THE STORY OF JOE: BORN IN THE USA, REVISITED

BACKSTORY

This past September, Franny and I were on the 401, heading to Ogunquit, Maine, for our annual vacation.  We’ve been going to “OG,” as we call it, since 1987.  And when we take this trip, I load six or seven CDs in the car that I know Franny will like.  (Yes, I have Spotify, but I also still have about 200 CDs.  When we’re in the car, I like to use them.)

I know the types of music she digs.  This trip included The Beatles’ Let It Be, greatest hits albums by Creedence Clearwater, Blood, Sweat & Tears, and Valdy, Jon Mayer’s SOB Rock, and Springsteen’s Born in the USA.  Franny is, like me, a Bruceophile, so I always include at least one of The Boss’s albums. 

The weird thing is why I included Born in the USA.  Since it was released in 1984, I had never been a fan of it.  And that’s odd – because it’s his biggest-selling album, the one that broke him through to a global audience.  But it never caught the fire in me the way his previous albums did. 

I’d actually forgotten I’d included it in the pile of CDs I’d put in the car.  When we got just past Kingston, Franny said, “Let’s put the windows up and hear some music.”  I was hoping she’d put CCR in – Up Around the Bend is one of the greatest of all highway songs.

When I heard that famous opening riff from the title track of Born in the USA, I rolled my eyes and cursed myself for not picking Bruce albums like Greetings from Asbury Park or Darkness on the Edge of Town.  But the tradition is that she chooses the CDs.  So, like it or not, I was now going to be listening to Born in the USA for the first time in decades. 

And a surprising thing happened. 

Read on. 

MY 1984 REACTION

I remember buying Born in the USA (which I’ll refer to after this as USA) and bringing it home.  1984.  We were living in an apartment at Victoria Park and Sheppard in Scarborough.  I had a really great stereo system back then.  Technics turntable, receiver and speakers.

By this time, I was deeply into Springsteen.  If you know me, or have read this blog, you know my story.  You don’t need me to re-tell the whole tale of my Springsteen evolution or why he and his music worked for me.  I’ve said it all before. 

My pal Mike McCarthy (a superb musician whose opinion I’ve always respected) had bought it before me.  He called me up and was effusive in his praise.  “Paulie, this’ll blow your mind.  The drums!”  But when I gave USA a few listens, I was underwhelmed.  It was pretty standard rock.  Some of the songs sounded like Eagles-ish country rock and I was really tired of that sorta-country/sorta-rock music.  There was also a notable use of synthesizers.  I didn’t mind the use of synthesizers, but for Bruce’s music?  No.  His albums had always been a spicy mix of music, often grounded by jazzy soul in the early albums and later with a notable hard rock approach.  But this album was vanilla.  And in terms of the stories, they all seemed to be about a fading USA and, even in 1984, I was bored of the USA constantly talking about the USA.  Besides, Bruce had already covered exactly the same territory just before USA with the brilliant Nebraska.  This felt repetitive…and not as musically sharp as Nebraska, where the music was simply Bruce solo with his guitars and harmonica. 

I listened to USA a couple of times and then just dismissed it. 

And, wouldn’t you know it, as much as I didn’t love USA, the rest of the world did.  In fact, it was his biggest selling album, drawing in a massive global audience, full of new fans who had never connected with Bruce or his music before.  He had a passionate, devoted fan base before this album and the adoration of even the toughest critics, but USA made him into a whole new entity.  No longer a rocker with a cult following.  Now he was a star. 

I never really listened to the album again with any amount of seriousness.  I was actually surprised to find it in my CD collection.  I must have bought it just to have it. 

MY 2023 REACTION

So, there Franny and I were, 39 years later, in the car between Kingston and Cornwall, Ontario. 

We played USA all the way through once.  My secret desire was to just get through it and then I’d put the CCR on. 

But when the album was over, I had to admit that something caught me that hadn’t before.  I thought, “Am I actually liking this album?”  So we played it again.  When we got to OG, I downloaded the album from Spotify.  It was a hot, sunny week, so we had a lot of beach-lazing – perfect for listening to USA over and over.  And that’s what I did.  But just what was attracting me was still elusive. 

Finally, one morning on a walk through the village, I realized what had grabbed me:  USA is one long story.  And when I thought of it that way, it’s quite a powerful story that’s as relevant today as it was in 1984. 

It was a classic “eureka” moment.  After decades of waving it away, now I was seeing something clearly. 

It’s about one guy and a journey he takes from a tough childhood to the hell of war to meaninglessness to one fumble after another to drawing a line in the sand and making the first steps to building a better life. 

And when I got that into my head, I went back through the album a few more times, tracing this fellow’s journey, as told by Bruce. 

Here’s how it played out when I thought of Born in the USA that way…..

BORN IN THE USA (THE OPENING SONG)

The music:  Booming.  Big drums, with Max Weinberg’s snare drum shots sounding like a gun firing.  Lots of synthesizer – a new thing for the E-Street sound.  Bruce’s vocals raspier than ever. 

The story:  We meet a guy who tells us about where he is in his life right now.  Later in the album, Bruce calls him Joe.  So let’s call him that for all of the story that is pieced together by the songs. 

From the first verse, you get the clear picture this is going to be a dark ride.  We learn that Joe was born poor, treated badly.  “The first kick I got is when I hit the ground/End up like a dog that’s been beat too much/Til you spend half your life just covering up…” 

He gets into trouble with the law, he’s get sent off to fight in Vietnam.  It is, of course, awful.  He sees his friends die.  He comes back home to a USA that doesn’t want him; the refinery won’t hire him back and the VA can’t help him. 

As we move out of this opening chapter, he leaves us with his hopelessness:  “Nowhere to run, ain’t got nowhere to go.”

COVER ME

The music:  This may be the hardest rock Bruce has ever played.  Screaming, shredding guitar.  (Proving the least known aspect of Springsteen’s talent: the dude can really play that axe.)

The story:  We left Joe when he had nowhere to go.  He’s still stuck.  But now, he’s gone into a psychological hole and he’s down deep.  He sees the world around him and he’s scared.  “The whole world is out there, just trying to score/I’ve seen enough/I don’t wanna see anymore.”

But he doesn’t want to suffer alone.  He’s calling out for someone to protect him.  He calls that person a “lover”…but you don’t get the feeling this is a lover he wants to have a good time with.  This is not an I-love-you-you-love-me romantic ode.  It’s a desperate cry for help from a man at his most vulnerable. 

DARLINGTON COUNTY 

The music:  Country-rock-twang.  There’s even the clang of a cowbell, given some groove by Dan Federici’s organ and Clarence’s big, booming tenor sax.  A joyous, let’s-have-a-party feeling.

The story:  Things are brightening up for Joe.  We assume he never met the lover who would protect him in Cover Me.  Or maybe he did and that’s all over.

But now he and his buddy, Wayne, have hit the road to find jobs.  Wayne’s uncle has a connection in the union.  They’re having a great time on this road trip.  They have a hot car with a t-top, they’re roaring down the highway.  They meet some women, flirt with them and they all get together and, we can easily assume, they have a blast.  Until Wayne goes missing and later turns up being apprehended by the law.  In fact, Joe sees him “handcuffed to the bumper of a state trooper’s Ford.”

Well, that was fun while it lasted. 

WORKIN’ ON THE HIGHWAY

The music:  More twangy rock.  A fun vibe that reminds me of Duane Eddy and Buddy Holly, although I could easily imagine a punk band speeding this up and having a good time with it. 

The story:  Joe has no luck.  He finally finds a job – working on a highway construction crew.  It’s boring, dirty work.  But he seems to have his head in a good place.  At least he’s got a positive goal:  as he holds a red flag out on Highway 95, “In my head I keep a picture of a pretty little miss/Someday, mister, I’m gonna lead a better life than this.”

But he’s got a nose for trouble.  He meets a girl, her brothers don’t approve of him, and he gets arrested.  He’s still working on the highway…but now it’s as a prisoner. 

No luck. 

DOWNBOUND TRAIN

The music:  I can’t praise this song enough.  Beautifully conceived and played.  The music is deceptive – it sounds simple and plain.  Bruce’s vocals are in a deep monotone.  It would be easy to sit in a dentist’s chair and hear this song and relax while the hygienist does their work.   But it grows on you.  What seemed like easy-flowing rhythm guitar takes on acerbic notes.  Behind it, Federici’s organ creates a ghostly mood.  And Max throws in some dark fills to accentuate the toxic greyness of it all. 

The story:  After his highway prison gang experience, Joe (this is the first time we officially learn his name) is free again, but he’s no further ahead.  He got a job at a lumber yard.  Then, the economy tanked and he got laid off.  He met a woman, it seems to have been a serious relationship.  And when Joe’s job ended, she left. 

Now, he’s working at a carwash.  It’s a dead-end job, even for a guy who has only had jobs like this.  And he misses that woman desperately.  So much so that a dream about her makes him rise up in the middle of the night, run to the house they had in the hope that she’s still there.  But she’s gone.  The last we hear from him, he’s swinging a hammer on a railroad gang, feeling blue and lost. 

I’M ON FIRE

The music:  This was a big hit.  The music is minimalist:  an insistent beat that never changes on Max’s snare drum rim, with some airy organ by Federici.  (Side note:  I played drums on this song with some friends recently.  Nailing that constant rim shot and never stopping is pleasantly hard.)

The story:  Joe’s either getting cocky or crazy here.  If he’s talking directly to a woman and telling her what a hotshot he is, then I’ll call him cocky.  But I suspect that all that he’s saying is in his private mind.  There is no woman in front of him.  It’s a woman maybe he’s seen in a supermarket or at a bar.  He imagining what he’d say to her. 

But Bruce hints that Joe is not in his right mind.  After the high talk about how Joe thinks he’s the cat’s pyjamas, he tells us of how desperate and lonely he feels.  “At night I wake up with the sheets soaking wet/And a freight train running through the middle of my head/Only you can cool my desire.”

It’s a scary story.  You wonder if Joe is going to do something awful. 

NO SURRENDER/BOBBY JEAN

The music:  Powerful stories, but neither of these songs do anything for me musically.  Both are at a fast tempo with completely unimaginative scores.  Pretty standard guitars and drums. 

The story:  I put these two together, partially because they sound almost exactly the same.  While I’m not impressed by the music of either, I like the stories.  They also seem to be intertwined, the second answering the first. 

These songs are about friendship.  Joe, in the moment of the No Surrender story, seems to be taking a break from his blues.  Maybe he’s thinking back to his teenaged years, before the weight of adult life came over him, when he and his mates were ballsy and adventurous.  The guys actually seemed to be in a rock band together.  And in these songs, Joe remembers the liberating joy rock music gave them.  I remember that too – despite the bore of school, stupid part-time jobs and my parents wanting me to conform to an approaching adult life I didn’t want, playing in a rock band was, for me, a liberation.

And in the next song, Bobby Jean, Joe and his friend are parting ways.  Bobby Jean (normally a woman’s name, but I think it’s a man’s here) has moved on.  Joe didn’t even know he’d left.  But Joe wishes him well and tells Bobby Joe he’ll think of him fondly as their lives roll on. 

I’M GOIN’ DOWN

The music:   A spirited rocker.  Nothing special musically, but gets your toes tapping.  Very nice sax solo by Clarence in the middle. 

The story:  Joe continues to have trouble with women – i.e., they keep leaving him.  But now, he seems to have reached an odd pinnacle -- he doesn’t seem terribly sad about his constant strikeouts with girlfriends.  He goes on and on in this one about how he and an unnamed woman once had a terrific time together, but now it’s all just flat.  “You used to love to drive me wild, girl, but lately, girl, you get your kicks from just-a drivin’ me down, down, down…”  But after he says that, Joe leaves the song, singing a kind of jazz-scat in a happy-go-lucky way.  Maybe Joe’s just giving up on women.  And he sounds rather happy about that. 

GLORY DAYS

The music:  I love this song.  Even back in ’84 when I didn’t like the album, this song delighted me.  A foot-stomping rocker.  The band has never sounded so good.  Bruce and Steve Van Zandt grinding away on guitars, Max slamming that snare on a solid 4-4 pattern, Federici and Bittan do this organ-piano chorus sounds like you’re on the Midway at the CNE.  I love how Steve keeps chiming in with these preach-it-teacher shouts in response to Bruce’s vocals. 

The story:  This is Joe’s re-entry into living his life.  As he tells this chapter of his story, I can feel him thinking, “OK, enough is enough.  So much whining!”  He’s been through all this shit and instead of letting it grind it down, now he’s seen a certain light as he observes the depths of his friends. 

He meets up with two people here who help him see the light. 

The first is an old school pal, a guy once a great ball player who could “throw that speed ball by ya.”  They see each other at a bar and sit down to have a few pints. 

Then he tells of a girl he knows who lives nearby.  He’ll stop by on Friday nights, after her kids have gone to bed.  She and her husband Bobby split up and she tells him she’s still sad about that. 

Each of them cry the blues to them, but can find a smile when they start thinking about the times they all had when they were younger, hipper, more carefree, leading Joe to proclaim, “Glory Days…they’ll pass you by/Glory days, in the wink of a young girl’s eye…”

But Joe doesn’t think that remembering the glory days makes him feel better.  In fact, the constant “hey, remember the time when…” stories are dragging him down.  So much so that Joe makes a declaration: 

“And I hope when I get old I don’t sit around thinking about it/But I probably will/Just sitting back/Trying to recapture/A little of the glory, yeah/The time slips away and leaves you with nothing, mister, but boring stories of…glory days.”

If Bruce had used these lyrics with the gloomy drone of Downbound Train, then we’d have a different feeling about Joe.  It would be a chapter of resignation and defeat.  But with that party rock tone, Glory Days becomes an awakening.  Back in Cover Me, he said, “I’ve seen enough, I don’t wanna see anymore.”  That was an expression of fear.  In Glory Days, he touches on the same need to leave the shit behind him, but now, feeling what he’s felt, seeing what he’s seen, he’s saying, “This doesn’t have to be my life.”

It’s the beginning of a turning point. 

DANCING IN THE DARK

The music:  If you’re of a certain age, you know this one.  A massive hit and rightly so:  Dancing has a cool groove to it, thanks to some nice playing by Roy Bittan on some kind of synth keyboard.  A good dancing song – and that’s how this one became a massive hit.  This was the era of MTV and the music video.  As I recall, the smart film director Brian DePalma was recruited to direct the video of Bruce and the band playing Dancing to a concert crowd.  Bruce is all tidied up – his hair has been cut, he’s clean shaven, he’s wearing a white button-down shirt with the sleeves rolled up high.  Eventually, he calls up a pretty young woman to dance.  I actually thought this was a real scene – until we discovered that young woman was an actor, Courtney Cox, who would become a big star on the TV series, Friends.  I’ve seen Bruce do Dancing since and follow this same routine.  In 2012 at the Air Canada Centre in TO, he invited an older woman up on stage and they did a lovely dance. 

The story: Joe is asking for help again, but he seems to have his feet on the ground.  In Cover Me, he was scared and wanted protection.  In Working on the Highway, Downbound Train, and I’m on Fire, he wanted a woman to partner up with him, but each time, it all fell apart or never happened.  In I’m Going Down, he just gave up on women. 

But with this chapter, I felt a note of positivity from Joe.  The experiences in Glory Days woke him up.  Yes, he’s still lonely.  He feels pointless and unconnected.  He still views the world around him as a dangerous place (“Stay in the streets of this town/And they’ll be carving you up alright…”), and he’s not only sick of the treadmill he feels he’s on, but of himself.  “I check my look in the mirror/Wanna change my clothes, my hair, my face…”

So, he asks for help.  Not a wild night on the town or even sex.  He asks for help and love.  He knows he’s got to re-start his life, or he’ll be just existing in a meaningless way forever.  And he knows he can’t – and doesn’t want to – do this by himself.  “You can’t start a fire, you can’t start a fire without a spark/This gun’s for hire/Even if we’re just dancing in the dark.” 

He’s been trying to find a partner through the whole story.  He can never seem to get it right.  He can never deliver his message the right way.  But now he’s in a new frame of mind and he’s found the word.  And he shouts out perhaps the most important line in the whole story at the end of the first verse:  “Hey there, baby, I could use just a little help.”  

MY HOMETOWN

The music:  A beautiful song, one that I find myself whistling when I think of it.  (That’s always a good test to see if a song has a noticeable tune – can you whistle it?)  The whole band (except for Van Zandt) plays on the concluding song.  The overriding sounds come from Bittan and Federici on keyboards, playing in a soft, lilting way that reminded me of the ocean in Aruba when the waves are lapping up on the shore. 

The story:  Most living beings migrate.  I just watched a short video of snow geese from the Canadian Arctic that leave when winter comes to the far north.  They fly in huge masses to the southern US (stopping off in the fields and ponds of southern Canada for a few weeks for a break).  When one place becomes inhospitable, they find another place that’s better. 

People, of course, are the same.  It’s hard to pinpoint just when “humans” first appeared on Earth.  I’m something of an evolution geek and have read all kinds of material.  Maybe it’s 300,000 years, as some scholars have said.  But then another source will say 50,000. 

But whenever humans became humans, we’ve been moving around the planet to do what all living beings have as their primary goal:  to survive and keep the species going.  And even beyond survival, we strive to do better, to leave dangerous places behind and find a place where we can start anew. 

My two grandfathers did that.  Giovanni Fraumeni and John Madigan left southern Italy and Ireland for Canada in the early years of the 20th century.  I never heard directly from either why they made this trek.  I never met Giovanni – he died in 1934 of tuberculosis when my dad was seven years old.  I have vague memories of John Madigan, who we called Grumpa.  But I was six when he died.  I don’t know what the specific forces were that compelled him to get on a ship and settle in Toronto. 

But it’s easy for me to assume that they both left for better life opportunities.  Southern Italy and Ireland were poor countries.  North America was becoming a place of opportunity.  From Naples, Italy and Dublin, Ireland, people packed the ships heading for Halifax, Boston, Baltimore, Philadelphia and New York City.  Remember that powerful scene in The Godfather Part II, when young Vito Corleone is on the ship that arrives at Ellis Island in 1900?  Remember the look of hope on the faces of the passengers at they looked at the Statue of Liberty?  My grandfathers were passengers just like that. 

And in My Hometown, the final chapter in Born in the USA, Joe decides to make a similar move. 

If Dancing in the Dark was his declaration of fuck-this-shit, I need to change, then My Hometown is the big act of putting a new life in place. 

Joe tells us of when he was a little kid and his dad would point out the sights of as they drove around.  “Son, take a good look around…this is your hometown.”  Then he shifts to his teenage years, when racial strife took over the town.  “A lotta fights between Blacks and whites…troubled times had come to my hometown.”  From there, Joe tells of economic decline.  “Main Street is whitewashed windows and vacant stores/Seems like there ain’t nobody wants to come down here no more/They’re closing down the textile mill, across the railroad tracks/Foreman says these jobs are going boys, and they ain’t coming back.”  We see that on our drive through the small towns of New Hampshire and northern New York State as we head for Ogunquit.  Towns where the good days are gone. 

And then things brighten up.  Joe tells us he and his partner, Kate, have a boy of their own now.  They’ve had a chat and have pretty much decided to move somewhere with more opportunity.  Maybe they’ll go south. 

And before he concludes his story, Joe tells us he does with his son what his dad did:  “Last night I sat him up behind the wheel and said, ‘Son, take a good look ‘round.  This is your hometown.’”

It’s a decidedly adult song.  Springsteen had explored victorious escapes before – that’s what Thunder Road is about (“It’s a town full of losers and I’m pulling out here to win”) and his anthem, Born to Run (“Someday girl, I don’t know when/We’re gonna get to that place where we really wanna go/And we’ll walk in the sun”).  And most of the brilliant and moody Nebraska was about moving, sometimes desperately, sometimes on the lam from the law, sometimes just in your mind. 

But this is, to me, the most mature expression of growth and taking a new step from Bruce.  It reminds me of the final scene in the classic British “angry young man” film Saturday Night and Sunday Morning.  Albert Finney’s brash, f-you rabble rouser, Arthur, has seen a new way to live.  He’s with Doreen (Shirley Anne Field), the young woman he loves.  Instead of being out knocking back pints and getting into fights, he’s holding hands with her as they look at new houses being built in the gritty, steel-mill city of Sheffield, England. He throws a rock at one of them, only to be scolded by Doreen.  “Maybe one of those will be ours one day,” Doreen says.  Arthur still has a sneer on his face, but he knows that’s the life he wants.  He wants to move on. 

And after all the shit he’s seen and all the rumbles he’s been in, so does Springsteen’s Joe. 

AND IN THE END…

The only thing I’d change in this album is the synthesizer in the title track.  I have nothing against synth, but it sounds hollow and out of place on that song.  Some screeching guitar would have been better to indicate the anger of the song. 

Aside from that, I am nuts about this album.  It’s so much smarter than I had thought.  Too bad it took me 39 years to realize that.  Or maybe my lateness is not a bad thing.  We experience things differently at different times.  When Born in the USA was released in 1984, I was happy with Bruce and his music the way it had been – full of soul groove and entertaining characters slouching around the New Jersey beach towns.  I wasn’t ready for change.  Odd, because I was only 26.  Ha, that Dylan line comes to mind:  “I was so much older then, I’m younger than that now.” At the time of this writing, I’m only 2.5 months away from 66.  And I feel fresher and more ready to rock and change now. 

And I’m pretty sure that’s why this magnificent album, essentially a long story about change, is speaking so vibrantly to me now. 

I hope it works for you, too.