“Pullin’ Out of Here to Win”: The Narrative Flexibility of “Thunder Road”

In Conceptualizing Music, Lawrence Zbikowski uses the idea of conceptual blending to build upon Nicholas Cook’s understanding of song as multimedia, explaining how the music and lyrics of a song can work together to create a more complex narrative than either component could on its own. While Zbikowski’s examples are taken from German art song, the present project applies this idea of conceptual blending to popular music, investigating how different recordings of a song can alter its narrative. I examine three versions of Bruce Springsteen’s “Thunder Road,” all recorded in 1975: an early live performance in February, the studio recording released in August, and a later live performance in October. This investigation of “Thunder Road” highlights an interesting issue present in popular music: the artist can continue to tweak his/her/their arrangement of a song in live performances, drastically altering the song’s narrative. Springsteen’s alterations to the song’s music and lyrics over the course of 1975 create three distinct protagonists, each negotiating their own relationship the desire to escape from a small town and find a better life on the open road.


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DANA DeVLIEGER BOSS: The Biannual Online-Journal of Springsteen Studies 5 (2022)   In popular music studies, a studio album recording is considered the primary text of a song.Many popular musicians will replicate their album recordings in live performance, with no more than subtle interpretive changes.However, some performers view their studio recordings as simply one interpretation of a song, and their live performances are often substantially different from what appears on their albums.Perhaps the most famous example of this is Bob Dylan, but Springsteen has also made significant changes to his songs in live performances over the course of his long career.In the case of songs like "Thunder Road," such changes can alter both the persona of the main character and the outcome of his desired escape.
This article looks at three different performances of Springsteen's song "Thunder Road," all from the year 1975: the studio recording released in August; an earlier performance at The Main Point in Bryn Mawr, PA in February; and the version appearing on the Live 1975-85 album from a concert in West Hollywood, CA in October.I begin with a brief overview of how this project engages with conceptual blending in music scholarship. 5Then, I examine how Springsteen's writing and performance decisions in each recording suggest three equally BOSS: The Biannual Online-Journal of Springsteen Studies 5 ( 2022) convincing yet distinct personas 6 and narrative trajectories, 7 ultimately determining whether each recording's protagonist ends up "pullin' out of here to win."

Conceptual Blending
The following analyses are grounded in the idea of conceptual blending, a term from cognitive psychology that refers to the "process in which elements from two correlated mental spaces combine into a third." 8This concept has been applied to music by scholars like Lawrence Zbikowski, who argues that conceptual blending goes beyond notions of cross-domain mapping or musical metaphor to a point where elements from two different conceptual domains -in this case, music and text -blend together to create an entirely new domain.Though other scholars have addressed the dialectical relationship between music and text using different terminology, conceptual blending provides a 6 Allan Moore writes of a song's persona as informed by the lyrics, vocal melody, and singing style.Allan Moore, Song Means: Analysing and Interpreting  Recorded Popular Song (Farnham: Ashgate, 2012).Moore distinguishes this from the "persona environment," which is communicated by the accompaniment and can interact with the person in various ways.In the following analyses, however, I use the term persona to address the character that the lyrics, melody, singing style, and accompaniment combine to convey. 7David Nicholls has discussed the application of narrative theory to popular music.David Nicholls, "Narrative Theory as an Analytical Tool in the Study of Popular Music Texts," Music & Letters 88, no. 2 (2007), 297-315.The recordings of "Thunder Road" discussed in this paper are party to Nicholls' fourth level of narrative: "both lyrics and music contain elements of narrative discourse, which to some degree operate independently of each other, though always in relation to an overlying story."Ibid., 301.

While Zbikowski's work applies conceptual blending to
German art song, it can easily be applied to twentieth-century popular song.Popular music has certainly addressed the idea of blending, even if musicologists have not referred to it explicitly by that name: In the world of pop music, it is pretty meaningless to say of a lyric that it is good: it is only one piece of the jigsaw puzzle and must be judged not on its own merits but on 9 Ibid., 78. 10 While there is arguably a third input -the visual element -involved in the study of live performance, this element will not be addressed in this article because the focus is on the interaction of music and lyrics in three specific sound recordings.The Innocent, and The E Street Shuffle were critically acclaimed, they did not have the commercial success that his record label had expected from their much lauded "New Dylan."15At the time, Columbia Records was considering dropping Springsteen so that they could put more resources into promoting their newest sensation, Billy Joel.For this reason, Born to Run served as Springsteen's last chance to make it big in the music industry.

BOSS: The Biannual
Though he was not a member of the workforce at the time of its composition, his desire to escape his blue-collar roots helped to infuse the album with palpable desperation.
Springsteen is a perfectionist when it comes to his songwriting, often going through several versions of his lyrics to make sure that the words were exactly what he wanted.This semi-BOSS: The Biannual Online-Journal of Springsteen Studies 5 (2022) obsessive writing process is evident in the composition of the Born to Run album; the titular track alone took six months to write and record. 16Because Springsteen worked on his new material while touring, he tested early versions of many of his new songs at live shows before recording them.One such song is "Thunder Road."Through significant rewrites, "Thunder Road" was transformed from a story of a restless, car-obsessed teenager who does not understand the meaning of despair to the tale of a determined and desperate young man who is trying to convince his cautious love interest to leave her claustrophobic life and run away with him in search of something better.The lyrics to the studio version of "Thunder Road" are given in Appendix 1.
The opening stanza of the song depicts the protagonist sitting in his car outside the house of a girl named Mary, listening to the radio and watching as Mary comes outside.In the first line, Springsteen describes a screen door slamming in an otherwise peaceful scene, as if the door is closing quickly to keep the house's occupants from escaping.This stanza is filled with Catholic imagery, from Mary's name to the description of her as a "vision." 17ese lyrics suggest that Mary is repressed by the expectations of her upbringing, but they also imply that Mary is repressing herself DANA DeVLIEGER BOSS: The Biannual Online-Journal of Springsteen Studies 5 (2022)   in order to retain the self-sacrificing status that the speaker attributes to her.
As he watches Mary emerge from the house, the speaker is listening to Roy Orbison "singing for the lonely" on his car radio, referring to Orbison's popular ballad "Only the Lonely."18This song gives voice to a man who has just had his heart broken and is saddened by the painful realities of the world.Orbison's last verse, while still dark, offers a glimmer of hope to all those familiar with this heartache: "Maybe tomorrow/A new romance/No more sorrow/But that's the chance -/You gotta take/If your lonely heart breaks/Only the lonely."19Springsteen's protagonist clearly identifies with the lonely speaker in Orbison's song, indicating to the listener that he has experienced pain but sees Mary as his "new romance," his chance for something better.
When the speaker identifies with the song on the radio, he switches from observing the scene to addressing Mary directly.He sings, "Don't turn me home again, I just can't face myself alone again/Don't run back inside darling, you know just what I'm here for," implying that this isn't the first time he has asked her to run away with him.He knows that she is scared to leave her comfort zone.He suggests, however, that with a little faith, they can escape to a better life together.The speaker seems to put his foot in his mouth when he tells Mary she isn't a beauty, but what appears to be an insult is the speaker's way of saying that, though Mary may BOSS: The Biannual Online-Journal of Springsteen Studies 5 ( 2022) not be perfect, she still deserves a chance to escape her circumstances.
In the third stanza, the young man shifts from pleading with Mary to accusing her of ignoring this opportunity.Instead of escaping, she puts her head in the sand or dwells on her misery, letting it eat away at her.The image of the cross once again portrays Mary as a would-be-martyr, while the reference to "throwing roses in the rain" paints her as childlike.The speaker claims that Mary is fervently waiting for a rescuer but, when he finally shows up to offer her an escape, she is too scared to act.Though the young man acknowledges that he's far from perfect and can't fix all her problems, he has the means to get away and can offer Mary the chance to find something good.
Springsteen's use of the phrase "dirty hood" is open to several interpretations.The most obvious is the engine under the hood of the car, suggesting that their chance to escape is, quite literally, "beneath this dirty hood."Another possible reading is that the speaker's passion and desperation are housed in the heart that beats beneath his dirty sweatshirt.Finally, the speaker could be using "hood" as a slang for himself.In this case, the lyrics take on a sexual connotation, implying that Mary can escape the expectations of her Catholic upbringing by taking the speaker as her lover to achieve a fleeting type of escape.These interpretations are not mutually exclusive, and the multiple meanings might simply serve to reinforce the inextricability of the man, the car, and the possibility of escape.Though the speaker is vague about where DANA DeVLIEGER BOSS: The Biannual Online-Journal of Springsteen Studies 5 (2022) they will go or how exactly things will be better once they get there, he is adamant that escaping now is their only option.
The fifth stanza romanticizes their escape as the speaker describes racing down an empty highway with the windows rolled down.This description contrasts with the opening image of the slamming door, suggesting that the repression of their lives will disappear as soon as they leave town.It is as if the speaker gets caught up in his own optimism, thinking of the endless possibilities that lie beyond the limits of their small town.The line "We've got one last chance to make it real/To trade in these wings on some wheels" once again argues that Mary must give up her selfsacrificing behavior and embrace her real hope for salvation: the speaker and his car.
In the sixth stanza, the young man explicitly states his invitation to Mary, letting her know that, while leaving her comfort zone is terrifying, she will not have to take the risk alone.His desperation and passion are palpable in this stanza as he describes his intention to "case the Promised Land."Casing is colloquially understood as checking the scene of a theft in preparation for committing the crime.This tells the listener that the speaker has had a hard life; he believes that if he wants something for himself, he will have to go out and take it.Even the name of the highway conjures power, passion, and earth-shaking intensity. 20He calls the highway "a killer in the sun," perhaps implying that if they don't go, the possibilities of their escape will become "what ifs" that slowly kill them.The speaker reminds Mary that she has not BOSS: The Biannual Online-Journal of Springsteen Studies 5 (2022) resigned herself to that fate yet.All she has to do is get in the car and hang on for the ride; the car will do the rest.
The young man mentions his guitar playing in the seventh stanza, suggesting that this will be a way for the couple to support themselves.He seems confident that if he gets out of his small town, he can make a life for himself as a musician.Then, he reminds Mary of their current situation: his car is ready and waiting, she just needs to commit to the idea of leaving.He will not force her to sacrifice her safety and comfort; the choice is Mary's.The speaker acknowledges that Mary may be hesitant because he has yet to tell her he loves her (the "words that I ain't spoken") or assure her that everything will be okay.He addresses these concerns by saying that, though excitement lies ahead, neither of them can know exactly what will happen once they escape: "all the promises'll be broken."However, the protagonist predicts what will happen to Mary if she chooses not to come with him: she will regret her decision and be haunted by memories of boys like him who tried to save her.The eighth stanza describes this in eerie detail, from the "skeleton frames" of the cars to the "screams" of the spurned saviors.Even her graduation robe, a symbol of the accomplishments that were expected of her, "lies in rags" suggesting that staying for the sake of duty and obligation will end  The eighth stanza energetically predicts Mary's fate should she reject the speaker's offer.As he describes the "ghosts in the eyes of all the boys you sent away," the lead guitar interjects as if its voice will be one of the ghosts that will haunt Mary's thoughts.The vocals reach desperate heights on the line, "They scream your name at night in the street," and stay in that register to describe the symbol of all that Mary has worked for being reduced to "rags." The keyboards disappear as the lyrics set a scene "in the lonely cool before dawn."The silencing of the piano, which has been the central instrument for the entire song, represents the silencing of Mary's hope for escape.It appropriately sets the lines that describe Mary being haunted by the ghosts of her missed opportunities.The piano and organ return with steadily descending quarter notes as the speaker tells Mary, "when you get to the porch they're gone," signifying her hope for escape, potentially disappearing into the distance.Just before the singer extends his final invitation to Mary, the guitar plays a soloistic blues riff, as if to remind Mary that her would-be savior is still there and that she has not missed her chance yet.As the young man sings his last desperate lines, the accompaniment and vocals build into   the introduction sets the scene of a small town through the use of the harmonica.Perhaps it is even the protagonist himself, leaning against his car and playing harmonica along with the radio.There are few definitive cadences over the course of the song, with the strongest one occurring on the last line.Finally, the cumulative form of the song is teleologically oriented towards the climax of the outro, which repeats and fades out in a way that could signify driving into the distance. 24The absence of the harmonica at the end of the song, the marker of the small town from the beginning, communicates that the setting has changed.Over the course of the song, the protagonist gradually comes to the decision to escape.He invites Mary to go with him but ultimately decides that he will leave regardless of her decision.The exuberant outro communicates that his getaway is a success.

Lyrics
Before recording the version of "Thunder Road" that ended up on Born to Run, Springsteen performed an early draft of the song with the parenthetical subtitle "Wings for Wheels."This version includes lyrics with a different focus than the studio recording, beginning with the name of the singer's girlfriend: here, Angelina instead of Mary. 25 The lyrics of this recording appear in Appendix 2. The first and second stanzas are largely unchanged but, by the BOSS: The Biannual Online-Journal of Springsteen Studies 5 (2022) third stanza, the singer seems more focused on his car than his girlfriend.He quickly shifts from assuaging her fears to pressuring her to make up her mind so that he can get back on the road.He seems more interested in going for a drive than in leaving town for good.The fourth stanzas of the two recordings communicate similar ideas but use different imagery to convey passion and excitement.The speaker in the "Wings for Wheels" version does not address the difficulties of starting a new life, but instead focuses on how they will "dance all the way" out of town.
The next-to-last stanza does not have a clear parallel to the studio version.It conjures images of the shore town life that is the focal point of "4th of July, Asbury Park (Sandy)" from Springsteen's second album.The singer laments that the season is over, the cold is coming in, and he wishes "I could take you to some sandy beach where we'd never grow old."This identification of a specific location makes the story less generalizable.This is not a generic small town where nothing ever happens; shore towns are busy places during the summer but become quieter when the tourists go home.Situating the town on the shore makes it seem like the young man's desire to leave is merely temporary until the next summer rolls around.
The final declaration in the studio recording is "I'm pullin' out of here to win."It is definitive and action oriented.Here, the lyrics are "baby I was born to win."While passionate -and perhaps foreshadowing "Baby we were born to run" -they are passive and do not contain any direct statement of action.

BOSS: The Biannual Online-Journal of Springsteen Studies 5 (2022) Music
The harmonica is absent from the beginning of this recording and the instrumentation is different, including violin and substituting organ for the studio recording's glockenspiel.The balance between instruments does not seem as intentional, though this is a live performance as opposed to a carefully crafted studio track.Before the next-to-last stanza, the energy drops down and the instrumental texture thins out, signifying a change of mood.Just before the last line, the energy begins to build back up again, reaching a similarly strong cadence as the studio recording.After this strong conclusion, however, the saxophone leads the band back in for an outro that feels disconnected from the rest of the song.It sounds like a party or a jam in the style of "The E Street Shuffle," ending the song on an upbeat note.haphazard, and the closing material does not seem to fit with the rest of the song.Overall, it seems that this protagonist's situation is not serious and can be fixed by a long drive and an end-of-summer party.He does not escape, and that's okay.He believes he is "born to win."

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Lawrence Zbikowski, Conceptualizing Music: Cognitive Structure, Theory and Analysis (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 245.BOSS: The Biannual Online-Journal of Springsteen Studies 5 (2022) useful visual representation of the blend taking place: conceptual integration networks, or CINs.This graphical technique, developed by Gilles Fauconnier and Mark Turner, helps "formalize the relationship between the mental spaces involved in a conceptual blend, to specify what aspects of the input spaces are imported into the blend, and to describe the emergent structure that results from the process of conceptual blending." 9In a CIN, the input spaces on either side of the diagram contain elements of the two different domains that are being correlated; in the case of popular music, these domains would be the lyrics and the music. 10The two inputs give rise to the blended space at the bottom of the diagram; here, the resulting narrative or persona.The generic space, which appears in the topmost circle, dictates the fundamental categorization that the input spaces and blended spaces share.
Online-Journal of Springsteen Studies 5 (2022)   the way it fits in with the other pieces, both distinct from them and at the same time completely dependent on item. 11Bruce Springsteen's oeuvre epitomizes the symbiotic relationship between music and lyrics, and a particularly strong example of this is "Thunder Road."I begin my analyses by looking at what the words and music of each recording separately contribute to the song's narrative and persona. 12It should be acknowledged that the lyrical and musical analyses that follow, like any such analyses, are subjective interpretations based on my own reading and listening.They are nevertheless supported by the text and music of the songs and present one plausible way of making sense of the relationship between these three recordings.Studio Recording -August 1975Lyrics "Thunder Road" is the opening track on Springsteen's third studio album, Born to Run.This album can be seen as a bridge, both thematically and musically, between his first two albums and the three that followed Born to Run: Darkness on the Edge of Town, The River, and Nebraska.Springsteen's first two albums contained DANA DeVLIEGER BOSS: The Biannual Online-Journal of Springsteen Studies 5 (2022) Dylan-esque lyrics and lush orchestration in their tales of optimism, romanticism, and innocence. 13Beginning with 1978's Darkness on the Edge of Town, however, Springsteen's songwriting turned thematically towards stories of isolation and hopelessness, set with comparatively sparse instrumentation. 14While Born to Run is closer to the earlier albums in terms of orchestration, the lyrical turn towards passionate first-person narratives seems to foreshadow the thematic shift towards the realistic depictions of working-class desperation that appear on Darkness.Born to Run also marks a turning point in the trajectory of Springsteen's career.While Greetings from Asbury Park and The Wild, up being worthless.Night is a time filled with potential and opportunity over the course of the song.As the magic of the night wears away, however, "in the lonely cool before dawn" Mary will hear the 54 DANA DeVLIEGER BOSS: The Biannual Online-Journal of Springsteen Studies 5 (2022) sounds of car engines and change her mind.She'll run out to join him, but it will be too late.Having issued this warning, the speaker extends one last invitation to Mary before turning the attention back to himself.He concludes by passionately declaring that "It's a town full of losers, I'm pulling out of here to win."While he would like Mary to join him, he must leave regardless of her decision.Music Determined to address the criticism leveled at the production quality of his first two albums, Springsteen used Born to Run to showcase the latest recording technology.He strove to create the perfect rock record, obsessing over every detail of the album's recording and production.His first two albums had been recorded live, with all the band members playing at once, but Springsteen decided to use the technique of overdubbing on Born to Run.This allowed him to create an enormous, Phil Spectorinspired wall of sound on this album.Another aspect of Born to Run that sets it apart from the earlier albums is his method of composition.Springsteen wrote all the songs for Born to Run on the piano instead of his primary instrument, guitar.In the words of E Street Band keyboardist Roy Bittan, "There's a great difference when you write on the piano….I think that oftentimes on the piano you can discover things that you wouldn't discover on the guitar." 21Composing at the piano allowed Springsteen to create powerful melodies in the album.BOSS: The Biannual Online-Journal of Springsteen Studies 5 (2022)Though the piano is the most prominent instrument in the song, the other instruments have their affective roles to play.One of the key musical features of "Thunder Road" is the crescendo created by adding layers of instruments over the course of the song, as illustrated in Figure1below.The song opens with a simple melody played by piano and harmonica.The piano becomes more rhythmically active at the end of this introduction, creating a sense of rushing by shifting from a relaxed two-beat tempo into a driving four.The first two stanzas of the song are accompanied solely by the piano.Both the arpeggiated eighth notes of the right hand and the sparse, syncopated bass of the left occupy a register higher than the vocals, highlighting the rough quality of Springsteen's voice.The treble accompaniment conveys a quiet timidity under the rhythmically steady vocals.Despite the simplicity of the texture, the constant eighth notes in the right hand of the piano suggest an underlying urgency.At the beginning of the second stanza, there is a measure of strong, stable chords that shifts the register of the accompaniment down an octave, giving the impression of growing strength and confidence.Though the basic melody of the second stanza is the same as the first, the range of the vocal line expands upward, further energizing the song.BOSS: The Biannual Online-Journal of Springsteen Studies 5 (2022)

Figure 1 :
Figure 1: Texture Diagram for Studio Recording their final crescendo.The instrumental ending tells us at least part of the story's ending: the young man has escaped.Whether or not Mary joined him is left open to speculation.Perhaps the descending DANA DeVLIEGER BOSS: The Biannual Online-Journal of Springsteen Studies 5 (2022) piano line just before the last lyrics symbolizes Mary running down the porch steps to join him in his victorious departure.