Bruce was really young when he made those first few classic records, and yet all of the songs feel more like a 60-year-old looking back on life than some young buck. I mean the imagery, the feelings, the observations about human nature, and so on.
How did he accomplish this? What’s the story there? Or is that just what makes him “The Boss?”
He just ripped off Dylan.
[/mostly kidding]
Growing up New Jersey is like living in dog years.
From “Blinded by the Light” by da boss. Written in '72 or '73 I believe.
Deep indeed for the age he was when he wrote it.
[sub]I’ll be going to about my next Boss concert in less than 50 days now![/sub]
It little profits that an idle king,
By this still hearth, among these barren crags,
Match’d with an aged wife, I mete and dole
Unequal laws unto a savage race,
That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.
I cannot rest from travel: I will drink
Life to the lees: All times I have enjoy’d
Greatly, have suffer’d greatly, both with those
That loved me, and alone, on shore, and when
Thro’ scudding drifts the rainy Hyades
Vext the dim sea: I am become a name;
For always roaming with a hungry heart
..............
Come, my friends,
T’is not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew.
Tho’ much is taken, much abides; and tho’
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield
Tennyson was 24 years old when he wrote that. I guess genius transcends age and experience.
Heehee. This truly and honestly made me giggle out loud.
It might actually be true.
Think about the lyrics to “Born to Run”. Zebra might be on to something. Though I shudder to think how old that makes me. ((41-8)*7)+8=239
Did he?
I will counter that Springsteen’s work is generally one dimensional and juvenile. He’s a one trick pony who found his trick and worked it to death.
His early work is essentially no better than his later work - although his songcraft, his sense of adventure has tailed off badly from “Darkness on the Edge of Town” onwards.
This is kinda why I giggled so much when The Traveling Wilburys went and parodied early Springsteen with “Tweeter and the Monkeyman”.
Hey, I like “Blinded by the Light” but gibberish ain’t deep.
Agreed- what early songs are you referring to- Blinded by the Light? Spirits in the Night? For You? You could play the “who wrote this- a respected musician or a crazy ranting homeless dude” game with these lyrics. And they’re just Dylan rips anyway.
Janis Ian wrote Society’s Child at 15 or 16, which while not that deep, is deeper than anything by Bruce.
And if its about the performance, Manfred Mann did all three of the above much better to boot.
Well, I would say “Thunder Road” is as good as any song lyric you’re going to find. He wrote that at 25, I believe.
I have to disagree with this thought. Springsteen’s music, particularly his early stuff, evokes a setting and a mood, not describes it. He paints a picture using brief metaphoric images, not detailed exposition. If you think about it, you can understand exactly what he is saying and why, but if you don’t bother thinking, you can just feel it wash over you.
Take for example Wild Billy’s Circus Story, which is probably his least metaphorical early song. When you listen to it (or even just read the lyrics), can’t you just smell the popcorn and feel the stifling heat. Hearing Growing Up can’t you just picture the teenage rage and ambition and hope and fear and connection and alienation. Or in Meeting Across the River, can’t you just feel the mixture of nerves and hope and fear going through his head as he tries to psych himself and Eddie up for what could be a big score (or a disaster). How about 4th of July Asbury Park, where he is desparately trying to convince local girl Sandy to be with him because he’s given up on the flashy New York tourist girls – for tonight at least – and you know she’ll fall for it, again and again.
In his song, the words – not your typical words, but words evoking a fleeting flash of image – gently paint a picture of the scenes and emotions he is trying to display. Yes, you can deconstruct that Jungleland’s “local cops, Cherry Tops” refers to the red lights atop the police crusiers breaking up the gathering in the Exxon parking lot, but don’t you just see the same image more clearly if you just let the words and music flow by.
That’s why his more metaphorical lyrics cannot be from “some crazy ranting homeless dude.”
Ah, I was exaggerating with that comparsion- obviously he’s not without talent, just that I don’t find him that “deep”. I think the legend and the background and the four hour concerts are the key to his rep, not the songs, with a few exceptions.
Wow. I thought that Springsteen would be about the last person in the world to be susceptible to that kind of criticism. Over his career, every time he did something popular, he followed it up by going a different & risky direction.
I thought his songcraft was at its best with Nebraska and Tunnel of Love.
By “sense of adventure,” surely you must not mean musically? Then again, surely you must not mean lyrically either…
I can’t say I’ve ever seen it as a Springsteen parody, and still don’t. It’s just another Dylan song where he spins out a complex (for a rock n’ roll song) tale involving four or five characters over the course of a rather long song. (E.g. “Lily, Rosemary, and the Jack of Hearts.”) Sure, he has Tweeter driving on Thunder Road, and that reference is surely a nod to Springsteen, but that’s about as much connection as I see.
And it’s not exactly the first time Dylan has used New Jersey as the setting for a song.
I agree on both sentiments.
To pull a reverse on you here, I regard this song as a bit of Dylan homage. Listen to “Stuck Inside of Mobile with the Memphis Blues Again,” then listen to “Blinded by the Light.” They’re not the same song, but they’re sure the same idea of how one might build one out of whatever bits of flotsam were floating through one’s head. And it’s not like “Stuck Inside of Mobile” was the only time Dylan ever did this sort of thing.
I’ll add that it had better be interesting flotsam, and it takes a fair amount of skill to make it work. You need a good tune, and you need to be able to string the bits together in a way that works for the listener. “Blinded by the Light” does all this, as do most of Dylan’s goes at it. But you couldn’t have sat Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart, for example, down and asked them to come up with a Dylanesque song of this sort, even though they were competent songwriters.
To expand on my own post:
After Born to Run (huge commercial success), he took 3 years off before Darkness on the Edge of Town, which went a (mild) new direction musically and lyrically.
After **The River **(commercial success), he released Nebraska, which went a (completely) new direction musically and lyrically.
After Born in the USA (huge commercial success), he took 3 years off before Tunnel of Love, which went a (completely) new direction musically and lyrically.
For Human Touch/Lucky Town he worked with a new band - new direction musically.
Streets of Philadelphia was both a new direction musically and lyrically, and a huge risk lyrically writing from the point of view of an AIDS patient.
After Greatest Hits (commercial sellout), The Ghost of Tom Joad was a startling new direction both musically and lyrically.
The Rising and Devils & Dust both took on sensitive political issues, certainly showing a lyrical sense of adventure.
Live in Dublin was absolutely a new direction musically.
So “one dimensional” really just has no basis in fact.
In some ways I agree with you. I don’t think his songs (particularly his early songs) are particularly penetrating expositions of the human condition. Rather, they are wonderful expressionist paintings showing a vivid slice of life.
I suppose that some literary theorist’s dissertation could coax a deep meaning out of: “My tires were slashed and I almost crashed but the Lord had mercy. My machine she’s a dud, I’m stuck in the mud somewhere in the swamps of Jersey.” However, without that much tortured analysis, it is simply the best two-line image of automotive misfortune ever.
Au contraire! Gibberish worthy of comparison to Dylan or Jon Anderson of Yes fame is indeed deep.
Contrast for example, by Anderson
with this Dylan lyric:
Now, stack the Boss on top of that, with
It’s not just deep, it’s laid on thick with a trowel.
But I like it anyway. 
Unabashed Springsteen fan here.
First, I think using Blinded by the Light as being indicative of Springsteen’s lyrics is pretty misleading. Lyrically that song (and one or two others such as Does This Bus Stop at 82nd St from that, his first album) bear little resemblance to everything that came afterward.
At the time the record company felt that he was very Dylan-esque (likely in part because of those lyrics) and were disappointed when he ended up going in a very different direction.
As Billdo says, I don’t find that Springsteen is deep in the “makes you think” sort of way. What he does is capture people and feelings (often full of energy but lacking outlet, either trapped by themselves or their environment), and sings truth into them.
Wee Bairn (and others), his popularity is not strictly because of his long concerts, but because when he sings Used Cars, Born to Run, No Surrender, Racing in the Streets, Badlands, etc etc, he is singing about me.
Some guys they just give up livin’
and start dying little by little, piece by piece.
Some guys come home from work and wash up,
and go racing in the streets.