A Western fan, I like the Western theme. But still don't know what the song's saying. Maybe it's not saying anything.
― the pinefox, Friday, 28 May 2021 12:11 (three years ago) link
must be some good shit in that balloon
― maf you one two (maffew12), Friday, 28 May 2021 12:23 (three years ago) link
Interesting article here about Janey... and Zevon's interpretation of the shooter as the bang-bang type:https://estreetshuffle.com/index.php/2020/07/27/roll-of-the-dice-janey-needs-a-shooter/
― maf you one two (maffew12), Friday, 28 May 2021 12:33 (three years ago) link
I had no idea Priest was one of this first tuneshttps://www.cbc.ca/radio/day6/covid-19-in-long-term-care-rudy-giuliani-channels-veep-the-rise-of-parler-springsteen-s-manager-and-more-1.5800016/after-48-years-bruce-springsteen-has-finally-released-the-song-that-launched-his-career-1.5800018
― maf you one two (maffew12), Friday, 28 May 2021 12:38 (three years ago) link
Song for Orphans is the other song on the record written in the 70s. It's funny that you seized on these three. He was wordier back then.
― maf you one two (maffew12), Friday, 28 May 2021 13:08 (three years ago) link
Springsteen on NPR a few months back:
INSKEEP: In the old songs, you hear a cascade of images that may or may not be related. The wordplay caused early critics to hear the influence of one of your heroes, Bob Dylan.SPRINGSTEEN: I wrote for several years in that style.INSKEEP: Were these songs narratives and they're just so complicated I don't get the narrative? Or was it just imagery?SPRINGSTEEN: I don't get the narrative, either, so you're not alone.(LAUGHTER)SPRINGSTEEN: All I know...INSKEEP: Well, that interests me, though, because within a few years, you were telling stories with specific characters that you could relate to and events you could follow. What made you change?SPRINGSTEEN: I changed the style because of all the Dylan comparisons. Sometimes I regret not holding onto that style a little bit longer just because it was so much fun.
SPRINGSTEEN: I wrote for several years in that style.
INSKEEP: Were these songs narratives and they're just so complicated I don't get the narrative? Or was it just imagery?
SPRINGSTEEN: I don't get the narrative, either, so you're not alone.
(LAUGHTER)
SPRINGSTEEN: All I know...
INSKEEP: Well, that interests me, though, because within a few years, you were telling stories with specific characters that you could relate to and events you could follow. What made you change?
SPRINGSTEEN: I changed the style because of all the Dylan comparisons. Sometimes I regret not holding onto that style a little bit longer just because it was so much fun.
― Josh in Chicago, Friday, 28 May 2021 13:17 (three years ago) link
That interview is reassuring in that it suggests that I'm not missing anything coherent.
In 'song for orphans' he mentions a 'Confederacy' which I find interesting but puzzling.
― the pinefox, Friday, 28 May 2021 13:37 (three years ago) link
I just read that blog post on 'Janey needs a shooter'. At last, I've learned something!
― the pinefox, Friday, 28 May 2021 13:43 (three years ago) link
Read that a while back, but need a refresher
― AP Chemirocha (James Redd and the Blecchs), Friday, 28 May 2021 13:44 (three years ago) link
Janey's been seeing a lot of guys but she needs someone who really knows her well, who's a straight shooter who tells it like it is, whose peen isn't quite as large as the policeman's.
― maf you one two (maffew12), Friday, 28 May 2021 13:47 (three years ago) link
Oh you don't think he means a shooter with a gun? OK.
I don't think I have ever heard 'shooter' to mean 'straight talker', but this does make sense with the rest of the song.
― the pinefox, Friday, 28 May 2021 14:05 (three years ago) link
"straight shooter" is someone that tells it like it isthen there's shooter as in gunthen there's shooter as in needlethen there's shooter as in a shot of liquor
shooter's a pretty versatile word!
― Josh in Chicago, Friday, 28 May 2021 14:15 (three years ago) link
But I thought the actual meaning of the song was a 5th thing: a man with a gun.
― the pinefox, Friday, 28 May 2021 15:25 (three years ago) link
One thing for sure is that there are altogether too many bad boys trying to work the same Janey.
― maf you one two (maffew12), Friday, 28 May 2021 15:31 (three years ago) link
Janey needs a break.
― Josh in Chicago, Friday, 28 May 2021 15:41 (three years ago) link
Who has it worst in Springsteen songs in general: Janey, Bobby or Johnny?
― Lily Dale, Friday, 28 May 2021 23:12 (three years ago) link
Here’s a question: is Bobby Jean a boy or a girl? I always assumed a girl, but I guess that’s not definite (“we liked the same clothes”)?
― like a d4mn sociopath! (morrisp), Saturday, 29 May 2021 00:23 (three years ago) link
(I always pictured two “New Waver” kids.)
― like a d4mn sociopath! (morrisp), Saturday, 29 May 2021 00:40 (three years ago) link
Let's also bear in mind that Incident on 57th Street's character wasn't really named Jane. By that token, was Spanish Johnny really a Johnny? Was he even Spanish?
― maf you one two (maffew12), Saturday, 29 May 2021 00:42 (three years ago) link
I think of Bobby Jean more as a boy, but really I think it's more like - both? Neither? A blank wall of gender on which you can project whatever Bobby Jean you happen to be carrying around locked in your own personal heart?
There's something kind of shapeshifty about Bruce's Characters of Indeterminate Gender, I think - less like they're actually trans or nonbinary, more like they're an Ursula Le Guin character who is sometimes male and sometimes female in the same narrative.
No Surrender is another one. I always heard it as written to a woman and telling a story that's a lot like The River, because of the way it seems to start out with them lying in bed together, him wanting to go out and party and her wanting to go to sleep. I heard it as they were young and had this wonderful friendship and now they're married and settled down and aging together, and he's having a midlife crisis and is angry at her for reminding him that his youth is behind him and is thinking about having an affair. But then everyone including Bruce says it's a song of friendship for Steve Van Zandt, and the "blood brothers" line does make more sense that way. I'm not totally sure it's the same character all the way through the song.
― Lily Dale, Saturday, 29 May 2021 00:47 (three years ago) link
That line “I hear your sister's voice calling us home across the open yard” is so evocative to me; I’m not even sure why. The sibling of a friend evokes a deep connection somehow. It’s like those David Berman lines:
I had this friend his name was Marc with a "c"His sister was like the heat coming off the back of an old TV
― like a d4mn sociopath! (morrisp), Saturday, 29 May 2021 01:08 (three years ago) link
yes! Me too. Like those Rod Stewart lines from "You Wear it Well": "Remember them basement parties, your brother's karate, the all-day rock and roll shows?"
― Lily Dale, Saturday, 29 May 2021 02:11 (three years ago) link
And also this amazing song which I have been listening to ALL THE TIME lately, thanks Bruce for playing the Vulgar Boatmen on your radio show and turning me on to them https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jDts6e9UKMo
― Lily Dale, Saturday, 29 May 2021 02:16 (three years ago) link
wow, no thanks ilx for the weird stretchy type thing
― Lily Dale, Saturday, 29 May 2021 02:17 (three years ago) link
Wait, we didn’t tell you about Vulgar Boatmen here?
― AP Chemirocha (James Redd and the Blecchs), Saturday, 29 May 2021 02:34 (three years ago) link
You did! But I heard Drive Somewhere on Bruce's show first and asked about it on the Vulgar Boatmen thread.
― Lily Dale, Saturday, 29 May 2021 02:52 (three years ago) link
No Surrender is pretty clearly about Van Zandt imo or a bandmate, we learned more from a three minute record than we ever learned at school, the drummer, maybe we'll find a place of our own with these drums and these guitars. seems pretty explicit to me
― Blues Guitar Solo Heatmap (Free Download) (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Saturday, 29 May 2021 03:14 (three years ago) link
Do you see why I heard it the other way first, though, before I had any idea who Steve van Zandt was?
Tonight I hear the neighborhood drummer soundI can feel my heart begin to poundYou say you're tired and you just want to close your eyes and follow your dreams down
And then the end:
I want to sleep beneath peaceful skies in my lover's bedWith a wide-open country in my eyesand these romantic dreams in my head
Now, obviously that's not what this is. It's a portrait of him and Steve; he says so, the lyrics you quote say so. And yet I can't shake the feeling that the Steve story has been spliced together with another story, one that's more like "The River."
― Lily Dale, Saturday, 29 May 2021 03:39 (three years ago) link
I've never, ever, ever heard 'No Surrender' as being addressed to a woman romantic partner. Though I think with that one line ('just want to close your eyes') I can see why Lily Dale had that idea.
Isn't the song about someone (fictional, say) from an early age (say, 15, or even less), whereas the E Street people are from later years in his life?
Meanwhile in parallel ... I'm astounded that people thought that Bobby Jean was a boy. I always thought it was clearly and definitely meant to be a girl. Was that a strange cognitive error on my part?
I suppose there are really only two features that suggest female: 1) the name 'Jean' (but if that's female, well 'Bobby' is more male) and 2) 'I miss you baby' in the last line.
― the pinefox, Saturday, 29 May 2021 16:19 (three years ago) link
Re: No Surrender, there's also the interesting detail that when he performed it on the Born in the USA Tour and dedicated it to van Zandt, he also changed the last verse; now it's
But it's good to see your smiling faceAnd to hear your voice againNow we could sleep in the twilightBy the river bedWith a wide open country in our heartsAnd these romantic dreams in our heads
― Lily Dale, Saturday, 29 May 2021 16:52 (three years ago) link
"bobby jean" is pretty widely (i think) understood to be about steve, too, and i think the sequencing of "no surrender" and "bobby jean" back to back to start side 2 of born in the usa is no accident. not that the sequencing of springsteen records is ever an accident. but there are plenty of good, valid reasons to hear either song another way. bandmate, lover, spouse, best friend, soulmate... is there really that much of a difference?
― fact checking cuz, Saturday, 29 May 2021 17:16 (three years ago) link
I suppose there are really only two features that suggest female: 1) the name 'Jean' (but if that's female, well 'Bobby' is more male) and 2) 'I miss you baby' in the last line.Yeah, this is the crux of it. The name is super ambiguous (it’s not “Bobbie Jean,” or “Bobby John”), and “baby” could work either way as well… but I always heard it as a girl.
― like a d4mn sociopath! (morrisp), Saturday, 29 May 2021 17:23 (three years ago) link
Springsteen is one of the only really hetero-scanning mainstream male rock artists who attaches really vivid, romantic feelings to male friendship, sometimes verging on almost...sexual maybe?...but I get where you are coming from Lily Dale.
― Blues Guitar Solo Heatmap (Free Download) (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Saturday, 29 May 2021 19:00 (three years ago) link
Totally agree with that, and I think he def is willing to write songs of friendship as love songs, and that sometimes those songs veer into sexual territory (see This Hard Land for instance.)
I just wonder if some of the mysterious shifting gender stuff in his songs comes from that refusal to distinguish between friendship and romance, combined with an approach to songwriting where he's constantly chopping up his drafts and combining them with each other. Like, if love and friendship are exactly the same thing, why not drop bits of an early draft of "She's the One" into Backstreets? Why not take a story of a fading romantic relationship and mash it up with the details of his friendship with Steve van Zandt?
One of the things I used to find awkward about Bobby Jean but have since come to love is how transparent the veil of fiction in it is: it starts out apparently about two teenagers, but by the end, with the verse about "you'll hear me sing this song," he's given up on that and the song is very clearly about him and Steve. There's something similar going on with the sound of it, too, I think - the big ONE TWO THREE FOUR arena-rock opening, and then it's actually kind of a one-note dirge. It's a song that feels slightly uncomfortable with what it is, but that ends by being honest.
I think maybe he does something similar in No Surrender, but without the reveal at the end, or maybe the reveal comes gradually, over the course of rewriting it for the Born in the USA tour.
― Lily Dale, Saturday, 29 May 2021 19:47 (three years ago) link
To clarify: I'm just talking about the songs where you don't know the gender of the person he's singing to, or where the person seems to shift between genders in the course of the song. Agree that he has lots of songs about male love/friendship/romance as well.
― Lily Dale, Saturday, 29 May 2021 19:51 (three years ago) link
Like Terry's Song from... Magic? Which is both about male friendship *and* another gender ambiguous song, despite being about a real (male) person.
― Josh in Chicago, Saturday, 29 May 2021 20:09 (three years ago) link
One of the things I used to find awkward about Bobby Jean but have since come to love is how transparent the veil of fiction in it is: it starts out apparently about two teenagers, but by the end, with the verse about "you'll hear me sing this song," he's given up on that and the song is very clearly about him and Steve.
I don't get this at all. I've read his memoir but I don't even remember Bruce knowing Steve Van Zandt when he was a teen - shows what I know.
But I take the song at face value: he's singing to a teen friend (a girl, I've always thought) who has left, and then there's the tremendous poignancy that Bruce is actually a recording artist and that lost friend might actually hear the song on the radio.
No sense whatever that this is about a fellow rock star who plays in a famous band with Bruce - how could it be? The whole lyric contradicts that! The whole sense of 'maybe you'll hear me on the radio' here is that this person has been lost from his life, into the wide open highways of America, and he has no idea where she is, let alone her telephone number.
The shift of time frames reminds me of eg: Pulp's 'Something Changed' which I heard on the radio yesterday. I don't love Pulp but I really admire the paradoxes of time and causality here - 'I wrote this song a few hours before we met', etc.
― the pinefox, Sunday, 30 May 2021 10:19 (three years ago) link
What I meant was that the "you'll hear me sing this song" assumes that the song is going to be played on the radio, which doesn't seem to match up with the first part of the song, where the singer seems much younger than Bruce Springsteen. At least, "I went by your house the other day/ your mother said you went away" sounds to me like the characters are still young enough to be living with their parents.
I take it that the basic story is sort of like "Independence Day" from the POV of the best friend who gets left behind. They live in this small town, they're both the weirdo outsiders there, they depend on each other - and then one of them gets sick of this shit and leaves, and the other one is heartbroken.
But there are already some contradictions there; "ever since we were sixteen" doesn't quite match up, though it does match up with when Bruce met Steve. It would be weird for someone 18 or 19 - young enough that "your house" is automatically also your mom's house - to think of "ever since we were sixteen" as a long time. But it is a long time for two 34-year-old rock stars to have been best friends.
As for the end - the whole point is that Steve doesn't play in the band anymore, that he's left to go solo. And Bruce knows the song will be played on the radio because he's not really a bereft teenager stranded in a small town without his best friend, even if he feels that way; he's a 34-year-old rock star writing a hit record.
― Lily Dale, Sunday, 30 May 2021 14:28 (three years ago) link
At least that's how I interpret Bobby Jean when I stop to think about it. But the storyline is so vague, and the emotion behind it so strong, that there's something very universal about it despite the "I'm a rock star" ending; it feels like it's about any time that a friend has suddenly disappeared from your life, for any reason.
― Lily Dale, Sunday, 30 May 2021 14:31 (three years ago) link
Like, even though I know this song is about Steve van Zandt going solo, in my mind it's about my friend Bobby who lived down my street in Fairbanks and died by suicide in a motel room in Anchorage. So I don't want to intellectualize it too much.
― Lily Dale, Sunday, 30 May 2021 14:49 (three years ago) link
Speaking of songs that admit they're a song, I was listening to "Hold On" by Tom Waits and it occurred to me that the last verse is like "Bobby Jean" from the POV of Bobby Jean:
Down by the Riverside motelIt's ten below and fallingBy a ninety-nine cent storeShe closed her eyes and started swayingBut it's so hard to dance that wayWhen it's cold and there's no musicOh, your old hometown's so far awayBut inside your head there's a record that's playingA song called "Hold On"
A song called "Hold On"
― Lily Dale, Sunday, 30 May 2021 14:56 (three years ago) link
Someone said 'Bobby Jean' was monotonous. I think of it more in terms of the marvellously gallant, overreaching, melodramatic, corny keyboard phrase - which feels like it ought to have been used many times, but perhaps only belongs to this song.
On the other hand I was thinking about the Boss's melodies the other day and reflecting that 'No Surrender' was a pretty poor, minimal effort.
― the pinefox, Tuesday, 1 June 2021 07:20 (three years ago) link
The melody for sure is pretty standard, but it's all worth it for that final exultant verse:
Now on the street tonight the lights grow dimThe walls of my room are closing inThere's a war outside still ragingyou say it ain't ours anymore to winI wanna sleep beneath peaceful skies in my lover's bedWith a wide open country in my eyesAnd these romantic dreams in my head
Plus of course the line "We learned more from a three-minute record than we ever learned in school" does as well summing up the Bruce ethos as anything else in his catalog.
― Josh in Chicago, Tuesday, 1 June 2021 12:27 (three years ago) link
Is the war here the Vietnam War?
― the pinefox, Tuesday, 1 June 2021 15:25 (three years ago) link
I was thinking the other day: as a big lover of the Boss, I'm not convinced that his melodies are often great.
I tried to think of good Boss melodies. I thought:
1: The River2: My Hometown3: There Goes My Miracle (The novelty of including a late / recent song in the pantheon!)
But actually, I think the keyboard part of 'Born in the USA', and the melody working against it, are as melodically memorable as anything he's done. (And would have been lost if he'd just stuck to the NEBRASKA version?)
― the pinefox, Tuesday, 1 June 2021 15:27 (three years ago) link
Bearing in mind that I know nothing about music and wouldn't know a melody from a hole in the ground, I think I agree with you about his melodies often being lacking, or maybe he just loses some of his interest in melody around Born in the USA? "Thunder Road" has some lovely melodies jostling around in it, "Incident on 57th St" ditto, and I suppose "Independence Day" has a strong enough melody for Jakob Dylan to rip off for "One Headlight."
A lot of his songs that aren't obviously variations on each other have similar melodies: "Western Stars," "Letter to You" and "Land of Hope and Dreams" are all pretty close to one another, for instance. There's a video somewhere of him playing "Linda Will You Let Me Be The One" and "I Wanna Marry You" back-to-back and then realizing as he's doing it that they're actually the same song. "Janey Don't You Lose Heart" and "Dancing in the Dark" also seem like maybe they share a common ancestor, but I'm not as sure about that one.
But then Bruce also has a lot of songs where I wouldn't think there was enough of a melody to work with but he manages to sing them and make them sound good. I was just thinking about "Backstreets" and how cool it is that the verses are pretty much in Hiawatha meter, barely singable, more a chant than a song, and then it suddenly lifts off into the chorus.
― Lily Dale, Wednesday, 2 June 2021 00:28 (three years ago) link
Or "She's the One," which is also kind of a simple repetitive thing which somehow never fails to end up epic and awesome.
― Josh in Chicago, Wednesday, 2 June 2021 00:37 (three years ago) link
I also think it is super cool how minimalist and repetitive the chorus of "I'm Goin' Down" is:
I'm goin' down, down, down, downI'm goin' down, down, down, downI'm goin' down, down, down downI'm goin' down, down, down, down
The same word sixteen times, and almost always on the exact same note; you'd think it would be boring, like how the hell is that a chorus? But instead I find myself waiting for that eleventh "down" to come along and break the monotony, and every time it comes there's more of a reward, until finally he starts breaking up the whole damn thing with nonsense syllables and it brings such a sense of freedom with it, like he's created this 4x4 grid of chorus just to scribble all over it.
― Lily Dale, Wednesday, 2 June 2021 00:46 (three years ago) link
That’s funny, I was just about to remark how I feel like a lot of his melodies sort of work alongside the lyrics, to thematize them – the tightness and constraint of “I’m on Fire” or “Tunnel of Love”; the repetition of “Workin’ on the Highway”; the tension of “The Rising”; etc.
― like a d4mn sociopath! (morrisp), Wednesday, 2 June 2021 00:52 (three years ago) link
It helps that he’s often singing about people with constrained lives, trying to break free…a small melodic gesture breaking a repetitive melody, as Lily describes, can go a long way.
― like a d4mn sociopath! (morrisp), Wednesday, 2 June 2021 00:54 (three years ago) link