#downbound train

I could write a book about any of Bruce’s records from Born To Run to Born In The USA. I did in fact write my grad school thesis using Nebraska as the hook: ”Vehicles of Grace: Automobile Imagery and Salvation in the works of Bruce Springsteen and Flannery O’Connor” LOL which is one million percent true. 

In fact, I bought Nebraska on my first day of class in grad school (a whole story by itself), and BITUSA came out as I was finishing my coursework two years later. It’s hard to overstate how hard this one hit, but my reaction was kind of complicated, so I’ll tell ya all about it.

the first song from this album I heard: “Dancing In The Dark”, which came out as a single before the album. Followed immediately by “Pink Cadillac”, its b-side. We played the SHIT out of that song in particular, far more than the A side, and were dumbfounded that it wasn’t on the album. 

do I own the album?: Obvs, but there’s a story. Of course. My girlfriend and I bought it on vinyl the day it came out in June (we weren’t married yet, but we’d merged our record collections the previous year LOL), then for my birthday in August, she bought me a CD player for like $800 (they were expensive as FUCK when they first came out -- and $800 was even more of a fuckton of money back in those days, especially for a couple of grad students), with one CD, Born In The USA. That one CD was more than reason enough to spend the dough on a player.

I still have that CD, along with the ticket for show where we saw Bruce on our honeymoon in England, at St. James Park in Newcastle, in June 1985. He’d just gotten married too (the first time), which is a whole ‘nother story too. Oh, and I still have the sweatshirt from that show! I'll post a picture of all this some time.

my favorite song: Wellll....here’s where it gets kinda complicated. Bruce had a notoriously hard time picking songs for the record. He’d recorded something like 50 songs for the album, and once he cut the list to 30 or so, he kept asking people he trusted to pick THEIR favorite running order. (Dave Marsh talked about this in his book Glory Days: Bruce Springsteen in the 1980s, and I haven’t heard it much discussed since then.) It’s hard to argue with the finished results, but you know what? I kinda do, still, all these years later. LOL 

My favorite song OF the album, no question, is “Shut Out The Light”. (Check my tag for this song to hear some more about it.) It was first released as the b-side to the 7 inch single of “Born In The USA” (remarkably, the third single from the record), and wouldn’t show up on CD until 1998 on the Tracks anthology. Tracks was 4 CDs in all (should probably have been 6 discs, and COULD have been 10), but I bought the whole thing for THIS.

My favorite song ON the album: “Downbound Train.”

my least favorite song: “Darlington County”. 

a song I didn’t like at first, but now do: “Dancing In The Dark”. I’m not alone in this. Miami Steve famously HATED the song at first, and only came to appreciate it after years of playing it live. I still remember never more eagerly anticipating an album in my life, and never being more upset by the advance single. I was devastated.

Here’s why. Born to Run came out when I was 15. “Gotta get out while we’re young!” The romance of escape, with the last two songs, still grandly romantic, hinting at its costs. 

Darkness came out when I was 17. Narrator: “They did not escape.” LOL Ghosts, bitterness, compulsion, cursed by God. His estranged wife’s eyes “filed with hate for just being born”, while “Tonight I’ll be on that hill ‘cause I can’t stop.” 

The closest thing to hope: a whispered “Tonight my baby and me are gonna ride to the sea / and wash these sins from our hands.” I was a senior in high school and the dream was already dead. Awesome. LOL

The River came out when I was 20. The only hope is domesticity. Too bad that it’s suffocating and you’ll fuck it up. LOL Want to wash the sins from your hands? Sorry, the river is dry. “Is a dream a lie if it don’t come true / Or is it something worse./ that sends me down to the river?” Yikes!

The shows for this album were astounding. The album was soooo much darker than it first appeared, and the catharsis in the performance was rewarding, sure, but almost unbearable. You were left broken and crawling by the end of the night. In a good way. LOL 

Nebraska came out when I was 22. Murder, mental illness, ghosts, more murder, compulsion, and as a treat, a little more murder. LOL 

The one song I couldn’t stand was “Reason To Believe”, because I didn’t believe there was one, and I didn’t believe he did either. But boy did I love the album as a whole. Like I said, my grad school thesis started here, because I had too much to say about Nebraska and the sweep of Bruce’s literary roots and spiritual impulses NOT to write about it. 

(Not shockingly in retrospect, and a blessing for us all that he went through with it and is still at it, but Bruce’s therapy started here too.)

So from 1975 to 1984, things got darker and darker and darker. It was beautiful. LOL And hey, this was MY LIFE we’re talking about, too! From 15 to 24, I was listening to Born To Run, Darkness, The River, and Nebraska practically on a loop, and the more hopeful stuff was becoming less and less resonant. 

Sure, there was Rosalita and Thunder Road and Badlands, plenty of dancing and pumping fists, but I was dwelling in darkness, and living for it. On my best days, I was wounded, not even dead LOL but I barely listened to Born to Run by the end of this span. It was mostly Darkness and Nebraska. 

I couldn’t wait to hear what was coming after the highest body count in recorded history on that album. LOL I knew it wouldn’t be acoustic again, but man, he was cutting closer and closer to the bone each time out. How much farther could he possibly go?

And it was....Dancing In The Dark? What the actual FUCK? Practically fucking disco or something? WHA....? I loved dance music, especially in the 80s, but I didn’t need it from Bruce. I had that from other people. Oh well, at least the b-side was cool, so maybe the album won’t bite. LOL BUT THEN PINK CADILLAC WASN’T ON THE ALBUM. FUCK.

The album didn't bite, of course, but it took a looooong time to get over this huge dual disappointment of a chirpy disco single by an artist I barely recognized, and whom I now felt I could no longer trust to manage his own creative mission.  

My wife wrapped her head around it first (as is usually the case LOL). She dug it as the closest Bruce had yet come to putting his actual self in a song. The narrator is a writer, anyway, unlike every other song he’d ever written about jobs he never held for a single second (an observation that would form the bedrock of Springsteen on Broadway 40 years later).  

Now, I totally dig it. If you’re naughty enough, I might even post my ukulele cover of Dancing In The Dark. LOL

a song I used to like, but now don’t: None. The songs I loved, which is most of ‘em honestly, I still do. Everything about this album has gotten better with time for me, and nothing about it has gotten less so.

my favorite lyric: 

From “Shut Out The Light”: Oh mama mama mama come quick I've got the shakes and I'm gonna be sick Throw your arms around me in the cold dark night Hey now mama don't shut out the light 

From “Downbound Train” The room was dark. Our bed was empty Then I heard that long whistle whine And I dropped to my knees, hung my head, and cried

Bruce was gonna try to give me a happier record, but I was having none of it. LOL 

For the record, “Downbound Train” is my wife’s favorite track on the record by FAR, at least partly because it sounds like a band version of a song that could have followed Nebraska. I prefer Shut Out The Light because I heard the story of my own mental illness in it for the first time, but yeah, Downbound Train is amazing.

I only saw it live once at the time (in Newcastle, June 4, ‘85), but it really comes to live onstage -- true for all of Bruce of course, but this album more than any other imo.

overall rating out of 10: Then: 8. Now: 9.2.  The shows were unbelievably good (we saw three shows in three different countries on that tour) and it sold a buttload, but I still couldn’t shake the feeling that after the run of Darkness - The River - Nebraska, that this was a missed opportunity at best. 

Now I work down at the car wash Where all it ever does is rain Don't you feel like you're a rider On a downbound train?

She just said, "Joe, I gotta go We had it once, we ain't got it any more" She packed her bags, left me behind She bought a ticket on the Central Line

Nights as I sleep, I hear that whistle whining I feel her kiss in the misty rain And I feel like I'm a rider On a downbound train

Last night, I heard your voice You were cryin', cryin', you were so alone You said your love had never died You were waiting for me at home

Put on my jacket, I ran through the woods I ran 'til I thought my chest would explode There in the clearing, beyond the highway In the moonlight, our wedding house shone

I rushed through the yard, I burst through the front door My head pounding hard, up the stairs I climbed The room was dark, our bed was empty Then I heard that long whistle whine And I dropped to my knees, hung my head and cried

Now I swing a sledgehammer on a railroad gang Knocking down them cross ties, working in the rain Now don't it feel like you're a rider On a downbound train?

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