At the Lighthouse

So, here’s something really weird that’s been happening to me lately. I’ve started to really, really like Bruce Springsteen.

I know, right? What? Bruce Springsteen. Me. I was always so sure that Bruce Springsteen’s music was an oeuvre reserved for 40-something cotton-shirts-and-Dockers-wearing married men in the sub-urbs, warming up with potato chips and beer before they went bowling. You know, feel-good rock ‘n roll with no real edge but enough guitar riffs to make said men feel very tough and manly, (but not quite enough to make their wives come down and tell them to stop that noise or they’ll wake up the baby!!!). Surely that was nothing that my opera loving self would enjoy.

What has happened to make me realize that I was wrong then? Well, I’ve gotten acquainted with The Boyfriend, and The Boyfriend absolutely adores The Boss. And after being sceptical for about a year whenever The Boyfriend would rave about Springsteen’s awesomeness, I agreed to sit down and just listen to a Springsteen song of The Boyfriend’s choice, while reading the lyrics.  His choice was the 1980 ballad “The River” from his album of the same title, and I tried to remain sceptical, I really did. But fact remains that as the song faded out I actually had tears in my eyes and a change of heart.

Just listen to that. Listen to it! And read the lyrics:

I come from down in the valley where mister, when your’e young
They bring you up to do like your daddy done
Me and Mary we met in high school when she was just seventeen
We’d ride out of that valley down to where the fields were green…

We’d go down to the river
And into the river we’d dive
Oh down to the river we’d ride

Then I got Mary pregnant and man, that was all she wrote
And for my nineteen birthday I got a union card and a wedding coat
We went down to the courthouse and the judge put it all to rest
No wedding day smiles, no walk down the aisle
No flowers, no wedding dress

That night we went down to the river
And into the river we’d dive
On down to the river we did ride

I got a job working construction for the Johnstown company
But lately there ain’t been much work on account of the economy
Now all them things that seemed so important
Well mister, they vanished right into the air
Now I just act like I dont remember, Mary acts like she dont care

But I remember us riding in my brothers car
Her body tan and wet down at the reservoir
At night on them banks I’d lie awake
And pull her close just to feel each breath she’d take
Now those memories come back to haunt me, they haunt me like a curse
Is a dream a lie if it don’t come true
Or is it something worse that sends me

Down to the river, though I know the river is dry
Down to the river, my baby and I
Oh, down to the river we ride

…and then tell me that that’s not one of the beautiful rock songs you’ve ever heard. Indeed there is nothing cotton-shirts-and-Dockers-ish about that. To me it’s truly heartbreaking. As The Boyfriend and The Boyfriend’s music-loving friend tell me, Bruce Springsteen is very much of a working class spokesperson, and as much is definitely evident in the lyrics of “The River” (the Johnston company, the notion that there hasn’t been much work lately “on account of the economy”). But the beauty of it is that without betraying his mission as a working class hero, Springsteen manages to work so much more than just social realism into the song. The melody is hauntingly beautiful and creates an atmosphere of something ancient-old with its subtly folky sound, something that’s underlined so perfectly by the song’s frequent folk ballad-style references to the persona’s native soil and its landscape: The once green fields and banks, the flowing river at night. 

And there’s the heart-breaking love story with the memory of a time when the young couple’s love was so precious that the persona would register and treasure every breath that his girlfriend would take, contrasted by the grey blur of days that make their present, troubled every-day existence: “Lately there ain’t been much work on account of the economy/Now all them things that seemed so important/Well mister, they vanished right into the air/Now I just act like I dont remember, Mary acts like she dont care”.

And then The Boss totally brings it home with the last stanza. Instead of getting sappy or overly flowerly, which indeed is a very real risc when you write a song about native soil and lost love, Springsteen keeps it simple. The persona has no fancy conclusion to his own woeful story, he only asks a simple, but devastating question: “Now those memories come back to haunt me,/they haunt me like a curse/Is a dream a lie if it don’t come true/Or is it something worse?”

Seriously…! That’s effin’ beautiful. That’s as poignant as, I dunno, King Philip’s aria in Don Carlos (and you all know how I feel about that aria)! I’m hooked. The Boyfriend recommends Springsteen’s folky album Nebraska, so I’m going to check that out next. And I’m actually starting to get really envious at The Boyfriend who’ll be attending Teh Boss’ concert in Copenhagen this weekend.

Oh, well. Maybe I’ll be lucky enough to catch a glimpse of him in the streets of Copenhagen, the way by-passers did when he visited the country in Copenhagen 20 years ago*. Here’s hoping .

/marie

*Seriously!! How cool is it that he did that? And how cute does he look, standing there in the street in his humble old jeans, playing and singing all sincerely?