This countdown is being compiled and written in present time by JT of Perth, West Australia. Follow him on Twitter @thesonsofnoone.
34. Badlands
Get it on: Darkness on the Edge of Town (1978), Live 1975-85 (1986), Live in New York City (2001)Did you know that according to Greasy Lake’s setlist archive, ‘Badlands’ has been played live 936 times since 1978? 936 times, and I don’t get it. What makes this song 18 times better than ‘Streets of Fire’, which has been played live only 51 times (please forgive my twisted logic)? I don’t get it, but I’m willing to forgive ‘Badlands’.My relationship with ‘Badlands’ is a confusing one. I get a kick out of the song and I can’t help but sing along with it (it’s one of the more impossible songs not to sing along with), but I can’t understand Bruce’s love for it.Even though I don’t consider the song to be one of his greatest, I mark it high because I’ve got an awful lot of respect for the song. Just because I don’t think it’s the greatest thing ever, doesn’t mean I don’t appreciate the sound of the roar which goes out around the crowds when that opening drum roll kicks in. It’s practically euphoric.Now, if I’m going to be honest, I get a kick out of it too. Those drums kick in and nine times out of ten, hairs stand up on the back of my neck. But I do have a few bones to pick with the song.But that’s OK. Anything that I don’t like about the song gets redeemed by something far better. Bruce’s singing is fine enough, but the "let’s go ahead with double tracking your own vocals" thing doesn’t really work for me. The chorus? Not a fan. But as I said, that’s OK. The vocals and each of the choruses gets redeemed by "poor man wanna be rich, rich man wanna be king, but the king ain’t satisfied till he rules everything". Lines that good make you forget about all the things you wish were different.So ‘Badlands’ ends up ranking so high not necessarily for the lyrics, or the music, but for how it makes the skin tingle sometimes. So maybe I do understand Bruce’s love for the song. 936 times ‘Badlands’ has been played live means 936 times a simple drum roll has sent the crowd in a frenzy. It’s an uneasy anthem, but like the very best anthems, it gets your feet tapping, the heart pumping and the blood racing.The best bit: "It ain’t no sin to be glad you’re alive". One line can make a film more memorable than it should be and the same goes for songs. "It ain’t no sin to be glad you’re alive". Give a pen to William Goldman or any other great screenwriter, give them an epic drama to write and in 1000 years they couldn’t come up with a greater line.
33. My City of Ruins
Get it on: America: A Tribute to Heroes (2001), The Rising (2002) and Live in Dublin (Bonus Disc - 2007)
Looking back on one’s life is probably one of the more dangerous things you can do, especially when you’ve got so much more life yet to live. Not that thinking about the things which have made you the happiest is a bad thing, it’s just that when you look back (well, when I look back anyway) you tend to think about the things you wish you could do differently or the things that you miss and could never replace.
‘My City of Ruins’ isn’t so much a plea for things to return to the way they were, but a wish for things to have turned out differently. There the singer is, sitting in a town which is only being held up by ever-crumbling walls while the one thing which made him the man he was has gone from his life (it’s never made abundantly clear whether she has died or simply left).
The song scores a bunch of points because even though it’s the closest thing Bruce has written to a classic song in the past decade, it never sounds as though it’s trying to be. Never in the song do I get the idea that the singer or the band are trying to overstretch and form something greater than is needed. To me, ‘My City of Ruins’ doesn’t strive to be anthem and for that, it’s more of an outstanding song than if the band aimed for grandiose or fist-pumping.
The best bit: There was a live version released on a bonus disc of the Live in Dublin release. Listening to the crowd sing along with Bruce’s initial "rise up!" chorus is spectacular. Who needs backing vocals when you’ve got a brilliant Irish crowd to back you up? Special mention must also go to the "without your sweet kiss my soul is lost my friend, tell me how do I begin again - My city's in ruins" line.
32. All That Heaven Will Allow
Get it on: Tunnel of Love (1987)
As kids, we spend a lot of our time being asked questions about outcomes which won’t occur for a decade or so, but they’re questions which help shape our lives.
“What do you want to be when you grow up?”
Me? I always wanted to be an archaeologist because that’s what Indiana Jones was and not only did he get to go off and fight Nazis and other bad guys, he got to find all this awesome treasure. Then one day I wanted to be a lawyer. Not sure why. Well, today I am neither an archaeologist nor a lawyer, but as a child it’s natural to have dreams.
"What do you want to do with yourself once you leave school?"
That’s the adolescent version of "what do you want to be when you grow up". It’s an acknowledgement that the time is fast approaching where you’re going to have to make that leap from childhood to young adulthood and the world will almost overnight seem to be a different place.
"Which girl’s your favourite?"
I used to get this one a lot. It’s the question, isn’t it? Well, it was one that my mother used to ask me (even though I’d never reply). It’s the one that I thought about more than any others. I didn’t care what I did with my life as long as it was with whichever girl I had a crush on/was in love with at that time. Maybe I was just a horny teenager (most likely) or maybe I was a hopeless romantic (also possible), I just wanted happiness. I wanted the idyllic life without troubles.
For example, my father quit his job with the Australian Taxation Department to start his own tax consulting business in the early 1990s. It took a lot longer for him to get the business off the ground than he would have hoped and as a result, we struggled for a while. Things were so dire that we nearly lost our house, and when that house was the only one I’d ever known, it scared me shitless enough to know that I’d never ever go into business for myself. And even though 20 years or so have passed, any time anyone tells me I should go into business for myself, I tell them "no thanks". To see the strain that it put on my parents was heartbreaking, and it caused a hell of a lot of arguments between the pair. Because of that, I wanted to become the man that my parents always hoped I would become, but without their worries or troubles.
I also always wanted to die young. I saw how my grandmother slowly died and I swore that I never wanted to get to the stage where I couldn’t look after myself. Well, that ain’t the case now and Bruce sums it up perfectly when he sings:
"Now some may wanna die young man
young and gloriously
Get it straight now mister
hey buddy that ain't me
'Cause I got something on my mind
that sets me straight and walkin' proud
And I want all the time
all that heaven will allow"
‘All That Heaven Will Allow’ earns this spot because it perfectly captures the promise of a better life. There’s nothing better than the feeling at the start of any relationship when you think to yourself that this girl could be the one for you. There’s nothing better (for me anyway) than the feeling that you now care significantly less for yourself than you ever have before, and conversely, you now feel more for someone else than you ever have or than you ever thought possible.
So I spent my whole life planning my life on what I’d seen and heard and thought was true. But let me tell you this, it doesn’t mean a single thing. None of your past experiences matter when you meet that one person. Sure, they can help greatly, but in the instant that your head interprets what your heart is telling you, you don’t care anymore.
The best bit: "Rain and storm and dark skies, well now they don't mean a thing If you got a girl that loves you and who wants to wear your ring". Sappy? Of course. Overly sentimental? Not a chance in hell.
31. It’s Hard to Be a Saint in the City
Get it on: Greetings From Asbury Park, NJ (1973), Live 1975-85 (1986), Tracks (1998), Hammersmith Odeon, London '75
To be honest, it sits there quietly. Well, relatively quietly. It perfectly sums up his debut album. Good, but with the promise of something better. On Greetings From Asbury Park, NJ, ‘It’s Hard to Be a Saint in the City’ gives you but a taste of the song’s true nature. Sure, we’d get a true demo of the song when Tracks was released in 1998, but the album version of the song, to me anyway, is just like another demo.
It sounds like a demo because how could you honestly listen to any of the live versions the E Street Band battered us with in the mid-to-late 1970s and think that the album version was the way the song was supposed to sound.
So here we have ‘It’s Hard to Be A Saint in the City’, not because of its original form, but for mainly the revelatory rip-through we got on the Hammersmith Odeon, London '75 release. That version is so good and reinvents the song so much that my placement for the song would probably have been in the mid-60s had it not been released.
And you know what? It probably isn’t even the best out there. I mean, that initial Hammersmith concert was long considered to be one of the man’s first failures (especially in a live setting). Obviously, listening to the concert now, there’s no way that anyone could ever come to that conclusion, but the gig was thought of so poorly that it took Springsteen six years to go back to Europe.
But man, it’s electric. Bruce’s vocal doesn’t sound like a guide track for his band. The band itself roars through it, no one left sitting there with nothing to do. The twin guitars of Springsteen and Van Zandt should be utilised far more often...
Springsteen’s career is littered with live performances that are beyond belief and one night in London, he and the band laid down a version of ‘It’s Hard to Be a Saint in the City’ that was so good that it causes my rating of the song to jump 30 points or so. Not much else really needs to be said!
The best bit: The ending guitar duel from Hammersmith. God it’s good.
30. Seaside Bar Song
29. I Wanna Be With You
Get them both on: Tracks (1998)
Yep - here I go, continuing my journey through the greatest Tracks cuts. But for everyone thinking that I’m having too many of them, then I’m here to tell you that I’m not, but don’t worry because there’s only one more to come after these two. These great two. Honestly, I can’t consider these songs outtakes because they’re so fully-formed, and so rampantly upbeat. The best way I can talk about them is to compare them to James Cameron’s The Abyss.
When The Abyss came out in 1988, it was a pretty good movie with some cool effects. Hindsight will tell you that The Abyss was James Cameron’s way of learning his way through the effects needed for Terminator 2: Judgement Day, and also that the experiences with that film helped him when making Titanic and Ghosts of the Abyss (what with the underwater component needed). But I digress.
When the Director’s Cut of The Abyss came out it fleshed a good movie into something approaching a great movie. Characters were embellished, motivations became much clearer, and the power of the underwater aliens was much more evident. When viewing the Director’s Cut side-by-side with the theatrical version, I don’t view the extra scenes in the Director’s Cut as ‘Deleted Scenes’ which were re-instated to the film. ‘Deleted Scenes’ conveys that they weren’t good enough. That’s not true. It’s just that they didn’t fit with the parameters of the film they were to release.
Well, like those scenes in The Abyss, ‘Seaside Bar Song’ and ‘I Wanna Be With You’ are too good to be considered outtakes. I’d like to think that they were originally unreleased because they just didn’t fit the parameters of the album they were recorded for (something I’ve spoke about in length for other Tracks or still-unreleased songs).
‘Seaside Bar Song’ is such a great, fun song that it really is a shame that there was no avenue for its release. It would have stuck out like a sore thumb on The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle. In fact, the only place it could have been placed on the album was as the opening track, but then that would have thrown off the awesomeness of the tuning horns at the start of ‘The E Street Shuffle’, so I’m not complaining that it wasn’t there.
What a different world we’re in. ‘Seaside Bar Song’ just couldn’t have been cut if that album were being made today. But I don’t want to go down that path. The album’s perfect as it is, we’ll just leave it in 1973 thank you very much. As with all other Tracks cuts that I’ve spoken about, it’s a shame they weren’t originally released, but I’m damn glad we’ve now got it to enjoy.
‘I Wanna Be With You’ could have been mistaken for a Tom Petty backing track, but that’s not a bad thing. In fact there’s nothing bad about this song. It’s the perfect outtake. Not legendary, but simply joyous. If we want to play the "it should have replaced..." game, then I’m scratching my head to think of how something like ‘Crush on You’ got a spot on The River, yet this was left languishing. Great job by the whole E Street Band, each with their little job to do. I feel as though I’m underselling just how good this song is.
So there we go. Don’t think of these two gems as outtakes. Think of them as great songs that were just a little bit unlucky to begin with. Think of them as two great scenes in the Director’s Cut of Bruce’s career.
The best ‘Seaside Bar Song’ bit: Vinnie Lopez doesn’t get enough credit. His drumming here is spot-on. Sure, it’s like all his other drumming, so maybe it’s best not to say that his drumming suits the song perfectly, rather it’s more of a case of the song suiting the drums. Either way, the drums drive the song along at the breakneck speed the song needs.
The best ‘I Wanna Be With You’ bit: I’m tempted to say "I just can’t understand it, you’re not pretty at all" line, but it has to be the final line "be-cause I love you soooooo". Like any other reason is necessary.
28. Brilliant Disguise
27. Living Proof
Get ‘Brilliant Disguise’ on: Tunnel of Love (1987)
Get ‘Living Proof’ on: Lucky Town (1992)
I’m a pretty happy guy the majority of the time. I fully realise that there are millions of people who lead lives far more unfortunate than mine, and that such is their destiny... it’s unlikely that they’ll ever know anything other than the unfortunate lives they lead right now. On the odd occasion however, I’m not an easy guy to be around. In no way am I violent or abusive to anyone else, but I treat myself with utter contempt.
I thought that getting married would rid me of the times where I have nothing but self-loathing. However, as brilliant and loving as my wife is, I still have days where I can’t help but think that my life is one long journey towards ultimate disappointment. I have the thoughts for about 10 seconds before I snap straight out of it, but the thoughts are there nonetheless.
I also need things to do. There’s nothing worse for me than sitting down in a quiet room with nothing to do except sit with my thoughts. I hate my thoughts. I have far too many of them. Perhaps that’s why I like music so much, songs distract me from the idiotic things which go through my mind.
Having said all that - I’m never unsure of myself. I may hate myself every now and then, but I know what I can do and the value I can bring to any situation. I just wish other people saw my value (and therein lies the problem. My brief moments of self-loathing aren’t necessarily about me, but about others’ inability to see what I know is good about myself). None of this probably makes any sense. I guess what I’m trying to say (in a VERY roundabout way), is that Bruce Springsteen, when singing ‘Brilliant Disguise’ is a man unsure of the choices he’s made.
Some see the song as perhaps a little harsh on the person he’s singing the song to, but I don’t think it’s harsh at all. How can one be completely sure about the choices he’s made in life if he’s unsure about himself? I guess that I’m glad I don’t have similar feelings. When marrying my wife, I gave myself completely to her. She knows my secrets and I hers. There’s no disguise in our marriage, and thank god there’s not. If there was then I wouldn’t be able to live with myself.
Musically, Bruce dipped down a level after ‘Brilliant Disguise’. He got his life turned around. Divorced his first wife and married his second. Became a father. Gone were the songs like ‘Brilliant Disguise’, and replaced with inferior songs that could have been about anyone.
Bruce may not have realised it at the time, and he still probably doesn’t understand. He made a comment at his Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction about how he tried writing happy songs but that the public didn’t like them. Well, that’s partly true, but I’m not sure he understands why we didn’t like them. We didn’t like them because the best thing about Bruce Springsteen’s music pre-1992 was that even though the songs were about other people, we as the listeners have no problem with the notion that the songs, all the songs, may very well be about himself.
The worst songs on Human Touch and Lucky Town (for the most part) could have been written by and about anyone. And by making the songs like that, they lost what made earlier Springsteen songs great. There were a few exceptions however. And ‘Living Proof’ is one.
I’m convinced that of all the songs written by parents about their children, this and Wilco’s ‘My Darling’ are probably two of the very finest. ‘Living Proof’ isn’t a puzzle. It’s about a man who was trapped within his own thoughts and fears for no reason whatsoever, a man who was bought into the light by the birth of a child. Now, I’m not a father (yet), but when the day comes and my child is brought into this world of ours, I’ll know how to react. But on the very odd chance that I don’t, I’ll be able to listen to ‘Living Proof’ and see how another man changed his world around.
The best ‘Brilliant Disguise’ bit: "God have mercy on the man who doubts what he’s sure of".
The best ‘Living Proof’ bit: It was the first time anyone outside of Bruce’s circle had heard the song. Saturday Night Live, 1992. Bruce plays ‘Living Proof’ and for those few minutes you listen to the song and you can’t help but be bought into what the man was singing. That, and for a brief moment, you also thought that the ‘Other Band’ wasn’t half bad at all. Track this version down if you can. It’s definitive.
26. Meeting Across the River
Get it on: Born to Run (1975)
When I first listened to Born to Run, it wasn’t hard for me to point to ‘Meeting Across the River’ and say that it was my least favourite song on the album. After all, it seemed like nothing but an introduction to ‘Jungleland’, and since ‘Jungleland’ was so good in itself, why would I need to worry with the introduction?
So yeah, I’m an idiot sometimes.
‘Meeting Across the River’ is so much more than an introduction to ‘Jungleland’. Sure, it doesn’t go nearly as long as its successor, but it packs a helluva story into its running time. If it’s a story that couldn’t be digested into a movie, it would make a damn good episode of your favourite television show. The imagery is so vivid, you can’t help but travel along with guys in the song, you can’t help but feel the tension as the singer sings "word’s been passed this is our last chance" and "here stuff this is your pocket, it’ll look like you’re carrying a friend".
However as much as the amazing lyrics grab you, they wouldn’t be anywhere near as effective as they would be if it weren’t for Mike Appel.
For all of the man’s failings, he scored big here. Actually check that, I don’t necessarily know that he had too many failings. Sure, he sued Bruce and prevented him from entering a recording studio (a pretty big failing), but he also helped try and bust down the biggest of doors for Bruce to saunter through. OK, so you could point to Bruce’s lack of success in those early days as an indictment on Appel’s management, but the guy did sweet talk his way through the halls of both Time and Newsweek, getting his boy on the cover of both within the same week (both, coincidentally, appeared on the newstands on Appel’s birthday).
Having said all that, his contribution to ‘Meeting Across the River’ (which was interestingly left off the Wings for Wheels doc that accompanied the Born to Run boxset) could be his greatest contribution to the music of Bruce Springsteen. Piano and trumpet. Just those two. Bruce’s voice. Nothing more. There’s the Mike Appel influence.
There’s Appel’s biggest success.
So in the end, I was wrong. ‘Meeting Across the River’ is by no means solely an introduction to ‘Jungleland’. It’s by no means the weakest song on the album (the album has no songs you could honestly deem the weakest). Thanks to lyrics from a master songwriter at the peak of his powers and the contribution from a manager who was well and truly on his way out, you’re left with a song that will last forever.
The best bit: The way Bruce sings "but Eddie man, she don’t understand, that two grand’s practically sittin’ here in my pocket" and the four notes he wrangles out of "pocket". That’s a great part. But you know what else is fantastic? The sound of the trumpet. It’s like it was recorded in the middle of a deserted carpark with microphones placed all around at a distance.
25. Prove it All Night
Get it on: Darkness on the Edge of Town (1978), Live 1975-85 (1986) and Live in New York City (2001)
When I spoke earlier about my apprehensions with Darkness on the Edge of Town, I neglected to say that ‘Prove it All Night’ suffers from none of the problems I mentioned. It’s almost the finest song on the album, easily the best rocker found there, and a live great.
And that’s where the song shines. For as good as the album version is, the song gets its greatness from the hundreds of live renditions we’ve got. And there’s been no better time for ‘Prove it All Night’ fans than on the 1978 Darkness Tour. It’s a legendary tour for many reasons. You had a band reaching the peak of their powers, a singer eager to reclaim an audience that was in danger of being lost and a bunch of songs which translated perfectly to the live setting.
Of all the songs, ‘Prove it All Night’ was transformed the most. It wasn’t transformed by new lyrics or a different melody. It wasn’t done solo, it was just improved out of sight. And it all lies in the introductions. They’d see Bruce and Steve rip their guitars with Max pounding the skins and Roy Bittan matching them note for note on his piano. By the time the song proper was ready to start the crowd would be in a frenzy and ‘Prove it All Night’ would kick in with the band matching the highs of the crowd.
You really have to do yourself a big favour and track down any of these versions. My favourite comes from the show I’ve already mentioned as my #1 Springsteen show - the September 19 show from the Passaic Theater. But honestly, any version from the tour will leave you breathless.
The best bit: "what it means to steal, to cheat, to lie. What it’s like to live and die to prove it all night" That last bit reminds you of the guy’s concerts much? It’s almost his live motto.
24. Drive All Night
Get it on: The River (1980)
The line keeps coming to me as I think about ‘Drive All Night’...
“I swear I’d drive all night again, just to buy you some shoes”
I’ve spoken about her already. She was my first love. She stole my fifteen-year-old heart with a simple smile as our eyes met for the first time on a crowded train. In all honesty, I’d been looking at her for a while, I just never knew she was looking back. She was amazing, and for years she helped me get through what was a pretty tough time in my life. I never wanted to go to school, but I would never have wanted to miss the time we spent together each day for three years of schooling. There was an hour in the morning and an hour in the evening. Two hours each day where she made me forget about everything bad which happened in between. I remember the night she first called me up. Well, it was her and the girl who introduced us. They were spending Friday night at one of their houses and out of the blue I got a phone call from the two. How did she get my number (we were unlisted)? I honestly didn’t care. All that mattered was that she got it and called me. We spoke for two hours that night.
And god, was she gorgeous. She was way out of my league. Tall, slender and with a smile that could melt a statue, I always thought she was too good for me... I always knew I’d never stand a chance. But that didn’t matter. Every morning and evening for three years, I got to spend time with a girl who made me feel like a normal kid.
I was a year older than her, and left school to go to university while she finished school. I was going to be lonely again. Good times come to an end.
"I swear I’d drive all night again, just to buy you some shoes"
‘Drive All Night’ is an amazing song. I’d like to say it’s unlike anything in the man’s catalogue, but there’s a part of me which hopes to hell that it was recorded on the same dark and stormy night as ‘Point Blank’ and ‘Wreck on the Highway’. There’s so many parts to the song which stand out. Bruce’s vocals (never better?), the tiny electric guitar flourishes, the haunting piano, and a note perfect contribution from Clarence Clemons.
"I swear I’d drive all night again, just to buy you some shoes"
That first year of university was an amazing time. Almost overnight I was forced into adulthood and thrust into a new world where I could cower in a corner and disappear into anonymity, or I could become the person I wanted to be and find myself in situations I always wanted to be in. I chose the latter. But it just wasn’t the same. She wasn’t there. Of course, I still saw her every now and then, but it wasn’t the same at all. I didn’t have that hour in the morning and that hour in the afternoon with her.
Everything changed the year after that (1998). She finished school and enrolled at the same university as me. But I’d changed by then. I wasn’t the same child I was at school. In a year I’d changed to a heavier drinking, less impressive version of myself and we never took the next step, one that everyone around us were sure we would eventually take. Through all of this though, the love I had for her was still there. But we could never align ourselves. She went to parties without me and after one of them, she told me about this one guy she’d met at a party. I was crushed, but I would never have let her know.
"I swear I’d drive all night again, just to buy you some shoes"
I take some sort of perverse satisfaction from Bruce’s November 8, 2009 show at Madison Square Garden. That was the night that he and the band performed The River in its entirety. That was the night where he stuffed up the lyrics to a song he’d performed over 500 times in his life (‘Hungry Heart’) and roared through songs he’d hardly ever played (‘I’m a Rocker’) with a passion that suggested he thought far more of the song that its lack of live airings suggested.
It was also the night he nailed ‘Drive All Night’. Sure, he fucked up ‘Hungry Heart’, but nailed ‘Drive All Night’. I love it. He didn’t just nail it. He knocked it out of the park. Why it never became a set closer, I’ll never know.
"I swear I’d drive all night again, just to buy you some shoes"
It was the worst day of my life. I got a call from her friend at about 10am saying that she hadn’t woken up from the night before. She had gone to bed sick the night before and had gotten worse overnight. By the time anyone realised, she’d slipped into a coma. Her father, a doctor, had sped his way to meet her at the hospital where the ambulance was keeping her, while I could just sit helpless, not knowing what I could do. My best friend at the time was in a coma and the prognosis was not good.
I’m an emotional man, and I’ll admit I shed tears at my wedding last year. Both when I first saw my wife walking down the aisle, another time when talking of how great my parents had been to me, and another time how I described what kind of husband I wanted to be. But that day, when I found out my first love was seriously ill, well it all came out. I bawled like never before, and and I bawled like I haven’t since. I honestly thought that I used up my lifetime quota of tears that day.
The stab to the heart came later that day when, in a desperate attempt to see her, I drove to the hospital she was admitted to, only to be turned away at the ward’s entrance. I wasn’t family, they told me. Only family were allowed entry. I couldn’t find her family to get them to let me in. So I sat there, emotionally drained. The worst part? The guy she’d met at the party a couple of weeks before had found out she was sick, had driven to the hospital and mentioned that he was her boyfriend, and the nurses let him in. He was there when she awoke, and that was it for me (he was to later become her fiancee, but never her husband). We were never as close again as we were before and it wasn't until years later that we both professed what we should have professed years before - that we were once both in love with each other but never said anything for fear of ruining the friendship we had. By that time, our lives had changed and although there was love between us, we were no longer in love with each other.
" I swear I’d drive all night again, just to buy you some shoes"
Bruce Springsteen’s greatest ability (to me anyway) is the ability to take the unwritten thoughts of others and put them into the words we wish we could say. Some might say that "I swear I’d drive all night again, just to buy you some shoes" is one of the man’s corniest and worst lyrics, but honestly... I think it could be one of his very greatest.
It’s a line that’s as much maligned as it is praised. Some will say that it’s the man’s worst ever lyric. To those who do, I’ll argue forever and a day that what you’re saying is a lie. But I never understood how much the line meant. Now, I do. My life’s moved on from my first love, however she’ll always hold a special place in my heart. I would have driven all night for her. I would have done whatever she wanted to, not because I was under her spell, but because for a few years, my heart was hers. Driving all night just to buy her some shoes was the very least I could do. Now I’ve got a woman in my life who took the love I once had for someone else and made it her own forever and I’ve got someone new who I’d drive all night for, even if it’s just to buy her some shoes. Because of this song, I'd drive all night especially to buy her some shoes.
The best bit: So many to choose from. There’s the sound of the piano, there’s the anguish of Bruce’s "heart and soul" lyric and the brilliant "don’t cry little baby" wail he unleashes. But for perfectly fitting the song, I’ve got to go with Clarence Clemons and his great sax break.
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