The Biannual Online-Journal of Springsteen Studies

Contributors

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Contributors to BOSS Vol. 5

Front Matter and Table of Contents

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Title page, submission instructions, and table of contents

Introduction

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Introduction to Vol. 5

American Lonesome: The Work of Bruce Springsteen Review

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American Lonesome: The Work of Bruce Springsteen, written by Gavin Cologne-Brookes

Review by Thomas Alan Holmes

Fierce Loves and Faithless Wars: Bruce, Byron and the Man of Feeling

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Lord Byron’s epic poems, and more pointedly his parliamentary record as exhibited by his speeches, express a rare communion with the plight of the working man and a singular opposition to unjust war. These sentiments, hilariously and cuttingly explored in Don Juan and Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, set him apart from the archetypal, systemically controlled male of his time. His work shares intriguing connections with the songs and expostulations of Bruce Springsteen, whose musical efforts against the Vietnam war, including Born in the USA and Your Hometown, are marked by outright tragedy and winking irony as well as the kind of subversive rhetorical melodies found in Byron’s work.

Additionally, Springsteen’s vast library of songs espousing the real, abstract and enduring challenges of working-class Americans (particularly men) parallels Byron’s open parliamentary support for the society of Luddites. Drawing from Ildiko Csengei’s essay The Fever of Vain Longing, which posits that Canto III of Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage sees the transformation of the Byronic Hero into The Man of Feeling, I argue that while the unstirred Byronic Hero often stands in opulent contrast to the socially isolated, margin dwelling male trope that peppers Springsteen’s songs, this transformation aligns the two poets’ transgressive archetypes.

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

2023-01-28T10:44:00-05:00

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.