There's Magic in the Night

As I thought yesterday about the fusion of art forms in the service of effective storytelling, I was reminded about one of the best English classes I took in high school. In it, my 9th grade teacher had us compare a short story to a Bruce Springsteen song. While I cannot remember either the specific song or the story (it’s been 8 years people), I do remember it did causing me to look at the Boss in a completely different way and it’s a perspective I have appreciated ever since. You see, more than a rock and roll star, Bruce Springsteen is a poet and a storyteller. His songs have characters and settings and plots. He paints pictures with his words. This is why he is so iconic. More than being sexy or having a great voice, he’s a writer who captures stories from a certain time and place.

The best example of this is Thunder Road. It is one of the only songs that I could honestly call “cinematic.” Think of that beginning: “The screen door slams/Mary’s dress waves/Like a vision she dances across the porch as the radio plays.” By slowing the song down and emphasizing those words, Springsteen makes his imagery vivid. It is easy to picture Mary’s dancing and it sets a tone of beauty and longing for the rest of the song. The next lyrics are some of my favorites because of their specificity: “Roy Orbison singing for the lonely/Hey, that’s me and I want you only.” So many works of art avoid specific references to pop culture in the moment because it can date the piece. Springsteen deliberately picks a timeless and familiar artist for his namedrop, but it means that his moment feels authentic. We don’t ignore the music we listen too and this makes this more of a piece for the everyman. He then abruptly switches from narrator to participant with the “hey that’s me.” Not only does that make the song personal to him, it aligns us with him. He’s listening to a song and relating and so are we.

Skipping ahead a bit, Bruce starts addressing Mary: “So you’re scared and thinking that maybe we ain’t that young anymore/Well have a little faith/there’s magic in the night/You ain’t a beauty, but hey you’re all right/oh and that’s all right with me.” Now I’ve always joked that only Bruce can get away with telling a girl “She ain’t a beauty” and still sound romantic, but once again these lyrics root us in something intensely personal. In reality, the majority of us are not “beauties” and the majority of us are scared and scared of running out of time. His commitment to helping Mary with her fear is what makes this song romantic and not his adoration of her.  

After this opening, the song picks up and we switch to act 2, which is the lovers being set free. Before this, he’s established the characters and their desires and fears, much like act one of a film and now we are into conflict mode: “You can hide ‘neath your covers and study your pain/make crosses from the lovers, the roses and the rain/waste your summer praying in vain for a savior to rise from these streets.” So while Bruce is still addressing Mary here, he’s switched back to a narrator like mode so we get her story. Bruce’s desire was her and her desire is a savior. I can picture the crosscutting now. “Well now I’m no hero that’s understood/All that I can offer girl is beneath this dirty hood.” Ok, so here we have further characterization of the narrator. He’s definitely more of a James Dean than a super man, but we also are given the solution to our two issues: Bruce’s car (remember this is a movie told over 5 minutes not 2 hours). Also, for the literary geeks out there, here we have metaphors! Watch out for that dirty hood, ladies.

Ok, so we have an introduction, establishment of problems, establishment of the solution to the problems, and now we get a chorus, which also feels like a climax: “So throw down the window and let the wind blow back your hair/Well the night’s busting open and these two lanes will take us anywhere.” This is the part where the stadium sings along and Mary and Bruce are set free. It’s John Wayne and Claire Trevor heading off into the sunset. It’s Bonnie and Clyde flipping off the police and the studio system. Here is the tricky part though. In a film, the climax usually happens more than 2/3rds of the way through at least. This climax is about half way through the song. Therefore, what is interesting about Thunder Road is that it keeps going. Not only do we get the escape, we get the afterward. We get the reiteration of the moral. We get to revel in Mary’s freedom. “Thunder Road” becomes a sort of heaven (you might even say its heaven waiting down on the tracks) that we get to live in for the rest of the song.

The reason this is all so significant is that to the listener is because we get taken to Thunder Road with Bruce. We are Mary. The rest of the song maintains the fast tempo established by the original build to the climax. He takes us somewhere with a story and carry our own fears and insecurities and desire to escape into the song. This is why this such a powerful stadium song. We’re celebrating where we’ve been taken and Bruce let’s us hang out a bit. As we revel, we get the line: “Well I’ve got this guitar and I’ve learned how to make it talk.” If you notice, Bruce brings it back to himself here and establishes Bruce the singer as Bruce the narrator. “My car’s out back if you’re ready to take that long walk/from your front porch to my front seat/the door’s open but the ride ain’t free/well I know your hungry for words that I ain’t spoken/tonight we’ll be free/all the promises will be broken.” So beyond the obvious sexual connotations here, if we take these lines as an audience, the power comes from the words that he has not spoken (apologies for cleaning up the grammar a bit). There are two types of missing words we could apply here. First, there are the missing words from loved ones of all those in the audience that they are waiting to hear. We can relate to Mary and her desire for Bruce to express like he is now doing. More importantly, however, is that as an audience, when you listen to great music or go to a great concert, part of you is looking for a transformative or revelatory experience. We are hungry for Bruce’s words because we recognize him as an artist with wisdom to impart. We gather to hear those words and as he sings them we become free. Ok, so I know that is insanely cheesy, but it can really apply to any great rock song. Once you start flailing away on the dance floor or screaming at the top of your lungs, you are, in a way, set free. Meanwhile you can sit around and listen to these songs over and over and take comfort in the lyrics (coughcough). We are all hungry for guidance and wisdom and expressions of true experiences and this is part of the power of Thunder Road.

So after we have our big fist pumping chorus we return to the story with: “The ghosts in the eyes of all the boys you sent away/they haunt this dusty beach road in the skeleton frames of burned out Chevrolets.” I love this line. I can’t really speak to its greater meaning to us as an audience, but is a return to the vivid imagery of the opening. If the first part of this song is structured like a super short movie, part two is like a flashback with added depth. The next bit is also a return to the sonic structure of the opening: “They scream your name at night in the street/your graduation gown lies in rags at their feet/In the lonely cool before dawn/you hear their engines raging on/when you get to the porch they’re gone.” Through this we get further insight into just what Mary is mourning. Time has passed and so have all her boyfriends. What is now significant is that this boyfriend is telling her to come with him and travel on through time. “Oh Mary, climb in.” With this added insight we A) feel much better about all our rejections and B) realize this is more than just romance and insecurities. This is about time and towns and opportunities. Mary is not only escaping her bad boyfriends, she is escaping her trapped life and so do we.

It is with this added insight that we are carried off into the sunset with a beautiful sax solo and the story is over. Bruce has told us a story with layers and layers of depth. His lyrics inspire both gorgeous images and also communal rock experiences. He gives us those words we are hungry for. They comment on a time and place, yet tap into extremely personal insecurities and fears. Meanwhile, he combines them with a score that rises and falls like a great cinematic orchestra. “Thunder Road” is great art and great storytelling. Bruce draws on many forms to make it work and it can also be emulated by future artists. It is proof that great storytelling can be found everywhere. Rockers can be poets. Poets can be rock stars. Also, beautiful things can totally come from NJ.