Bruce Springsteen "Born in the U.S.A." album, 35 years later...

There's a nice boot which gathers up just about all the tracks that are "out there". It really whets my appetite for an official box. Hopefully this fall we'll get one..

 

Was always amazed at this. Street Fighting Man meets Born on the Fourth of July, one of the most pointed damaging indictments of American values and society post Vietnam War reduced to jingoistic sing along. I guess this country's rorschach reaction was dependent on where and how you lived. Maybe Guthrie felt the same way about the reaction to "this land".

Question: Long Dark Daddy in the USA. Always thought that was as Charles Starkweather quote, but probably confused it with another one off of Nebraska. I think its more to the heart of perhaps who Bruce is, and how he sees himself, more than maybe any other lyric.

Always thought his sunny optimism, although greatly appreciated and sometimes needed, was nothing more than a ruse.

 

I believe the actual lyric is “long gone daddy”. Either way, your last sentence here is probably right on.

 

Wow! thanks, now I get it, Hank Williams

 

Yup, that's true. And in some places, like the title track, I think that dress up game works great. I think the rock anthem version of the song not only betters the original stripped down take, but I also think you have to be kinds of deaf no have missed the story in the song. And the mixture of both pride and disappointment is very much in keeping with the spirit of the song and its narrator.

In others case, like "Working on the Highway" -- a song about running away with an underaged girl and winding up in jail for it doing hard labor, turned into a chipper rockabilly novelty -- I think the result is a kind of cognitive dissonance that doesn't work work at all.

I'd say the attempt to dress up the material with a buffed and shining exterior was executed with mixed success.

 

My recollection was that core Bruce fans knew that the songs were protest songs and anti-Reagan. But millions of new fans that were brought in by the radio singles, the MTV fans, they just heard the overall tone of the songs, which were generally ebullient and triumphant, it was a Morning In America kind of record that helped the Republicans.

Even Bruce's image of the time, his sleaveless, buff-armed posing, looked like America on the March. The overall effect was of a patriotic, flag-waving, Reaganesque image. Bruce was referred to in the media as the "Rambo of Rock", again fitting in to the Reagan Narrative.

 

I don't like the sound of Cover Me. I am not a musician, so I can't explain it. I really don't like the live version from 84-85, especially Patti whining "Nowhere to run to baby, nowhere to hide" and Bruce following by saying "Cover me. Cover me..."

In fact, I think the live experience tainted the album for me. I saw six shows on the reunion tour, and they were my first six E Street shows. I was tired of Darlington County and Working on the Highway was such a downer in the spot it was played in.

Combine that with the songs on Tracks that could have been on there, it really drops this album down in my book. It's certainly not objective, but I can't disassociate my feelings.

 

Truly, I can't think of a single song with a major sax break, that wouldn't be improved by its removal. I really can't abide the bloody things.

 

Not even Yakety Sax?

I know how you feel about the sax all over Springsteen records and saxophone stuff in general. I sorta got over it though.

 

Yes, it is very different from, and does not fit well, with the rest of the record. To me, “Cover Me” actually sounds a lot like another tune that also did not fit well with the rest of the material on it’s LP: “Hungry Heart” from The River.

I like them both quite a lot though.

 

That the title track was a protest song was lost on many fans in the 80s, but I think the years have treated the album mostly well. In a somewhat related way I look back more benevolently now on the baseball players who were "larger than life" in the home run era of the 90s. I'm not saying Bruce was juicing, but he was pretty buff on the BITUSA tour!

My original US pressing sounds terrific - I don't remember the first CD issue fondly at all.

 

I would agree. BITUSA (title song, album version) is the best modern-day blues song I've ever heard. One would have to be completely tone deaf to not hear the bitterness, anguish and pain in the protagonist's voice. It also works with Darlington County, which has a sad ending, but the jovial arrangement somehow works.

But it doesn't work with Workin On The Highway, and it doesn't work with Dancing In The Dark. John Legend's version of DITD comes closest to hitting the mark. As you said, mixed results.

I'm Going Down is probably the weakest track. Weak subject matter, weak lyrics, generic arrangement. It's hard to conceive how that one made the cut and This Hard Land didn't.

 

I don't really think too much of "Darlington County" myself, and I'm not really sure what it's supposed to mean. Is this just two roughnecks from NYC carousing their way around South Carolina, one of whom winds up picked up by the police on some kind of drunk and disorderly, or is it something more at the end? I don't know. I just always presumed it was more a kind of drunken rowdy wind up arrested kind of song that's supposed to be fun. Is there something more to the story that I'm missing? That's a song which, if I never hear it again my life, my life won't be any the lesser for it.

 

I like Clarence sax breaks. Big, brassy, and in line with a rock sound.

Now, cheesy 80's smooth soprano sax solos in songs where it didn't belong (which is, to say, almost all songs)...hard pass. But Bruce never went that route.

 

I think you pretty much nailed it. I don't think you're missing anything. It certainly won't go down as one of Bruce Springsteen's finest songs.

 

Landau and Springsteen committed to a largely commercial format and by doing so, left some of the best material in the vaults.

 

I love Clarence's big ballsy tenor sound. But the Dancing In The Dark solo gets dangerously close to the smooth 80's style you're referencing.

 

Yeah, that's true. But it's pretty inoffensive, and not very high in the mix, and tacked on to the very end of the song kind of as an afterthought, I think, because something had to go there, and a ripping guitar solo probably wouldn't have worked there either. Honestly, there's so little sax on that album that throwing Clarence a bone at the end of "Dancing" works out okay, I think.

 

Yeah it was okay, certainly not bad.
It's me. I just can't get past my dislike of that song.

 

It's overplayed to death. I do like how the reunion-era band has played it, slightly lower key, more guitar-centric and way more rocking, kinda how I (and maybe Bruce) wishes it was recorded originally. I mean, I still like it more than the title track or "Glory Days," it's at least a more interesting composition than those two.

 

The gated snare on DITD is awful. As is the Yamaha DX-7 synth. Sounds like Loverboy.

 

I for one think the arrangement completely betrays the lyrical content of the song, the vocal delivery, the hammer drum, the synth, the almost martial chorus over and over again. The acoustic version is tremendously moving, and I'm sure it was even more so with the original chorus containing the word "Vietnam." This of course is why it's been so misconstrued. For many, many of the songs fans, the verses could easily have been "Blah, blah blah blah blah-blah" and they would still feel the same about it. I'm a fan of Bruce, but in this case he harmed a great peace of art to move units, IMHO.

 

It is, far and away, Springsteen's most accessible album and, not surprisingly, it's his most commercially successful album. And, yes, some of the song choices are head-scratchers, particularly compared to what was left in the vault. Of course, given the quantity of quality material Springsteen was writing and recording during those sessions, culling the sessions down to 12 songs was always going to result in some genuinely terrific stuff not making the cut.

 

Commercial considerations

 

Which is more cringeworthy: Bruce's dancing or Max's hair?