Originally Published on Aug. 20, 2018
The Song of the Day is:
Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band – “Thunder Road”
From the album Born To Run (1975)
From your front porch to my front seat
The door’s open but the ride ain’t free
And I know you’re lonely for words that I ain’t spoken
But tonight we’ll be free, all the promises’ll be brokenBruce Springsteen
Justice for Bruce! I’ve played two Springsteen songs so far (“Streets of Philadelphia” and “Born in the USA”), and I hadn’t really stood behind either of them. I claimed that they had aged poorly, and it’s true. This song, though, is timeless. In fact, I would rate this as one of the greatest songs ever written. It’s funny that this song and the title track, which cover much of the same thematic material, come from the same album. “Born to Run” was Bruce Springsteen’s breakthrough, that it did tend to overshadow “Thunder Road”. Numerous comparisons could be made, such as Super Bowl winning quarterbacks Peyton and Eli Manning, Scorsese movies Goodfellas and Casino, or actors Shirley McLaine and her brother Warren Beatty. Both are classics, and they are bother essential Springsteen. The song, named after a Robert Mitchum film, is quite cinematic, with its stage directions (“screen door slams”), its soundtrack (“Roy Orbison singing for the lonely”) and its dialogue (“You ain’t a beauty, but, hey, you’re alright”). The song hits two of Springsteen’s favorite themes, leaving the childhood home town that has nothing to offer the protagonist, and the search for the “promised land”. The E Street Band, of course is magnificent in backing the Boss, and the late Clarence Clemons (saxophone) gets to play off these two lovers as they go out in search of that “promised land”.
Hear Today, Grown Tomorrow 