Twelve Days of Brucemas: Part 1
Today is the 13th, meaning there are 12 days till Christmas (and yes, I know those aren't the "twelve days of Christmas" in the song, but they work for me ETA: Or maybe they are the ones from the song. I don't know. Is it the twelve days before Christmas or the twelve days after? WHATEVER. NOT THE POINT.) and I have arbitrarily assigned myself the project of analyzing a Bruce song to death on each of those days.
I'm very excited about it.
We begin with "For You."
I have heard two versions of "For You": the original from Greetings from Asbury Park, NJ (1973) and a live version from the Hammersmith Odeon concert in 1975 (the Born to Run tour). The differences between the two versions are pretty fascinating.
Greetings was Bruce's first album, and I'm going to steal a comparison from likeadeuce to talk about it: I can't find the post to quote her directly, but essentially, Greetings is Bruce's "I am a young superhero" album. The first burst of energy, he knows he can save the world, and no villains or retcons have appeared yet to put a check on things. The whole album is dizzy, ridiculous stream-of-consciousness poetry, just the pure thrill of playing with music and words. The most famous example of this is "Blinded By The Light" (madman drummers bummers and Indians in the summer, indeed, Bruce), but my personal favorite is from "Does This Bus Stop At 82nd Street?" : Hey bus driver, keep the change/Bless your children, give them names/Don't trust men who walk with canes/Drink this and you'll grow wings on your feet I mean, what? WHAT? Gibberish! But you know it meant...something...to the young, stoned man with the guitar and the record contract.
"For You" has its share of "um...okay" lyrics, but it has more of a narrative structure than some of the other songs on Greetings. (I'd say "For You" and "Spirit In The Night" try the hardest to tell a coherent story as well as letting Bruce quasi-rap free-form free-verse poetry.) The story in "For You," as far as I can parse it, is about a boy and a girl (aren't they all?), and he loves her and thinks he can save her. She resists him, because, he thinks, she's afraid. I suspect she just doesn't love him back, or else she finds him pushy and off-putting.
But you let your blue walls get in the way of these facts
Honey, get your carpetbaggers off my back
You wouldn't even give me time to cover my tracks
You said "Here's your mirror and your ball and jacks"
But they're not what I came for, and I'm sure you see that too
I came for you, for you, I came for you, but you did not need my urgency
She tries to send him away, to give him his stuff back, and he just keeps coming back for more, because he came for her.
The refrain-
And your cloud line urges me, and my electric surges free
Gibberish? Yes. But also, the crazy power of being in love, feeling like you're all lit up inside, and chasing that person who won't give in, who's running away from you over on the horizon, at the cloud line. (Um, Bruce, she's running AWAY, maybe you're being creepy by chasing, I'm just sayin'. But yes, okay, sing to her more.)
Crawl into my ambulance, your pulse is getting weak
Reveal yourself all now to me girl while you've got the strength to speak
`Cause they're waiting for you at Bellevue with their oxygen masks
But I could give it all to you now if only you could ask
And don't call for your surgeon even he says it's too late
It's not your lungs this time, it's your heart that holds your fate
Here we get into the "trying to save her" part. She'll DIE without him. (Projecting? He thinks he'll die without her?) He's so sure that she SECRETLY loves him, if she would just trust her heart, they would be together and happy and she would be healed.
Don't give me money, honey, I don't want it back
You and your pony face and your union jack
Because I am a terrible person, I am someday going to write a Hornblower story that uses that as an epigraph. Yes, I know. Leave me to my shame.
Skipping ahead a bit to the bridge...
And your strength is devastating in the face of all these odds
Remember how I kept you waiting when it was my turn to be the god?
The Hammersmith Odeon version has a variant bridge: The second line changes to Remember how I kept you waiting when it was finally my turn to play the god? I'll discuss this below in the compare/contrast section on the two versions. For now, though- he admires her. She's strong. She's able to wait patiently when he pretends he's in charge! Oh, baby!Bruce, she is so playing you. Go find Clarence.
You were not quite half so proud when I found you broken on the beach
Remember how I poured salt on your tongue and hung just out of reach
I have no idea what that's supposed to be a reference to.
We were both hitchhikers but you had your ear tuned to the roar
Of some metal-tempered engine on an alien, distant shore
So you, left to find a better reason than the one we were living for
And it's not that nursery mouth I came back for
It's not the way you're stretched out on the floor
'Cause I've broken all your windows and I've rammed through all your doors
And who am I to ask you to lick my sores? And you should know that's true
This is my favorite section, in either version of the song. The energy, the tempo, the intensity builds through those seven lines, and peaks and falls as it moves into the refrain that follows. And the imagery here! Oh, God, the imagery. This is the section I want to use as a base for my Helo/Apollo/Racetrack threesome epic of self-indulgence. Some metal-tempered engine on an alien distant shore (Greasy Lake official lyrics nonwithstanding, when you LISTEN, there is no comma there, it's all one seamless breath); not that nursery mouth I came back for (the number of references to underage girls on Greetings is a wee bit eyebrow-raising, but hey, he wrote these when he was young, we'll give him a pass ::eyes him:: ); not the way you're stretched out on the floor; I've broken all your windows and I've rammed through all your doors (the rhythm of that line is just a tactile thing); who am I to ask you to lick my sores? (GROSS. But Jesus, evocative. You just know EXACTLY.)
Okay, now looking at Greetings versus the live version. Like everything on Greetings, "For You" is the cocky young superhero. Superman saying "This flying shit is MADE OF AWESOME." No, Superman was always too serious. Hmmm...okay, it all comes back to X-men, since this IS likeadeuce's metaphor. Young Angel stretching his wings and soaring for the sun. I don't even know. It's just...it's a rush of energy, it's up-tempo and revelling in the power the creator has found within himself, just in this case the power is words. And chords. But Greetings is very much about the words.
So "For You" is a swirl of energy. It's this guy flinging himself at his girl's feet, then leaping up and dancing around her, trying to cajole her into loving him back, trying to win her over with the sheer force of how much he wants. It's happy. It's actually nonthreatening, for all the subtextual creepiness noted above, because it's an entirely good-natured, joyous song.
Hammersmith, on the other hand. Oh, this concert. I must have this album for Christmas, or I will die, do you understand me? DIE. I don't think Bruce's voice is ever stronger, darker, richer than on this recording. Just...gah. I love the reedy, dorkboy voice of Greetings, which has weird-ass no-budget production values, and I love the thinner, drier, broken-and-patched-up-again voice of the more recent albums, the one that doesn't reach for those high notes anymore but takes them down a step because there just ain't no way, darlin' (and I also love the affected quasi-Southern accent, oh BRUCE, you DORK)...um, where was I? Oh. Yes. Hammersmith Odeon "For You." His voice here is like...it's like he's in the fucking room with me. I could turn around and see him RIGHT NOW. No, I just checked, there's just my cat destroying my winter coat.
He reaches for the notes and he nails them. When it was finally my turn to play the god is a slow-building roar, and he hits that top note on god and just holds it, holds it, holds it, shaking not with strain but with wanting to push it farther, and it just makes me shiver. Fuck. I love this song.
The live version is 8:26, compared to the album's 4:40. He takes the tempo down, lays it over a piano instead of the full studio instrumental, lets the lyrics wander and stretch and pause. He turns it into a ballad almost, certainly a lament, a song of mourning. She's already left him and he's singing his regret, what might have been. Or this is the moment when You were not quite half so proud when I found you broken on the beach , but she's really broken this time, and he's singing her down into the dark.
Um. I love this song.
The last line of the live version (And your cloud line urges me, and my electric surges free) rolls and rises and fades off in this amazing tone of farewell. I'm telling you, it does. The tempo, the way his voice caresses the line. Gah. A gentle, rolling send-off into the final, fading piano arc. Completion. The whole thing leaves you sated and drained and a little shivery. (I know, right? Yeah. Like that.) The album version is wonderful, fun to listen to, fun for dancing around the apartment with a very angry cat, or driving down the expressway with the windows down, and just delighting in the wordplay. But the Hammersmith version? Oh, that one's for having your soul take a journey somewhere, if you can sit still and close your eyes and listen.
Greetings From Asbury Park version
Hammersmith Odeon Live version
If you download, please do comment and talk to me about it! I share music because I want to hear what you THINK.
Wow, that took a lot longer than I thought. Off to campus to finish my stats paper, whee!
ETA2: I'm actually quite eagerly waiting for quicknow to correct the errors in this. I know they're there. Help me, Quick, and your Bruce-fu, you are my only hope!
I'm really leaving now. Really. Okay, maybe I'm just hitting save on the edit.
I'm very excited about it.
We begin with "For You."
I have heard two versions of "For You": the original from Greetings from Asbury Park, NJ (1973) and a live version from the Hammersmith Odeon concert in 1975 (the Born to Run tour). The differences between the two versions are pretty fascinating.
Greetings was Bruce's first album, and I'm going to steal a comparison from likeadeuce to talk about it: I can't find the post to quote her directly, but essentially, Greetings is Bruce's "I am a young superhero" album. The first burst of energy, he knows he can save the world, and no villains or retcons have appeared yet to put a check on things. The whole album is dizzy, ridiculous stream-of-consciousness poetry, just the pure thrill of playing with music and words. The most famous example of this is "Blinded By The Light" (madman drummers bummers and Indians in the summer, indeed, Bruce), but my personal favorite is from "Does This Bus Stop At 82nd Street?" : Hey bus driver, keep the change/Bless your children, give them names/Don't trust men who walk with canes/Drink this and you'll grow wings on your feet I mean, what? WHAT? Gibberish! But you know it meant...something...to the young, stoned man with the guitar and the record contract.
"For You" has its share of "um...okay" lyrics, but it has more of a narrative structure than some of the other songs on Greetings. (I'd say "For You" and "Spirit In The Night" try the hardest to tell a coherent story as well as letting Bruce quasi-rap free-form free-verse poetry.) The story in "For You," as far as I can parse it, is about a boy and a girl (aren't they all?), and he loves her and thinks he can save her. She resists him, because, he thinks, she's afraid. I suspect she just doesn't love him back, or else she finds him pushy and off-putting.
But you let your blue walls get in the way of these facts
Honey, get your carpetbaggers off my back
You wouldn't even give me time to cover my tracks
You said "Here's your mirror and your ball and jacks"
But they're not what I came for, and I'm sure you see that too
I came for you, for you, I came for you, but you did not need my urgency
She tries to send him away, to give him his stuff back, and he just keeps coming back for more, because he came for her.
The refrain-
And your cloud line urges me, and my electric surges free
Gibberish? Yes. But also, the crazy power of being in love, feeling like you're all lit up inside, and chasing that person who won't give in, who's running away from you over on the horizon, at the cloud line. (Um, Bruce, she's running AWAY, maybe you're being creepy by chasing, I'm just sayin'. But yes, okay, sing to her more.)
Crawl into my ambulance, your pulse is getting weak
Reveal yourself all now to me girl while you've got the strength to speak
`Cause they're waiting for you at Bellevue with their oxygen masks
But I could give it all to you now if only you could ask
And don't call for your surgeon even he says it's too late
It's not your lungs this time, it's your heart that holds your fate
Here we get into the "trying to save her" part. She'll DIE without him. (Projecting? He thinks he'll die without her?) He's so sure that she SECRETLY loves him, if she would just trust her heart, they would be together and happy and she would be healed.
Don't give me money, honey, I don't want it back
You and your pony face and your union jack
Because I am a terrible person, I am someday going to write a Hornblower story that uses that as an epigraph. Yes, I know. Leave me to my shame.
Skipping ahead a bit to the bridge...
And your strength is devastating in the face of all these odds
Remember how I kept you waiting when it was my turn to be the god?
The Hammersmith Odeon version has a variant bridge: The second line changes to Remember how I kept you waiting when it was finally my turn to play the god? I'll discuss this below in the compare/contrast section on the two versions. For now, though- he admires her. She's strong. She's able to wait patiently when he pretends he's in charge! Oh, baby!Bruce, she is so playing you. Go find Clarence.
You were not quite half so proud when I found you broken on the beach
Remember how I poured salt on your tongue and hung just out of reach
I have no idea what that's supposed to be a reference to.
We were both hitchhikers but you had your ear tuned to the roar
Of some metal-tempered engine on an alien, distant shore
So you, left to find a better reason than the one we were living for
And it's not that nursery mouth I came back for
It's not the way you're stretched out on the floor
'Cause I've broken all your windows and I've rammed through all your doors
And who am I to ask you to lick my sores? And you should know that's true
This is my favorite section, in either version of the song. The energy, the tempo, the intensity builds through those seven lines, and peaks and falls as it moves into the refrain that follows. And the imagery here! Oh, God, the imagery. This is the section I want to use as a base for my Helo/Apollo/Racetrack threesome epic of self-indulgence. Some metal-tempered engine on an alien distant shore (Greasy Lake official lyrics nonwithstanding, when you LISTEN, there is no comma there, it's all one seamless breath); not that nursery mouth I came back for (the number of references to underage girls on Greetings is a wee bit eyebrow-raising, but hey, he wrote these when he was young, we'll give him a pass ::eyes him:: ); not the way you're stretched out on the floor; I've broken all your windows and I've rammed through all your doors (the rhythm of that line is just a tactile thing); who am I to ask you to lick my sores? (GROSS. But Jesus, evocative. You just know EXACTLY.)
Okay, now looking at Greetings versus the live version. Like everything on Greetings, "For You" is the cocky young superhero. Superman saying "This flying shit is MADE OF AWESOME." No, Superman was always too serious. Hmmm...okay, it all comes back to X-men, since this IS likeadeuce's metaphor. Young Angel stretching his wings and soaring for the sun. I don't even know. It's just...it's a rush of energy, it's up-tempo and revelling in the power the creator has found within himself, just in this case the power is words. And chords. But Greetings is very much about the words.
So "For You" is a swirl of energy. It's this guy flinging himself at his girl's feet, then leaping up and dancing around her, trying to cajole her into loving him back, trying to win her over with the sheer force of how much he wants. It's happy. It's actually nonthreatening, for all the subtextual creepiness noted above, because it's an entirely good-natured, joyous song.
Hammersmith, on the other hand. Oh, this concert. I must have this album for Christmas, or I will die, do you understand me? DIE. I don't think Bruce's voice is ever stronger, darker, richer than on this recording. Just...gah. I love the reedy, dorkboy voice of Greetings, which has weird-ass no-budget production values, and I love the thinner, drier, broken-and-patched-up-again voice of the more recent albums, the one that doesn't reach for those high notes anymore but takes them down a step because there just ain't no way, darlin' (and I also love the affected quasi-Southern accent, oh BRUCE, you DORK)...um, where was I? Oh. Yes. Hammersmith Odeon "For You." His voice here is like...it's like he's in the fucking room with me. I could turn around and see him RIGHT NOW. No, I just checked, there's just my cat destroying my winter coat.
He reaches for the notes and he nails them. When it was finally my turn to play the god is a slow-building roar, and he hits that top note on god and just holds it, holds it, holds it, shaking not with strain but with wanting to push it farther, and it just makes me shiver. Fuck. I love this song.
The live version is 8:26, compared to the album's 4:40. He takes the tempo down, lays it over a piano instead of the full studio instrumental, lets the lyrics wander and stretch and pause. He turns it into a ballad almost, certainly a lament, a song of mourning. She's already left him and he's singing his regret, what might have been. Or this is the moment when You were not quite half so proud when I found you broken on the beach , but she's really broken this time, and he's singing her down into the dark.
Um. I love this song.
The last line of the live version (And your cloud line urges me, and my electric surges free) rolls and rises and fades off in this amazing tone of farewell. I'm telling you, it does. The tempo, the way his voice caresses the line. Gah. A gentle, rolling send-off into the final, fading piano arc. Completion. The whole thing leaves you sated and drained and a little shivery. (I know, right? Yeah. Like that.) The album version is wonderful, fun to listen to, fun for dancing around the apartment with a very angry cat, or driving down the expressway with the windows down, and just delighting in the wordplay. But the Hammersmith version? Oh, that one's for having your soul take a journey somewhere, if you can sit still and close your eyes and listen.
Greetings From Asbury Park version
Hammersmith Odeon Live version
If you download, please do comment and talk to me about it! I share music because I want to hear what you THINK.
Wow, that took a lot longer than I thought. Off to campus to finish my stats paper, whee!
ETA2: I'm actually quite eagerly waiting for quicknow to correct the errors in this. I know they're there. Help me, Quick, and your Bruce-fu, you are my only hope!
I'm really leaving now. Really. Okay, maybe I'm just hitting save on the edit.