Waving to the Girls, Feeling out of Sight: Born in the USA (1984)

Tonight, the one and only:

(1984) Plus:

"Pink Cadillac," B-side to "Dancing with the Dark"

Bryan: I've described elsewhere and at length how growing up in Germany during the 80s influenced to no small degree what American pop culture - particularly MTV - filtered into my consciousness. Anything that was huge on MTV in the early-to-mid-80s in America (Thriller, Purple Rain, Pyromania, Like a Virgin, etc.) was even huger on Rhein Main AFB because there was delayed access and awareness. Like a colonial complex in reverse, if it was big in the states, it was cool to be into these things faster than the next guy. I was highly motivated, therefore, to love Born in the USA, although it was outside of my other ten-year-old listening (i.e. my older brother's metal records). But - like millions of people around the world - I ended up connecting with the album to such a degree that I developed Bruce-mania.

The album cover was essential room decoration for any film or TV from this era. (My Science Project, 1985.)

I didn't rush out and get the back catalog until years later - I was only ten and my allowance only stretched so far - but from this point on the Bruce and the E Street gestalt was something I personally identified with. Let's revisit - how does it hold up thirty-three years down the road? My co-pilot as always is Bryant. Hello Bryant! So you’ve mentioned not being a Springsteen fan until college. As someone my age who did not contact Bruce-mania in '84, how did its MTV and radio ubiquity strike you at the time?

Bryant: Well, I dug the songs I heard from it, like a lot of music from that era. Like, the first albums I ever bought with my own money - this was while visiting my grandparents in San Antonio during the summer of 1984 - were Purple Rain, An Innocent Man, and... the soundtrack to The Muppets Take Manhattan. That being the case, I think just about anything regarding my taste in music is extraordinarily suspect until at least college. 

In all seriousness, though, I don't know that I was aware how big a star Springsteen was. I knew who he was, obviously; I was aware of Tunnel of Love being a big deal as a follow-up to a bigger deal. I knew some of his previous stuff ("Born to Run," "Hungry Heart," "Rosalita"). But I honestly don't remember having a sense that he was one of the decade's defining artists. And given that I watched MTV incessantly, this strikes me as odd. This is true of much of my recollections of my childhood, though; imagine me having my head turned slightly to the side and up, a bit of a frown on my mouth, a Spockian eyebrow lift hanging over it all. "Dude," I'm implying to my younger self, "what the hell?"

Bryan: I have this same time tunnel moment with myself on many occasions. Well, my friend, it's time to make the donuts. But before we get to the album itself, let's discuss "Pink Cadillac," the aforementioned b-side from which the title of this post is derived.

Bryant: 3.5/5 Wikipedia informs me this got enough airplay of its own accord that it got to #27 in the charts. Later, of course, Natalie Cole had a top-ten hit with a cover. That version is butt. This one rules. 

Bryan: 5/5 I have always just unreasonably loved this song - and another tune I wish Bruce could have time-traveled to early 60s Elvis to make a movie around – but now I have a new one: I was changing Lauren's diaper and this started and man she started grooving immediately. (Making the diaper-changing harder than it had to be). The reaction was so instant, strong, and natural that I cracked up. She really likes that one. Like father, like daughter.

Bryant: I don't think your "Pink Cadillac" love is unreasonable in the slightest. If you didn't love it, now THAT would be unreasonable. I like how Bruce says “whyvin’ to the girls.

Bryan: That "whyvin'" business is great, I agree, and I kind of wish he'd sang it that way each time it came round instead of just the once. (Also, why stop there? Could've even went to "goyls" instead of "girls" etc.) I wish I could pull off my own pronunciations of things the way Springsteen, Texans, and hip-hoppers do. And Boomhauer.) A great deal of my Bruce fandom is wrapped up in Born in the USA (and the Live set we'll be doing next) but all mixed up in that is "Crrrushed velvet seats".

"Rock and roll is a fetishist's dream. The physical totems, the jackets or the shoes, they hold such unusual power on the imagination. There's a spirit power to it." - Bruce, some interview. (David Lynch would agree, on too many levels to hyperlink.)

We talked elsewhere of Bruce's "almost" lifts from other tunes. The riff from "Peter Gunn" - which I knew only as the Spy Hunter music at the time - gets a bit of a re-arrangement here. When Clarence comes in with the sax, it really drives it home. No one's complaining or saying "Pink Cadillac" is a rip off or anything, just hey, musicians lift, just like filmmakers or anyone else, and then put their own spin on it.

"Born in the USA"

Bryant: 5/5  There have been times in my Springsteen fandom when I wasn't all that enamored by this one, but those days seem to be gone for good. The synthesizer still bothers me just a little; it's SO eighties. And not -- at least up to this point in the discography -- particularly Springsteen-y. But the shallowness and vapidity of that instrument as it is used here serves as an ironic underlining of the shallowness and vapidity of unquestioningly blind patriotism, so it works. I leave it to you to decide if I'm serious about that. Either way, the song is a classic, and still packs a wallop.

Bryan: 5/5 It took me a long time to come around to loving this one, too, or embracing it as a statement/ appreciating it as the classic it is. As for the keyboard, I guess Bruce was going for something just-evocative-of-Southeast-Asia enough, and when he heard Danny (or Roy - probably Roy) playing it that way he made him stop and do it over and over again. 

Bryant: It's weird. I spent a long time simultaneously liking and disliking it. I don't know of many songs I feel that way about. You ever heard the acoustic version? If not, boy are you in for a treat.

Bryan: I think I have but not in a long time. (Twenty-five minutes later, heroically pulling himself out of a Youtube landslide) Oh! Yeah that is awesome. Jaysus. There are some wild live variations out there, but that version is a legit peek into a whole alternate universe. 

"Cover Me"

Bryan: 4.75/5 Nils Lofgren is put to immediate good use after joining the band.

Bryant: 4.5/5  Ah, man ... I'm tempted to equal your score on this one. I'm going to restrain myself for some reason I don't currently understand. But yeah, obviously, this one is a corker.

“Darlington County”

Bryan: 4.8/5 I suppose you could quibble about its similarity to "Cadillac Ranch," if you wanted (to be a jerk).

Bryant: 4.5/5 If it were necessary to pit this and "Cadillac Ranch" in a cage match, I'd go with "Cadillac Ranch." But I'd try to talk them out of getting in the ring, because I love them both and don't want to see them hurt each other. 

“Working on the Highway”

Bryan: 5/5 It almost feels like everyone is holding onto a working jackhammer on this one, like the vocals and instrumentation are all vibrating to the rhythm of the work crew.

Bryant: 4.25/5 I used to not like this one much at all. I don't know what was wrong with me. I don't rank it as highly as you do, but I do indeed love it. 

Bryan: I only wish someone could time travel this song back to the era of Elvis movies and written it as a whole vehicle for him.

Bryant: Oh, man, IF ONLY there could have been an Elvis version. There are lots of reasons to wish Elvis could have kept right on living, but the thought of the collaborations he might have had with people like Springsteen is a powerfully sad thought. RIP, King! I'm not sure I'd ever paid close enough attention to the lyrics prior to this listen to notice that the whole song is from the point of view of a guy on a prison work crew.

Bryan: See, it could be the sequel to Jailhouse Rock. (Or does Elvis get out at the end of that one? I’ve never actually seen it. I’m sure he does. Ah well, he could be re-incarcerated and put on the highway crew.)

“Downbound Train”

Bryant: 4.5/5  You know, when I think about this album divorced from a recent listen to it, I tend to think of it as being a collection of four or five huge hits and then a bunch of filler. And boy howdy is it not that. This is a GREAT song. You can hear Tunnel of Love getting ready to happen, but you can also imagine it being recast in a Nebraska guise. Fascinating!

Bryan: (5.5/5) That’s an excellent point of this being a blend of what came before and after it. Incidentally, the ex I bring up from time to time who hated Bruce - she loved Soul Asylum. She even compared this tune to Soul Asylum's "Runaway Train" - like, to point out the "superior" latter version. Not just because they have “train” in the title, presumably, on account of their covering the same conceptual ground. It stuns me in retrospect she could take her own musical opinion seriously with such an opinion as this. I’m reminded of that great anecdote about Zelda Fitzgerald relayed in Hemingway's A Movable Feast, when she turned to Hemingway at a dinner party and said "Don't you think Al Jolson is better than Jesus?" ("That's when I realized she was insane. She watched me like a hawk after that. And hawks don't share." I'm paraphrasing, but I think that's the succession of sentences.) Sure, I’m casting myself as Hemingway in this scenario, but so be it. I wish I could time travel to the moment back in 1992 or so when she was telling me she hated Springsteen but loved Soul Asylum, see myself nodding along, then stroll up and hit my young self upside the head and deliver that “hawks” line. Would’ve freed up a whole bunch of time. I like that we both have Bruce-related time travel we want to do to admonish our younger selves. But, as any TNG fan knows, you can’t outrun the Nausicaans. 

“I’m on Fire"

Bryan: 7/5 I mean what can you say? Like Johnny Cash filtered through a Miami Vice montage, but so much more than that.

Bryant: 6/5  I wish it was twice as long, if not longer ... but at the same time, I'm glad it's so brief. Something about that brevity feels right. One of Larry Underwood's very best music videos, too! 

Bryan: In case this chapeau-worthy remark puzzles any readers, Stephen King's character from The Stand was inspired by Bruce Springsteen.

Bryan: It’s like the art movie version of Billy Joel’s “Uptown Girl,” that video. (Like each of the music videos except "Dancing in the Dark," which was directed by DePalma, this was directed by John Sayles.) 

“No Surrender”

Bryan: 5.5/5 Great side 2 opener. I love this damn track. 

Bryant: 5/5 One of his very best rockers.  I don't have much to say about it, other than to click my heels together and snap a salute at it.

Bryan: In a pivotal summer between 5th and 6th grade I somehow got the responsibility of coming up with things for me and the guys I rode bikes with to do. I promptly renamed our group ("The Metallic Fire Force"), came up with a comic book origin issue for us (can't remember if this was ever completed or if it was just begun by me and one of these guys who was a good artist), dubbed several of our spots around town new names ("Skylab" for this one big-ass tree with low thick branches that we could climb, several others I can't remember), and re-organized the games we'd play from wiffleball to Tag into new things with new and over-complicated rules. I mention all of this because whenever I hear "No Surrender" I think of all these things and how seriously I took the role. I somehow transposed my own summer on this slice of E Street mythmaking/ autobiography and the disparity between the situations makes me love it all even more. Anyway! It's a great song for a hundred reasons; this is only one very individual one.

Bryant: Which makes it no less valid, of course. "The Metallic Fire Force" is in need of an actual comic-book series, I think. 

“Bobby Jean”

Bryan: 4.75/5 I had trouble believing this was about Steve Van Zandt and his departure from the band, but after the idea sat with me awhile, now it makes total sense.

Bryant: 4.75/5  I always assumed it was about he and Steve. I could say the same about "Darlington County," too. Autobiographical readings like that are always tempting, and probably a bit facile. But either way, it's a hell of a song on an album full of hell-of-a-song songs.

Bryan: Agreed. I always make a pained, dramatic face when I sing along to “we like the same clo-oh-oh-thes.” 

“I’m Goin’ Down”

Bryan: 5/5 This was the only song on the album I didn’t like (relatively) as a kid and I did a pretty funny impersonation of it. Funny for 11 or 12, I mean, just me singing this in a bad country drawl, particularly the "ba chok a wakka wakka" stuff at the end. Now, tho, I love it, sincerely - for starters, the sort of country-voice Bruce intermittently worked at in all previous records is basically a thing of perfection here. He found it and it never leaves his sight again. That slight reverb on it, too, is perfect. I'm listening to this again for the 4th or 5th time this week. I just love it.

Bryant: 5/5  In my case, I always thought this one was great. Was it a single? It must have been; I knew it from the radio, and loved it. 

Bryan: It was. I remember reading that Def Leppard's Hysteria was built on the "Thriller/ Purple Rain model," i.e. where any song could be a single. They could just have easily have said the Born in the USA model. Though hell, you've got four of my favorite albums in one paragraph, so it's a model I love regardless of how you slice it. This is how you get the Bryan McMillan vote!

Bryant: Here's another one that could very easily have been a Nebraska-style rocker.

Bryan: Am I crazy or is this one of those 7/5 songs hiding in plain sight? It's kinda perfect. I searched through a bunch of youtube live ones. This one's perfectly cool but a little slowed down \ beer tent version. Here's a contemporaneous version of it - fun for the crowd noise and PG-rated Paul Stanley-ing with the audience, mixed with John Travolta - but some blistering stuff after all that. But the studio version is so crazily perfect. Ok, maybe not 7/5, but we both gave it a 5/5. I think maybe there's something here bespeaks further study.

Bryant: I think the only reason it isn't better known is that it got overshadowed by some of the other huge hits from that album. It's a hell of a tune by any standard I'd care to pay attention to. That 2013 version is good; I don't know why Nils would think it was a good idea to wear that hat he's wearing, but I guess these things happen with aging rockers. The '85 one, obviously, is great. Bruce has that crowd eating out of the palm of his dadgum hand.

“Glory Days”

Bryant: 5/5  I just last night got around to seeing Cars 3 finally, and there's a cover version of it performed by a band in an honky-tonk for old-timey racers. Pretty good movie. GREAT song. (The original, not the cover, which is inadequate, as all covers of this song are perpetually doomed to be.)

Bryan: 7/5 I mean what can you say? This is the video that forever cemented my image of Bruce and the gang. A diverse set of faces and folks, led by their hero, who they look at adoringly throughout and who's rocking the hell out of this little bar. I love the glimpses of his home life, and his feeling the orange in his palm while eating lunch at work and thinking back - all of it. It's just such a positive thing to me - I forever see and feel it through the eyes of being ten, looking forward (sort of) to looking back on the glory days passed me by. He makes it sound simultaneously like something to celebrate as well as mourn. The name of the game is to find where you are be happy right there, even when time slips away and leaves you with nothing, mister, but boring stories of...

This is also when Patti joined up with the band. Something that will have major repercussions down the line, but we'll save all that for Tunnel of Love.

I've been singing this and "Hungry Heart" around the house so much lately I'm worried Dawn's going to get the wrong idea. (Update: she tells me nope, just stop singing "Pink Cadillac" all the time. NO DEAL!)

“Dancing in the Dark”

Bryan: 7/5 I mean, it's not fair to all the other albums. By Bruce or anyone. It's like he was holding it all in reserve until he had the world's attention and then wham: here are all these classics that will forever change your life.

Bryant: 6/5  I apologize for dipping into crassness, but a female friend of mine once informed me that -- and I apologize for this, but I think it's essential -- if she ever had need of, uhm, becoming spontaneously moisturized, all it would take was watching this video. Or any Bruce video from the era, really, but this one was a clincher. And I mean, god dang, what can you do when hearing that except bow before the might of 1984-era Bruce Springsteen? All that sort of thing put to the side, this is just a great song. I guess some Bruce fans find it cheesy, but it's similar to "Hungry Heart" in that it's a powerfully sad song disguised as an uptempo rocker. Or a popper in this case, I case. (I will avoid the obvious joke there.)  And since I have no problem with pop, none of this bothers me. There's nothing inherently more worthy about rock than pop, so why should it make me grit my teeth for Springsteen to have cannonballed right into the deep end of that pool? I'd have to be a weirdo to think that. I have said it before and will say it again: give me a song as great as this, and the genre matters to me not in the slightest.

Bryan: Couldn't agree more and well-put. I can't comment as to the effect of Bruce's early 80s videos on the female anatomy, but I'll take your friend's word for it. At least for her. I don't know if it'd work for everyone. Thankfully! Because that'd have been a huge mess.

Bryant: Yes, the ravages of that would have made the melting of the polar ice caps look like a Care Bears episode.

“My Hometown”

Bryan: Like everything else on the album, definitive Americana, definitive Springsteen. I can safely say after a few dozen listens to this over the past few months, I’m kind of all set with it for awhile. But I scored this prior to that feeling. This is that “how the world looks to Sad Bruce” tunes. I can say from personal experience that driving back through one’s hometown after being gone for years is the precise opposite feeling to driving into NYC with the “Theme from New York New York” playing.

Bryant: 4/5 Is it even possible that this is my least-favorite song on this album?!? Yeah, I guess so. It's good, though, and from it, I will draw my proposed title for this post - "Son, take a good look around." (Bryant: This was the original title of the post - and it's a good one - but as you can see, we went in a slightly different direction.)

FINAL THOUGHTS

Bryan: Total 65.25 Avg 5.44 My favorite so far, and it's tough seeing anything outscore it. I could probably last quite a few years in the wilderness if I had only Born in the USA for company (and okay, maybe Invisible Touch, and Sabbath Bloody Sabbath) without losing it.

Bryant: 58.5 total, 4.88 average So not quite as high as you, but still high enough to vault this straight into the first-place spot. I'm surprised by that; all along, I kind of expected it would be Nebraska, with this one coming in at maybe four or five. But after a fresh listen, I think it's 100% the correct choice. It's an intimidatingly great collection of songs.

Bryan: Before we go, let's discuss a couple of quotes. The first, lengthier one is from this 2005 article from the New York Times:

“John Lennon sang that a working-class hero was something to be. In England, maybe, but in this country, where money and mobility tend to dissolve and to mystify social divisions, a working-class hero may be a contradiction in terms. And so Springsteen, the son of a bus driver and a legal secretary, occasionally encounters suspicion when, from his current position as an unimaginably rich and successful rock star, he speaks up for, and in the voices of, the marginal and the downtrodden. His preacherly demeanor solicits accusations of bad faith, while his forays into political activism (including his mini-tour in support of John Kerry near the end of last year's presidential campaign) can be caricatured as the well-meaning sentiments of yet another wealthy show-business liberal. Springsteen's sincerity can also rankle those who prefer their pop culture affectless and ironical, or who are more attuned to the clever manipulation of sampled bric-a-brac than to the struggle for mastery over historical influences.

In a recent article in Slate, Stephen Metcalf made the provocatively revisionist claim that the real Bruce was neither the singer of quiet, Guthriesque ballads nor the purveyor of grand, operatic anthems, but rather the scruffy, mischievous New Jersey boardwalk habitué -- "a scrawny little dirtbag from the shore" -- who composed the verbose, playful, musically adventuresome shaggy-dog tales of his first two albums, Greetings From Asbury Park, N.J. and The Wild, the Innocent, and the E Street Shuffle. In Metcalf's account, it was the rock critic Jon Landau, author of the most famous line of rock-critic prophecy ("I saw rock 'n' roll future and its name is Bruce Springsteen") and after that Springsteen's producer and mentor, who transformed the charming beach bum into a self-conscious man of the people and, consequently, into a darling of the intellectuals. For Metcalf, at the same time that Landau "intellectualized Bruce, he anti-intellectualized him," minting a familiar, durable persona that turns out to be "Jon Landau's middle-class fantasy of white, working-class authenticity," and the basis of what is "in essence, a white minstrel act."

Strong words. But authenticity is a peculiar criterion to apply to a rock musician, since American popular music since the 1950's has provided fertile ground for self-invention, contradiction and cross-pollination. The personas of the great popular musicians of the rock era -- from Elvis to Prince, from Bob Dylan to Madonna -- are hardly organic products of native soil. There are no pure products of America. Which is not to endorse Metcalf's cynical view of Springsteen's imaginative project of the past three decades, but rather to suggest that the idea of authenticity needs to be applied somewhat differently. Not to Springsteen's persona -- which I would argue even the most passionate and literal-minded fan understands to be, to some degree, an artifact, an act -- but rather to the experience of witnessing and participating in a Springsteen performance, and also to the musical, lyrical and conceptual integrity of the songs themselves.”

Bryan: I think critics like Metcalf bring up some interesting things, but this sort of endless Marxist interpretation – particularly in art and media criticism – is such a blunt instrument, and it shatters (or attempts to shatter) too many things. I think the NYT writer gets it right here: within the discussion of purity in rock and roll, or whatever, are the more immediately relevant – and concrete – elements he describes

Bryant: This sort of stuff fascinates me. The essence of what we’re now talking about, I think (and steer me back on course if I’ve swerved onto the shoulder), is the question “Who is Bruce Springsteen?” Is he a workingman’s-spirit rocker or a dust-bowl-come-again troubadour? Is he a ghost haunting the boardwalk or a greaseball hot-rodder? Is he a war protester or a coal miner? I think it’s a mistake to think there can ever be a definitive answer to these questions. Why can’t be all of those things? He’s an artist, he’s a storyteller, he’s a man who’s made his life and living by taking on different guises that, at whatever given moment, add up to what we think of as “Bruce Springsteen.” I’m sure it means a very different thing to Bruce than it means to me; a different thing still to Patti, or Steve, or Max, or Jon Landau, or Chris Christie, or the guy selling hot dogs at one of his shows, or the guy scalping tickets to it. “Bruce Springsteen” is all of those things, and probably none of those things.  This has been Deep Thoughts, with Jack Handey.

Bryan: Amen - unsurprisingly, you have put into perfect words what I didn't quite realize was exactly how I too feel on the subject. As Bruce does himself, on many occasions. I'm in good company! And to further that good company, here's the second quote, from the Peter Ames Carlin book: 

"While Bruce's sensibility flowed largely from New Deal liberalism, his working-class idealism came with bedrock principles on the virtues of work, family, faith, and community. None of which would be considered partisan had the collapse of American liberalism in the late 70s and 80s not included a large-scale redefinition of mainstream values as being conservative. That Bruce neither accepted nor acknowledged the politicization of traditional values could be seen in his own work ethic and the symbolic communities he formed with the E Street Band and the fans who bought his records and attended his shows. And even when his songs decried ruling class greed and the fraying of the social safety net, they still came bristling with flags, work, veterans, faith, and the rock-solid foundation of home and family. 'He's got a Democratic ideology, a Republican vocabulary, and a Populist delivery system.'"

Bryan: When I read this I had a Keanu “I know kung-fu” moment. Wow – that really articulates something I’ve been trying to say not just about Bruce but about politics (my own in particular) for years. It’s a very clearly expressed birds-eye view of what has animated so much of the man’s work.

Bryant: That quote is fantastic. I mean, that's one way to build a superstar, isn't it? Not too shabby a template at all.

PERSONNEL

Bruce Springsteen – lead vocals, lead guitar, acoustic guitar

Roy Bittan – piano, synthesizer, background vocals

Clarence Clemons – saxophone, percussion, background vocals

Danny Federici – organ, glockenspiel, piano on "Born in the U.S.A."

Garry Tallent – bass guitar, background vocals

Steven Van Zandt – acoustic guitar, mandolin, harmony vocals

Max Weinberg – drums, background vocals

A bit earlier than '84, but it came up when searching "Garry Tallent 1984" so blame internet.

See you next week for a triple-sized post on Live '75 - '85.

Pokin' That Dog With A Stick: Nebraska (1982)

Tonight!

(1982) Darkness on the Edge of Bruce.

Bryan: Here's Bruce's first solo record, released 35 years ago today. (Not that we planned that timing!) It didn't start out that way - Bruce intended the tunes he recorded at home (on a newly purchased and state-of-the-art-of-home-recording-in-the-early-80s Tascam Teak s144 4 track) to be fleshed out by the E Street Band as per normal, but as Bruce wrote in his 1998 book Songs: "I went into the studio, brought in the band, rerecorded, remixed, and succeeded in making the whole thing worse." He tossed the "spooky acoustic demos" cassette to Toby Scott and said "Maybe we should just use these."

Bruce's decision was based mainly on the inability of the studio to reproduce the "sunken beatbox sound" of the home recording, which came from when the Panasonic boom box he'd used as a mix down deck fell into the river and later came back to life, but the demos now sounded... well, muddier. It was, in Bruce's mind, the key component to the album's sound.
 
And it's tough to argue with that decision, given the results. (Hell, Asbury Park sounds much closer to "muddy" in my own estimation than Nebraska.) With me again is the only other man to make the Kessel run in less than twelve parsecs, Mr. Bryant Burnette. Bryant!

Bryant: The hour: six-and-a-half. The man: writing about Bruce Springsteen. The location: Needstogotobedsville, USA, right outside of Sleepwhendeadsburg. Oddly enough, I feel in a river, but have come back alive so I could … uh, make spooky blog-post comments? Nah, that really doesn’t work, does it? Well, anyways, regardless of all that, the point where we are chronologically feels to me like about the right time for Springsteen to try something different. A solo album from him at this time certainly qualified as different. 

Bryan: Even if the E Street Band didn’t make the final cut, they recorded most of Born in the USA while trying, so hey, for that alone, probably the most productive sessions of their career, even if they didn’t make the then-current album. According to Max Weinberg, a full-on E-Street Band electric Nebraska album exists somewhere in the vault. I imagine it’s only a matter of time before the 6-album with DVDs release of it. (Maybe by the time we’re done getting through the catalog it’ll be out there.) 

Bryant: God almighty. I better start saving money now. Because I will have that.

“Nebraska”

Bryan: 5/5 I'm not the hugest fan of folk. That said, having come of age in an era where almost any stretch of Americana seen from a moving car or bus window was accompanied by this song or something almost exactly like it, I came to appreciate it (the genre) as killer (no pun intended) mood music at the very least. Occasionally some couplet or musical phrasing will make me perk up and say oh that was cool, but for the most part, I appreciate it almost exclusively as mood music. The exception is pretty much Nebraska, which hits me like some dark offspring of John Steinbeck or Jim Thompson, a murdering ghost of the Dust Bowl/ Appalachia sort of thing.

Bryant: 4.75/5 You can probably guess just from that first score that this album is doing to do quite well with me. You're not wrong. If people who were Springsteen fans at the time heard “Nebraska” and just rolled their eyes and went and bought a Jackson Browne album or something, I don’t guess I could blame them too much. I mean, let's face it: there's not much in Bruce’s catalog up to that point that prepares one for this song. “Wreck on the Highway,” sure, but that's at least got a positive message, so you can connect it to Bruce's other, sprier songs. But it's a long way from “Promised Land” to Charles Starkweather asking for Caril Fugate to sit on his lap when the electric chair is activated. No doubt about it: that takes a leap of faith on the listener's part. 

I wonder how it would have been for me if I'd been listening in 1982 when the album came out; and I don't really know for sure. All I know is that the first time I heard the album, it blew me away. I already had a solid Bob Dylan fandom under my belt, so I wasn't much challenged by guy-with-a-guitar-and-harmonica music. That helped. But it struck me then and now as quintessentially BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN (capitalized to emphasize the _________ as opposed to merely the man), due to the sheer talent and the passion for storytelling. Make me a song this great, and I don't care what style it's in. I don't care what the instruments you use (if any) are; I don't care what it's about. I'm with you, Boss.

Bryan: I know that within the country/ folk tradition there are songs galore about killers, but setting the tale of Starkweather to the “This Land Is Your Land” melody? And starting the album with it? Pretty badass. While we're here, Springsteen's famous quip about Reagan's referencing "Born in the USA" during his re-election campaign in '84 (“Which album's his favorite? I don't think it's Nebraska”) always makes me imagine Reagan (or maybe Phil Hartman as Reagan) responding with “'From the town of Lincoln, Nebraska with a sawed off .410 on my lap / Through to the badlands of Wyoming I killed everything in my path.' Yes, Mr. Springsteen, Nancy and I drop a needle on "Nebraska" whenever we want to 'get dark.'”

“Atlantic City”

Bryant: 7/5 Better than perfection. Perfection wishes it was this good.

Bryan: 5/5 I like it a little less than that, but not by much. Not my absolute favorite of his songs but arguably his most quintessential. That mandolin that comes into the mix as the song goes on is pretty sweet. Sounds ghostly, or like it's coming up from underwater somehow. What drowned river bard, its hour come round at last, slouches towards Atlantic City to be born?

“Mansion on the Hill” 

Bryant: 2.5/5 Nothing wrong with it at all, but it's one of the lesser songs on the album, in my opinion.

Bryan: 5/5 I’m surprised this one doesn’t rate higher with you! I love this one. There’s a version of this from that Nebraska cover album that came out a ways back that I’ve always liked. I have a distinct memory of my then-girlfriend's housemate at Vassar (which can accurately be described as several mansions on the hill) playing it a few times in their dorm. 

Bryant: I don't think I'd ever even heard of that Badlands album. I'll have to check it out.

Bryan: Surprisingly, I don't think Johnny Cash is at his best with “I'm on Fire”. Figured that would be a slam dunk.

“Johnny 99” 

Bryant: 4.5/5  Think a guy with a guitar that isn't even plugged in can't rock your face so hard your ear hairs fall out? Bull SHIT. Here's my proof.

Bryan: 5/5 These first 4 tunes are about as perfect an album opener as you can get. The Live 75-85 version was my first introduction to this, and I think I may like that one a tad more.

“Highway Patrolman” 

Bryant: 4.75/5 I was tempted to go the full 5 on this one. It occurs to me listening to this one that while Frankie may be no good, he -- I'm assuming, granted -- is under no pretensions that he's anything more than what he is. The narrator, on the other hand, seems to be routinely abusing his position so as to keep Frankie out of the trouble he's earned. So who's the real villain of this one?

Bryan: 4/5 I'd forgotten that Sean Penn's movie The Indian Runner was based on “Highway Patrolman.” I tried watching a little of it last night, but the circumstances of my life these days are alas mutually exclusive to watching things like The Indian Runner. That's a film best suited for a bachelor, in his 20s, with a bong, I think. Or medication. Not necessarily a dis - I'd say the same thing for Blow-Up, and that's one of my favorite films.

Bryant: I've never seen that, but I knew it was based on one of the songs from Nebraska. Of all the albums, it's that one that has generated a movie adaptation!

“State Trooper”

Bryant: 4.25/5 It's slower than “Johnny 99,” but seemingly comes from the same sort of punk-rock attitude. That barbaric yawp he unleashes toward the end is nerve-wracking. This brings up something that seems worth discussing: the production. What's he using that causes those echoes? All I know is, this album sounds like gold-covered dynamite.

Bryan: 4.5/5 I'm assuming it's a mix between that Echoplex pedal and the Panasonic boom box that drowned and came back to life: “The remnants of river muck that brought out the desolation,” as it’s put in the Carlin book.

Bryant: So in other words, this is a little bit like Cthulhu Unplugged. Okay, I can dig that.

Bryan: Here's a pretty great version from the '84 tour. I assume that's Roy or Danny doing the cool keyboard sounds. To echo one of your comments from another album, I wish it was sometimes clearer which of those two was doing what, as I hate to attribute the wrong part. Whoever it is, though, totally synched-up on this one.

“Used Cars”

Bryan: 4/5 "Now the neighbours come from near and far / As we pull up in our brand new used car / I wish he'd just hit the gas and let out a cry / And tell them all they can kiss our asses goodbye."

Bryant: 4.75/5 Oh, you can kind of imagine this getting revamped and fitting quite well on Born to Run, can't you? My mind can almost make that happen. But I don't need it; this version is great on its own.

“Open All Night”

Bryant: 4.5/5  Not quite as hard a rocker as “Cadillac Ranch,” but it's close. I wonder if he's ever done this with the band?  I bet it slays.

Bryan: 5/5 Hell yeah he has - here's a relatively recent one and here's the one from the Stand Up For Heroes benefit. (I hope I synched that up right.) Kind of a bad recording, but admirable energy from the E Street fellas. And this version with the E Street/ Pete Seeger superband is pretty sweet, too. This is kind of an odd choice for a song for Nebraska, eh? It's totally made for the big band swing version.

“My Father's House”

Bryan: 3.5/5 I mean, it’s a brilliant tune and all, but maybe it’s a bit too much after all the rest. I might’ve cut this one, actually and just got to “Reason to Believe” a little faster. But, maybe not. Probably not, actually - the album would seem incomplete without it, or any of these songs, really.

Bryant: 4.25/5 Heartbreaking. I can see how this sort of thing isn't everybody's cup of tea; I mean, if you're only into Bruce for the “Rosalita”s and “Thunder Road”s, I get it. But I feel bad for those fans; they're missing out.

“Reason to Believe”

Bryant: 5/5 That's a hell of a closer. And imagine! Not even the best song on the album! 

Bryan: 4/5 Couldn’t agree more. I scored it a little less only to keep consistency with some of my other scores, but I love this tune and I think it's the perfect ending to the record.

FINAL THOUGHTS

Bryan: 45 total 4.5 avg. It's the sort of thing that is great all on its own but even better when you consider it as the interlude between The River and Born in the USA - sort of the troubled dreams of a rest between those two mega-journeys. I hadn't listened to Nebraska this much in such a small period of time since the late 80s. If indeed I ever did cluster-listen to Nebraska back then - it wasn't my favorite when I was in my Bruce Phase One fandom. Which was not a fault of the album, just my mindset at the time: nothing country or folk could penetrate my sphere of musical appreciation. That Nebraska even got in there is thanks only to Bruce.

Bryant: 46.25 total, 4.63 average, which means that I am indeed saying this album is superior to both Born to Run and Darkness on the Edge of Town. Not by much; all three are indispensable. But if I have to pick a winner among them, here's mine.

PERSONNEL

Just Bruce – vocals, guitar, harmonica, mandolin, glockenspiel, tambourine, organ, synthesizer, production

FURTHER READING

Deliver Me From Nowhere (2005) by Tennessee Jones. I've never read it, but I'd like to: a collection of short fiction inspired by Nebraska.