I was late coming to a love of Bruce Springsteen’s music.
I missed his first two albums, and I was living in Vienna, Austria, when I first heard the “Born to Run” album. Two songs from the album — “Thunder Road” and the title song — were picked as two of Springsteen’s best songs in 2018. I didn’t know they would be that well regarded, but they are two songs that after more than 40 years, I still turn up the volume when they come on.
But it was the last song on the album, a 9 1/2 minute tour de force called “Jungleland” that showed how far Springsteen was going to go down the road to greatness. The last part of the last verse might just be the best lyrics ever in a rock song.
“Outside the street’s on fire in a real death waltz between what’s flesh and what’s fantasy, and the poets down here don’t write nothing at all, they just stand back and let it all be.
“And in the quick of the night they reach for their moment and try to make an honest stand, but they wind up wounded, not even dead, tonight in Jungleland.”
That was 45 years ago.
There has been so much great music since and so many incredible albums. My favorite album was “The River” in the early ’80s, and I saw Springsteen in concert in 1985 in St. Louis. I actually had tickets to see him in 1978 at the Capital Centre, but my first wife had a headache and we didn’t go.
Probably the beginning of the end of my first marriage.
Springsteen is about three months older than I am, and much of his music is about the stage of life in which we find ourselves. His new album, “Letter to You,” is largely about being at the point in your life when people you have known and loved are starting to die. His song “Last Man Standing” is about the fact that all the other members of his first band, the Castiles, are gone now.
“Rock of ages, lift me somehow, somewhere high and hard and loud, somewhere deep into the heart of the crowd, I’m the last man standing now. I’m the last man standing now.”
I can’t remember the last time I bought an album and the sat down right away and spent an hour listening to it from beginning to end. I did it twice with “Letter to You.”
Maybe tomorrow I’ll make it three times.
Sorry if this sounds silly, but in a world of Donald Trump and trash culture, it gives me hope that Bruce Springsteen is still making music. And in a world where so many of my favorites are old — Brian Wilson and Paul McCartney are 78, Jimmy Buffett and Elton John are 73 and Jackson Browne is 72, Springsteen is the youngest of the bunch.
I will miss each and every one of them when they go, but I will definitely miss Bruce the most.