Hex at Sleep Dirt wrote a blog post about having to deal with Bruce Springsteen fans and him not liking Bruce Springsteen. I left a comment saying “I love Bruce Springsteen. That is all.” Hex responded with “Well can you help me out then? What’s the appeal? I’m not trying to bag on you, I actually want to know.” I started to leave a comment on his blog but stopped when I realized it was getting pretty long, so I moved it here. This way, others can read my thoughts on Bruce Springsteen. Sure, the Internet was invented so people can read what some nerd thinks about Star Trek. But dammit, I strive to make the Internet a little bit more than just that. I want my little corner of the Internet to be what some nerd thinks about Bruce Springsteen.
I can’t tell you what the appeal was in 1975 with Born to Run, I wasn’t born yet. I can’t say why Born in the USA was so special, I was like 3 or 4 when it was released. All I can tell you is why I love Bruce Springsteen.
I didn’t really start listening to Bruce until I was in high school and only started because I, myself, wanted to know what the appeal was with Bruce Springsteen. I asked myself that very question you’re asking me. Instead of talking to people, I just grabbed some of his albums and started listening. Before that, I was only familiar with the hits from Born in the USA and the song Born to Run. Everything else was completely new to me. Everything I heard, I liked immediately.
This is why I love Bruce Springsteen.
The songs tell wonderful stories. Born to Run is a collection of short stories told through song. The stories themselves are nothing earth-shattering, but that’s what makes them interesting. In Thunder Road, he’s not going after the most beautiful girl in the world. The character tells this woman “You ain’t a beauty, but hey, you’re alright. And that’s alright with me.” You can’t go upto a woman and say that without getting slapped.
Throughout that entire song, I’m sucked into this little world that exists only in that song. I’m in the world created by the words. I can see the world Bruce has created for his audience. I see this winding beach road travelling north along the eastern shoreline. The Sun is about to rise up out of the ocean. The left side of the street is lined with tiny shotgun shacks, surrounded by rusty, chainlink fences. Each house is delapitated in it’s own special way. Shutters swinging in the breeze. The thin beach on the right is filthy with random bits of garbage: empty bottles, hub caps and such. I get all of that from listening to Thunder Road everytime it’s played.
No other artist’s lyrics so frequently give me such a vivid image in my mind of the world inside a song: Spirit in the Night takes me down to Greasy Lake, Born in the USA takes me to a worn down veteran’s hall, My City of Ruins, ground zero, watching that flag being pulled from the wreckage of the twin towers.
A recurring theme in Bruce’s earlier writings is getting away. Whether it’s for one night just to have some fun or getting away forever because there’s no hope left in this town. It’s a pretty simple idea that pretty much any artist could do, but none (in my opinion) really ever do, with the exception of Third Eye Blind*.
Bruce is also one of the few artists that gets me to sing along. I’m no singer, in fact, I’m probably tone deaf. But when I hear Blinded by the Light or Badlands or Prove it all Night, I usually hurt my throat and lose my breath singing along. Listening to Bruce makes me feel good. And isn’t that what music should do.
Now, I can’t defend everything Bruce has released. It’s not all great. There is a lot of shit in his catalogue, but anybody with a catalogue that big has got some shit in there. It was the ’80s. Everybody sucked in the ’80s. But certainly with Born in the USA, the song is hampered by poor production, or more specifically, over-production. A stripped-down, Nebraska-esque version of the song exists and is far better (in my opinion and the opinions of everybody I’ve ever seen write on the subject of Bruce’s production in the 1980s) because it isolates the song. The production on Born in the USA is everything the song is not. The song is sad, the song is a sarcastic view of being American; but the production is upbeat and plastic. The production sells the song as “USA A-Okay” while the lyrics tell you something completely different. Maybe that’s what Bruce was trying to do. Maybe he was trying to subtly implant the possibility of American imperfection by making a song that easily sells itself as being a pro-American rallying cry. And maybe it just didn’t work.
Well, I hope that answers your question. If it doesn’t, do I what I did. Grab a copy of Born to Run and listen to it from start to finish.
* Long story short, Third Eye Blind’s self-titled album is the closest thing to Born to Run, in terms of story-telling and subject matter, that I’ve ever heard.
