This is a continuation article on Bruce Springsteen and what he meant to a kid growing up and being exposed to his classic “Born to Run” and following him on his journey through “Darkness and the “Born in the USA” era. But don’t quote me. This may or may not see the light of day. If it does, Bruce and music peeps, I bid you welcome, if you are a Bruce hater then exit while you can, for I saved you about 10 minutes or a short song by Gentle Giant.
Westminster, Ca. circa 1978…When you’re about 17 years old, you start thinking about who you are, what you are about to become and what you are going to do for the rest of your life. I still haven’t figured it out. Some people are blessed knowing what they want to do from the get go. Others struggle their entire lives trying to find some sort of enjoyment or meaning in what they do for a living…this is a living hell, when you are constantly trying to find your niche in life. When I was in high school, we used to do these aptitude/career tests to help one find a vocation in life. I would always end up as a musician. This is exactly what I wanted to do! I wanted to perform for people so they would like me and get paid handsomely so I could afford the mansion and the Playboy playmates. But that’s like growing up wanting to be a cowboy! Well, if dreams came true, oh, wouldn’t that be nice? Well, it took about 15 years after this (about 1996) to realize the dream was basically over…but in 1978, I had dreams. I wanted to believe in a faith that could save me. I believed I could be raised out of the badlands of Westminster, all in the name of rock and roll, and I wanted to be saved!! I was looking to be saved! I needed to go down to the river to cleanse my soul, from what, I did not know yet. I was only 17. But I knew that it was all in the name of rock and roll and one, Mr. Bruce Springsteen.
Three years have passed since my musical awakening from “Born to Run”. Since then, I have had a nice forever (2 years) relationship with the high school sweetheart girl of my dreams. Been dumped by the girl of my dreams (very much like when you find the Girl of your Dreams in the Arms of Some Scottsmen from Hull!), fell in with the wrong crowd at HIGH school, then graduated unceremoniously from high school. All the while, I was still holed up in my room listening to records, drowning in self-pity with Pet Sounds, and reading all sorts of music magazines learning about punk rock and the new wave of music, and anxiously awaiting the arrival of Bruce’s next LP.
I thought I had read in Crawdaddy, that due to legal issues with his manager, that Bruce wasn’t allowed to put forth new material. Also, his painstaking recording process and devout perfectionism was dragging things out a bit. Three years is a long time to wait between records, especially in a time when new music might be making your butt obsolete! So it was the true fan that was champing at the bit for the new beardless Bruce. Now I don’t remember if I was at the record store the day it came out but I am sure that I bought it soon after it’s release and I don’t remember the radio playing anything from the LP before it’s release. But I can still recall sitting in my room, making sure everything was just right and then dropping that needle onto the surface and getting hit, not with a folksy harmonica, but a hit to the gut by a rack tom and snare roll hit that was delivered, like an FDA stamp onto inspected meat, helped along with an authoritative Link Wray-esque power glide that shook one from a daydream.
“Badlands” a galloping declaration of faith that has Bruce leading the E Street Band across the desert like Lawrence of New Jersey. This was NOT Born to Run II. This was an angry in your face, no more dreaming of the highway, but facing the harsh reality of the world and the darkness that seeps through our lives. Even the cover had a different feel. In color, of a disheveled Bruce looking like he just crawled out of bed or had just worked a graveyard shift at a job that he hated. The Spector feel was gone and replaced with a more stripped down in your face grit that put low buzzing rack and floor toms at the front of the mix. “You spend your life waiting for a moment that just don’t come”. Indeed, and make sure you have a back-up plan, like working at the gas station, instead of rock and roll kiddo. Then came “Adam Raised a Cain” with a searing blazing hot guitar lead (if a guitar sound can feel like a toothache then Bruce has truly captured it!) that made the listener feel that nothing good is going to come out of this one. Oh, there is anger here. There is anger here a’plenty. Bruce is certainly pissed for just being born.
I was really getting to like this LP! A punk attitude with still classic rock and roll stylings. “In the darkness of your room your mother calls you by your true name!” The poetic wordy imagery was thrown out the window along with the hopes of getting to second base with an unattractive Mary. This was more street smart (even on the black and white back cover photo the leather jacket was removed) than lothario. “Something in the Night”, a plodding precursor to “The Promise” that touches on Bruce’s recent lawsuit against his manager, also takes on the feel of what the rider in “Born to Run” did after Wendy spurned his advances…all alone, chasing something in the night, that more than likely doesn’t even exist! A lot of wordless pains ala “Backstreets”, along with the great line, “as soon as you got something they send someone to try and take it away”. This is a very bitter Bruce. No one is waiting for him like in the “Night”And then along comes the hi-hatted opening of “Candy’s Room”. A song that features a great drumming track by Max Weinberg that propels this song into your soul. So far, this is a more guitar driven record than BTR. Someone has to pay and make up for these three years of silence! Side One ends with “Racing in the Street” a revamped east coast modern version of “Don’t Worry Baby”. A beautifully constructed song that slowly builds with piano with the passage of time signified by a metronomical rim shot to full band. “Some guys come home from work and wash up…then go racing in the street.” It took me a few years to truly understand what that line was all about. Here I am in my 50’s and if I didn’t have painting, if I didn’t have playing music, if I didn’t have writing, I would be nothing. A lot of us go “racing in the street” still and Bruce met this girl only three years ago (see the connection?) and already there’s wrinkles around her eyes and she hates for just being born. Summer is here and the time is right, not for dancing, but for racing in the street. This song live has the most incredible ending. So beautifully played that you never want it to end. I believe, this is one of his best songs that he ever wrote. Halfway through this record, you realize that Clarence’s horn is very sparse. The man that was on the cover of Born to Run with The Boss seems to make an appearance here and there like an old friend dropping by on his way to somewhere else, somewhere more fun perhaps???
Side Two opens with more toms on the hymnal “The Promised Land” that has Bruce looking for a fight, staring down the heart of a storm and ultimately declaring his youth is over , but showing his faith in something still. I recalled in an interview with him at this time that he was quoted as saying that “you can’t save everybody, but you gotta try”. This stuck with me, and at the time, I was ready for salvation in the name of rock and roll. Looking back, I see the naiveté and the sadness that it’s pretty hard to find something to believe in so strongly anymore after all these years of dashed hopes and promises. I hope that younger people today have the faith and the dreams that I had when I was young and that some artist or person is supplying them with music or a cause to believe in and the hope and the belief that things may change for the better. Up next is “Factory” a song that I thought was the weakest on the LP at the time but grew to like it as I get older. I can really relate to the “Factory takes his hearing, factory gives him life, the working, the working, just the working life”. Now this is written about Bruce’s father, with whom he had a tempestuous relationship at best, the funny thing is and I have never seen anyone else allude to this, is that the melody firmly recalls Andrew Lloyd Webber and Tim Rice’s, “I Don’t Know How to Love Him” from Jesus Christ Superstar (Catholic Bruce again???) that was a hit for Helen Reddy! Not sure if Bruce meant to do this or if it was hidden in his conscience, all in all, a very apropos way for him to salute his father. This takes us to “Streets of Fire”. A song that opens with Danny Federici’s funereal sounding organ as Bruce intones that it’s him against a world where one can’t trust anything, a true punk attititude. “Prove it all Night” comes at us with snare and crash cymbal hits along with the cherished glockenspiel. This could have been a love song written by Charles Starkweather to Caril Fugate. Bruce will totally take on the persona in the later masterpiece “Nebraska”. One of my favorite lines, “But if dreams came true, oh, wouldn’t that be nice” is the entire basis of everyday life. Again, the guitar is very prominent on this record. Bruce plays with an anger that has yet been seen on previous records. “Darkness on the Edge of Town” ends the record closing the circle of car imagery/references that is on over half of these songs. Nothing matters to Bruce anymore. Not his money, not his wife. He just wants clean hands and no secrets and no lost dreams to bring him down, just an embrace of all things that are found in the darkness on the edge of town. Hence, “Well if she wants to see me, you can tell her that I’m easily found, tell her there’s a spot ‘neath Abrams Bridge, you tell her, there’s a darkness on the edge of town.” Well, Bruce it seems that you are the actual darkness that you are writing about.
And so we wrap up this 17 year old teens impression, along with an adult viewpoint, on an artist that truly led me to believe in rock and roll. The years have passed and I still think the “Born to Run” and the “Darkness” LP’s are about the best back-to-back albums ever released by an artist. I still hadn’t seen the man live in concert yet. I lived vicariously through bootlegs, live radio concerts and my brother Jack’s photos of Bruce’s show at The Forum. Man, was I envious, and why I didn’t go, I have no idea!? But I was to catch him several times on his next tour promoting “The River”. I may see you all again, down by the river…but we all know the river is dry.
