I had the very good fortune of getting to see Bruce a few times this last year on the Working on a Dream Tour, and I was also lucky to get some good seats / spot in the pit.
The first great moment was at GS Show #3 (10/3/09) when, during the final song, Thunder Road, Bruce walked toward us during the instrumental section, and saw the sign we had brought to the show:
It was towards the end of the song and we were waving the sign up and down hoping to get his attention... finally Bruce saw it and came over and pointed to us and played to us for a solid 10 or so seconds! Our sign even made it up on the Megatron!
In the above picture, the top part is the megatron (with Bruce on the right, and the yellow-front of our sign on the left), and down below, you can see the real Bruce and the red-back of our sign.
That was by far my greatest personal moment at a concert.... A close second though was lucking out and getting first row seats right behind the stage for the 11/7/09 show at MSG, where the band played Wild, Innocent... all the way through! I had desperately been trying to get tickets to this show, clicking away at ticketmaster, until finally, at 4:30pm on the day of the show, we get two seats right behind the stage, first row!
I recently found this great video where Bruce comes and sings right in front of us during "Working on a Dream" (see 2:23-2:25, and 2:34-2:40):
I was able to screen shot a few pictures where we are right in front of him!
Not sure if I'll ever get opportunities to see the E Street Band again from that close, but I sure hope so!
I've been relatively busy during the past few weeks, which is why I haven't posted since mid-January, but I've got some more good stuff coming.... For now, a summary of what kept me busy in late January, as told by Bruce:
Visited NYC:
My Mother-in-Law* visited (and this video, incidentally, is from the 11/8/09 MSG show I saw from the torrential-nose-bleeds, but it's plenty of great party noise from an awesome crowd):
Found out that Bar Sports League is starting up again soon, and where else, but at Jimmy's Seaside Bar!
Also this alternate version of Prove it all Night blows my mind... It's amazing how much thought and experimentation go into his lyrics (notice the parts borrowed from Racing in the Street:
Expect more interesting posting this weekend!
*If you are reading this, I'm just joking about the "Sherry Darling" song!!!
The 25 Most Exquisitely Sad Songs in the Whole World: No. 25
'The River'
Bruce Springsteen (1980)
The Breakdown: Premature pregnancy, marriage and a weepy harmonica crush the dreams of a young couple.
The Waterworks: "We went down to the courthouse/And the judge put it all to rest/No wedding day smiles, no walk down the aisle/No flowers, no wedding dress."
Casualty Count: One couple's age of innocence.
This got me thinking about Springsteen’s ‘sad’ songs. While there are elements of sadness (or darkness) in most of his songs, I wouldn’t actually classify most of his songs as fundamentally sad. There is generally an optimism and hope of redemption that comes through in his songs. After all, in Born to Run he sings “Together Wendy we'll live with the sadness / I'll love you with all the madness in my soul.”
However, he does have some songs that are just sad. Here I rank the top 10 saddest songs, ranked in order of how sad they are (not necessarily how good they are).
Honorable Mentions:
Loose Ends – Very sad song about love gone bad… But is far too upbeat to make the top ten… I find myself forgetting what this song is about when I hear it played.
Born in the USA – The album version has the same issue as ‘Loose Ends,’ which has also allowed this song to become grossly co-opted. There’s a decent argument to be made that the acoustic version of this song should make the list, but I didn’t find it sadder than my top 10.
Lost in the Flood – Simultaneously incredibly beautiful and incredibly sad, this song is one of Springsteen’s most powerful. However, the story in the song is told from a distance from its characters that reduces the song’s emotional sadness.
The 10 Saddest Springsteen Songs:
10. Wreck on the Highway (The River)
A song about the sadness of tragedy and loss. Although you might argue this verse isn’t necessarily sad, it’s pretty powerful, and relates the sadness of the rest of the song in a way that I think many people can connect with:
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
9. Sinaloa Cowboys (Ghost of Tom Joad)
This song is about a sad theme that appears in a number of Springsteen songs (including others on this list): the price you pay for pursuing a dream. In Sinaloa Cowboys, the protagonists are warned in advance by their father: "My sons one thing you will learn, for everything the north gives, it exacts a price in return." But like most of Springsteen’s characters, the protagonists have no choice but to pursue their dream (or at least, in this case, escape poverty). In this case (spoiler alert), the price Miguel pays is the life of his brother Louis.
8. Downbound Train (Born in the USA)
Starting right with the title you know this one’s gonna hurt… Many Springsteen songs are piano based, but this is a guitar song, and the way he strums the guitar really sounds like the way pain and desperation has become regularized for the song’s main character. It’s only after waking up from a dream that everyday pain reaches a climax:
I ran till I thought my chest would explode
There in the clearing, beyond the highway
In the moonlight, our wedding house shone
I rushed through the yard, I burst through the front door
My head pounding hard, up the stairs I climbed
The room was dark, our bed was empty
Then I heard that long whistle whine
And I dropped to my knees, hung my head and cried
Now I swing a sledge hammer on a railroad gang
Knocking down them cross ties, working in the rain
Now don't it feel like you're a rider on a downbound train
7. The Price You Pay (The River)
A song about the price of chasing your dreams, but also the price of not doing so.
But just across the county line, a stranger passing through put up a sign
That counts the men fallen away to the price you pay,
and girl before the end of the day,
I'm gonna tear it down and throw it away
For Springsteen to give up on the promise land, to give up on the dream, is to give up everything. It’s so unthinkable that despite the pain and the costs that he knows chasing the dream will entail, he intentionally makes himself delusional to the very sadness that he sings about. I suppose there is an interpretation that when he says he’ll tear down the sign, he means that he will overcome the odds… But just like Springsteen’s attitude in the rest of the song, I think the only way to come to that interpretation is to be desperately seeking some way to justify following the dream.
6. Youngstown (The Ghost of Tom Joad)
Springsteen sings about the economic devastation in an American cold war town, and the struggle of the American worker.
When I die I don't want no part of heaven
I would not do heavens work well
I pray the devil comes and takes me
To stand in the fiery furnaces of hell
He is so disgusted with what his work has reduced him to that it would be counter to his very identity to die and go to heaven: he knows that he could only belong in hell. The sad state to which he has resigned himself is enough to send shivers down your spine.
5. Reason to Believe (Nebraska)
My friend Charles covered this on his blog – there are two possible (not necessarily mutually exclusive) interpretations of this song: (a) Springsteen finds some kind of honor in the ability of his song’s victims to continue to find reasons to believe or (b) the song is about the delusional nature of the characters in the song who have suffered great tragedy.
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
While I prefer the former interpretation (which is, to be sure, less sad than the latter), it’s still an intensely sad song. After all, the song includes tragedies so great that it makes finding a reason to belief seem funny.
4. The River (The River)
Spinner’s choice comes in at #4.
Now all them things that seemed so important
Well mister they vanished right into the air
Now I just act like I don't remember
Mary acts like she don't care
Mary and the protagonist (turns out to be about Bruce’s brother… or at least that’s what he said before he played this song at MSG 11/8/09) face such a dire situation that their only way to cope is denial. ‘The River’ is very dark and promises a haunted future of lost dreams. However, it’s still less sad than the following three songs for two reasons. First, (despite the above verse), most of the song sounds more removed, as if the sad things are events of the past (even if the theme is timeless). Second, the song is simply musically less sad than the following three. That is not to say it’s not sad at all. The “is a dream a lie if it don’t come true, or is it something worse” part sounds like desperation and resignation to sadness. However, it still doesn’t reach the levels of tragedy and sadness of the following three.
3. Streets of Philadelphia
I was bruised and battered and I couldn't tell what I felt
I was unrecognizable to myself
Saw my reflection in a window I didn't know my own face
Oh brother are you gonna leave me wasting away
On the streets of Philadelphia
This song was written for the movie Philadelphia. It’s the reason why you can start crying during the opening scene of the movie before anything has even happened.
Reported by Meg Guroff, Jim Jerome, and Lyndon Stambler, September & October 2009
"When I was doing Philadelphia, I called Neil Young to get him to write a real kick-ass, American-dude anthem that would put all the homophobic white males who had come to the movie in a reassured mode. A week later I got this hauntingly beautiful, delicate song called 'Philadelphia' that was at the end of that movie. It was extraordinary. But we still needed that reassuring, hard-driving song. So I got in touch with Springsteen. I leveled with him. You know you've got to level with the Boss. I sent him the movie with Neil's music. He said, 'Okay, I'll send you something back in a week or so.'
"The tape arrived. My wife and I got in the car and put the cassette in. We started driving. Here comes 'The Streets of Philadelphia.' I had to pull over because we were both so overwhelmed. I thought, 'Bruce Springsteen trusts this movie and the audience more than I do. Enough with the anthem already.'
"Bruce is the greatest American filmmaker who has yet to make his first film."
2. Stolen Car (The River)
It’s a story about a marriage gone wrong – a love that somehow was lost and left a coupon imprisoned.
And I'm driving a stolen car
Down on Eldridge Avenue
Each night I wait to get caught
But I never do
The stolen car he is stuck in is the empty marriage, and the metaphor is powerful and dark. While you might expect the use of car imagery here to come off as corny, I don’t think anyone who has heard the song would feel that way. The song desperation and helplessness – and leaves you knowing he really will never get caught.
1. Your Missing (The Rising)
Pictures on the nightstand, TV's on in the den
Your house is waiting, your house is waiting
For you to walk in, for you to walk in
But you're missing, you're missing
You're missing when I shut out the lights
You're missing when I close my eyes
You're missing when I see the sun rise
You're missing
God's drifting in heaven, devil's in the mailbox
I got dust on my shoes, nothing but teardrops
The song sounds the way that crying feels. It opens with a short piano piece that sounds like it belongs in a fairytale, and I think it does that to prepare you for the sadness that is about to ensue. In Wings for Wheels Springsteen says he often includes short little introductions designed to welcome the listener to the song, to invite them in. The opening here sounds like Springsteen trying to give the audience a big hug for what they are about to hear.
The song is defined by prominent violin chords that set a deeply sad tone. Springsteen goes through a list of things going on as usual, that are all made sad by the fact that the loss of a loved one has shattered the very concept of normality…. “Nothing but teardrops…”
The following is a breakdown of how many concerts Springsteen played in the following locations:
The Northeast was clearly his favorite region, which isn't surprising given that it's his hometown area and it's where his largest fan base is.
Northeast
33
Europe
26
Southeast
9
Midwest
8
West
5
South
3
Canada
1
Other than the US, Springsteen seems to like Europe, but didn't go anywhere else this year (except Canada):
US
58
Spain
5
Sweden
3
Italy
3
Norway
2
Ireland
2
Germany
2
England
2
Switzerland
1
Scotland
1
Holland
1
France
1
Finland
1
Denmark
1
Canada
1
Austria
1
The cities that Springsteen preferred are also not very surprising as far as Springsteen goes. The one exception might be NYC, although given the number of concerts in the NYC metro area (especially Meadowlands), New Yorkers certainly can't complain.
E. Rutheford
7
Philadelphia
6
Stockholm, Sweden
3
NYC
2
Mansfield, MA
2
Hartford
2
Dublin, Ireland
2
DC
2
Chicago
2
Boston
2
Bergen, Norway
2
Asbury Park
2
LA
2
As far as specific venues go, surprisingly, Giants Stadium didn't take #1 (although if you lumped Giants Stadium and the Izod Center together, they would have):
Spectrum, Philly,
6
Giants Stadium
5
Stockholm Stadium, Stockholm, Sweden
3
The thing that I found most surprising when I initially looked at these numbers is how much time Springsteen spends in Spain, relative to other areas. As it turns out, he has a particularly large and passionate fan base in Spain. I would encourage anyone (who hasn't already done so) to check out the video of his concert from the Rising tour in Barcelona. This clip is just one of my favorite (there's also an especially intense version of Badlands from the same concert). But I chose to share this because of the intensity of the crowd. Just focus on how awesome that huuuuuge pit section is during the opening of Prove it all Night.
That one part right at 0:25 where you see the whole crowd jumping up and down in sync with the opening piano is incredible. Springsteen crowds are famously enthusiastic, but that crowd in particularly was amazing.
WASHINGTON—Faced with the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, the White House announced Tuesday that a cautious President Obama is awaiting the release of the next Bruce Springsteen album before moving forward with additional economic stimulus initiatives. "If Mr. Springsteen puts out an E-Street Band project with one rave-up and several tracks containing an overarching theme of redemption, the president will certainly take that as a strong indicator of economic recovery," said press secretary Robert Gibbs, adding that an album cover featuring an American flag would be "extremely promising." "However, if he records a stark, haunting, Nebraska-esque exploration of blue-collar life, then it is time to lower interest rates and take immediate steps toward drastically reevaluating our current strategy." The president has reportedly eschewed the supplementary Mellencamp Little Pink Housing Index used during the Reagan administration, as economists now widely believe it conveys a derivative, shallow view of the American fiscal landscape.
O’Reilly makes 2 basic arguments here. One is silly and reflects the way he talks about most political issues and the way that he treats his political opponents. The second argument is one that is theoretically defensible and I think many people with reasonable politics would agree with. But is also wrong.
Argument 1 – Springsteen is unpatriotic
O’Reilly calls Bruce a pinhead for saying our country has “illusions about itself” and likes to leave certain things out of our history as a people. I don’t plan on spending much time here countering O’Reilly’s absurd claim that Springsteen has a one-sided negative view of America, because frankly, that claim doesn’t require or deserve much refutation.
I’ll make it quick:
- “There's treasure for the taking, for any hard working man who will make his home in the AmericanLand”
- “Meet me in a land of hope and dreams”
- The constant use of patriotic American images (such as the Flag).
Yes – Springsteen sings a lot about problems America faces. O’Reilly’s argument is a typical extreme right-wing claim that to be critical is unpatriotic. Of course, nobody who actually listens to what Springsteen says can reasonably hold the belief that Springsteen would ever say “America itself is bad”. To the contrary, not once does Springsteen rejectAmerica, he simply sings about (among other things) (a) what makes America great (for instance, the people who live there) and (b) things that call for reform and improvement.
By saying it’s unpatriotic to point out flaws in America, O’Reilly is making an intrinsically contradictory claim: his criticism of Springsteen and the left-swing politics that supposedly dominates the American political landscape is also itself a claim that America is flawed. O’Reilly’s style of argument is anti-democratic in the most extreme sense because it calls for an end to all debating, questioning, and thinking.
There is one and only one reasonable argument about why Springsteen’s music and politics could possibly be construed as anti-American: an interesting interpretation of the cover of ‘Born in the USA’ that holds that Springsteen is urinating.
Argument 2 – Springsteen defines liberal politics, and that is bad
His second argument is that Bruce control’s the political left, and that he is an artist, not somebody who should be shaping political views on such a scale. He says that Springsteen “defines how the far left sees this country.”
I think many people, including both reasonable liberals and reasonable conservatives (and probably extremists as well, like O’Reilly) hold that view that artists are not political scholars, and should not be defining America’s political beliefs. At the very least, many people find the politics of some artists to be naïve, uninformed, and idealistic.
Of course, Springsteen has many listeners. But he is not telling people how to vote on every issue. Springsteen is not laying down proposals for how to reform social security, negotiate a settlement in the Middle East, or alter the economy.
True, he is very political. But other than endorsing Senator Kerry and President Obama, Springsteen has largely stayed out of the details of specific policy proposals. Instead Springsteen sings about broader themes and ideas; themes and ideas that might frame how people think and prioritize issues.
The number of people who vote for a candidate simply because Springsteen told them to is very small (I’m skeptical any evidence exists that a politically significant number of undecideds changed their mind because of Springsteen). Rather than effecting specific political opinions, Springsteen is more likely to influence broader political outlooks. Maybe people will be sympathetic to the interests of minorities and the disempowered (“nobody wins unless everybody wins”). Springsteen might affect the general lens through which people evaluate policymaking because that is what he sings about (unlike specific policy proposals).
On THOSE issues, Springsteen IS qualified. He may be unqualified to evaluate statistical models predicting the outcome of economic policy, but he is qualified to shape how people generally feel and think about issues such as everyday struggle, hardship, redemption, and relationships (and these ideas certainly influence how people view many political issues).
These criticisms of Springsteen are analogous to the political criticisms people made of the Beatles and John Lennon. It is argued, if congress listened to John Lennon, we’d have anarchy.
But Springsteen (like most musical artists) are not congress-people, policymakers, or policy advisors. That’s not their job. Other people do that. Springsteen is an expert in the field of human relationships and redemption, just as a labor economist is an expert in the field of labor policy. Political opinions of the general public are the sum of many different beliefs informed by many different voices. And just as people need to know what policies will have what effects, they also need to know how to prioritize and how to evaluate what’s good and bad, and wrong and right.
The world of political discourse is saturated with arguments about what politics can do for people’s individual needs. “This foreign policy will threaten your security.” “This economic policy will enhance your bank account.” Voices of John Lennon and Bruce Springsteen are not voices that are overheard. John Lennon and the Beatles helped promote themes such as love. And Bruce Springsteen sings about many different themes and ideas that the general public may tend to forget, even though they are also important.
Springsteen doesn’t pretend to be a political expert about every issue. He is honest with his audience, and he sings about what he knows and believes. And in those areas, he is certainly qualified to share his feelings with the general public.
When I think about Springsteen's career, I generally consider his early years to be Greetings through Born in the USA, and his later era begins with Tunnel of Love.
This year, Springsteen played 1,148 songs from the early era and 442 songs from the recent era.*
Almost 3/4 of his songs at concerts this year were from the early years.
I certainly think this distribution is justified (and possibly even too heavily weighted toward recent stuff) from the standpoint of basing his song selection purely on what his best songs are (not necessarily what's new or what he should be promoting).
I'm pretty sure most people prefer the early years, but do you think the early era is 2.6 times better than the recent era (that's the proportion reflected in his song selections this year)?
Check out the poll on the right hand side of the page - if you think the early years were greater than 2.6 times better than the later years, choose the first option. Otherwise, choose something else!
It was when I really got into Tracks that I noticed just how much Springsteen likes re-using certains phrases and lyrics in his songs (although it's definitely less common on album-songs). There's many examples ("find out what I got" in Badlands and Iceman, "some stupid half trance" in Bring on the Night and My Love Will Not Let you Down), but the purpose of this post is not to list every such example.
I find the lyric "The highway is alive tonight" particularly fascinating. It shows up in both Seaside Bar Song (an unreleased song from WIESS that is on Tracks) and The Ghost of Tom Joad. Here are parts of both songs where the lyric appears:
Seaside Bar Song
The highway is alive tonight so baby do not be frightened
There's something about a pretty girl on a sweet summer night
That gets this boy excited
The Ghost of Tom Joad
The highway is alive tonight
But nobody's kiddin' nobody about where it goes
I'm sittin' down here in the campfire light
Searchin' for the ghost of Tom Joad
These two songs were written decades apart (Seaside Bar Song in the early 70s and the Ghost of Tom Joad in the mid 90s). Stylistically, these two songs are dramatically different (and incidentally, are just one of the countless examples that counter the frequently made, annoying and terrible argument that "all Springsteen songs sound the same"). Thematically, they differ quite obviously as well.
Seaside Bar Song is a good example of a typical early Springsteen song - fun, upbeat, full of energy, and similar (in its youthful theme) to songs like 4th of July, Asbury Park and some of his earlier love songs like Rosalita (or Thundercrack, if you can call that a love song!...)
The Ghost of Tom Joad is obviously much more "serious" (for those unfamiliar with the song or 10th grade reading, its about John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath). It's an ode to hardship and struggling, and especially somber, even for Springsteen. Early-mid Springsteen songs often had a dark context or story, there was often hope of redemption and escaping the sadness. In The Ghost of Tom Joad, there's no hope or possibility of "pulling out of here to win," even temporarily.
Seaside Bar Song lacks the darkness of most Springsteen songs (although many of the very early Springsteen songs lacked that darkness and were simply fun, energetic, and even silly). Especially in Born to Run, Darkness on the Edge of Town, and onward, the highway, cars, and other similar devices were symbolic for the ability to escape from dark circumstances and were reminders of the possibilty of redemption, no matter how bleak the situation was.
The re-use of the lyric "The Highway is Alive Tonight" in Ghost of Tom Joad is especially depressing precisely for this reason. Early Springsteen greeted the 'living highway' with excitment and antici....pation! Perhaps, a contemplative and pessimestic Springsteen in the 1990s became frustrated with just how optimistic "The Highway is Alive Tonight" sounded. That would explain why in The Ghost of Tom Joad, "nobody's kiddin' nobody about where it goes." And that is why the song takes on an especially dark meaning, and becomes so powerful when considered in the context of Springsteen's decade-long career.
I am by no means claiming that The Ghost of Tom Joad is simply a depressing and sad depiction of reality and hardship. The song is better interpreted as honoring struggle and hardship. However, what is dark and depressing is Springsteens rejection of the optimistism in proclaiming "The Highway is Alive Tonight!" Of course, there is a reality of hardship in the world and there is artistic and practical value in representing that hardship. What's dissapointing is that the situation is so bleak that (unlike for the characters in songs like Reason to Believe, arguably) Springsteen finds it necessary, after declaring "The Highway is Alive Tonight", to clarify that it's really not and we all know it.
*Lyrics taken from Springsteen's website's Search the Lyrics feature.
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