Pull .38s And Kiss The Girls Goodnight: The Quest Of Understanding Bruce.

This is the first, and likely last time I'll ever write anything on Bruce Springsteen. It's nothing short of a little unfair, and a lot irresponsible of me to do so. I mean, we all have artists who we just enjoy so much that we have trouble looking at them with any objectivity. But, I'm making an exception in this case, because tomorrow is the 4th of July. And I swear to God, if anyone plays "Born In The U.S.A." at any point between now, and Sunday night, I'm going to lose my mind.

We can skip any kind of career recap, mostly because it's all to well known, and I'm not interested in insulting anyone's intelligence.

It's this writer's opinion that Bruce Springsteen is one of the greatest writers of this century. Not just songwriters....writers. His style transcends just the art of song. What makes a Springsteen song so great? He's not equipped with Dylan's wit, he's not exactly a beacon of emotional honesty within himself, like a Joni Mitchell, he rarely uses Wentz-like metaphorical wizardry... so what is it?

Overall, it's the fact that he doesn't NEED to do any of that. He's as straightforward as it gets. Who needs to analyze themselves through song, when in your mind, figuring yourself out isn't worth it? (sorry, Joni....), who needs metaphors when all you have to do to inspire thought is tell a story? (sorry, Mr. Wentz....), and lastly who needs Bob Dylan's wit, when....well, ok, I won't touch that. Springsteen in a storyteller in the greatest, most challenging sense. Because he has to find away to fit it in. To tell the best possible story, over music, from 3 to 12 minutes. He's grown stylistically, early on...in the Greetings, and The Wild, The Innocent, And The E Street Shuffle days, it was really about fitting as many characters into the song as early as possible. Look at "Incident On 57th Street", before you even get to 10 bars, you're introduced to Spanish Johnny, Those hard girls over on Easy Street, Puerto Rican Jane, and The Pimps...swinging their axes. His character development at this early stage wasn't the best, and he mainly only tackled one theme, love....and the choices made in losing it, but he did it well. He dabbled in regret as well....in "Incident", Spanish Johnny longingly looks down at the kids playing in the street, and shouts down, "Hey little heroes, summer's long, but I guess it ain't very sweet around here anymore"....Johnny realized that as he's in this fight to survive, and keep his one true love against all odds, these kids are having the time of their lives, carefree, out in the street. Maybe he's jealous, but I think he's regretting the fact that he can't feel as free, and love like these kids will one day. And we end up seeing him fail, essentially, when he chooses those Romantic Young Boys over Jane, as they sit outside of his window, asking if he wants to make some easy money that night. Sure, he says he'll meet Jane on Lover's Lane the next day, but that doesn't inspire much hope. "Incident" is like Romeo and Juliet on steroids. Shakespeare for cynics, as if dear old William wasn't cynical enough as is. Springsteen's first two albums are about communicating REAL feelings using the most heightened romantic tools. It's the Boss shrugging off literal reality of situations, just for the sake of creating something that felt more real than mundane reporting. As an aside, the best part of Wild, Innocent is that it upon it's release in September, 1973, it came without a lyric sheet, due to financial reasons. Best because it allowed it's listeners to sit back, and create their own reality through those lyrics, instead of reading along in a mundane sense. Those two albums identify most with Springsteen's Jersey roots. Fighting, clawing, loving, losing....all in continued failed efforts to get out of that Godforsaken state. All throughout his career, the environment is very Jersey inspired, and the ultimate goal is to get out. I don't know what this says about Bruce's feelings for him home State, but it's there.

Thankfully, in his next era of works, starting with of course, Born To Run, Bruce found his next theme, and the one that would prevail most prominently in his career: decency in the face of defeat. Overcoming intense unhappiness with the promise of being able to do something about it. Most of Born To Run goes for the mythic, as opposed to the actual, or specific, but that's never stopped a writer like Springsteen. He started to write more all-encompassing, hoping for community, hoping for people to back him up. He didn't sing, "I sweat it out in hopes of a runaway American dream"...he sung "WE sweat it out in hopes of a runaway American dream"...because no one should have to fight that fight alone. That line alone is fighting against itself. Sure, there's a dream, there's hope...but it's run loose, and God knows how WE'RE going to catch it. Admittedly, some of it is hilariously overblown. "Jungleland" opens with the line, 'The Rangers had a homecoming/In Harlem late last night...', now, the New York Rangers would likely not have a hockey celebration in the middle of summer. At night. In Harlem. In the 70's. This shows nothing if not the fact that Springsteen is not a hockey fan, and at that point in his life, had likely never been to Harlem. But as you get deeper into the song, you see growth. He's not shoving as many characters down your throat as he was early on. Here, the Magic Rat drives into town, and takes one last shot at love with the barefoot girl. But, hell...it's a Jungle out there (no pun, I'm not THAT bad....), and the law is after the Rat, which makes this romance thing a bit tricky, right? And he not only builds the characters, but now he builds their environment. So you can see how fucked up, but beautiful the world that they're searching for love in really is. Over there! Man, there's an opera out on the Turnpike! There! there's a ballet being fought in the alley! And these kids are wielding guitars like switchblades? hustling for the record machine?? Jungleland, when painted in that light, is not for the faint of heart (and for listeners, not for those short of appreciation of overblown drama). Of course, the greatest part of Jungleland, musically, from a composition standpoint, is that Springsteen makes you wait for the ending. You sit to find out what happened to the lonely hearted lovers that vanished in the night, as Clarence plays his infamous sax solo, only to come back to Earth to hear the terrible news that (ummm....spoiler alert? if you're one of the two people who have never heard Jungleland...) the Magic Rat was finally caught and gunned down, and by his own dreams, no less. And no one even cared, especially the barefoot girl, who doesn't even watch the ambulance pull away, but just shuts off that pesky bedroom light.

It's at the end of "Jungleland" where Springsteen , for my money, lets out his greatest written line. After the Magic Rat is carted off, and the streets go insane, with flesh fighting fantasy, a regretful sounding Bruce shouts angrily, "And man, the poets down here don't write nothin' at all. They just stand back and let it all be". This could mean a lot of things. I see it as him saying, Look! look at all of these great talents, with this great responsibility, and they're failing us!! They're failing humanity, which is a greater injustice than anything that the Magic Rat could have done to deserve his fiery fate. How great is an artist, if they're detached so violently from the world in which they live in the first place? Jungleland's so-called poets were getting a harsh reality shoved in their faces, and had the ability to deal with it, but chose not to.

Often, his themes are mocked as just girls named Mary, cars, and heartbreak. I can't see that as entirely true. The next wave of albums just conveyed the simplest aspects of life, in the most dramatic way, which I understand people getting tired of, but it still rings important. He attacked the responsibilities of growing up, and becoming a family man, It runs all through his work, the idea of finding that one person and making a life together. Look at The River....he gets Mary (oh, ha ha ha....I know...) pregnant, and for his 19th birthday, he gets a wedding ring, and a union coat, and they go down to the river, and start their lives together. In "Hungry Heart", the character, fresh off leaving his wife and kids, "takes a wrong turn, and keeps going"....before he realizes the errors of his ways. His characters, no matter what else goes on around them, always come out better than the world that tries to tear them down. And, you know what? I, like most of Bruce's purest fans, kind of despise Born In The U.S.A. the song, and the album...but really, it's mostly because of the context. If you were alive in the 70's, especially in Jersey, Bruce was YOURS....and "Born" was his "Thriller"....that turned him into EVERYONE'S, and you feel a little cheated. At it's core, the songs are the same themeatically, but the music is louder, the muscles bigger, the jeans tighter (sadly, the Band's sound was not...), and what hurt the most was the departure of Steve Van Zandt. Despite all of Springsteen's wild, grand motions, Miami Steve was always able to reel the Boss in, no matter how bad it got. Imagine how great that album could have been if Steve was there. More stripped down, probably not titled "Born In The U.S.A."....I mean, whatever. But, for what it's worth, "Glory Days" was one of the few songs that seemed to find Springsteen self examining himself for the first time, looking back with longing and regret. Essentially, "Born" could be the first time that we realized that Bruce was not an emotional robot.

The 90's were tough, because he had to find himself without his band, but he took on the challenges associated with writing from a standpoint of his own life, as opposed to building characters around this world. "Secret Garden" is a ballad. A ballad! about HIM finding love with a beautiful woman. "Murder Incorporated" is an angry story about the violent Jersey streets, opening with the lines "Bobby's got a gun that he keeps beneath his pillow/out in the streets your chances are zero" (and later has the classic Bruce line, "The only comfort that you keep is chrome plated"). "High Hopes" is a song that he wrote for his father. "Radio Nowhere"? taking vicious aim at the sad state of mainstream radio. I mean, I'm talking true, pure musical growth here. No two albums have ever been the same, even to this day, even to "Working On A Dream".
You get the sense that Springsteen was NEVER an idealist. Yeah, he's got an idealistic image of rock music, and what it CAN be....like Pete Townshend, but anything else?? His songs, while inspiring the quest to find hope, never really resolve with much. My favorite, "Atlantic City", is so fantastic because it ends just as fucked as it starts. The Chicken Man's house explodes to open the song, and you're given this image of a torn down environment, that's only getting worse. The racket boys are gearing up for a fight, there's trouble coming from out of state, the D.A. is losing his mind, and even the gambling commission has nothing left. And this guy is trying to make something pure in this impure world. The second verse explains that this character tried to put money away, but he's "Got debts that no honest man can pay", and your heart drops a bit. He's just a guy. Just a good, hard working guy, that can't afford anything to make himself, or his gal happy. So, they get out of that disaster of a town, but there's no luck anywhere else. "Everything dies, baby, and that's a fact", right? And at the end, it doesn't lift you up, it crushes you. See, this guy's been looking for a job, with no luck. And when Springsteen sings "Down here it's just winners and losers, and don't get caught on the wrong side of that line"...you know that this guy he's singing about, well he's on the wrong side. And the only way out is to do a "little favor" for this guy he meets.

And the song ends. That's it. You feel defeated and fulfilled all at once. Defeated because this guy lost, right? he lost the battle of decency in an indecent world. But, fulfilled because, well....isn't that reality? Bruce's writing has always planted itself between white rockabilly and black gospel. Between rebellion, and redemption. Who else can say that?

Happy 4th of July, Gents. Be safe, and make sure no one around you plays "Born In The U.S.A."