Bruce Springsteen
Born In The U.S.A.
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Bruce Springsteen
Born In The U.S.A.
Columbia, 1984
RiYL: John Mellencamp, Bob Dylan, Tom Petty |
It’s an argument not totally without merit, especially now, in the age of, well, whatever the hell age this is, where adorable little mall girl Avril Lavigne is considered punk while college kids loudly wonder who Joe Strummer was. We’re trained to think that way by the sheer crassness of the lame product foisted upon us, and maybe it’s not a bad thing to default to.
But it’s an unfair argument, too, completely discounting that shot, that once-in-a-lifetime convergence of planetary orbits, wherein something that is universally loved by the masses is all pretty goddamn good. Sure, this happens less than once in a blue moon. The Sopranos, maybe, for a while. "The Lord Of The Rings" movies. But musically, it’s the epitome of few and far between, and for me, it probably will never happen again. Thank God, then, for Born In The U.S.A.
Born was huge. Mammoth huge. Culture-defining huge. Huge enough to cameo in a presidential election; huge enough to virtually deify its proprietor in an age where that sort of thing seemed novel (though now it’s almost quaint). Anyone who was conscious during its reign remembers it -- although it’s probably more accurate to say that it’s been burned into his or her brain matter. Hell, I was the ripe old age of 9 when my Mom brought me home a shiny new vinyl copy, and I played the holy hell out of that thing, it being the first real LP I owned that didn’t contain any combination of the words “Pac-Man” or “Fever.”
But an inordinate number of factors in the intervening years -- the passage of time, the installation of MTV, the short-attention spanning of everything -- has resulted in the cold, hard fact that people remember few images rather than a collective whole; Bruce jerk-dancing with Courteney Cox, that horrific baseball video, "Glory Days," Springsteen’s own arse on grand display on the album cover and titular video. Given that the rise of Born In The U.S.A. coincided so strongly with the dawn of the age of image over substance (why else would David Lee Roth and 1984 have gotten so famous?), it's natural that people equate these fleeting, goofy pictures with the whole. That's what people remember of Bruce. Most of us in this here age bracket don’t remember the glory days of Born To Run, "Time" and "Newsweek," Darkness, et al. We remember “Born down in a dead man’s town”, and to this day Bruce finds himself battling the demons that such an enormous success dragged with it. Tunnel Of Love, as impressive an album as it was, couldn’t delete them; nor could Bruce’s subsequent five-year hiatus, divorce, dismantling of the E Street Band, etc. Frankly, Bruce’s public moves in the late 80s fairly well guaranteed that no one would ever, ever form a new image of him. And thus, the Born In The U.S.A. caricature remains to this day, or at least the day that Bruce started bum-rushing the "Today Show," "Letterman," "Nightline," and the collective American subconscious in the summer of 2002 in the media blitz that preceded The Rising.
You can blame the cheesing-out of everything by MTV, you can blame videos for killing the album star, or you can blame Martha Quinn. Hey, you can probably blame David Lee Roth.
But you can’t blame Bruce. And you sure as hell can’t blame Born In The U.S.A, a powerful, brutal, breakneck and ultimately unforgiving near-masterpiece of rock n’ roll.
That said, no, this isn’t his best studio album. For my money, it’s #4 or #5, behind Darkness On The Edge Of Town, Born To Run, Nebraska, The Wild, The Innocent & The E Street Shuffle, and, depending on how I feel that day, maybe The River.
And that being said, yes, the acoustic version of the song “Born In The U.S.A.,” recorded alone in Colt’s Neck, N.J. on or around Jan. 3, 1982, is a criminal and haunting piece of dramatically underplayed anger that blows a cold wind straight through your back -- even heard, as it had to be before the Tracks retrospective, in tinny bootleg form. It is just Bruce, as alone as he’d ever be for the next 20 years, spitting a monotonous growl and punctuating it with an occasional startling yelp, and the only other noises coming from a poorly recorded acoustic guitar. Why this track was deemed worthy of a re-recording is a testament to Bruce’s notorious perfectionism; what it’s got over its full-band counterpart is a thinly concealed fury that threatens to explode into a thousand tiny splinters.
But the fact is, it was re-recorded, it was deemed incomplete, and when the E Streeters in full glory took a crack at it in 1983 -- well, they damn well may have upped the ante. Forget the video, or the sold-out world tour, or the MTV uber-exposure, or the virtual deifying of Springsteen in the embryonic years of the TV Rock Superstar. Listen to Max Weinberg’s hammering, destructive beat, machine-like and furious, driven by not a pop sensibility but a powerful anger. Listen to the twin guitar assaults of Bruce and Steve Van Zandt. Yes, listen to the anthemic howl of the ubiquitous hook. And listen to Bruce, furious, desperate, on fire, screaming bloody murder at song’s end in a release that remains shattering to this day. “Ten years burnin’ down the road / nowhere to run, ain’t got nowhere to go.” How so many Republicans could read this damn thing so pathetically wrong is truly one of the great political and cultural head-scratchers of our time.
(For more of all this, seek out the bootleg recording of an extended nine-minute studio cut, during which Bruce hails the band back from its initial fade-out, and they embark on a totally improvised jam that roars on for another full five or so chaotic minutes. “Recording ‘Born In The U.S.A.,’ Weinberg would later say, “was the single greatest night of recording I've ever experienced.”)
Before we continue, let me say this: Yes, Bruce could have probably done well to take down the giant Old Glory that hung behind the band on the Born In The U.S.A. tour. That didn’t help.
But can one really say that it’s up to the artist to dictate how his work is received? Could Bruce really help it if the bulk of folks who bought the record never actually stopped to listen to its words? Is Neil Young responsible for all those goons throwing up devil horns during “Rockin’ In The Free World?” Should M. Night Shyamalan be worried that not that many people really got the end of “Signs?” I agree with Bob Marley (on most things, actually), but one other good thing about music is that people can take it however they want. If their reading is flawed, well, fundamental misinterpretation happens an awful lot in this country, and with far more meaningful things than rock n’ roll songs. Hell, if everyone here suddenly began reading everything correctly, it’s safe to say we’d all be freaked out.
Born In The U.S.A. is a hell of a record, a near-masterpiece, the rarest of collisions between great art and explosive popularity.
Is it a pop album? No.
Is it a fundamentally dark album? Yes.
Does it sound cheesy? Yes, in parts. But it was 1984. Everybody sounded cheesy in 1984.
Is it as thematically dark as Nebraska? No. Bruce doesn’t kill anybody on this one.
Is it as thematically dark as his other records? Depends. Are we counting the “Sherry Darling” parts of The River as dark?
There’s not a happy song on Born In The U.S.A.; it’s just that the album, given its release era, contains some happier-sounding instrumentation. Consider: the title track concerns a Vietnam vet who can’t catch a break. “I’m On Fire” simmers with unrequited longing. “My Hometown” is a burned-out hull. “Glory Days” regards a life lost to regret. “Bobby Jean” is never coming back. “No Surrender”’s characters are fighting to remain relevant. Hell, even “Dancing In The Dark,” for all its “I don’t hear a hit” origins, is a portrait of simmering desperation, of a man clawing to “get out of a dump like this.” And I haven’t even yet gotten to “Downbound Train,” far and away the album’s standout track.
To be sure, the album’s sheer size detracted from its overall message, like all music that achieves that degree of ubiquity, and that will very likely be its unfortunate legacy (that, and the Courteney Cox dancing thing. Shiver). To his credit, every time the misuse of “Born In The U.S.A.” is widely reported, Bruce goes to bat to shut it down, having written letters to the editor against Bob Dole’s use of it in his failed 1996 presidential bid, and publicly calling out Ronald Reagan in 1984 as well.
The title song has been dusted off since, most successfully, many would argue, in its 1996 dirty blues incarnation, one performed during Bruce’s solo acoustic tour on slide guitar that operated without benefit of a tempo or, really, a melody. Like its acoustic ancestor, it was chilling and incisive. This year, on his tour behind The Rising, Springsteen has added “Born In The U.S.A.” to his nightly setlist, a initially surprising move -- until you hear him preface it each night with a pointed warning about the dangers of reduced civil liberties in a time of war. If “The Rising” is a response to 9/11, “Born In The U.S.A.” is now even more cautious than before, given the continued uncertainty, fear, and skepticism that’s woven together to create our new national mood. His speech is a perfect precursor, probably far more apt (and chilling) of one as he could have hoped to apply.
Meanwhile, at a Chicago stop in September of 2002, “Born In The U.S.A.” closed with a razor-sharp, fiery, almost psychedelic guitar duel between Bruce and Steve, one that eschewed all melody and structure in favor of chaos, two guys not trading licks as much as beating the living hell out of their instruments. The message was clear. There’s plenty left to be angry about.
Fans and skeptics take note: this song isn’t played out yet.
Editor's Note: For a second take on this album, read Ben French's review of this album here.
JEFF VRABEL | Jeff Vrabel may look like your average, strapping Midwestern-type, but lurking inside him is a passion for all things Springsteen, "Weird" Al, and regrettably, the Chicago Cubs. He's touched Britney Spears. He knows Slash's phone number. Obey him at all costs.