Straight Time

See, that's the thing about Bruce Springsteen. You can listen to one of his songs for literally decades and then one day a line hits in a way it never has before and you suddenly realize the subtlety, the deftness, the intricacy of his writing all over again.

This quiet deep cut off 1995's The Ghost of Tom Joad LP, for instance. It tells a tale of an ex-con, and the push and pull he feels as he's buffeted by various forces: his wife, his shady family, his soul-killing job, his desire to stay straight, the siren call of the illicit life.

Got out of prison back in '86 and I found a wife
Walked the clean and narrow
Just tryin' to stay out and stay alive
Got a job at the rendering plant, it ain't gonna make me rich
In the darkness before dinner comes
Sometimes I can feel the itch
I got a cold mind to go tripping across that thin line
I'm sick of doin' straight time

My uncle's at the evenin' table makes his living runnin' hot cars
Slips me a hundred dollar bill, says
"Charlie, you best remember who your friends are"
I got a cold mind to go tripping across that thin line
I ain't makin' straight time

Eight years in, it feels like you're gonna die
But you get used to anything
Sooner or later it just becomes your life 

Kitchen floor in the evening, tossin' my little babies high
Mary's smilin' but she watches me always out of the corner of her eye
Seems you can't get any more than half free
I step out onto the front porch and suck the cold air deep inside of me
Got a cold mind to go tripping 'cross that thin line
I'm sick of doin' straight time 

In the basement, huntin' gun and a hacksaw
Sip a beer and thirteen inches of barrel drop to the floor 

Come home in the evening, can't get the smell from my hands
Lay my head down on the pillow
And go driftin' off into foreign lands

Like many of the tracks on the album, the song ends somewhat unresolved, with the final lyrics being not an expected return of the title, but just half of another verse (although, interestingly, harmonically it does resolve to the tonic, unlike some of the album's other songs).

It's that last full chorus which is the key to the song's greatness:

Kitchen floor in the evening, tossin' my little babies high
Mary's smilin' but she watches me always out of the corner of her eye
Seems you can't get any more than half free

It's easy to sympathize with the narrator, as he suffers that horrible feeling of not being trusted by the one person in the entire world who should trust him unconditionally.

Except...except.

Mary’s watching him, yes. But why?

Is it because as an ex-con he can never be fully trusted?
Or because she's his wife, and she can tell that her husband is teetering on a precipice, and he's slipping?
Is he slipping because no one fully trusts him, not even his wife? Is that a self-fulfilling prophecy? Oh, you don't trust me? Well, then I might as well go back to my old ways.
Is he simply paranoid? Is she watching him because it’s hardwired into many species to keep an eye on their spawn at all times? After all, he is doing something that's at least a bit dangerous with their children.
Or maybe she's just watching him play with their kids because it makes her so damn happy to see?
Is it all just an excuse? Is he simply looking for a reason to go back?
Or is it even all just unavoidable? As he himself says earlier in the song:

You get used to anything
Sooner or later it just becomes your life

No way to know for sure. Every possibility is there, and more, all laid out in fewer than 250 words—about half the number of words in this post...and that's excluding the quoted lyrics. Springsteen's lyrical concision is staggering—we know who this guy is, what he's gone through, what he's going through, and we're pretty sure we have a pretty good idea what he's going to be doing shortly, even if he himself pretends he doesn't know yet.

That's some sweet writing. And it's just another track off one of his least-known albums. 

The Famous Final Scene

So. The great Bob Seger may have played his final concert ever the other night. 

It's weird to see Seger relegated to the AOR arena-rock dinosaur category by people who've listened to music made since 1990; sometimes it feels like the only ones who give ol' Bob his due are the ones who loved him in the 70s and 80s and have pretty much stopped listening to anything since. And it's jarring, because he was so big—in the late 70s, he was more commercially successful than Bruce Springsteen, despite really only breaking through because (the younger) Springsteen paved the way.

But Seger is an authentic artist and a true believer; he was already making records when the Beatles were putting out Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, he wrote one of the all-time great anti-war songs, "2+2=?" (which is an absolute banger), and his first authentic hit, "Ramblin' Gamblin' Man" came out in 1969. He was a local star who time and again almost seemed like he might hit the big time without ever actually doing so. Until the kid from New Jersey sent the record labels looking for the Next New Dylan™ and lo and behold Capitol discovered they had a real live peer already signed to their roster. Live Bullet set the stage and Night Moves blew the damn thing wide open.

And why not? As Dave Marsh wrote, only Springsteen and Jackson Browne could write as well as Seger, but Seger could obviously sing rings around them both. Which is no slight on either of them: Bob Seger can sing rings around all but a tiny handful of white rock and roll singers ever. As Bruce Springsteen himself said recently, "Really great singers, people who have a really great instrument, like...Bob Seger has a great instrument."

(It turns out that Seger himself doesn't entirely disagree; he's got a nickname for his own voice, and that nickname is "The Mountain" and it's completely and totally warranted.)

Ironically, that long-ago chart success and that amazing voice may have actually served to ultimately obscure just how excellent a writer Bob Seger is. In fact, I think Bob Seger may be the most underrated great writer ever. There are a number of reasons for that. In part, I suspect his midwestern roots didn’t allow him to seriously discuss his writing, the way Springsteen or Browne did theirs. (In this way, he reminds me, oddly, of The Replacements.)

He wasn’t nearly as prolific as Springsteen—again, that's not a slight, since there have been very few artists ever who were as prolific as Springsteen was for the first few decades of his recording career—nor as obviously erudite as Browne. And unlike those guys Seger almost always had at least a few covers per LP, which I suspect had a psychological effect on the listeners and their view of the artist.

And when you heard Seger sing a song, the very first thing you noticed wasn't the guitar or the drums or the arrangement or the lyrics: it was that amazing voice.

Finally, his final few songs to really capture the public's attention were the likes of the absolutely terrible "Shakedown," one of his worst songs ever, and which naturally therefore went to #1. Then there was "Like a Rock," which was turned into a commercial at the exact time that things like "selling out" were a topic among passionate rock fans. And finally, there was "Old Time Rock and Roll," which he co-wrote but didn't take a songwriting credit for, meaning he wasn't able to stop it from being used for...well, everything, including more terrible commercials.

(And then he took years off to hang out with his family, and disappearing from the public eye at that point in time certainly wasn't the best move from a critical point of view.)

All of which means that while Bob Seger was ginormous in the late 70s and early 80s, he's basically unknown by younger listeners, unless they know him as the guy who sang that cheesy reactionary "Old Time Rock and Roll" that's been used to hawk burgers and such. Which is a shame, because he should be viewed as a rock and roll Willie Nelson or Muddy Waters or something: an artist who once upon a time was one of the very greatest ever, whose best work absolutely stands the test of time.

 "Feel Like a Number" perfectly captures how powerless and faceless one can feel in modern society. "Night Moves" is a remarkably powerful yet unsentimental look back at the freedom and naivete of youth. "Turn the Page" allows the listener to actually sympathize with how difficult being a traveling musician can be, while not denying the benefits. "Rock and Roll Never Forgets" pulls off the difficult feat of paying tribute to the music itself while not sentimentalizing it and yet managing to be a great example of its power. "Against the Wind" is a simply devastating look back at the roads not taken, and which really probably should have been. And there are a dozen other examples just as good.

But as I said, it seems as though he's perhaps done with that, and if anyone's earned the right to retire, it's Bob Seger. He created some of the greatest American rock and roll songs and albums ever—Night Moves and Stranger in Town are both nearly flawless—and he seems to have always stayed true to himself.

So. So long, Bob, and thanks for all the fish. Here's hoping the afterparty is everything you could ever want.

Think in terms of bridges burned
Think of seasons that must end
See the rivers rise and fall
They will rise and fall again
Everything must have an end
Like an ocean to a shore
Like a river to a stream
Like a river to a stream
It's the famous final scene

And how you tried to make it work
Did you really think it could
How you tried to make it last
Did you really think it would
Like a guest who stayed too long
Now it's finally time to leave
Yes, it's finally time to leave
Take it calmly and serene
It's the famous final scene 

It's been coming on so long
You were just the last to know
It's been a long time since you've smiled
Seems like oh so long ago
Now the stage has all been set
And the nights are growing cold
Soon the winter will be here
And there's no one warm to hold 

Now the lines have all been read
And you knew them all by heart
Now you move toward the door
Here it comes the hardest part
Try the handle of the road
Feeling different feeling strange
This can never be arranged
As the light fades from the screen
From the famous final scene

Moonlight Motel

Imagine you're Bruce Springsteen. Just for a moment, imagine that.

You've written "New York City Serenade." You've written "Jungleland." You’ve written "Darkness on the Edge of Town" and "Wreck on the Highway" and "Reason to Believe" and "My Hometown" and "Valentine’s Day." You’ve written "My Beautiful Reward" and you’ve written "My City of Ruins." You’ve written "Matamoros Banks" and "Devil's Arcade."

You've written some of the greatest album closers in the history of rock and roll. And not just because you're one of the greatest writers in the history of rock and roll—although you are—but because you not only understand the importance of sequencing, but are also a master of it.

And yet somehow, after all those—or perhaps because of them—years later you are still capable of writing "Moonlight Motel."

And then…you sit on it for five years. You just leave it in the can.

Because you're Bruce Springsteen.

If you're any other artist, you rush the thing out. Maybe you don't even wait for the rest of the album. You shove the song in the world's face and you scream, "Lookit! Lookit! Look what I can do! Look what I did!"

But you're Bruce Springsteen. So you don't do that. You just...wait. Until you've done a bunch of other stuff and you feel like the time is right to finish up this project and you do and it's a damn masterpiece.

And not of course it is. It's not a given.

There are a lot of truly great artists—absolute titans—who peaked and never again came close to being that great again. In fact, perhaps only Bob Dylan and Johnny Cash have ever come close to doing what Bruce Springsteen has done this century, which is to continue to write and record and release albums which can stand shoulder to shoulder with their very finest work—their very finest work being fine indeed: masterpieces, in fact.

The [mainly younger] guy who once wrote things like:

My father's house shines hard and bright
It stands like a beacon calling me in the night
Calling and calling, so cold and alone
Shining 'cross this dark highway where our sins lie unatoned

and

You've got to learn to live with what you can't rise above

and

Like a river that don’t know where it’s flowing
I took a wrong turn and I just kept going

and

It was a small town bank
It was a mess
Well, I had a gun
You know the rest

and

They prosecuted some poor sucker in these United States
For teaching that man descended from the apes
They coulda settled that case without a fuss or fight
If they’d seen me chasin’ you, sugar, through the jungle last night

and

They died to get here a hundred years ago, they’re dyin’ now
The hands that built this country we’re always trying to keep down

and

If pa’s eyes were windows into a world so deadly and true
Ma, you couldn’t stop me from looking but you kept me from crawlin’ through

and

41 shots—and we’ll take that ride
Across this bloody river to the other side
41 shots—my boots caked in mud
We’re baptized in these waters and in each other’s blood

and

You end up like a dog that’s been beat too much
Until you spend half your life just covering up

and

As I lift my groceries into my car
I turn back for a moment and catch a smile
That blows this whole fucking place apart

and

Remember all the movies, Terry, we'd go see
Trying to learn to walk like the heroes we thought we had to be
And after all this time, to find we're just like all the rest

can still—can now—write a verse like this:

Now the pool's filled with empty, eight-foot deep
Got dandelions growin' up through the cracks in the concrete
Chain-link fence half-rusted away
Got a sign, says, "Children, be careful how you play"
Your lipstick taste and your whispered secret promised I'd never tell
A half-drunk beer and your breath in my ear
At the Moonlight Motel

Obviously, as always, context matters. Coming from one of the most popular American musicians ever, after a long career, delivered in a weathered voice, makes it all the more powerful. But this would be a great song if it were written by some one-hit-wonder.

And the only thing that could be even better than all this?

Is that he says he's going into the studio with the E Street Band soon for a new album.

Hurry Up Sundown

When I watch a film like the oh so pleasant and at times remarkably accurate "That Thing You Do" I can't help but marvel at how spot on the songwriting was. The title track fits its time period perfectly even as it's simply a fantastic song, able to stand up to being played in the movie roughly 73 times and never once do you come close to getting tired of it, as though it seemed as though you'd known it all your life the very first time they play it. That's some seriously skilled writing on the part of Adam Schlesinger, one half of the songwriters of Fountains of Wayne, as well as reportedly consultants at their much in-demand telephone hotline.

Based on this relative throwaway of an outtake, or outtake of a relative throwaway, Bruce Springsteen could maybe score a gig like that, should the whole rock and roll legend thing suddenly dry up. This song could easily fit on a hidden masterpieces of the 1960s collection and no one would doubt it for a moment. (Other than the vocal which, while great, sounds a bit too adult to pass for sunny bubblegum.)

White City Fighting/Hope

When Pete Townshend learned, back in 1983, that David Gilmour was working on a new solo album, he offered his assistance, knowing how difficult it could be to step out from the shadow as large as that of a band such as Pink Floyd (or the Who). Gilmour took him up on it, asking him to write lyrics for three songs. Townshend did, but Gilmour only used two of them, the third being too different, thematically for him.

Gilmour then sent the song to his friend Roy Harper, singer of Pink Floyd's "Have a Cigar," and asked him to write lyrics. Harper did but, again, Gilmour didn't think they'd work for him, so he simply dropped the track from About Face, his second (good but not great but better than Gilmour thinks) solo album.

Both Townshend and Harper ended up using their own lyrics, recording the songs themselves, the former with guitar help from Gilmour, the latter with guitar by some guy named Jimmy Page (whose band had also relatively recently dissolved).

There are many intriguing "what if" questions in rock and roll. What if Lennon hadn't been killed: would the Beatles have ever gotten back together? What if Kurt Cobain hadn't killed himself: what would have done musically? What if Jimi Hendrix hadn't died so young: where might he have gone musically?

This doesn't rise to that level. And after decades of listening to Townshend's, it's disorienting but fascinating to hear Harper's version. But I surely do wish Gilmour had perserved and written his own set of lyrics, so we could hear yet a third varation, and hear what it would have sounded like if he himself had recorded a version.

Crush on You

Sometimes I don't understand my fellow hominidae.

For reasons which escape me, many hardcore Bruce fans not only don't think "Crush on You" is a fine song, they actively dislike it, thinking it's the weak spot on the otherwise magnificent River album, and a low point of his recording career.

Which is just asinine. The song is, at worst, an enjoyable throwaway, certainly no less good than fun frat rock songs like "Double Shot (Of My Baby's Love)" or "Wooly Bully" or "Nobody but Me" or "Wild Thing" and how much less vibrant would our lives be without those gems?

I mean, musically, this is just great down and dirty gutbucket rock and roll right here.

And lyrically?

My feets were flyin' down the street just the other night
When a Hong Kong special pulled up at the light
What was inside, man, was just c'est magnifique
I wanted to hold the bumper and let her drag me down the street 

Okay, the "Hong Kong special" line may not have aged terrible well, but rhyming "c'est magnifique" with "drag me down the street" is seriously sheer gold.

Admittedly, the chorus

Ooh, ooh, I gotta crush on you
Ooh, ooh, I gotta crush on you
Ooh, ooh, I gotta crush on you tonight 

is not likely to make Bob Dylan nervous, but then again, I submit my beloved "Louie Louie" and trust the point is made.

Sometimes I spot a little stranger standing 'cross the room
My brain takes a vacation just to give my heart more room
For one kiss, darling I swear everything I would give
Cause you're a walking, talking reason to live

And there 'tis right there, reason enough—far more than, in fact—for the song to exist. "My brain takes a vacation just to give my heart more room" is, no two ways about, great damn writing. That sums up, in one line, the effect of love—let's call it love, shall we?—on humans, or at least humans of the young male persuasion. That is exactly what it feels like and no denigration intended to its forefathers but if forced to choose I'd hold out as long as I possibly could but in the end I believe I just might take it over some other famous lines expressing the same sentiment, such as "a-wop-bop-a-loo-bop-a-wop-bam-boom" or "da-doo-ron-ron-ron" or "sha-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-la-tee-da" or "de-do-do-do-de-da-da-da."

Well, now she might be the talk of high society
She's probably got a lousy personality
She might be a heiress to Rockefeller
She might be a waitress or a bank teller
She makes the Venus de Milo look like she's got no style
She make Sheena of the Jungle look meek and mild
I need a quick shot, Doc, knock me off my feet
Cause I'll be minding my own business walking down the street...watch out!

And again, although the song needs no further justification, "she makes the Venus de Milo look like she's got no style " is simply wonderful writing. It's good enough, in fact, that the conclusion of the couplet, which is a fine line on its own—"she make Sheena of the Jungle look meek and mild"—seems a mild let-down by comparison. But no matter. A song with lines as fine as the two best here is more than good to go.

Springsteen himself said, during a soundcheck back in November 2009, in preparation for playing it for only the second time since the few dozen times he performed it back in 1980:

"Yes, folks, it could have been...let me think...'Loose Ends'...it could have been 'Take 'em As They Come'...it could have been 'Roulette'...it could have been 'Where the Bands Are'...it could have been...But instead it is...one two three four!"

Later that same night, after playing the wonderful version embedded right above this very line, you can hear him crow, "a hidden masterpiece!" Sure, he may have been speaking with a healthy dose of sarcasm, but then again, he may not have been. And either way, he was very nearly right.

Favorite Song Friday: America

Paul Simon is a great songwriter—that’s pretty much a given.

The man also has a serious predilection for being an uninformed, self-important tool, but hey, not all songwriters are saints which walk among us. And as a songwriter—despite at least one heartily misplaced sense of rivalry that hopefully by now he has forgotten about (though I doubt it)—he remains on a very, very short list.

(No, that’s not a height joke).

One of my favorite songs he ever wrote is, in fact, one of his greatest: 1968's “America,” from the wondrous Bookends album.  It’s such a beautiful piece of music and a such a personal and moving story; two young lovers making their way across the country in search of…something. It’s a heartfelt travelogue where the search is everything, to the point where we really don’t even know what the destination is. Nor do we need to, I don’t think.

And as much as any Simon and Garfunkel song, "America" I think truly shows just how essential Arthur Garfunkel was to the final product. Sure, Paul did the songwriting, played guitar, took an awful lot of the lead vocals. But listen to what Arthur's voice does to this song. His harmonies make it soar and lend it a level of soul that is almost impossible to imagine would be there without him.

But a recent listen of the song had me thinking about the songwriting first and foremost, and what an unusual turn it was for Paul Simon. This is one of the best examples I have ever heard of blank verse, minimalist songwriting, and it's not something Paul did too often.

Let us be lovers, we'll marry our fortunes together

I've got some real estate here in my bag

So we bought a pack of cigarettes

And Mrs. Wagner pies

And we walked off to look for America

"Kathy," I said as we boarded a Greyhound in Pittsburgh

"Michigan seems like a dream to me now"

It took me four days to hitchhike from Saginaw

I've come to look for America

Laughing on the bus, playing games with the faces

She said the man in the gabardine suit was a spy

I said, "Be careful, his bowtie is really a camera"

"Toss me a cigarette, I think there's one in my raincoat"

"We smoked the last one an hour ago"

So I looked at the scenery

She read a magazine

And the moon rose over an open field

"Kathy I'm lost," I said, though I knew she was sleeping

"I'm empty and aching and I don't know why"

Counting the cars on the New Jersey Turnpike

They've all come to look for America

All come to look for America

All come to look for America

Now one of Paul's trump cards has always been to take an array of songwriting styles and make them work.

"Homeward Bound" is more of a straightforward rhyme scheme, with some internal rhyme for good measure ("...all my work comes back to me in shades of mediocrity..."). 

"The Boxer" goes for poetic flourish, particularly in the final verse, which is astounding when positioned with the straight narrative that largely proceeds it. It is also largely unrhymed until the end of each verse, which is incredibly difficult in its own right.

"The Sounds of Silence" has no chorus (like "Homeward Bound" does and which the "Lie la lie" part ably represents on "The Boxer") and instead depends on a series of couplets which lead up to a steady reveal at the end of each verse. 

"Graceland" embraces pop as much as it does its African sensibilities and stands as a more traditional, middle-aged update of the search we first hear about in "America." 

But "America" is written blankly as a straightforward narrative, not a rhyme in sight, and it works to a tee. It sounds like something Hemingway would write, if Hemingway were a songwriter.

Just look at the fourth stanza as a perfect example. It's downright journalistic, no images or metaphors to describe what's happening, just plain voice, first-person reporting, and it's staggering in its simplicity. Particularly considering Paul Simon's gift for being such an intricate and imagistic writer.

"Toss me a cigarette, I think there's one in my raincoat."

"We smoked the last one an hour ago."

So I looked at the scenery,

She read a magazine,

And the moon rose over an open field.

It's helped, of course, by an irresistible melody and, again, some of the most breathtaking interplay between the two singers we've ever heard. And it sets up for what follows; one of the saddest and most devastating lines rock-n-roll has ever produced. No drama, no bombast, just one more simple statement. And it hits like a hammer.

"Kathy I'm lost," I said, though I knew she was sleeping.

"I'm empty and aching and I don't know why."

It's a gift to write like this, because it's so hard to mesh blank verse with melody and make it work. It's an even greater gift to have this be only one of the types of writing at which you excel. Paul Simon, flaws and annoyances aside, once occupied some very rare, very special terrain as a songwriter. He surely did.