually marry him. When one person asks another to get married and the party of the second part agrees to marry the party of the first part, it's not blind faith on the party of the first part to assume the party of the second part is actually going to go through with it.   

Congregation gathers down by the riverside

Preacher stands with his Bible groom stands waitin' for his bride

Congregation gone and the sun sets behind a weepin' willow tree

Groom stands alone and watches the river rush on so effortlessly

Wonderin' where can his baby be

Still at the end of every hard earned day people find some reason to believe

But then there's Mary Lou.

Now Mary Lou loved Johnny with a love mean and true

She said "Baby I'll work for you every day and bring my money home to you"

One day he up and left her and ever since that She waits down at the end of that dirt road for young Johnny to come back

Struck me kinda funny seemed kind of funny sir to me

How at the end of every hard earned day people find some reason to believe

Mary Lou may indeed be a victim of blind faith, in that she's still there waiting at the end of the dirt road, pissing her life away, hoping against hope—no, against all clear evidence and common sense—that young Johnny will come back when it's crystal clear to everyone that he's never going to. So, okay, one of the five subjects of this song may indeed have fallen prey to a surfeit of blind faith. 

But the rest of the song is about faith—just not blind faith. It's about the faith people have, that they cling to, in desperation, even when all available evidence would lead one to give up the ghost. That's foolish faith, perhaps, or simply an overabundance of faith. But it's not blind faith.   

It's an interesting song, in terms of construction. The first verse, for instance, is the only one where the guy seems to definitely be at fault—assuming he's the one who hit the dog, and that it's not actually his dog and someone else hit it and the owner's now dearly hoping his beloved dog'll get up and run. All the rest would seem to be victims of fate. The first verse is also the only one where the narrator is directly witnessing the scene being described: in all the others, it's omniscient. 

Interestingly, the second and third verse tell, more or less, the same story, just swapping the genders and locales. Meanwhile, the first and third verses both deal with death, but in very different ways. The third verse is the only one with two contrasting stories, whereas all the others are single tale verses. And it's this third verse, with its circle of life that's really the heart of the song. The first verse may also have dealt with death, but the third adds birth and religion to the mix, leading the narrator to address God directly, begging him to tell us what it all means. 

There's no answer. Just another verse conveying a heartbreaking tale of betrayal and lost love. And a jilted, humuliated, perplexed groom staring at the river rushing past, implaccable, unknowable. The lyrics drop out and it's just Springsteen's guitar, rumbling on like the river rushing past, as time stretches out. Is he thinking about the vagaries of nature? Or the incredibly short lifetime of humans compared to billions of years of the planet? Is he thinking of drowning himself? 

Who knows. All we're left with is the knowledge that somehow, some way, for some reason, people still find some reason to believe. Is this admirable? Is it worthy of contempt? Springsteen gives no indication, in the lyrics or his performance. All we know is that they do. 

Reason to Believe

 

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

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

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’. 

 

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.