Alright, I'm going to do my review of Bruce Springsteen's Born to Run now because I said that I would, I haven't updated in ages, and Bruce always makes me happy (no matter what – ignore the slightly obsessive tone of that...).
I'd say that the first thing you would have to know when approaching this is that, around this time, Bruce was known to romanticize a lot of his characters. He'd often focus on the down and out, misunderstood characters and celebrate them. Perfect example would be "Zero and Blind Terry". Terry falls in love with Zero, who is the leader of a gang. Terry's father dislikes this, knowing that Zero is a "child, a thief, and a liar". He sends troopers to hunt down Zero and bring Terry back. At the end of it, as time passes, Zero and Terry become the stuff of legends:
Well now some folks say Zero and Terry got away
Other said they were caught and brought back
But still young pilgrims to this day
Go to that spot way down by the railroad track
Where the Troopers met the Pythons
Old timers cry on a hot August night
If you look hard enough, if you try
You'll catch Zero and Terry and all the Pythons
Oh just hiking them streets of the sky
Just walkin', hiking the streets of the sky
Just hiking the streets of the sky
Hey Zero!...
The album preceding Born to Run – The Wild, the Innocent, and the E Street Shuffle – is beautifully chocked full of that stuff. It's a phenomenal album, by the way. While often tinged with sadness, and certainly a sense of persecution, the general ending was rather upbeat and hopeful. Probably due to the need to actually do a hit album this time around (or be dropped from his record label), Born to Run lives up to its name – again, it's those outcast characters, but this time there's a sense that they must get out. They're running – from fears, to hope, to safety, et cætera. In terms of concept, this is followed by the next album, Darkness On the Edge of Town, where the questionable heroes succumb, rather awfully, to their own vices. That one's a gloriously dark album.
However (going back to Born to Run), the lyrics, for me, is what makes this album absolutely delectable. It sounds very, very upbeat (for most of the songs). Yet the lyrics are some of the most frantic, desperate, and borderline reckless I've heard.
Finally – the music. This is absolutely gorgeous in terms of composition. I remember reading somewhere that a critic was noting Bruce turning to traditional song structure at the turn of Darkness On the Edge of Town. And I had never simply recognized that before (maybe because I basically grew up on this stuff). For the most part, traditional song structure is abandoned. Both "Thunder Road" and "Born to Run" are just a beautiful bombardment of melodies and harmonies that you can't initially keep up with everything that's going on. Plus it largely consists of piano (most of the album is piano, given that it was first written for composition on the piano with the other instruments added later), guitar, and saxophone. It's utterly gorgeous. It's actually a shame I can't do more service to the music in description, for it deserves as much scrutiny as the lyrics. Acknowledging my own short coming, just trust it never disappoints.
And that's when the album becomes dubious. On one hand, it's a Bruce album. That means that the lyrics can be utterly mind-blowing. Thus, I'm expecting them to be. I want to be amazed, poetically moved, emotionally shaken, et cætera. However, not all of the songs necessarily live up to this, lyrically. Musically, they're fantastic (like the whole of the album), which means they're alright songs. But in comparison to other songs on the album, they're less than we could get. Yet, on the other hand, they're consistent with the whole of the album. And that's something that I've really tried to keep in mind more with music. Yeah, the songs are all nice – but how does it all work as an album? And, in that sense, the album totally works together, painting a wholistic picture that even the lesser songs help to fill in.
With all that said, onto the songs of this delightful album.
Thunder Road – 5 stars
And here's my first problem, right in the first song. For one, the lyrics are killer here. As this blogger said, "Actually you can close your eyes, put your finger down on the lyric sheet of “Thunder Road,” and you’d probably land on a line that has resonated through rock and roll history."
Screen door slams, Mary's dress sways
Like a vision she dances across the floor as the radio plays
A tale of admiration, hope for romance when it's never guaranteed, and a desperation to cut loose from all the bullshit – everything which is holding you down or you were told you couldn't have – makes this song the definitive song for a dreamer.
And, really, what a perfect way to start off the album. As he asks Mary to take his hand, trust him despite all the possible doubts that can arise, he's asking us to venture with him. Enter this world, enter these possibilities. It's not even just asking that dangerous question of whether to enter into a relationship, ripe with the chance that they might "turn me home again/[because] I just can't face myself alone again." It's that followed up demand that we have a right to what everyone else seems to have a right to. These characters are the outsiders, the outcasts. Whatever Thunder Road is, whether it's success in rock 'n' roll to finally get financial success and support or just means reaching happiness finally, a family, support, it's being daring enough to say you can have it after it being so elusive for so long.
Again to indirectly quote the blogger, there's a reason why they have to "case" Thunder Road. They can't just go to it, they have to steal it. Yet by the time the chorus rises up, in the midst of that, "Oh, oh, come take my hand/We're riding out tonight – to case the Promised Land/Oh, oh, oh, oh! Thunder Road! Oh, Thunder Road!" you know that's it. Despite the worries of your dreams, despite that fact that it's "lying out there like a killer in the sun/Hell, [you] know it's late but we can make it if we run". Shit, who cares about the worries, the odds - this is it! This is our chance, our moment. Don't let it get away.
Honestly, the lyrics of this thing are amazing, just drawing you in while barely letting you go. Once again repeating the blogger, the specificity of the lyrics leaves you with something that could move you without the music. The car, their access of getting out of town and escaping, is the only redemption they have left (Now I'm no hero, that's understood/All the redemption I can offer, girl, is beneath this dirty hood), again tying in with that concept of having to case the Promised Land. Yet this redemption isn't given and passed down by God. They don't meet that "Heaven waiting down on the tracks" by being granted. It's up to them. Again echoed through every level of the song, this is repeated once more to Mary, acknowledging that, yes, "[his car] door's open, but the ride/it ain't free". But I think I've clearly said enough. I'll allow you to further peruse the lyrics at your own leisure.
The fault, ironically enough, comes from the music. Don't get me wrong, it's gorgeous. Not quite the maze of "Born to Run", but a pretty thrilling thing to listen to regardless. From the piano to the guitar, it's fantastic and executed perfectly: "Well, I got this guitar and I learned how to make it talk" – cue 2 second guitar solo. The issue is...it's too happy. Which, in and of itself, isn't a bad thing. It matches the rest of the album which is (I think) for the most part pretty upbeat.
And why shouldn't it be? Sure, the lyrics are often afraid and anguished from the suffering, but this isn't an acknowledgement. This is a call to action, a fight back and a scream of rebellion that only rarely becomes downtrodden.
And yet...I dunno. Maybe it's because for the longest time, at one point, I didn't have the original album and the only version I had of "Thunder Road" was the one off of In Concert/MTV Plugged. Then again, during that time, I had the version of "Born to Run" from Chimes of Freedom and both are very similar (stripped down to one or two instruments, a lot slower, and very sad). Yet I find "Born to Run" fine as it is. I just get left with this feeling like there's a disservice being done to the lyrics with the original. There's fear, very alive fear, in those lyrics. A slow, piano only version of "Thunder Road" seems to capture the spirit far more perfectly. The music works in the original, don't get me wrong. But the stripped down version does the song far more emotional justice and has a far greater emotional maturity. That wonder of Mary moving to the radio on the porch isn't lost. Yet when he asks her not to turn him home...God, you feel that pain.... It just...the original almost doesn't seem to compare. And yet, what could you do? The other version would be sorely out of place on the album. I'm giving it five stars, regardless, because it still fits with the whole of the album and is still a mind-blowing song. But the other version is far better.
In spite of this, that end of the original is perfect. Whichever version, "Thunder Road" really isn't itself without it. Every time, slow or fast, it still manages to convey that sense of going forward. When it's slow, it's a steady, unstoppable plodding. When it's fast, it's a stampede, as if the feet are moving so fast that they trip over themselves in the rush and glory of it all. Either way - we're going somewhere.
Tenth Avenue Freeze-out – 4 stars, if not for "Night" and "She's the One" it'd be a 5
The lyrics aren't quite on par as some of the best on this album, sadly. As Mr. Ward (from American Studies) often said to me, it's the stories that really make the stuff that just draws you in (probably why The Wild, the Innocent, and the E Street Shuffle is one of the best albums ever, far as I'm concerned). Yet the second that main riff hits – from the long stretched note of the horn to the piano and guitar supplied groove, fuck, this is musical Heaven.
I remember, when trying to re-listen to this album again, rediscover why so many love this album (since, admittedly, I grew up on this so it's mostly nostalgia and the fact that it sounds good that was driving my opinions. I missed a lot of the little things and I actually didn't play this album much other than 2 or three songs; that's changed now), I was comparing this version to the version off of the Live in New York album. It might have just been bad acoustics, but I think they tried to substitute the horns for just metal guitars. Which, admittedly, it works – but in comparison to the original, it practically seems a sin. The gorgeous lightness of the piano with the steady blasts of the horns and the guitar weaving its way through it all cannot be replaced.
Plus – it just sounds like old rock (something that most people these days wouldn't know two things about, it seems). You can hear the jazz influences alive in it.
A sort of fictional version of the creation of the E Street Band and Bruce's need for them for support, it packs plenty of emotion in its lyrics to keep it interesting.
Teardrops on the city
Bad Scooter [Bruce Springsteen] searching for his groove
Seem like the whole world walkin' pretty
And you can't – find no room – to – move
Well, everybody better move over – that's all!
'Cause I'm runnin'-on-the-bad-side and I got my back – to the wall
Admittedly, not even Bruce knows what a Tenth Avenue Freeze-out is. You can always use your imagination, piece together clues from the lyrics and descriptions of the other songs on the album, or assume it's a term Bruce has made up and figure out the definition from the lyrics of the song.
Regardless, it quickly becomes apparent that it's not so important what that one segment of the song is and that you should just realize the fantastic emotions that he's sending you are.
I was standin' in the jungle
Tryin' to take in all the heat they was givin'
'Tiiiilll, the night is dark – but the sidewalk's bright
And lined with the light of the livin'
From a tenement window a transistor blasts
Turned another corner, things got real quiet real fast
Yeah, the story's been told time and time again and you could probably piece it together without hearing the song (given also the lyrics aren't that specific and kinda vague at some points). But it's that feeling of being at the cusp of just doing what you've always wanted to. That excitement, that frustration beforehand (I love the "teardrops" line), the bewilderment – just all of it. So that when the groove cuts away and the opening fanfare of the beginning before the groove hits kicks in, you feel that desperation
And I'm aaaallllllllll alone...
I'm all alone
in spite of it being a song that you just want to get up and dance to. Clarence Clemons's (the saxophonist of the band) line "Now, kid, you better get the picture" sounds more like the parental warning of an older generation telling you this is how the world is, you can't do it this way, you're gonna fail. And the immediately following lines of
And I'm oooonnnnnnn my own
I'm on my own
And I can't go hooommmmeeeee....
just completes it as the groove kicks back in and the fear, the desperation, just feels like a part of life. By the time the last verse comes around, you're sold.
Well, the change was made uptown
And the Big Man [Clarence] joined the band [cue 5 second sax solo]
Frrrrooooommm the coastline to the city
All the little critters raised their hands
I'm gonna sit back real easy and laugh
When Scooter and the Big Man bust this city clear in half!
Night – 3 stars
Now, understand – it's not that "Night" is a bad song. In fact, as I re-look over the lyrics, I find them to be rather delicious in their own right (The rat traps filled with soul crusaders/The circuits lined and jammed with chromed invaders). Yet, in the end...well, it's just about escaping work. And, to be honest, most of the lines don't quite live up to that couplet. They come close, in their own subtle ways (noting that the highway "ignites" and then that last, fatalistic couplet "Somewhere tonight you run sad and free/Until all you can see is the night" really shocked me as I read them together, even after having listened to this song for years).
But does it compare? It's like a sub-par version of everything. Which, for the boss, means some pretty decent shit regardless. But in comparison, it just doesn't match. It comes off feeling like more of a repeat, really (from the desperation, the crushing feeling of it all, and even the customary anonymous girl that is the narrator's desire).
And, musically, I'm not really sold. Again, it's not bad...it's just not as good as it could be. There is an inability to deny "Tenth Avenue Freeze-out"; "Night"'s melody just doesn't quite excite me so.
So, I give the track 3 stars because, in comparison to the other songs, it could've been better, not because it's a bad song. It deserves more stars if we're talking music in general, probably getting a 4. But on the scale of Born to Run, it gets a 3.
Regardless of the rating, it still fills in the album. Because of its existence, we now get a vision of the worker who's just trying to make it through the day in the world that's being painted for us.
Backstreets – 5 stars
Finally, we get a truly depressing song on this album, other than "Meeting Across the River" (even though I feel "Meeting" actually isn't all that depressing). And...wow, is it fantastic.
Once more, it's dealing with the concept of getting out. However, in spite of the anthems of "Thunder Road" and "Born to Run", it actually contemplates the failure. Yet, it's not really that their dreams failed. It's that they failed. While "Jungleland" warns of the possible destruction of their own environments and both "Born to Run" and "Thunder Road" seem like calls to escape it, "Backstreets" bemoans the results when they fail themselves so bitterly that it almost burns. The emotions are all there again, so desperate they seem ready to tear out of the song itself, but (with so terrible a subject matter) it seems, this time, ready to burn everything else down in its misery.
The song beautifully starts out with a piano solo, weaving the melody that's to portray the whole song. The percussionist, Max Weinberg, provides a drum beat that sounds, fittingly, like a heartbeat. As the piano goes on, other instruments add in as the music rises in intensity, seemingly portraying the story of the song without words. Just as it rises in a final roar, it fades and then dies as the first stanza kicks in:
One soft infested summer, me and Terry became friends
Trying in vain to breathe the fire we was born in
Catching rides to the outskirts, tying faith between our teeth
Sleeping in that old abandoned beach house, getting wasted in the heat, yeahhh...
Hhhiiiddinngg on the Backstreets
Hhiiiding on the Backstreets
With a love so hard and filled with defeat
Running for our lives at night on them Backstreets
It seems almost that the two's relationship is framed by that world they're trying so hard to stave off. Lost in a cruel and harsh world, they are their source of comfort, their reminder that there's still a reason to fight:
Slow dancing in the dark on the beach at Stockton's Wing
Where desperate lovers park, we sat with the last of the Duke Street Kings
Huddled in our cars, waiting for the bells that ring
In the deep heart of the night, we cut loose from everything – to go
Rrruuunninngg on the backstreets
Rruuuning on the backstreets
Terry, we swore we'd live forever
Takin' on them backstreets together
Endless juke joints and Valentino drag
Where dancers scraped the tears up off the streets dressed down in rags
Running into the darkness: some hurt bad, some really dying
At night, sometimes, it seemed you could hear the whole damn city crying
Notably, there's continual language hinting at an inseparability from that darkness. As if timed by it, it determines when they release their own inhibitions in an attempt to escape it. While being abused by it, they run directly into that darkness.
What is it? I'd like to think life. Likely to tie in with that theme thus far for the album of just people who have thrown you out, outcasted you, written up a bunch of hypocritical rules you couldn't hope to fit in, and all else you might think of along those lines, it could really be much more as well. Personally, there are easily themes of depression that I read out of darkness. Maybe they try to use that dark for their own sense of identity or comfort (dancers scraped the tears up off the streets dressed down in rags). I don't know. Regardless, it's a community of sufferers in the end (At night, sometimes, it seemed you could hear the whole damn city crying).
In spite of that, I still argue that the failure lies in the characters themselves. For it's after that admittance of a whole city of sufferers that the narrator addresses that Terry leaves him. And by that point, he no longer cares about the rest of it all, not caring who is blamed or what it right or what is wrong, perhaps not even able to know anymore:
Blame it on the lies that killed us
Blame it on the truth that ran us down
You can blame it all on me, Terry
It don't matter to me now...
When the breakdown hit at midnight
There was nothing left to say
But I hated him
And I hated you...when you went away
Bruce has been criticized before for an almost need on many songs to add some kind of noise in where there isn't lyrics being sung, making his own vocals ever-present. Perhaps there is good reason to question some of his odd, well, squeals at points of certain songs. This isn't one of those moments.
Stripped of everything, it's a bellow of pure anguish. Without the use of words, he's communicated everything, almost as if everything so previously well done in the song wasn't needed.
And it's in that stanza, I feel, that their own faults are revealed to be the cause of the final suffering, the defeat, and the admission of that defeat. For one, while (until the point where he says it's alright to blame him) the lyrics focus on blaming lies (a dream deterred?) and a truth they refused to face, if the blame didn't somehow lie with their own actions, it would ignore the kinda huge fact that Terry is leaving him.
There's also the aspect that if the inescapable truth they refused to accept was there could be no change, no hope for something better, then Thunder Road is a myth (in terms of this album). Forget hoping for it, it's just a killer, nothing more. It's not a possibility of failure – it is failure.
Interestingly, the breakdown hits at midnight, the pinnacle of darkness. Again, I think this is due to Terry's abandonment. But the thing that solidifies my belief in this is once the music fades for Bruce to whisper:
Laying here in the dark, you're like an angel on my chest
Just another tramp of hearts crying tears of faithlessness
Remember all the movies, Terry, we'd go see?
Trying to learn how to walk like the heroes – we thought we had to be!
And after all this time, we find we're just like all the rest:
Stranded in the park – and – forced – to – con-fess – to
Hhhiiiddinngg on the Backstreets
Hhiiiding on the Backstreets
We swore – forever friends!
On the Backstreets until the end
I very well may be reading things which simply aren't there into this song, but I find that Terry and the narrator's relationship was supposed to represent difference. That darkness, those backstreets, that feeling of outsideness and outcasting that was bred from their environments is forever a part of them. As he says at the beginning of the song, "Trying in vain to breathe the fire we was born in." It's a difficult bit of gymnastics, incorporating the bad of your life with who you are. As someone with depression, I do it daily. There's a sense of identity. Yet there has to be more. After all, we're talking about a negative. On its own, it leaves a bleak view.
"Trying to learn how to walk like the heroes we thought we had to be" – something is broken in her betrayal. A sense of heroism. A sense of something more. What it is, I can't rightly concretely articulate. But the result is them having to confess to hiding on the Backstreets. Every time these streets have been evoked, there was the concept of running and hiding on them. But there was no sense of judgment. The scenarios were given as they were, with the bad, good, and ugly consequences frankly spoken. But here is a blatant shame to the hiding that wasn't there before.
They are stranded in the park – not moving, not going forward. This image of "just another tramp of hearts crying tears of faithlessness" leaves only the realization that they are just like all the rest: going nowhere, nothing special, nothing heroic. Like all the others just struggling to survive, running headlong into the darkness though it may kill them, the narrator and Terry are left only with the fire they are born in – nothing more.
Born to Run – 5 stars
The blogger I had mentioned earlier. As he was choosing his last songs, he placed "Born to Run" as the greatest Bruce Springsteen song. While that is so difficult a thing to choose, I remember thinking, "What?!?!" That overplayed, by now cliché song? I mean, don't get me wrong, it's a beautiful song, definitely huge at its time, and something I love. But it's almost too cheerful and not nearly as lyrically beautiful as some of Bruce's other works. Such opinions seem childish to me now.
Really, the blogger said it the best, so I'm going to just let him speak for this one. Sometimes we get so used to something, we forget the impact, the gravity of those words:
"Start with Ernest ‘Boom’ Carter’s opening drum shots, and then marvel at the fact that the guy played on all of one Springsteen recording and it turned out to be ‘Born to Run.’ Then stand back and prepare for that first crash of sound that hits you with reckless impact. Seemingly a thousand instruments coming at you at once, even though the album credits list a mere six players contributing to the track.
"Now, listen, really listen to that opening riff again. Listen to how it seems to bust down walls, break invisible chains, clear your sinuses, and promise nothing short of infinity. And, hey, keep in mind that Steve Van Zandt, fittingly, made an unsung contribution to the track by altering Springsteen’s initial riff simply because he misheard it. Bruce liked the riff the way Steve heard it better, and that became the riff etched in the annals of rock history. Who knows what might have happened if he hadn’t happened along in the studio that day, but that’s part of Steve’s indefinable genius, isn’t it?
"OK, now the lyrics begin, and you need to hear how Bruce nails the existence of an entire generation in two electric lines: ‘In the day we sweat it out on the street of a runaway American dream/At night we ride through mansions of glory in suicide machines.’ Do you notice how his description of these folks is peppered with such explosively active phrases? ‘Sprung from cages on Highway 9/Chrome-wheel fuel-injected and stepping out over the line.’ There is so much motion and potency in these words, a dead-on depiction of frustrated youth afraid to stand still because they might never be able to start again.
"At this point, take into account how Bruce’s narrator has an ulterior motive with all of this fancy talk: He’s trying to convince his girl, Wendy, to join him on an escape from ‘this town,’ which he describes as if it were a living entity, a remorseless Terminator programmed to grind down hope and promise. As David Sancious’ piano swirls all around him, Bruce gets to the point of his argument: ‘We got to get out while we’re young/’Cause tramps like us, baby, we were born to run.’
"A couple things you need to consider at this point. First of all, what a pinpoint choice of words when he calls himself and those like him ‘tramps.’ He could have said ‘bums like us,’ but ‘tramps’ has just the right tinge of romance clinging to it, more apt to the ebullient music. Next, think about how endlessly profound the phrase ‘Born to Run’ is. Born to run from their problems. Born to run because it’s in their nature, an instinct no different than a shark’s single-minded quest to eat. Born to run because inertia is tantamount to death. Born to run with all of the grace and beauty of a gazelle, and born to run in a desperate, messy gait to escape the hellhounds of the past.
"As the next verse begins, it’s time for you to hone in on Garry Tallent’s burbling bass underpinning the entire grandiose structure of the song. But try also to notice how Bruce balances a genuinely heartfelt and chaste promise to Wendy with some bawdy talk to appeal to her more prurient side: ‘Wendy, let me in, I want to be your friend, I want to guard your dreams and visions/Just wrap your legs round these velvet rims and strap your hands across my engines.’ But for all of that bravado, this guy quickly reveals himself to be vulnerable: ‘I’m just a scared and lonely rider’ who wants to know ‘if love is real.’ The multi-faceted nature of this character is part of what makes this song so enduring.
"OK, time for Clarence. Just sit there with your jaw open at his lightning quick solo. Ain’t nobody running anywhere faster than that. But prepare for a change of pace, because now the bridge arrives, and the music has an almost dreamlike quality. All the better to accompany Springsteen’s description of the nightlife. He highlights its allure, from the picturesque scenery to the sounds of the traffic to the boys and girls.[...]
"You can also appreciate, especially in this period in which we live when irony rules and all genuine gestures are vied suspiciously, the unabashedly romantic nature of the line that ends this section: ‘I want to die with you, Wendy, on the streets tonight in an everlasting kiss.’ With that, the reverie is shattered by a blistering drag race between Bruce on guitar and Clarence on sax, all leading to the drum-rolling, instruments-poised-to-strike crescendo.
"I can’t begin to calculate the number of times that I’ve listened to ‘Born to Run,’ and, let me tell you, the moments following that crescendo give me chills every time. The main riff returns, this time embellished by all of the Spectorian grandeur surrounding it, and Bruce bursts out in a voice so cathartically desperate it practically cracks with the immortal couplet: ‘Highway’s jammed with broken heroes on a last-chance power drive/Everybody’s out on the run tonight but there’s no place left to hide.’
"Consider now how those lines may have resonated with their creator, and how that desperation wasn’t a put-on. Springsteen was putting everything into this song, because it might very well have been his last chance. With two mediocre-selling albums in his rear-view that didn’t come close to matching the hype his record company heaped on him, had ‘Born to Run’ flopped, Bruce likely wouldn’t have been given another shot to go this big again. His career was at stake; talk about rising to the occasion.
"It should all be gravy from here, but rest assured that Bruce isn’t going to mail it in. Because in the final lines, you realize that these two might never get out, grounding this song in a sorrow that runs counterpoint to the lofty optimism. It deepens the entire enterprise when the narrator qualifies his final promise to Wendy with ‘I don’t know when.’ But, then again, as we are reminded three times in increasingly impassioned refrains, ‘Tramps like us, baby, we were born to run.’
"Now savor every second as the E Street Band, albeit one with a one-off lineup containing Sancious and Carter, brings it all home with gusto as Bruce gives his ‘Whoa-ohs’ every last ounce of energy he has. As the reverb of the final note dissipates, how do you feel? Exhilarated? Heartbroken? Blown away? Inspired? Spent? If you feel all of the above, then you’ve followed my instructions to the letter."
She's the One – 3 stars
This one, to me, is like "Night". Sorry to say, hearing about a femme fatale just isn't all that interesting to me. In my usual macabre way, you'd need to really make it twisted to grab my attention (Junichiro Tanizaki's short stories are a fantastic read).
The lyrics are good, as per usual. But they're short and somewhat sparse and it never leaves the fact that it's just descriptions of this girl. She remains almost a caricature filling out the cliché femme fatale role.
Musically (I could probably be crucified for this amongst Bruce fans), it doesn't interest me any more than "Night". There are live versions where Bruce attaches an intro titled "Mona" to the song. There, he plays in a loose, almost rambling fashion very similar to the style on The Wild, the Innocent, and the E Street Shuffle. Deadly quiet at time, stretching out, with long wails of almost incoherency at points and a drawl that is pure Bruce, it directly contrasts the very tight and on point arrangement and sound of the entirety of Born to Run. Jacking this 4 and a half minute song up to between 13 and 15 and a half minutes and merging these two very distinct (though classic) sounds of rock 'n' roll, I would have been a thousand times more interested in this musically.
Again, it's not bad musically. But there isn't enough here in total (just as with "Night") to make me give this more than 3 stars (again, on a Born to Run scale). Even in terms of the album...it's a fun song, but what does this random femme fatale have to do with the concepts and motifs of the album thus far?
Again, good song, even if not one of the best...but an oddball on the album.
Meeting Across the River – 5 stars
So short, it's more like a preface to "Jungleland" – but it's sure as Hell downright perfect, regardless. With a piano backdrop and a trumpet pushing pure, sad jazz (while in the midst of it all, a lone pass is heard strumming), it's a gorgeous track to lay the story of a guy trying to get his friend to give him a ride, so he can make good on a shady deal.
There really isn't much else to say. If I say more, I reveal the story and that's something that you ought to just experience for yourself. We don't know what'll happen to these guys. Maybe they run afoul. Maybe not. But we wind up understanding and sympathizing with the trap they're encased in, hoping they succeed.
Jungleland – 5 stars
Alright – this – this is one of the best song ever made. And I don't mean it ranks in there, maybe with some songs better than it. No, no – I mean that this is what to aim for in a song. It ranks at the very top. Maybe there are others which tie with it. But that's it, they just tie. And for someone as indecisive as me, who would never dare to rank something solely the best because I couldn't say if something else is better (notice how I still admit others could tie) – that's saying something.
Let's start with that undeniable beginning. Two notes from the violin and then the piano. Gracefully, the violin weaves beautiful musical strokes as the piano dances around it. Considering the subject matter, there are plenty of other instruments which might have been used. Yet that captures "Jungleland" so perfectly – look beyond the literal to what it means. It's newfound and dreams, the waking and birth of something just budding, just beginning.
Then the lyrics enter:
The rangers had a homecoming
in Harlem late last night
And the Magic Rat drove his sleek machine
over the Jersey state line
Barefoot girl sitting on the hood of a Dodge
drinking warm beer in the soft summer rain
The Rat pulls into town, rolls up his pants
Together they take a stab at romance and disappear down Flamingo Lane
The heroes have already been determined within the first lines. As the police have some sort of great bust in Harlem, the Magic Rat escapes and slides into New Jersey, completely decked in style. Stuck in a world of entrapment, he finds escape, independence, and self-sufficiency within crime. this is important, integral to the understanding of these characters.
After the Magic Rat's been introduced, now so is the barefoot girl. She is possibility. That very line is everything as it should be: "Barefoot girl sitting on the hood of a Dodge drinking warm beer in the soft summer rain." Sure, it's male-centric and, really, semi-superficial. But it's that instinctual picture of desire and beauty – just a girl, barefoot, sitting on a car drinking a warm beer, something so natural and not dressed up and yet capable of moving you so slightly.
Together, they take a chance, go out on that limb, and just see what the Hell might happen. Flamingo Lane is more than just a street – it's life and they're intent on living it.
Well, the maximum lawman run down Flamingo
chasing the Rat and the barefoot girl
And the kids round here look just like shadows
always quiet, holding hands
From the churches to the jails
tonight all is silence in the world
As we take our stand
down
in
Jungleland
As the two enter Flamingo, we enter their world. It starts with the persecution, going to the support in the face of such odds, to then their representation. And yet, in their own way, they are taking their stand. Forced to forever hide in the backstreets, and run like the tramps they're made to be, in their own way, they present their own form of resistance. While it's never concretely stated the way they resist, it's notable that right at the moment "From the churches to the jails tonight all is silence in the world" is sung, the organ strikes up to join the piano. By the time "down...in...Jungleland" is finished, the music has turned into a roar with the guitar joining the fray.
Well, the midnight gangs assembled
and picked a rendezvous for the night
They'll meet `neath that giant Exxon sign
that brings this fair city light
Man, there's an opera out on the turnpike
There's a ballet being fought out in the alley
Until the local cops, cherry top,
rips this holy night
The street's alive as secret debts are paid
contacts made, they vanished unseen
Kids flash guitars just like switch-blades
hustling for the record machine
The hungry and the hunted
explode into rock 'n' roll bands
That face off against each other out in the street
down
in
Jungleland
The description continues and the connection between art and their life is more firmly established. The city becomes alive as the mundane and violent are turned into operas and ballets. The battles out on the streets are then matched to the battles of the bands, wielding their instruments like weapons. This is fittingly finished with a guitar solo, speeding up, building even further until bubbling over into:
In the parking lot the visionaries dress in the latest rage
Inside the backstreet, girls are dancing to the records that the DJ plays
Lonely-hearted lovers struggle in dark corners,
desperate as the night moves on
In just one look and whisper...they're gone
And with that, everything dissipates with a long blast from Clarence Clemons's Sax. In a solo that so entirely captures the night, in a way that tinges on a cliché jazz melody that undeniably reminds you of a city night to an original, whole melody that so perfectly grasps the wasted emotions of desperation and a look for solace that it surprises you that this song can once again do something so damn right.
As that goodness ends and the violin and piano creep to the forefront, the violin too fades so that we just have that lone piano. In slow, steady and blunt notes, it jarringly contrasts to the uproarious and defiant sound previously in the song. Riding with the piano notes, Bruce begins:
Beneath...the city...two hearts beat
So-ul engines running through a night so tender
In a bedroom, locked,
in whispers of soft
refusal...and then
...surrender
In the tunnels uptown...the Rat's own dream guns him down
Shots echo down them hallways in the night
No one watches an ambulance pulls away
or as the girl shuts out the bedroom light...
Outside the street's on fire in a real death waltz!
between what's flesh and what's fantasy
And the poets down here don't write nothin' at all
they just stand back – and let it all be
And in the quick of a knife!
they reach for their moment and try to make an honest stand...
But they wind up wounded...not even dead...
Tonight
in
Jun-
gle-
land!
And with that Bruce erupts with a wild cry, the articulation and voice of every character that just tried to get by, to live, to make something of that world they were born in; we hear "Go-Cart Mozart’s insane ramblings, the Ragamuffin Gunner’s jaded fatalism, Crazy Janey’s healing sweet nothings, Zero and Blind Terry’s ghostly laughter, Madame Marie’s foreboding warnings, Spanish Johnny’s tragically romantic serenade to Puerto Rican Jane."
By the end of that, words cannot describe the experience, the perfect articulation of life itself. It doesn't matter you never knew these people. Humanity has been shown to you and you mourn their suffering, understand their joy, respect their defiance. Drained and left naked, you're rendered breathless. Every time, that's what I'm left as.
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