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Born to Run

Certain Songs #137: Bruce Springsteen – “She’s The One”

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Album: Born to Run.

Year: 1975.

Wiih its killer organ and secret basslines and big-ass drum fills, the Phil Spector-by-way-of Bo Diddley “She’s The One” packs a universe of epic grandness into just four-and-a-half minutes. And if the Born to Run version was all that we ever got, dayneu. 

But it was just a fucking trailer compared to the live version. On that 1978 tour, over Max Weinberg’s kick drum, Bruce would reference other classic songs with the Bo Diddley beat: “Not Fade Away,” “Mona,” “Gloria” – whatever came to mind – setting up what was always an absolutely monster version of “She’s The One”

The the density of the sound of the E Street Band is absolutely breathtaking: how Roy Bittan’s piano & Danny Federici’s organ intertwine, how Garry Tallent’s bass and Max Weinberg’s drums drive everything, and oh yeah, here comes Clarence Clemons kicking out a  sax solo while everybody is joyfully shouting “Whoa, she’s the one!”

And after that, they’re off to the races, pretty much leaving every other band ever in the dust. 

The last two minutes of any live 1978 version of “She’s The One,” with all of the building and building and stopping and starting and crashing and moving ever forward with ever single member of the band playing within an inch of their lives, ranks with the greatest rock ‘n’ roll music by anybody in any context. It’s utterly thrilling every single time.

“She’s the One” performed live in Landover, MD, 1978

“She’s The One” performed live in Passiac, NJ, 1978

My Certain Songs Spotify Playlist:

Every “Certain Song” Ever

Certain Songs #136: Bruce Springsteen – “Born to Run”

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Album: Born to Run.

Year: 1975.

Back in the mid-1980s, when Bruce Springsteen was the biggest music artist in the world not named “Michael Jackson,” I used to give a post-closing-shift ride home to one of my Video Zone co-workers, Mindy. She lived at the edge of Clovis, near where Tollhouse made its weird diagonal run towards the Sierra Nevadas.

That was, you know, 30 years ago, before suburban sprawl brought the mountains ever closer, and way before they built the 168 to help formalize that closeness. So Tollhouse past midnight – seemingly lit only by the lights of three radio towers – was one of those roads that represented “getting the hell out of Fresno.” 

Many nights after dropping Mindy off at the house where she was staying, I would linger at the stop sign at Tollhouse and Fowler, and look up Tollhouse and those radio towers, thinking “man, if my life was a Bruce Springsteen song,  I could just get on this road and never come back. I could escape everything and everyone.”

1,2,3,4!

Of course, my life wasn’t a Bruce Springsteen song. And it especially wasn’t “Born to Run.” My youthful wildness didn’t manifest itself in screaming down boulevards in hemi-powered drones. My youthful wildness manifested itself in drinking too much and not graduating college in a timely manner. But man, did riding through mansions of glory in suicide machines seem like it was way more fun that ditching class to go see a movie with Jay.

Right? Discovering if love was wild or real by dying on the street in an everlasting kiss with a girl named Wendy sounded like the most exciting thing that could ever possibly happen. Let’s go! But, of course, it wasn’t ever going to happen. Not to me, not to anyone, probably. But, man, who could hear this song and not want to live it, even for a little while? 

In concert – because with Bruce, the phrase “in concert” always seems to come up – they would turn on the house lights for “Born to Run.” That way you could sing along with thousands of other strangers who were also – for a few minutes – escaping their perfectly unexciting normal lives because we gotta get out while we’re young because tramps like us baby we were born to run!

“Born to Run” performed live in the mid-1980s

My Certain Songs Spotify Playlist:

Every “Certain Song” Ever

Certain Songs #135: Bruce Springsteen – “Backstreets”

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Album: Born to Run.

Year: 1975.

I know that Bruce posed with Clarence Clemons for the famous cover of what is probably the greatest transition record ever made, but it shoulda been Roy Bittan. I mean, of course it wouldn’t have worked visually in a nice gatefold cover, but let’s face it: Roy Bittan owns Born to Run. 

There isn’t a single song on this record without a perfect, memorable piano part. Roy’s piano is practically the first thing you hear in “Thunder Road” and the last thing you hear on “Jungleland.”  

And of course, Bittan is all over “Backstreets,” which may not be the greatest Bruce Springsteen song, but is definitely the most Bruce Springsteen song. 

One soft infested summer
Me and Terry became friends
Trying in vain to breathe
The fire we born in
Catching rides to the outskirts
Tying faith between our teeth
Sleeping in that old abandoned beach house
Getting wasted in the heat 
And hiding on the backstreets 
Hiding on the backstreets

It may not profound, but you can see it in your mind’s eye. More than that, you want to live it: that summer where everything changes. That summer which has since become so mythologized in your mind that you replay it for the rest of your life. You know, your glory days. 

And, besides, over the hard-rocking Blonde on Blonde sound of of the E Street Band, it becomes profound, because they make hiding on the backstreets sound like simultaneously the beginning and end of the world.

So in the end, when Bruce sings:

Hiding on the backstreets
Hiding on the backstreets
Hiding on the backstreets
Hiding on the backstreets
Hiding on the backstreets
Hiding on the backstreets
Hiding on the backstreets
Hiding on the backstreets

approximately 568,921,364 times, it becomes a catharsis, a cry for help, and a prayer to a god that had long since abandoned him and Terry. In the end, it feels like a cleansing, and everybody involved is pretty much exhausted. Which means it’s time to flip the album over and get reinvigorated all over again.

“Backstreets” performed live in Passiac, New Jersey, 1978

My Certain Songs Spotify Playlist:

Every “Certain Song” Ever