Product Description

When Bruce Springsteen went back on the road in 1984, he opened every show by shouting out, "one, two, one, two, three, four," followed by the droning synth chords of "Born in the USA". Max Weinberg hit his drums with a two-fisted physicality that cut through the swelling chords. With a rolled-up red kerchief around his head and heavy black boots under his faded jeans, Springsteen looked like the character of the song, and from the very first line ("Born down in a dead man's town") he sang with the throat-scraping desperation of a man with his back against the wall. When he reached the crucial lines, though, the guitars and bass dropped out and Weinberg switched to just the hi-hat. Springsteen's voice grew a bit more private and reluctant as he sang, "Nowhere to run. Nowhere to go". It was as if he weren't sure if this were an admission of defeat or the drawing of a line in the sand. But when the band came crashing back at full strength - building a crescendo that fell apart in the cacophony of Springsteen's and Weinberg's wild soloing, paused and then came together again in the determined, marching riff - it was clear that the singer was ready to make a stand.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #50528 in Books
• Published on: 2005-10-20
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 144 pages

Review
"'A brilliant series of pocket-sized books focussing on a classic album. Each one a work of real love.' NME"

About the Author
Geoffrey Himes has written about music on a weekly basis in the Washington Post since 1977, During that time he has also written about pop music for the Oxford American, Rolling Stone, No Depression, the Chicago Tribune, Country Music Magazine, Sing Out, Request Magazine, and other outlets. He won a 2002 ASCAP/Deems Taylor Award for Music Feature Writing.

Customer Reviews

Achieving Stadiumhood
Prior to the release of Springsteen's Born In The USA, a straw poll amongst people you worked with, drank with, ran with (if you were born to live that way) would have revealed that only a minority were familiar with The Boss's works, even if they'd heard of him. Some may dimly recollect that he was heralded as "the future of rock `n' roll" sometime in the dim and distant, but that was about it. Subsequent to its release, there was hardly anyone who wasn't a lifelong devotee, who'd followed his career from the swamps of Jersey to stadiumhood.

I never resented the fame and fortune that accrued from the album, though I admit to sneering on more than one occasion at the instant diehard fans it spawned.

My personal favourite album is the first I bought, Darkness On The Edge Of Town, which is possibly a default for all of us who don't want to say it's Born To Run.

Geoffrey Himes, more controversially I would think, rates Born In The USA as Bruce's finest hour. Some of his rationale is quite sound and persuasive. He contrasts the wordiness of previous songs with the relative simplicity of those on Born In The USA, and seems to consider the album to be something of a watershed from that point of view. He suggests that it was here that the runaway American dream was lost and that the songs are more reflective of the despair many Americans experience on a daily basis. He praises the use of humour in a couple of the songs as rare occasions where the light relief was not included as an embarrassing extra.

In all instances, though, he overstates the case. Whilst some of Born To Run may wander away from streetspeak, I've never found it inaccessible or highfalutin. Songs such as Meeting Across The River and Racing In The Street hold the paradoxical mix of optimism and surrender to the inevitable (the speaker in Meeting spends the entire song futilely trying to persuade himself that the little job is going to land him the jackpot). There's humour in songs like Rosalita, as in the reference to the record company's big advance.

And in noting some of the points on which I disagree, I'm also pointing up some its strength. Were Himes to have produced a bunch of opinions with which I could agree totally that would have been a waste of my time. Instead he got me not only reassessing Born In The USA but also thinking on the significance of Springsteen's entire output.

In addition, he gives some interesting insights into the Boss's creative process, the debates that went on regarding which tracks should be on the album, and also describes the context in which both the book's subject album and its predecessor, Nebraska, were made.

Amongst the vignettes: there really was a Chicken Man in Philadelphia whose house was blown up, just as in Atlantic City, on Nebraska; it was Steve Van Zandt who persuaded Springsteen to include No Surrender on Born In The USA (thanks Steve); and giving Donna Summer the song Protection to cover was a part of an attempt to reach out to a new audience.

There are some puzzling moments. Dancing In The Dark has always been, for me, one of the weakest of Bruce's songs, and the video is pedestrian at best. But Himes seems to love both. Later he comments that the music on Nebraska is different from that on the "first four albums", and I'm not sure if that's a typo or if he's saying that the music is not different from that on The River. And he skates over the question of the interplay between his marriage to Julianne Phillips, the affair with Patty Scialfa, and the songs on Tunnel Of Love, though perhaps that's another book.

The final chapter deals with Springsteen as a live performer, via the strange tale of how Reagan nearly hijacked Born in The USA for his 1984 campaign. And at the end of the book there is a brief evaluation of all the albums up to Devils And Dust, which amongst other things enlightened me regarding the making of the two records which provoked me into refusing to buy a Springsteen album for a decade, Human Touch and Lucky Town.

This is the third 33third book I've read, and like the others it is not perfect, but it does enough to make it worthwhile for anyone wanting to know more about its subject.