Darkness on the Edge of Town - Bruce Springsteen

It has been a while. Encouraged by our only fan and the fact I am home alone for the first time in three and a half years, I have poured a glass of red and put on the warm blanket that is Bruce Springsteen.

Three years in Amman and two kids later, B and I have left the blog dormant but not the music (or frankly, the drinking). There is a little more Elizabeth Mitchell and Play School than in the past, but plenty of new music - Chance the Rapper, Solange, Car Seat Headrest. Mostly there has been a lot of folk and bluegrass; in a moment of madness, B bought some Willie Watson bandanas at his Melbourne gig last week.

But let's get back to Bruce. I've decided that Darkness is Bruce's greatest album. I've quite possibly said the same thing about Nebraska and Born to Run. But Darkness is actually it.

The 1978 album continues the themes Bruce had so successfully portrayed on Born to Run. Young men (and sometimes, women) struggling against their circumstances, searching for belonging and wanting something more. It opens with Badlands. "Poor man wanna be rich. Rich man wanna be king. And a king ain't satisfied till he rules everything." This lyric is deliciously clever.

Adam Raised a Cain's desperate, repetitive chant always gets me. In the holy land, they too work with nothing to show but pain. Just like Springsteen's characters.

Seeing Bruce on his most recent Australian tour, today's politics was inescapable. Donald Trump is US President - the desperate characters on Darkness could very well be his constituency. The "men walk through these gates with death in their eyes, and you just better believe, boy, somebody's gonna get hurt tonight, it's just the working, just the working life". Trump sold these men from Factory a fanciful dream.

But while the lyrics are timeless, it's the music that keeps me in love. It's sweeping and majestic, but somehow restrained. Bruce and the E Street Band recorded together in flight, Darkness is perfect rock and roll.

Born to Run - Bruce Springsteen

Early in our relationship, one Valentine's Day, B told me "you ain't a beauty, but hey you're alright." And my heart melted. In a moment, I knew that he got it. He got my obsession with Bruce.

(B would like to add, btw, that he said it not because he believed it, but because he knew she loved the line).


Simply put dear reader, this is the greatest album of all time. L is not sure she can write about it and do it any justice. Thunder Road. Tenth Avenue Freeze Out. Jungleland. Born to Run. Born to Run is on most mix tapes, cd or playlist we've ever made and is always the first song played in the car on every road trip to Melbourne. Of course, only once we get past Hall and can put the foot on the gas.


L once heard Bruce talk about Born to Run album cover. As you open the sleeve, you see Bruce leaning on E Street Band saxophonist, Clarence Clemons. He describes the cover as an invitation to join the band. Thunder Road, the opening track, was Bruce's invitation to the album.

The song starts slowly with a lonely harmonica wail. It picks up speed as Bruce describes a vision: "the screen door slams, Wendy's dress sways". It's a simple but evocative image, which takes you somewhere else - straight into small town America. No songwriter has mastered imagery like Bruce. Indeed, he's more a storyteller than a songwriter. And there's many a novelist who could do well to learn from Bruce's pithiness. It doesn't take him 60,000 words to tell a tale.

Born to Run is extraordinary. Every listen makes us want to pack up our lives and get in a car and just go. What stops us is that we'd make it to Yass and realise it's not as easy as it sounds. That's the tragedy of the characters in Born to Run. We know that for all their enthusiasm and pent-up energy, they're not going to find escape and release.  The song apparently took six months to record, with overdub after overdub. Listen to the song closely and repeatedly and you can hear how it is painstakingly constructed. It's worth it. Every bar is a masterpiece; it's never been bested.

Bruce has made great solo albums but the E Street Band take his songs to a whole nother level. Each member of the band is a great talent and there's an unusual egalitarianism to the songs' production. No part dominates the other. Each instrument equally vies for your attention, which makes the album anything but subtle. The complementarity shows a band of geniuses working in perfect harmony.

Of course, Bruce is the pinnacle. His vocals are raw, rock and roll. But he has range and he can do it soft or loud. And when he's loud he's electrifying. The best there ever was.

Jungleland warrants mentioning because it's the world in a song. It doesn't have a single narrative arc, it has multiple. From highs to lows to deeper lows and the most breathtaking pinnacle. Our favourite line is "down here the poets don't write nothing at all, they just sit back and let it all be". Clarence's sax solo is magnificent. In a world where "sax solo" has rightfully become a dirty phrase, this stands alone.

It's a town full of losers. I'm pulling out of here to win.