Listening to Bruce Springsteen always brings back memories of my teenage years, and I guess that's as it should be and probably IS with everyone who got into the Boss in their formative teen years.
I was very open-minded about music even at 16, having a taste for everything ranging from Mozart to the Sex Pistols to Yes to Genesis to Pink Floyd to the Beatles to the Stones to the Who to the Clash to the Talking Heads to Elvis Costello to Maynard Ferguson to all the stuff I'm emberassed to admit I liked, but nevertheless did, like Boston and Chicago and a few others I'd just as soon not mention. I had heard "Born to Run" on the radio, and I thought it was an excellent song, destined to be a classic. But I wasn't, at the time, interested in checking out Bruce Springsteen. Sorry, I just had too many other bands/artists that were hogging all my music listening time.
Now as it turned out, I joined the Columbia Record Club...who hasn't done that? I mean, no self-respecting music lover could ever, in good conscience, turn down a deal like 12 records for 1 penny, and all ya gotta do is buy 8 more and pray you don't forget to mail in that little card they send you every 3 weeks.
But everybody DOES forget to return those cards and everybody eventually recieves something they didn't ask for and usually doesn't want, either. I was no different, and when the package, familiar in shape and size to those talismanic album covers, arrived in the mail, I was curious and eager to see what I'd been sent...I knew I hadn't ordered anything, because there wasn't much I really wanted that they had in their catalogue back then.
I opened it up, and I'll even confess to being mildly dissappointed to find out that what I'd been sent was the new Bruce Springsteen album, "Darkness On the Edge of Town". It's not that I wasn't willing to give it a spin...sure, I'd planned on doing that...but you have to understand that I was constantly spinning "Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the SEX PISTOLS" and it was in the process of changing the way I looked at music and what it should be about, and I just didn't think the "mainstream rock" of Bruce Springsteen was going to be the ticket.
From the opening drum lead-in to "Badlands" I found myself immediately drawn in, even a 16 year old music geek can relate to lines like "For the ones who had a notion, a notion deep inside/ That it ain't no sin to be glad you're alive/ I wanna find one face that ain't looking through me/ I wanna find one place/ I wanna spit in the face of these badlands". Now these were lyrics worthy of any punk rocker I can recall, from Iggy Pop to Johnny Rotten to Jello Biafra. And I decided, almost immediately, that I was fast becomming a Springsteen fan.
I wasn't all that impressed with "Adam Raised a Cain", though it's not a bad song, by any means. The guitar one-note squall that opens the song is cool as hell.
"Something In The Night" was the clencher. When Bruce, wordlessly moaning and wailing, cuts loose into that primal scream at 1:06 I knew that I would probably be singing along with it every subsequent time I played it. It's a trait of the Bosse's that I later was able to discern in other classic Springsteen songs, most notably "Backstreets" (from "Born to Run"), on which, coincidentally, I once REALLY DID hurt my vocal cords trying to sing along with.
My dad never worked in a factory, to the best of my knowledge...he was a truck driver most of his life, and before his untimely passing away at 65 he had been a bus driver for the public school. Even so, the song "Factory" always made me think of him. The whole thing about the never-ending work routine and his iron strong work ethic. About how that tireless ethic extracts a high price on a man ("Factory takes his hearing, Factory gives him life...the working, the working just the working life"). The song is just so resigned to the nobility of that common, often mundane way of life. The way he frames the song's lyrics between the factory whistle's crys at the beginning and the ending of the shifts. That's sheer genius.
Springsteen doesn't get NEAR enough credit as a lead guitarist, in my opinion. Listen to the searing, gut wrenching leads in "Streets of Fire" to experience my point that he is one of the best.
To make a long story short, by the time I'd reached the album's end, the album's title track, "Darkness On the Edge of Town", I was ready to throw it into equal rotation with that Pistols record and the Clash's 1st US release. I bought his other 3 records, and of course I bought "The River" when it came out, and I guess I bought every one of them not too long after their release.
I played saxophone, baritone sax to be specific, in the high school stage band and I always resented having to be the bari player when I REALLY wanted to be the Tenor player. Hell, I was the only one with the guts to actually stand up and play an improvisational solo in any of the songs we played, why shouldn't I get to choose which saxophone I got to play? I was the big guy and the girls sure didn't want to play bari, so I got stuck with it. Oh, well. I played it well.
Anyway, to compensate for having to play the baritone saxophone in the band, our instructor let me take one of the school's tenor saxes home to practice with. Practice, to me, was putting on a record, usually of big band jazz stuff like Woody Herman's Thunderinng Herd, and playing my own solos to the songs.
I liked to play to the sax and guitar solos on the Rolling Stones "Can't You Hear Me Knockin'", but my favorite rock song to play sax with was "Jungleland", from "Born to Run". Man, let me tell you I could wail right along with Clarence on that whole solo section. You want to talk about catharsis? Try playing along to that song!
Of course I couldn't wait to "turn my friends on" to Springsteen, and it wasn't hard to do. My best friend at the time, a George Carlin wannabe with an appetite for music almost as insatiable as mine, Steve Duncan was immediately taken with Springsteen. He always wanted to "re-pay the favour" by trying to introduce me to artists he thought rivalled Springsteen, and he was of the opinion that Billy Joel had what it took to compete with the Boss. I don't have to tell you that he hadn't a snowball's chance in hell of me swallowing that hogwash. I'll never be a Billy Joel fan, even though I think he's done a scant few decent songs. Billy Joel is Billy Joel's biggest fan, and I have a problem with that.
Another close friend, Gary Affentranger, who we nicknamed "Chet Atkins" for absolutely no reason at all, was also easilly converted to the Springsteen contingent. Chet went on to take the word of Rolling Stone magazine's record reviewers as Holy Gospel. If it got a good review in "The Stone", then chances were extremely high that Chet was singing it's praises. He read more reviews than he ever bought records, but he had an unwaverable and usually informed opinion of everything that had been deemed fit to be reviewed in RS. RS has always been kind to Bruce Springsteen, and so, consequentally, Chet Atkins has been similarly kind to Bruce Springsteen. In this case, I had been able to persuade him to go beyond merely knowing ABOUT a great album and actually buying and listening to one, and he owned most of Bruce's albums before long, just as Steve and I also did.
I had an experience once, while in a place I'd just as soon not talk about, I once fell in love with a woman who dissappeared into thin air after an all too brief, but intense love affair. We were at a dance, and I'd asked the DJ to spin Springsteen's "Drive All Night" from "The River". This was before we established the short lived relationship, but it became apparent as we danced throughout that beautiful, slow song that a relationship WOULD be established. I couldn't even begin to describe what that relationship entailed...it was just too bizarre, but whenever I hear "Drive All Night" I'm taken back to that night we danced so close to each other...God, she was beautiful. She'd been mistreated and had the scars to prove it. She thought she was too fucked up for me to want to have anything to do with her. She was wrong, but it's all for the best, I'm sure.
And the whole "Tunnel of Love" album reminds me of my failed first marriage. "When You're Alone"...I always, in my mind, sing along to that song as if it were written for my ex-wife. It validated my feeling at the time that she had left me, perhaps afraid of hard times, before I'd even had a chance to realize my potential (Not that I believe I've reached it as of yet, but I'm sure a helluva lot better off now than I was when she left me). "Nobody knows, honey, where love goes, but when it goes, it's gone, gone, and when you're alone, you're alone". Man, I'd been alone long enough...I had a right to begrudge some loneliness on my estranged ex-wife. And this song, and the whole album, for that matter, give a voice to all those feelings that I associate with those times....""Last night as I kissed you 'neath the willow tree/ He swore he'd take your love away from me/ He said our love was just a lie/ and two faces have I".
These lines from "Two Faces", and the whole of the song that follows it, "Brilliant Disguise" describes ME to a tee in how I remember my first marriage. That's why they call him The Boss, and he's a good 'un to work for. It's as if he's lived your life within you and written the words and melodys that you perhaps didn't have the time or the talent to do as well, if at all. "Tonight our bed is cold and moist in the darkness of our love/ God have mercy on the man who doubts what he's sure of"....Does it get any better than this? Not often. That is a modern Proverb if I ever heard one (Now there's an idea for a message board topic: Rock & Roll Proverbs).
"Tunnel of Love" has SO many great songs on it. "One Step Up"....the progression of the chords and the way Springsteen wraps the melodies around them, weaving the lyrics, like a beautiful fabric, through it's density. "Valentine's Day", there's another beautiful one for you. This one can bring you to tears if you've ever loved someone (and who hasn't?). You have to sympathize with a guy who trys to sweet talk a bouncer into letting him into the dance for free, because, ostensibly, he "left his wallet back home in (his) working pants". Surely Slim the Bouncer let poor Bruce into the dance so he could keep his date with "All That Heaven Will Allow". I can surely empathize with Bill Horton, who let his caution slip away when he met a young girl in the early days of May. Even my least favorite track, "Spare Parts", is redeemed by Bruce's ability to make you care about characters like Bobby & Janey. I also really love the wordless-singing section near the close of the title track.
These songs are ageless and timeless, every bit as good as Lennon & McCartney's best. They are stirring, moving and captivating.
I once spent a weekend with some friends at a yearly 4th of July "Bar B Q and Jam Session", and a friend had brought his girlfriend who, I discovered after playing some Springsteen tunes on acoustic guitar, was the world's biggest Springsteen fan. I don't think it's immodest to say that she cottoned to me in a big way after the third or fourth rendering of "Wreck On the Highway". The constant attention she showered upon me became a thorn in the pride of her boyfriend, who turned out to be of the jealous sort. He never really cared for me in the first place...I shouldn't have classified him as a "friend", it was more like he considered himself to be a friend of the hosts, even though his eventual delving into crack cocaine insured that he was left with absolutely NO friends, there were those at the occassion who would count him as a friend. I wasn't really of that camp, though. His girlfriend was good looking and certainly out of his league, and had obvious great taste in music. I could picture myself serenading her on a regular basis if she could just drop this loser who got lucky. But in the spirit of fair play, I allowed what was, to be, and though I have no idea what became of her, other than knowing she got smart and dropped the loser, I will forever fondly recall singing to her, singing songs like "Atlantic City", "Stolen Car", "Wild Billy's Circus Story", "4th of July, Asbury Park (Sandy)", "Nebraska", "Darkness On the Edge of Town". That incident alone made it worth all the effort I put into learning how to play guitar and eventually learning all those Springsteen songs.
And I have never regreted not sending back that 12" vinyl copy of "Darkness On the Edge of Town" that Columbia House sent me unsolicited. It was the gateway to some of the best music I have ever had the pleasure of hearing. From "Mary, Queen of Arkansas" to "Youngstown", he has consistantly turned out classic music, and I've never regretted buying a single Springsteen album....though, come to think of it, I don't think I ever paid for that copy of "Darkness..."....Maybe I should shut up about it before they come after me....
Thanks for indulging me.vvvvjy
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