I went surfing at Bay Street in Santa Monica this morning, which means I risked my life, not from the size of the waves (not very big) but from the super stanky water out there right in front of the high-booty Shutters and Casa Del Mar hotels. As I write this, I can feel my glands swelling, my skin itching, and toxic pus forming in my tear ducts (not unlike the one in the picture that accompanies this blog).
But that's not the point (though it should be for somebody -- can't we do something to clean this shit up? I mean, it's why people come to LA). The point is, I met a friend for brunch afterwards at Casa Del Mar...wait that's not the point either. The point is, while we were lounging at the beach in the early afternoon, she asked me what song I'd be if I were a song. For some reason, I said "She's The One" from Bruce Springsteen's Born To Run album.
I thought about why I said that for a minute, and I realized the song had all the elements in it one would like to think of as being a soundtrack to one's life. It's starts out with a mysterious and sexy echo-chambered piano intro which seems to foretell of excitement and drama, like delicate fingertips gently tickling your spine. Then, the vocals come in over the piano, sounding kind of like Elvis might if he wore a leather jacket (for real) and hung out on the boardwalk drinking beers and acting tough. Nothing but piano and a few well placed, stripped-down E and A chords for the entire first verse:
With her killer graces and her secret places that no boy can fill
With her hands on her hips, oh, and that smile on her lips because she knows that it kills me
With her soft French cream, standing in that doorway like a dream, I wish she'd just leave me alone
Because French cream won't soften them boots and French kisses will not break that heart of stone
With her long hair falling and her eyes that shine like a midnight sun
Whoa-oh, she's the one
She's the one
In the second verse, the song breaks into a kind of funked up, Bo Diddley beat with the vocals in the background sounding like a half-desperate superhero, on fire and befuddled about what vexes him -- not sure what to do in the face of such power, but going in there anyway.
That Thunder in your heart
At night when you're kneeling in the dark
It says you're never gonna leave her
By the time it ends, it's all howls and grunts and power-chord guitar slashes and saxophone wails....Oooooooh, she's the one... tightly wound, ready-to-break, almost out of control. Caught somewhere between punk and funk; defiant, demanding, vulnerable and pleading.
It's fucking sexy. Make what you want of Bruce Springsteen, and I have to say I don't make a lot of him these days, but he sure as hell nailed it with the Born To Run album. And it's the songs you don't hear so much about that make it truly great -- whether it's flame-throwers like "Night", passion plays like "She's The One" or epics like "Backstreets", which is probably the best song on the record (yes, better than "Born To Run" or "Thunder Road"), or the proto-Tom Waits "Meeting Across The River" the record is defined by its unabashed passion and romance. Not like flowers romance, but like booming, big-idea, fuck-you-and-everybody-else-saying-no, or you can't, type of romance. Youthful romance, but not naive youthful romance, more like the kind that gives you the energy and balls to say this is likely to all fuck up, but I'm going to give it a shot anyway. The kind you have not before you know better, but before knowing better stops you. Some damn good shit, and I highly recommend it if you want to feel alive, which means feeling possibility.
After you're done with that, check out The Wild The Innocent and the E-Street Shuffle, which is where a lot of the ideas and characters that come of age in Born To Run start feeling their oats. Forget being a soundtrack, the two records make one hell of a screenplay.
Only the great thing about this one is that it's up to you how it finishes.
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You nailed it again. I've got She's the One in my head now. Great song. And Meeting Across the River, with that evocative horn, like some '50s gangland movie scene. I was 16, 17, and playing that over and over, and Wild, the Innocent, and Darkness on the Edge of Town ... And wondering why all everyone ever talked about was Born to Run when these spectacular sound scapes were on these LPs.
This Capital Radio (London) DJ called Roger Scott, who died too early of cancer, used to play Rosalita almost every day for a while. Roger interviewed Bruce when he came to London and talked about it for days afterwards, "I can't believe I ate pizza with Bruce Springsteen." It was a big deal for us guys to hear big American stars talking from London.
I got my first hint of relationship dynamics from Bruce, like wanting someone above your station, except I didn't quite know that's what he was talking about on Darkness:
They're still racing out at the Trestles
But that blood it never burned in her veins
Now I hear she's got a house up in Fairview
And a style she's trying to maintain
Well if she wants to see me
You can tell her that I'm easily found
Tell her there's a spot out `neath Abram's Bridge
And tell her there's a darkness on the edge of town
It was 3 a.m. One morning in 1980 outside Wembley Arena when he came out in a white van after one of his famous 4-hour sets, and signed every fan's LP with a look on his face like he was bemused and pleased to be there. He NEVER did the limo, not at Wembley. That clued me in to the man too.
Posted on March 10, 2008 9:20 PM by Mel