he comes to battle without armor
September 25, 2019 6:33 AM   Subscribe

"I couldn’t stand Bruce Springsteen when I was younger. It’s all my dad would listen to, morning and night, in the car or the house, while cleaning or gardening. He’d sing along and play air guitar, sometimes air harmonica or saxophone when those instruments showed up on a song. Bruce’s voice was synonymous with my father’s. I took no interest and made no attempt to listen, finding it easier to rebel against the music than it would have been to actually rebel against my dad, which I had no reason to do in the first place." Lucy Dacus reflects on The Boss, image, and rebellion, and covers Dancing In The Dark.

The cover of Dancing in the Dark is in honor of Springsteen's 70th birthday and is part of Dacus' 2019 series of seasonal singles, which also include:

La Vie en Rose (Valentine's Day)
My Mother & I (Mother's Day)
Forever Half Mast (Fourth of July)
posted by everybody had matching towels (29 comments total) 24 users marked this as a favorite
 
Bruce Springsteen's birthday was the 23rd, oh well.
posted by everybody had matching towels at 6:34 AM on September 25, 2019


"...though herself too young to know that, to know, like Pirate, what the lyrics to 'Dancing in the Dark' are really about..."

--Thomas Pynchon, Gravity's Rainbow (yes I know, published in 1973)
posted by chavenet at 7:07 AM on September 25, 2019 [1 favorite]


I considered crafting a post for Bruce's 70th, but didn't follow through simply because I wanted a total love-fest, not some balanced discussion.

Bruce's music got to me like no other artist before or since. No doubt, my age was a factor. I was only 20 (i.e., life was stupidly simple) when my new neighbor put The Wild, the Innocent, and the E Street Shuffle on the turntable and the effect was immediate. Every album that had played earlier in the day served as background music, but this stopped the conversation. I sat on the floor reading liner notes while my neighbor queued up bootlegs and filled me in on Bruce's backstory.

I'm a fan to this day, but I let go of the obsessive devotion in the mid-80s because real life put constraints on my time. (E.g., back then, getting concert tickets meant at least a 2 hour drive and 12-24 hour waiting for Ticketron to open.)

Every year on 9/23 I send a quick text to my kids (currently 27 and 30), asking how they plan to mark the occasion. And they humor me with some BS, even though Bruce isn't their thing. This year, in honor of the milestone birthday, I sent the words John Landau wrote in 1974 after his first Bruce show:

..I saw rock and roll future and its name is Bruce Springsteen. And on a night when I needed to feel young, he made me feel like I was hearing music for the very first time.
posted by she's not there at 8:22 AM on September 25, 2019 [13 favorites]


I think I like Bruce Springsteen, I just don't like the E Street Band and all their synths and chimes and saxophones (RIP, I know, sorry).
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 8:44 AM on September 25, 2019 [7 favorites]


I'm a late to the party Springsteen fan myself. (I married into it.) When I heard that cover of Dancing In The Dark last week, I was struck that I'd never listened to the lyrics before. Now that I have, I really like the song, just not Bruce's version. I seriously think it's because of the stupid video.

That cover has also lead me to listen to her recordings. I like Lucy Dacus.
posted by donpardo at 9:40 AM on September 25, 2019 [2 favorites]


I couldn’t stand Bruce Springsteen because I thought his music was bloody awful. When people disagreed I used to find that asking for a second line of lyrics from "Born to Run" drew blank stares (this was in the days before you could find lyrics on the Web). QED
posted by StephenB at 9:41 AM on September 25, 2019 [1 favorite]


I think I like Bruce Springsteen, I just don't like the E Street Band and all their synths and chimes and saxophones (RIP, I know, sorry).
Give Nebraska a listen, if you haven't already.
posted by TrialByMedia at 9:58 AM on September 25, 2019 [4 favorites]


(not a Boss scholar, but I very sincerely doubt that sleeveless flannel-in-front-of-an-American-flag pic is from 1975)
posted by mwhybark at 9:59 AM on September 25, 2019 [1 favorite]


I so much want to like him more than I can. BIG fan in the late 70s and into the 80s. The two times I saw him, '77 and '85, are among the most amazing live music experiences in my memory. I've wanted to like his later records, but they haven't continued to hold me, and I've bought several of them... I've had to admit that I like a hook in a pop song, and too many of his songs either don't have them or the hook doesn't work. The Rising was the last album I've played more than a handful of times.

I admire how he's tried to use is fame in a positive way, but it's not enough to keep me listening.

I found the Broadway show on Netflix to be enjoyable but indulgent. The trailer for his new movie is so full of Marlboro-man clichés that it makes me wonder.
posted by conscious matter at 10:02 AM on September 25, 2019 [2 favorites]


The sleeveless flannel photo is from the Born in the USA tour (1985).
posted by plastic_animals at 10:05 AM on September 25, 2019


I think I like Bruce Springsteen, I just don't like the E Street Band and all their synths and chimes and saxophones (RIP, I know, sorry).

Exactly. Springsteen is fine on things like the new country album (sounds like he's been practicing his Broadway vocals) or on Nebraska, but I can't listen to that overblown E Street Band formula.
posted by pracowity at 10:23 AM on September 25, 2019


The Rising was the last album I've played more than a handful of times.

I've gone in and out on the later albums, but I've found Wrecking Ball to be really good on repeated hearings. I really love "Wrecking Ball" and "Rocky Ground" in particular.
posted by suelac at 10:31 AM on September 25, 2019 [2 favorites]


His cover of Royals.

One of my favourite things of his in recent years.
posted by bonehead at 10:58 AM on September 25, 2019 [9 favorites]


saxophones (RIP, I know, sorry).

Clarence's nephew Jake is the E Street's saxophone these days.
posted by bonehead at 11:11 AM on September 25, 2019 [2 favorites]


The best years, IMNSHO, are the first year of Steel Mill, sounding like a less stoned Vanilla Fudge but with highly original music, and the street poet years with the early ES Band 1973-75 that ended when his violinist Suki Lahav quit. And Nebraska. For some reason the Tom Joad album never did anything for me, and there's been only a handful of good tunes since Tunnel of Love. But those sweet-spot years, I still listen to the bootleg tapes, and wonder why no one else ever stepped up and made that kind of music.
posted by morspin at 12:00 PM on September 25, 2019 [1 favorite]


I really relate to the idea of "Jungleland" being a song that you have to grow into, as it used to be one of my least-often played tracks from Born to Run, but now it's one of my favorites. It's got so much depth and energy, and Clemons' solo is exquisite.
posted by Halloween Jack at 12:47 PM on September 25, 2019 [3 favorites]


Anyone who wrote The River will always be OK by me.

Springsteen was huge in Europe in the gritty 80s, when no one had any money, there were no jobs and genuine Levi jeans were a luxury good. I think his music is so steeped in that young and scrabbling aesthetic, its became less relevant in the good times, and now he's having a renaissance as another generation faces down the same kind of economic hopelessness.
posted by fshgrl at 1:09 PM on September 25, 2019 [8 favorites]


Give Nebraska a listen, if you haven't already.

This. I, too, loathe all that E-Street Band noise. It’s painful. But, yeah, Nebraska saves Bruce for me.
posted by Thorzdad at 1:39 PM on September 25, 2019 [1 favorite]


Saw Dacus play this cover live last Friday. It was great but she's a such a great song writer herself that she doesn't really need Bruce's songs.
posted by octothorpe at 2:08 PM on September 25, 2019


I'm going to disagree with the E-Street Band hate; i think the drums, keyboards, saxaphone are all integral to the sound. The album Born to Run deserves all the recognition it gets, but has some weak spots; I favor Darkness on the Edge of Town. And I probably act like Lucy's dad.

For a great cover version, here's Kurt Vile singing Downbound Train and he brings the right level of noise.
posted by Edward L at 3:25 PM on September 25, 2019 [1 favorite]


From StephanB: I couldn't stand Bruce Springsteen because I thought his music was bloody awful. When people disagreed I used to find that asking for a second line of lyrics from "Born to Run" drew blank stares

Anyone who was awake in 1976 and within earshot of a radio tuned to an FM station should reflexively reply "At night we ride through mansions of glory in suicide machines". Bruce was just huge that year (e.g., simultaneously on the covers of both Time and Newsweek in October, '76) and I swear Born to Run was always playing somewhere.

With all the respect I can muster for a Bruce-hater, I ask that you consider that the blank stares say nothing about Bruce's music, but volumes about the folks you were hanging out with.
posted by she's not there at 3:40 PM on September 25, 2019 [12 favorites]


As someone in college in New Jersey in the 70s, Springsteen was unavoidable. He was our guy, and a source of huge pride for a state that is often the butt of jokes, and always seems to have a chip on its shoulder. I swear you could walk down the hall in my dorm and you could hear "Born to Run" being played in just about every room. He also played sold out shows on our campus several times (I never managed to get tickets).

I myself respect him a lot, and like some of his early stuff, though he's not my particular favorite and I don't play his stuff often. I'm more nostalgic for Dancing in the Dark (youtube link) than Born to Run, probably due to the overplaying of BTR back in the day that I mentioned.
posted by gudrun at 4:55 PM on September 25, 2019 [2 favorites]


Sometimes it was hard to make out Bruce's lyrics because of how he'd sort of slur them when he was younger, so "Revved up like a deuce/Another runner in the night" infamously turned into the mondegreen "Wrapped up like a douche/Another bummer in the night", and in general sometimes made quoting lyrics problematic. But I'm pretty sure that people of my generation (tail-end boomer) could manage
Wendy, let me in, I wanna be your friend
I wanna guard your dreams and visions
Just wrap your legs 'round these velvet rims
And strap your hands 'cross my engines
especially as that made the car/sex connection explicit.
posted by Halloween Jack at 4:57 PM on September 25, 2019 [5 favorites]


What a sweet-natured, wholesome article!

Funny enough, I felt almost the exact same way about my Dad’s Neil Young and CSNY records. I either disliked them or they were just aural wallpaper. Then I went away to university and something clicked for me - and it wasn’t homesickness or nostalgia. Maybe I just needed the occasional palate cleanser for my steady diet of house, techno, hip-hop, and indie-rock, maybe I just hadn’t been paying enough attention, but those old albums suddenly spoke to me, and they still do now.
posted by tantrumthecat at 8:42 PM on September 25, 2019 [2 favorites]


Bruce Springsteen turns 70 today, and his work has defined the music landscape for nearly 50 years, though his early successes will also forever be cultural touchstones of the ’70s and ’80s. Music is in the unique position of being both dated and ageless, attached to its period while also brought back to new life again and again. The songs haven’t changed, and they won’t change. We are the mutable ones.

This is a good thought.
posted by mandolin conspiracy at 8:46 PM on September 25, 2019 [2 favorites]


I'm an unabashed Bruce fan. Here are some other recent covers of his songs, recorded to celebrate his birthday.
posted by terooot at 10:20 PM on September 25, 2019 [4 favorites]


Here's another great cover by Mary Spender.
posted by The Tensor at 1:17 AM on September 26, 2019 [1 favorite]


In July of 1978 Springsteen and The E Street Band played the Roxy. It was broadcast over KMET I believe. I recorded the entire show on my cheap Radio Shack stereo. It was great, classic. The E Street Band achieved moments of true drama. Best of all, my late older brother listened to most of it with me. That was a rare thing. My brother was a deeply troubled guy. So was I. I needed a brother. I'd never have one, really.

There's a lot of brother essence in Springsteen's persona for me. Despite his and the band's limitations and shortcomings, I'll always be fond of him. Very fond.

Those tapes I recorded are long gone. I just recently located a lossless bootleg of it, along with a bunch of other Springsteen shows, with a heavy emphasis on that era between Born to Run and Darkness on the Edge of Town. That's the sweet spot to me. I lost interest after that.

But it was a golden summer and remains a good and fading memory. Those moments come and go, but that's good enough.
posted by metagnathous at 3:33 PM on September 26, 2019 [5 favorites]




« Older The difference between Watercolor and Gouache   |   Like if Rainbow Road was refracted through... Newer »


This thread has been archived and is closed to new comments