Bruce Springsteen - Classic or Dud ?

"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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

Like Terry's Song from... Magic? Which is both about male friendship *and* another gender ambiguous song, despite being about a real (male) person.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 motel
It's ten below and falling
By a ninety-nine cent store
She closed her eyes and started swaying
But it's so hard to dance that way
When it's cold and there's no music
Oh, your old hometown's so far away
But inside your head there's a record that's playing

A song called "Hold On"

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 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 dim
The walls of my room are closing in
There's a war outside still raging
you say it ain't ours anymore to win
I wanna sleep beneath peaceful skies in my lover's bed
With a wide open country in my eyes
And 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.

Is the war here the Vietnam War?

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 River
2: My Hometown
3: 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?)

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.

Or "She's the One," which is also kind of a simple repetitive thing which somehow never fails to end up epic and awesome.

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, down
I'm goin' down, down, down, down
I'm goin' down, down, down down
I'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.

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.

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.

Another little vocal moment I think is super cool: in "Wild Billy's Circus Story," when he sings

Oh, and a press roll drummer go, ballerina to-and-fro
Cartwheeling up on that tightrope

He hits the word "cartwheeling" with such sudden and unexpected force that it sounds like he's throwing all his strength behind it, and it's always struck me as the perfect vocal impression of a gymnast launching themselves into a skill. Like, lots of people can show you the grace or the daring or w/ever of a circus act; Springsteen makes you feel how much physical effort goes into it.

He just wants to hear some rhythm

I have to hand it to poster Lily Dale for that hyper-formalist analysis of 'I'm Going Down'. I didn't think anyone could make that chorus so interesting!

I've just thought of a rare great Boss melody:

SAD EYES.

Relevantly, it's a fairly uncharacteristic song in sounding like some kind of ... relatively "glossy MOR pop-rock"? I have loved it since TRACKS came out and I suppose the tune is a big part of that.

I could be misremembering, but I could have sworn that "I'm Going Down" is one of the few songs that Springsteen himself has sort of dismissed. Maybe because it's so repetitive? Looks like he's played it only 47 times since the 1999 E Street reunion, which is not that much, for a single! I dunno, I think it's a fun song, with, like the best "fun" Springsteen songs, just enough of a current of darkness to give it a surprisingly cutting edge.

"Sad Eyes" is a lovely song. If you want full MOR, Enrique Iglesias actually recorded it and released it as a single, replete with sexy video!

Yeah, Springsteen doesn't seem to think much of it but he is WRONG, it is GREAT! I don't think he understands what he did with that chorus, though, because when he plays it live he usually introduces more variation into it right away instead of making us wait for it.

There is also some awesome controlled repetition in the verses:

I used to drive you to work in the morning
Friday night I'd drive you all around
You used to love to drive me wild
But lately girl you get your kicks from just driving me down

Ok yes it is Bruce Springsteen singing the word "drive" four times in a row, but look what he does with it! He gives the meaning a twist halfway through the verse; we go from literal to figurative and from him driving her to her driving him. And every time he sings the word it comes a little later in the line, until with the last line, when we know the word is coming, he breaks the meter, draws out the line and makes us wait for it.

Darkness album release was 43 years ago today ( i heard someone say on radio)

More great close reading from poster Lily Dale.

Get one Candy’s Room!

Lily Dale is definitely bringing it

I guess I wasn't expecting this:

Bruce Springsteen will return to Broadway this summer for a limited run of Springsteen on Broadway performances at Jujamcyn's St. James Theatre. Shows begin Saturday June 26, with additional performances taking place through September 4.

I wonder if he will change anything? I also wonder if, being several years older, he will be any changed? It's been 3 years, more or less, right?

(FWIW, "Audience members will be required to provide proof of full COVID-19 vaccination in order to enter the theater.")

Just saw that! I have been wondering the same thing (will he change anything, I mean). I would imagine he'd at least talk about the past year and a half. Not that there's much point in my speculating, because I do not have the budget for Springsteen on Broadway tickets plus a flight across the country.

At minimum he'll need to make an update or two (specifically the references to the dumpster fire that was the Trump administration), but it'll be interesting to see if he swaps out any songs, etc.

I mean, when I saw it he didn't even mention his kids or family, which I thought was weird for a show that focused so much on his own childhood and his parents and family.

Maybe, but I thought the section on him and Patti was enough.

I would be surprised if he didn't include one of the mourning-lost-friends songs from Letter To You.

xp There's a lot he didn't include from his memoir. A good chunk of the book is a depression memoir, but that doesn't really come into the show iirc, at least not explicitly.

Forgot, there's also his Dad's visit right after his kid's birth, and how that definitively headed off whatever troubles that would have been passed down.

(I should clarify, I meant that was in the show too.)

When you put it that way it does sound silly, but I can see how if you had fears of carrying on a cycle of abuse, that sort of gesture could be very reassuring.

That bit in the show always reminds me intensely of a not-very-good Kipling poem called "The Rabbi's Song," but for everyone's sake I will refrain from quoting it.

Yeah, I actually hesitated to put it that way because it really does make it sound silly and pretentious - it definitely does not play that way when you see the show. But ultimately I just wanted to identify that specific scene in the easiest, most direct way.

I don't think there's anything wrong with putting it that way - it highlights something that comes through for me in a lot of Bruce's stories about his dad, which is how very hard he's trying to get something positive out of this, because not forgiving his dad is just not an option.

The story in the book about his dad taking him on a janky fishing trip in a little boat in the middle of the ocean at the height of Bruce's fame was a good one.

i love that story <3

Yes.

He has the whole of WESTERN STARS to draw on now - one of his best LPs.

Back to my question about the Boss and melody, I kept coming back to thinking that the WESTERN STARS melodies were among the best. Which fits with my general admiration for that record and sense of how crafted it is. He seems to have artfully worked on the tunes in a way not evident on LETTER TO YOU.

if thats how you feel about it sure, but those two albums are coming from very different places & the crafting of Western Stars was trying to fit with a tradition of melody vs Letter To You going for more early days E Streetness

They are -- that's why I feel so different about the two!

But is LETTER TO YOU really like *early* E Street? I feel that the early (say first 3) records are more musically diverse, ambitious, unpredictable, not very Rock on the whole, and LETTER TO YOU is more straight modern rock like, say, THE RISING ... with some exceptions of tone like 'If I was the priest' where the dense lyrics do recall an early Bruce.