Besides the energy, there was a defiant joy in Springsteen's music, something that was getting lost in the disco era where even rock music was now carefully managed by mass-marketers, focus groups, and commercialization. That was what was important for us about him, as Springsteen was an indie rocker of singular and personal vision who was still small enough to evade the tired traps of the packaged musician.
That, and when one grows up in the Rust Belt, with a population often exploited by the political class [of both political parties] and their hand-maidens in academia and media, a blast of loud and laughing discord is sometimes a powerful antidote.
Later that summer, Springsteen's album "Born to Run" would be released and he would be "discovered" by the critics. From that point forward, he would play intimate venues like...Madison Square Garden...and have his music unnecessarily explained and used by politicians, the press, and professors.
That died down some in the past few decades, but I see it has reared its head yet again on the anniversary of the release of "Born to Run". Sigh. Two whelps, one a professor formerly of Princeton and the other a "critic" with the New York Post, now take on the responsibility of explaining Springsteen to the world. They both, of course, turn his music into some sort of blank slate on which they project their own world-view.
The Professor, from The Atlantic:
Born to Run and the Decline of the American Dream
[This really should have been entitled either "Born to Run and the Decline of a once-great magazine", or "Born to Run and the Decline of American Intellectualism".]
The Critic:
Elites just don't understand 'Born to Run'
Although, to be honest, The Critic gets closer to what Springsteen was about in this quotation:
No. The album is almost the opposite of what Zeitz says it is: It’s a celebration, not a rejection. It’s a barbaric yawp. It’s a blaze in the dark, a cry of pride amid desolation.
The music, you see, was fun. We smiled during the concert, and yelped like fools at certain portions. It was youth, energy, hope, and the power of ephemeral dreams to overturn circumstance. We left the Allen Theater smiling and happy and, to the woe of the nearby Howard Johnson's, a little hungry, too, after four hours. I think my ears are still ringing from it.
I've already heard the song "Born to Run" four times in the last 24 hours, so I won't play it on The Coracle. Besides, it really is a minor song. Instead, let me play "Rosalita", a little known song that brought down the house that gritty summer of '75. Listen to it and tell me if it's about urban angst or about...well, the sheer joy of being alive and in love, which is when music, any music, is at its best.