You would never think, listening to a masterpiece like "Born to Run," that the lyrics--which seem so natural, so inevitable--had been rewritten nearly fifty times before he ever cut the demo track. But they were.
Haha, yes. He's joked that "Blinded By The Light" is proof that he never had to take drugs (aside from pot, presumably, and alcohol) because he could write that without any help. I like how his first albums have these songs where the lyrics are...almost over-sized, like he has all these ideas he just has to get out right now. And as he gets older and finds his voice, the lyrics get a little more streamlined.
But, "Born to Run", the album was at the time the last album of his contract, and the first two didn't do so well, so he was pretty intense about it. Have you seen the documentaries of the making of BtR and Darkness? I'm not sure how the band managed not to kill him, between the 17 hour sax sessions for "Jungleland" and all the "stick" complaints on Darkness (Max had to redo the drums so many times because Bruce didn't like the way it sounded) and all the songs he threw out (Steve in particular gets very bemused/annoyed by it). The early versions of "Thunder Road" are interesting too, from "Wings to Wheels" and the versions with Angelina and Christina, before Mary.
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regna
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Date: 2012-05-23 18:52 (UTC)You would never think, listening to a masterpiece like "Born to Run," that the lyrics--which seem so natural, so inevitable--had been rewritten nearly fifty times before he ever cut the demo track. But they were.
Haha, yes. He's joked that "Blinded By The Light" is proof that he never had to take drugs (aside from pot, presumably, and alcohol) because he could write that without any help. I like how his first albums have these songs where the lyrics are...almost over-sized, like he has all these ideas he just has to get out right now. And as he gets older and finds his voice, the lyrics get a little more streamlined.
But, "Born to Run", the album was at the time the last album of his contract, and the first two didn't do so well, so he was pretty intense about it. Have you seen the documentaries of the making of BtR and Darkness? I'm not sure how the band managed not to kill him, between the 17 hour sax sessions for "Jungleland" and all the "stick" complaints on Darkness (Max had to redo the drums so many times because Bruce didn't like the way it sounded) and all the songs he threw out (Steve in particular gets very bemused/annoyed by it). The early versions of "Thunder Road" are interesting too, from "Wings to Wheels" and the versions with Angelina and Christina, before Mary.
As for Bruce/Clarence -- I like the idea that "Backstreets" is about Clarence (and "Bobby Jean" is about/for Steve), plus they used to kiss on stage. And you have Clarence saying, "He looked at me, and I looked at him, and we fell in love." And then Bruce wrote that song about how he basically married his band.