I started writing this on Saturday
morning, but it has been an eventful weekend, and I’m only now finishing it
off. Saturday night I went to a
Christmas party where I had a great time, but sprained my thumb attempting to
do a Russian dance during Boney M’s “Rasputin” (note to self – you are not 25
years old anymore). I guess it was only
fitting given that experience that I review an old album that reminds you of
being young.
Disc 574 is…. Born to Run
Artist: Bruce
Springsteen
Year of Release: 1975
What’s up with the Cover? Bruce, looking cool with his guitar. Also, some other dude’s back. I have no idea who, although I’m sure this
cover is famous enough that someone has researched it. Go ahead and Google it – I’ll wait…
How I Came To Know It: Welcome back! I can’t remember exactly how I came to
this album. Either Sheila bought it or
it was me drilling through Bruce’s collection.
Either way, it’s not much of a story, so let’s move on to the next
category.
How It Stacks Up: We have ten Bruce Springsteen albums. I like all of them in different ways, but
despite “Born to Run’s” reputation, I have to put it further down than
most. I’ll say it is sixth best, just
ahead of “Greetings from Asbury Park” (reviewed at Disc 506). If you think it should be higher, then go
ahead and gripe, gripers, but it is my blog, so it’s my order.
Rating: 4 stars
For many, “Born to Run” is
Springsteen’s greatest album. I like a lot of his other work more, but it
definitely has some great moments.
The record has a common theme of
being young and restless in a nowhere town that is so cohesive it borders on
being a concept album. For Springsteen, spiritual survival in those
circumstances translates into a desire to get out of town as soon as
possible. If you can’t get out, then you
want to find some release – girls, booze, or minor adventure – that help the
days go by quickly, and the night to give you some form of release.
I am from just such a blue collar
town, and I think that Bruce Springsteen will always resonate deep inside of me
because of it. “Born to Run” does a good
job of dragging all that up when I listen to it. It isn’t the masterpiece that “Darkness at
the Edge of Town” is, but I’ll give it credit for creating some of the same tone.
The first song, “Thunder Road” is a classic rock song of
rebellion. It starts off slow with piano
and harmonica, the measured tempo reminiscent of the walk down the graduation
aisle that the song’s protagonist sees represented as driving out of town and
never heading back. The song is light on
plans and heavy on hope, where leaving home might be the only thing left to give
him and his girl a chance.
“Thunder Road” builds beautifully, and the music has a feel that
lets you feel the speed of the car that will take the two young lovers out of
town, and even more so, the urgent need to go.
I know exactly how that feels, but if you’ve never felt the need to be
somewhere else this badly, listen to the song and you’ll know exactly what it
is like.
The next track, “Tenth Avenue Freeze Out,” doesn’t hold
up the same emotional resonance but I like the change of pace, discussing what
it is like living alone in the city.
That’s right, sometimes you leave town with a girl, but end up on your
own. Don’t be upset about it – at least
you both got to where it was you were going, even if it wasn’t the same place.
Midway through the record,
following more songs about desperate love and hard-working day jobs, we come to
the title track, a song filled with the joy of the muscle car. “Born
to Run” is rife with powerful images of the powerful machines that still
give me a thrill when I see them. This
is the land of the Dodge Charger, the Chevy Camaro and the Pontiac GTO. I love those cars, and it is easy to love
this song, as Springsteen sings:
“In the day we seat it out in the streets
of a runaway American dream
At night we ride through the mansions of
glory in suicide machines
Sprung from the cages out on Highway 9
Chrome wheeled, fuel injected
And steppin’ out over the line
Baby this town rips the bones from your back
It’s a death trap, it’s a suicide rap
We gotta get out when we’re young
‘Cause tramps like us, baby we were born to run.”
The song races like the cars in
it, and feels like it will crash as it climbs up the scale, before it is perfectly
rescued by a Clarence Clemons saxophone solo that grounds everything
again. “Born to Run” is a song about racing, and it is a song about love,
but more than anything it is a song about people with little to look forward to
finding a way to make life have meaning, through the very act at driving unsafe
vehicles and unsafe speeds just to approach the edge of the line where they finally
feel alive.
“Meeting Across the River” is the one song that I don’t love. It feels a bit too jazzy, and has a style
that feels like a Tom Waits song gone slightly wrong. Leave boozy lounge
singing to the master, Bruce.
The album ends with “Jungleland,” another classic song about both
coming of age and escaping youth (similar, but different things, trust me). The song is over nine minutes long, but it
never drags. Best line:
“Barefoot girl sitting on the hood of a Dodge
Drinking warm beer in the soft summer rain.”
“Jungleland” sums up the whole album. It manages to be about humble beginnings and
also the promise of a new adult life, in a place that is both grander than
where we start, and in many ways disappointingly the same. There’s the ubiquitous car racing, rock and
roll, desperate love being made in the shadows, and someone even gets shot (or
at least his dreams are gunned down); proof that not all adventures end like we’d
like them to.
Listening to “Jungleland”, I wasn’t sure if our “Thunder Road” hero at the beginning of the album had actually
gotten out of town, or just realized that town was a lot bigger and full of
adventure than he’d realized. At the end
of the day, it doesn’t matter – our jungles will always be part of us, whether
we drive as fast as we can away from them or just settle down and offer that
barefoot girl a cold beer and the promise of a tender night.
I came into this review expecting
a three star experience, but for making me appreciate the taste of warm beer in
my mouth, and reminding me how great the wind feels in your hair the first day you
truly drive somewhere, I give “Born to Run” the full four.
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