Bruce's Inadvertently Controversial Blockbuster - Listen Again Without Prejudice

Welcome to the month of July, the first (and last) ever Born In The USA Appreciation Month here at One Buck Records. Why?, you ask. Because why the hell not, I say. So, what is Born In The USA Appreciation Month? Well, during the next weeks I will post a bunch of stuff more or less related to that album. Some will be Bruce, some will not. There's at least two albums by younger artists that I want to post that show a clear sonic influence of Bruce' landmark album. There's a tribute album, and at least one alternate album that tries to  recontextualize the tite tune and Bruce's other Vietnam tales. But of course if we start the festivities, and that means starting with the riginal album. I don't know when - if ever - you have listened to Born In The USA, but listen again - without prejudice...

Born In The USA was famously or infamously was boorn out of the same sessions that birthed Nebraska, and it would take only a little bit of tinkering to make it a lot more...Nebraska-esque. In the same way that his electric Nebraska demos - finally revealed to the public last year - showed how Nebraska could become more like Born In The USA if the Boss had chosen so, the demos and bootleg cuts show that Born In The USA could have been as big a downer as Nebraska, had Springsteen chosen to do so. Instead he went for the biggest, shiniest sound of his career, and things got...muddld...and complicated. But you can hear the pessimism and downbeat atmosphere of Nebraska through the haze of Max Weinberg's thunderous drus and Roy Bittan's keyboard fanfares. There's hints everywhere. Of a deep and dark uneasiness. Of tragedy disguised as comedy. Of depression disguised as upbeat dance tunes.

One of the infamous memories of Bruce's Born In The USA era is him jiving akwardly with a teenage Courtney Cox to "Dancing In The Dark". When Jon Landay told Bruce that what was missing from the album was a hit, and Springsteen went home and wrote a piece that delivered on that front, you culd accuse Springsteen of seling out, or what not. But when was the last time you really listened to the lyrics of "Dancing In The Dark"? "I take a look in the mirror, I want to change my hair, my clothes, my face / I ain't nothin' but tired / and I'm just tired and bored with myself." Like the lyrics from the title tune, there is an obvious disconnect between the upbeat, joyful music and the downbeat sentiments. It's possibe to look at "Dancing In The Dark" as one of the first expressions of what we now know were bouts of depression that Springsteen was battling with. 

Now, about those production choices. Springsteen approved them, and owned them, and in some ways he continued the 'one for the large audience, and one for me (and the critics)' principle he had established with Darkness On The Edge Of Town and The River, then Nebraska and this album, and arguably continued with the subdued Tunnel Of Love and the glossy Human Touch. And it's just so easy to get caught up in the soun dof things. The album came with a lyric sheet, so people could have (and should have) easily sussed out the bitter Vietnam veteran tale in the title song, but Max Weinberg's huge drums - sounding, according to Bruce like handgrnades, which is correct and like the sound of panic, which isn't - and Bittan's triumphant keyboard melody covered the lyrical concerns up real good and real quick. 

The hints of a darker, less mainstreamy album remain, if only in hints, on the album. "Glory Days" started as a one-verse-and-chorus fragment during the Nebraska home recordings, decidedly differently, in that the chorus stated that the protagonist never had any glory days. But even if the final singalong version inverses sentiment and feel of that original idea, if you think about it, "Glory Days" just isn't as glorious as it pertains to be - and again it's easy to get suckered in by the boisterous chorus. But no amount of sha-la-la's can cover up that the heart of the song, with the baseball player's and waitress's lives peaking in high school and then - like John Mellencamp's Jack and Diane,getting on a long downhill slope, is sad, whether acknowledged or not. Like a ton of other protagonists, these folks are on a downbound train. 

Soringsteen did his best to dress up these tunes. "Working On The Highwy" gained a singalong chorus and lost the rather sordid backstory of its original incarnation titles "Child Bride". And "No Surrender" and "Bobby Jean", both songs that adress hois colleagues - the E-Streeters in the former, and the departing Steve Van Zandt in the latter - stay beautifully anthems to friendship and persistance. But yeah, you listen closely to this album and through the extremely Eighties production, and the album suddenly seems to be a lot more complicated than its popular reception and misappropriation of the Reagan administration among others, suggest.

When Bruce had finished the album, his friend, rock critic Dave Marsh, told him that the sound and sensivity of the album's title track and iconography would cause him trouble, but Bruce just laughed the idea off. He would learn the hard way how right Marsh was. But that doesn't stop Born In The USA from being a highly fascinating album, on a number of levels. So, listen again - without prejudice...