0 Patti Smith Group, "Because the Night" (1978)

May 13, 1978, #13
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I did not know or suspect for a long time that this is a Bruce Springsteen song, and now I have to wonder how I ever missed it. Recorded in 1977, it has the heroic thrust and optimistic face to the sun of his autopilot mode down to the thundering drums and tinkling circling piano intro. It's co-credited to Patti Smith because she reworked Springsteen's original lyric, though Wikipedia tells me he has also performed it over the years with his own lyric. I hope that doesn't mean tensions because I have long indulged a romantic sense that this was the result of a serendipitous connection between two New Jersey natives. Certainly their personas are simpatico here. Smith is a natural at the Springsteen swagger, which had to come from somewhere, and the tumbling surreal bent of her wordplay is part of what makes it work. I have to think the romantic view holds. They're playing and singing the hell out of it. The guitar solo from Lenny Kaye is a model of economy, a hallmark of its times (compare Iggy Pop with James Williamson, "I'm Bored"). And Springsteen had a way of insinuating himself into the greater New York City area elite, as remember also he showed up mumbling, "Well hey, man, that's just a lie" on Lou Reed's masterpiece title cut of Reed's Street Hassle LP. Springsteen was likely dealing with a fair amount of pent-up creative energy at the time, precluded from releasing anything while a legal battle with his former management was resolved. The dispute erupted shortly after he appeared on the covers of Time and Newsweek, three years before. Problems, problems. And out of all that came this wonderful surprise hit song in the spring of 1978.

Detail: Patti Smith Group, "Because the Night" (1978)

0 Bruce Springsteen, "Downbound Train" (1984)

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More confessions of a one-time Bruce Springsteen snob: This is pretty much the song that turned me around on him forever, the reason I favor Born in the U.S.A. of all his albums (also the sequence of which this is part from "Cover Me" through to "I'm on Fire," and speaking of which also all those hits too, except the title song). I know it's the triumphal ascendance point of his career, an annoying point in the careers of many. It's harder to feel special when you're sharing the object of your adoration with whole stadiumsful  of people showing up late. And some signs here already perhaps of the problems that were ahead, the frustrating admixture of bloat and vacuousness in there with all the good stuff. But one of the things I like most about Bruce Springsteen is that he looks around and feels sad, genuinely sad. "Downbound Train," which feels like a lost alternate-universe fragment of a chapter from The Grapes of Wrath, might be the best example of that I know. He's talking about injustice in as lucid and straightforward a manner as could be. He's not looking away from anything. He's working in a carwash. It grounds the high points of his other songs, delivers their joys better knowing all the extremes are acknowledged and felt. This is how I think Bruce Springsteen does it. He is carrying a heavy load in this song—presumably why it's a train. I love the way the burden flattens the words in his mouth into rounded vowels and sliding growls. On the lines "Now I swing a sledge hammer on a railroad gang / Knocking down them cross ties, working in the rain," he is practically just moaning and honking. It's good that people make lyrics available on the Internet, although thinking about it now every sense of those words is there in the vocal—the sense of working, and futility.

Detail: Bruce Springsteen, "Downbound Train" (1984)