Thunder Road (1975) – Bruce Springsteen

I can’t think of another song from my youth that left such a lasting mark on me, or that captured so clearly what music and storytelling could be, as Bruce Springsteen’s Thunder Road. And is there a more vivid, grounding opening in modern music than “The screen door slams, Mary’s dress sways”? From that first line, you’re there. Add Springsteen’s nod to Roy Orbison and Only The Lonely, and you’re already in the presence of something special. Even upon first listen, you feel like you’ve known the song for years.

Mary’s innocence comes into focus alongside Roy Bittan’s gentle, tiptoe piano – delicate, almost shy, and perfectly matched to the image forming in your mind. The music and the words move together, effortlessly, from start to finish. Nothing feels forced or out of place. It’s an epic rock ’n’ roll ballad. As close to perfect as they come.

Born to Run was the final installment of Springsteen’s first record deal with Columbia. The preceding albums, Greetings from Asbury Park and The Wild, the Innocent, and the E Street Shuffle, had not been commercial successes. The third album would be critical in determining the viability of his future in music. Facing that do-or-die pressure to compose a life-defining last-ditch effort, he leads off with a song about life-defining last-ditch efforts.

As I’ve written in other pieces about Bruce, his use of bridges is among the best in contemporary music. In many songs, bridges feel like functional filler – something added to serve the structure rather than deepen the song. With Springsteen, it’s the opposite. His bridges don’t just hold things together; they lift the song to another level. Thunder Road is no exception. In fact, the song doesn’t really have a traditional chorus at all – and if it does, it’s folded right into the bridge with “Oh-oh, Thunder Road, oh Thunder Road,” nestled between the later verses. The song is driven by narrative, and nothing is allowed to interrupt that forward motion as Springsteen moves from verse to verse, building one vivid moment after another.

In his 2005 VH1 Storytellers interview, Springsteen shares that Thunder Road is more than an invitation to the album, it’s an invitation to a bigger life. In his own words, “The music sounds like an invitation. Something is opening up to you… What I hoped it would be when I wrote this song is what I got out of rock and roll music – which is a sense of a larger life, greater experience, hopefully more and better sex, a sense of fun – more fun, a sense of personal exploration, your possibilities… the idea that it is all lying somewhere inside of you… just on the edge of town.”

What follows is a highly abridged version of the excellent Rolling Stone article “How Bruce Springsteen Created ‘Thunder Road’.” I’ve left out far too much good material to fit the scope of my own piece – trimming it down feels almost sacrilegious:

Springsteen had a new band, but wasn’t quite sure what to do with it…Another new figure in Springsteen’s orbit was Jon Landau, a prominent rock critic who had a past as a record producer. He invited Landau to the empty warehouse in Neptune, New Jersey where the E Street Band was rehearsing. It would be one of the most important rehearsals of Springsteen’s career. “Jon immediately started making tremendously spot-on musical suggestions,” says Weinberg, “particularly rhythmically. It was amazing. Within a couple of hours, he had turned the rhythmic thrust of the band away from that kind of charming but scattershot approach that was on the first two records. Very charming, but very busy drumming, certainly not what Jon wanted to hear.”

“Thunder Road,” in particular, “was fantastic, but it was a little unwieldy, a little unfocused, a little more like a jam piece,” Landau told me in 2005. “I remember talking with Bruce about a few ideas about how to just reshuffle the deck a little bit, and keep the song building from the very beginning right through the end.” As Springsteen adopted Landau’s suggested shifts and edits, the song started to take shape, and with it, a new, streamlined, harder-rocking sound for the E Street Band.

“Thunder Road” was the world’s introduction to Bittan’s architectural piano style, enhanced by glockenspiel parts an octave up. “Roy had the ability to take the basic parts that Bruce created when he would write the song,” Landau told me, “and expand on them just the right amount and give them a little more structure, and really wound up anchoring the arrangements on most of that record.”

Engineer Jimmy Iovine relied heavily on Bittan when he was mixing the album, “I always had Roy’s piano in my hand,” he says, “And whenever I would get in trouble I’d push Roy out. It’s the truth – he was always doing something interesting.”
“That song was interesting for me,” says Bittan, “because I created a piano part that moves – It was like staircases to me. I would move up to a section, then down. When the chords change, I would sort of step up to it musically and then I would come down from it and move around all different ways.”

Springsteen was only 24 when he recorded “Thunder Road,” which makes the line “maybe we ain’t that young anymore” all the more striking. “The songs were written immediately after the Vietnam War,” Springsteen told me in 2005. “And you forget, everybody felt like that then. It didn’t matter how old you were, everybody experienced a radical change in the image they had of their country and of themselves. The reason was, ‘you were changed.’ You were going to be a radically different type of American than the generation that immediately preceded you, so that line was just recognizing that fact”. 

[Verse 1]
The screen door slams, Mary’s dress sways
Like a vision, she dances across the porch as the radio plays
Roy Orbison singing for the lonely
Hey, that’s me, and I want you only
Don’t turn me home again
I just can’t face myself alone again

[Verse 2]
Don’t run back inside
Darling, you know just what I’m here for
So you’re scared, and you’re thinking
That maybe we ain’t that young anymore
Show a little faith, there’s magic in the night
You ain’t a beauty, but hey, you’re alright
Oh, and that’s alright with me

[Verse 3]
You can hide ‘neath your covers and study your pain
Make crosses from your lovers, throw roses in the rain
Waste your summer praying in vain
For a saviour to rise from these streets
Well now, I’m no hero, that’s understood
All the redemption I can offer, girl, is beneath this dirty hood
With a chance to make it good somehow
Hey, what else can we do now?

[Verse 4]
Except roll down the window
And let the wind blow back your hair
Well, the night’s busting open
These two lanes will take us anywhere
We got one last chance to make it real
To trade in these wings on some wheels
Climb in back, heaven’s waiting down on the tracks

[Bridge]
Oh-oh, come take my hand
We’re riding out tonight to case the promised land
Oh-oh, Thunder Road, oh Thunder Road, oh Thunder Road
Lying out there like a killer in the sun
Hey, I know it’s late, we can make it if we run
Oh, Thunder Road, sit tight, take hold
Thunder Road

[Verse 5]
Well, I got this guitar, and I learned how to make it talk
And 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 it 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 broken

[Verse 6]
There were 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
They scream your name at night in the street
Your graduation gown lies in rags at their feet
And in the lonely cool before dawn
You hear their engines roaring on
But when you get to the porch, they’re gone on the wind
So Mary, climb in
It’s a town full of losers, and I’m pulling out of here to win

References:
1. Thunder Road – Genius Lyrics
2. How Bruce Springsteen Created ‘Thunder Road’ – Rolling Stone