I recall hoping they’d play it on the radio late at night after everyone else had gone to bed and I sat up listening in the pale halo of the luminescent FM dial. “Spirit” become a concert staple and live fan favorite. Most of these are incidentals like “Early-Pearly… asked me if I needed a ride” or “crawl into my ambulance” or “I found the key to the universe in the engine of an old parked car.” But we get a peek at where this ride’s headed in “Spirit in the Night,” one of two tracks (along with “It’s Hard to Be a Saint in the City”) to tell a somewhat coherent story, of Billy and Janie and their friends driving out to a lake on Route 88 for a night of boozing, swimming, fighting, and lovemaking. To give a sense of the lyric genius lurking behind that frontal assault of images there, Springsteen told them “Be right back” and returned with “Blinded by the Light” and “Spirit in the Night,” the tunes that introduced his first radio fans to his work in the early ’70s, myself included.ĭespite not yet finding his own lyrical lane, Bruce peels out hot here, with cars or riding mentioned in every single tune on the record for a perfect 5 Caddies. She says “Man, the dope’s that there’s still hope”.īut the two songs that would get radio play for Bruce weren’t even on the first cut of the album, which Columbia rejected because they didn’t hear a hit single.
#E street shuffle lyrics meaning how to#
They take out a full page ad in the trades to announce their arrivalĪnd Mary Lou she found out how to cope, she rides to heaven on a gyroscope Queen of diamonds, ace of spades, newly discovered lovers of the everglades Wizard imps and sweat sock pimps, interstellar mongrel nymphs Leaning hard on Dylan’s post-folk work, Greetings hosts a carnival of characters in phantasmagoric scenes like this one from “Does This Bus Stop at 82nd Street”: Lyrically, though, we don’t see him so clearly yet. Because musically, this album’s all Bruce - infectious guitar riffs, swinging saxophone, tinkling piano interludes, check check check.
If you’re young it may seem weird how many reviewers compared Greetings to Bob Dylan. Springsteen’s first two albums, released the same year, didn’t really take off until Born to Run made him a rock star in ’75. The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle All album cover art by Columbia Records, courtesy of via Wikipedia¹ Let’s roll! Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J. Then, Springsteen’s entire body of work, including all the songs not on those records, is ranked on the same scale. tracks mentioning of course cars but also driving, riding, hitch-hiking, racing, engine repair, car washes, motorbikes, all that kind of thing. I’ve decided to rank the first-release material on each studio album, including retrospectives, from 0 to 5 Cadillacs in half-Caddy units, representing the percentage of “car” tunes, i.e.
Which got me wondering - just how often does Bruce Springsteen sing about cars? Well it only took me three and a half decades to get off my ass and go count. Otherwise… “I mean, I love Bruce, but get out of the car, man.” Joel said he had to mix it up to keep things interesting for himself and the audience. I read this magazine interview, he was asked something about the path to there from Glass Houses and from Piano Man before that. It was back in the early ’80s, around when Joel’s “Uptown Girl” video was rotating on MTV.