On what in the media might call a slow news day, I thought I’d share a little mass-transit related music I heard on my iPod this morning.
It’s from Bruce Springsteen’s first album, Greetings From Asbury Park, New Jersey. The tune is called “It’s Hard to be a Saint in the City,” and it sees Bruce trying to tow the line amidst all the miscreants and ruffians that inhabited Manhattan at the time.
We’ve all seen images of the graffitti-streaked subway cars; mass transit in New York was indeed a much different animal when Asbury Park came out in ’73.
Springsteen writes:
The sages of the subway sit just like the living dead
As the tracks clack out the rhythm, their eyes fixed straight ahead
They ride the line of balance and hold on by just a thread
But it’s too hot in these tunnels you can get hit up by the heat
You get up to get out at your next stop but they push you back down in your seat
Your heart starts beatin’ faster as you struggle to your feet
Then you’re outa that hole and back up on the street
Keep in mind the Springsteen we know and love now–chart-topping Springsteen, built like a welterweight Springsteen, living on some mega-horse farm in Jersey Springsteen–barely resembles the slight, scruffy troubadour that recorded Asbury Park. The album is folky–lots of acoustic guitar and piano, crude vocals, minimal production, and none of the brass bombast we’d come to know after Clarence and the rest of the E Street Band hopped onboard.
You can tell Springsteen was listening to a lot of Dylan and Beat poetry–lyrics are free-associative, full of wordplay and wacky rhymes, at times dizzily non-sensical.
“Hard to be a Saint” actually wasn’t the only peek at mass transit on the album. “Does This Bus Stop at 82nd Street” sees the narrator climb on board a city bus and take in the scenario.
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
Presumably, the bus rider had a hit or two of opium before boarding:
Wizard imps and sweat sock pimps
Interstellar mongrel nymphs
Rex said that lady left him limp
Love’s like that (sure it is)
Ah,yes. This album brings me back to my high school days. I still sing “Sandy” every 4th of July.
Bobby, “Sandy” is on the next album, The Wild the Innocent, the E Street Shuffle. Maybe you have to go back further than high school.
I realized my mistake as soon as I hit the “submit comment” button. I do pride myself, however, on knowing all the words to “For you.”