Bruce Springsteen
American singer, songwriter, and guitarist.
When they built you brother
they broke the mold.
Now some guys they just give up living
and start dying little by little piece by piece.
Some guys come home from work and wash up
And go racing in the streets.
Tonight, tonight the strip's just right,
I wanna blow 'em all out of their seats.
We're callin' out around the world, we're going racin' in the street.
I couldn't believe how happy his music made me and how good it was. He's a gift, and I didn't know. I mean, I knew 'Born in the USA' and 'Glory Days,' but I didn't know that he covered so much ground, and there was something in his music that touched what I was going through, the process of falling back in love with my America.
I'd heard The Bruce Springsteen Band was nearby at a club called The Student Prince. A rainy, windy night it was, and when I opened the door the whole thing flew off its hinges and blew away down the street. The band were on-stage, but staring at me framed in the doorway. And maybe that did make Bruce a little nervous because I just said, "I want to play with your band," and he said, "Sure, you do anything you want."
I met her in a Kingstown bar.
We fell in love, I knew it had to end.
We took what we had and we ripped it apart.
Now here I am down in Kingstown again.
The label of liberalism is hardly a sentence to public igominy: otherwise Bruce Springsteen would still be rehabilitating used Cadillacs in Asbury Park and Jane Fonda, for all we know, would be just another overweight housewife.
Remember all the movies, Terry, we'd go see?
Trying to learn how 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
Stranded in the park and forced to confess
To hiding on the Backstreets.
The highway is alive tonight
But nobody's kiddin' nobody about where it goes
I'm sittin' down here in the campfire light
With the ghost of old Tom Joad.
At this point, I don’t need my records to be Number One or sell as many as this person or that person. That’s not fundamentally important — I don’t believe that sustains you.
Sometimes it's like someone took a knife, baby, edgy and dull,
And cut a six-inch valley through the middle of my skull.
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.
Oh, I'm on fire.
The street's alive as secret debts are paid,
Contacts made, they vanished unseen.
Kids flash guitars just like switch-blades
Hustling for the record machine.
The hungry and the hunted explode into rock'n'roll bands
That face off against each other out in the street, down in Jungleland.
Gonna be a twister to blow everything down
That ain't got the faith to stand its ground
Blow away the dreams that tear you apart
Blow away the dreams that break your heart
Blow away the lies that leave you nothing but lost and brokenhearted.
Out of the east on an Irish stallion came bounty hunter Dan
His heart quickened and burdened by the need to get his man
He found Pete peacefully fishing by the river, pulled his gun and got the drop
He said, "Pete, you think you've changed, but you have not."
Whenever I see Bruce Springsteen do anything, he empties the tank. Every time. And the beautiful thing about this man is he empties that tank for his family, he empties that tank for his art, he empties that tank for his audience, and he empties it for his country. And we, on the receiving end of that beautiful gift, are ourselves rejuvenated, if not, redeemed.
This is Radio Nowhere
Is there anybody alive out there?
Last night me and Kate we laid in bed talking about getting out,
Packing up our bags, maybe heading south.
I'm thirty-five, we got a boy of our own now.
Last night I sat him up behind the wheel and said, "Son, take a good look around,
This is your hometown."
There'll be no oiling up with this band. The oil has been there for years and it only gets better.
It's a fairytale so tragic there's no prince to break the spell. I don't believe in magic, but for you I will"
We're here to re-dedicate you to The Power, The Passion, The Mystery, and The Ministry of Rock and Roll.
So I bought a .44 magnum it was solid steel cast
And in the blessed name of Elvis well I just let it blast
'Til my TV lay in pieces there at my feet
And they busted me for disturbin' the almighty peace.
Judge said "What you got in your defense son?"
"Fifty-seven channels and nothin' on"
I can see by your eyes friend you're just about gone
Fifty-seven channels and nothin' on.