The summer of 1977 was spent buzzing around in my friend Billy’s parents’ blue Chevy Nova. There were girls and waves of haze and a pile of 8-tracks in a puffy vinyl box on the passenger-side floor.
I’d love to say that we really dug blasting Bruce Springsteen’s Greetings From Asbury Park N.J. on Billy’s Kraco, but that would be imparting more than a little revisionist spin. The truth is that I was about a year away from my first Bruce album experience (1975’s Born to Run, to be borrowed from the brother of a girlfriend I hadn’t yet met) and was much more likely to be listening to Thin Lizzy, Deep Purple, the Steve Miller Band, Supertramp, and Alice Cooper.
… and “Blinded By the Light” by Manfred Mann.
His The Roaring Silence LP had been released in 1976, but the cover of “Blinded” had legs, going on to be a staple of rock radio for years to come. I guess my teen mind hadn’t developed much of an eye for detail because what stuck with me about the song was the spacy keyboards, followed by the lyric fragment “… wrapped up like a douche …” Just what the hell was that supposed to mean? We didn’t know. Or care.
Over the years I’ve heard a lot of people, Bruce Springsteen fans among them, say that they like the Manfred Mann version better. While I’m certain that I heard the Mann version first, Bruce Springsteen’s original – released as part of Greetings From Asbury Park N.J. on Jan. 5, 1973 – knocked me out. I loved the guitar parts (both the quickly-strummed intro and the snappy fills that come in later) and the stream of consciousness story (by way of the thesaurus) of Bruce and the characters of Asbury Park.
The words tumble out in one long, continuous flow, one whose meaning was not always obvious. But hey, life’s like that, isn’t it?
“GROWIN’ UP”: I wrote a Friday Morning Listen back in 2011 that was a mashup of Joe Jackson, Bruce Springsteen, Clarence Clemons, and Fellini. I was nervous about a bunch of things that day, not the least of which was the health of Clemons. Well, the Big Man flew off the Earth and left me with a pile of memories and a huge desire to listen to “Growin’ Up” over and over again.
That is exactly what I did for several days. My version of choice appears on Live 1975-1985. It’s got everything you’d ever want in Bruce Springsteen from that era: the rolling piano arpeggios, the glockenspiel accents, the goddamn guitar story, the explosion into the final verse.
Like most of the tunes from Greetings From Asbury Park N.J., “Growin’ Up” tells stories, however veiled, of the rise into adulthood and the ambitions that might get you there. I’m not sure what my young self thought about this song. At that point in my life, the road to maturity was paved with fear of the unknown, not ambition. Still, the positive energy that builds through the song is pretty hard to miss, though it always seemed like the song was over too soon. I wonder how old I was before I’d think the same thing about my youth?
“MARY QUEEN OF ARKANSAS”: Because I’ve been steeping myself in rock and folk music all of these years, people are genuinely surprised when I admit that I’m not a lyrics person. I suppose it puts me in the minority of listeners. It’s not that I don’t care about the words, it’s just that I care much more about the music. Give me a new album and I won’t get to the lyrics until at least the fifth listen. And if the music doesn’t resonate? Forgot it. The words just can’t save the songs.
To further frustrate the lyrics people I have another (and perhaps even more annoying) habit: When I do pay attention to the words, it only a line or two at a time. A song can be rolling along and one line (or sometimes just a phrase) will become luminous and pop into my attention foreground. I can’t really explain why I do this, mostly because I just don’t know. Does it get in the way of my “understanding” of songs? Probably, but there’s not much I can do about it.
So … “Mary Queen of Arkansas”? Many people say that it’s a low point on Greetings From Asbury Park N.J. I don’t buy it. I always loved the tension-inducing strummed guitar and lonesome harmonica. And sure, Springsteen was wordy as hell back then. So what? I always dug this song precisely because I couldn’t figure out what he was talking about.
It might be a love song, and it might not be. It might be a muse on longing for the future or it might be a pointless ramble. All I know is that lines like “but on your bed Mary I can see the shadow of a noose; I don’t understand how you can hold me so tight and love me so damn loose” can spawn so many images, different on every listen. Maybe I don’t really want to figure the whole thing out.
“DOES THIS BUS STOP AT 82ND STREET?”: A young Bruce Springsteen flashes a lot of exuberance in a rambling, upbeat dedication to New York City. Reported points of interest on the song include Springsteen’s dad working as a bus driver and Bruce taking a bus trip from Freehold to Manhattan to visit a girlfriend. True meaning(s) aside, I was always drawn the imagery presented in “Does This Bus Stop at 82nd St?” because of it’s Beat Generation-like use of free association.
In between “hey, bus driver keep the change” and “uptown in Harlem, she throw a rose to some lucky, young matador,” we see dock workers and billboards, newspaper headlines and celebrities. The images might be kind of non-specific but they on come rapid-fire, imparting an indirect energy to the trip being taken. I can kind of see where people got that “new Dylan” thing from songs like this (John Hammond included), but a few minutes of live listening would make it pretty obvious that Springsteen was going for something else.
A lot of ground is covered in a little over two minutes, that last line being put into sharp relief with an abrupt tempo drop and piano trio accompaniment. You can almost see that rose tumbling slowly through the air.
“LOST IN THE FLOOD”: As a kind of companion piece to “Does This Bus Stop at 82nd St?,” the mood shifts dramatically here, trading all of that romantic positivity for stark reality … or at least a reality whose dark side is winning out.
The first verse, accompanied by piano, sounds like it could be the story of a soldier returning from war to a country that’s coming apart at the seams. A Viet Nam vet? Perhaps, but then the focus pulls back and we see that everything is screwed up, or maybe not what it should be. The imagery in “Lost In The Flood” lays out a harsh landscape, part film noir, part modern-day dystopia. The amazing thing to me is that the song manages to come off as uplifting despite the violence and choking inevitability of it all.
A favorite live version is from Buffalo in 2009. Just like the album, the song takes on a full band arrangement when Jimmy the Saint shows up. Unlike Greetings From Asbury Park N.J., Bruce blows the roof off with an inspired guitar solo.
“THE ANGEL”: Bruce Springsteen accompanied by a lone piano, playing a sparse progression. Motorcycle outlaws (“the angel rides with hunch-backed children”)? Little kids on a bicycle adventures (“baseball cards poked in his spokes…”)?
Though I love the mixed imagery, I’ve always read this as a metaphor for a society damaged and hell-bent on destruction. Poison oozes from the angel’s engine while he’s “wieldin’ love as a lethal weapon.” The lullaby nature of the music makes this seem all the more ominous.
In the final verse, a last character enters – “Madison Avenue’s claim to fame in a trainer bra with eyes like rain.” A model? Too young? Another metaphor, this time of society’s decay? No matter, because that bowed bass comes in and the powerful final line is delivered shortly afterwards: “The woman strokes his polished chrome and lies beside the angel’s bones.” To be honest, I never really wanted to know what Springsteen was getting at here … mostly because I was afraid it might ruin the impact of that line.
“The Angel” has been played live very, rarely. But oh, those lucky bastards in Buffalo.
“FOR YOU”: Relationships heading toward their end can often impart a kind of repelling force between the couple involved. In “For You,” a relationship has run off the rails and there’s no small amount of soul searching. Is this different from any of the other countless breakup songs we’re already heard? If the themes are boiled down to that level of simplicity, then maybe the answer is “no,” but this is early Bruce Springsteen we’re talking about here.
To be honest, I never really picked up on the supposed suicide theme of this song. Sure, I knew there were problems, but it was the imagery of the attraction that really got to me: “and it’s not that nursery mouth I came back for; it’s not the way you’re stretched out on the floor.”
Even with all of the dark moments, the song feels like something of a triumph, with Bruce’s voice becoming more and more urgent, driven by the band and the centrifugal energy of the relationship. And yet, if you get to hear his solo version, “For You” seems like both a lament and a love song.
“SPIRIT IN THE NIGHT”: And now we have the full cast of characters from Greetings From Asbury Park N.J. – Wild Billy, Killer Joe, Hazy Davy, G-Man, and Crazy Janey – heading out for a Saturday night of wild abandon up at Greasy Lake.
There’s partying, hurt, and romance goin’ on, with Springsteen spinning out some of his most memorable early-career lines and images, my favorites being “she kissed me just right – like only a lonely angel can,” and “me and Crazy Janey was makin’ love in the dirt, singin’ our birthday songs.”
On record, the song has a tight R&B shuffle. When played live, “Spirit in the Night” has more of a rave-up kind of feel, especially later on when the longer piano/sax/organ intro was added. I’ve seen Bruce play this one several times and it always felt like you were going back and taking that trip with him.
Man, it’s been a long time since I’ve been up to Greasy Lake, and this version from from 1978 really takes me back.
“IT’S HARD TO BE A SAINT IN THE CITY”: Greetings From Asbury Park N.J. ends not with a happy postcard from the Jersey shore, but with the tough-as-nails “It’s Hard to Be a Saint in the City.” The song’s protagonist, who does not lack for swagger – “I could walk like Brando right into the sun, then dance just like a Casanova” – crashes through the seedy side of life in the city. The color has been washed out of the cast of characters, leaving the downtrodden, the evil, and the ones looking for a way out (if there is one).
The studio version pushes the energy with quickly strummed bits of acoustic guitar at crucial points (plus a very sweet ride cymbal pattern just as Springsteen delivers “as the tracks clack out their rhythm …”) but it was during the early live shows that Springsteen and Miami Steve unleashed the song’s full power.
Check out the guitar battle at this London 1975 show. A reflection of life on the street? Nah, that’s over-thinkin’ it … just a band rocking hard.
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