User talk:Zmbro/Born in the U.S.A.

Collaboration space

• Heylin did at least two books that covered all of Springsteen's songs: Song by Song and E Street Shuffle: The Glory Days of Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band. On page 480 of E Street Shuffle: The Glory Days of Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band Heylin mentions the January 1982 recording of "Cover Me" (famously initially recorded to give Donna Summers) but says he re-recorded the song in May 1982, and it was this latter recording that was used for BITUSA. I don't seem to be able to get access to the relevant part of the book in Internet Archive anymore. Also I don't have access to Song by Song, which another editor has used as a source for saying the January recording was used. Some other writers seem to assume the BITUSA "Cover Me" was the one recorded in January, though I'm not sure if anyone explicitly says so. I couldn't find the relevant bits of either book in Google Books or in the sample in Amazon. Maybe I'll need to borrow the books from my local library. We should also keep our eyes out for how explicitly other authors may or may not say the January recording was the one. Depending on what they say, we could either treat Heylin as authoritative or acknowledge the different accounts. –Moisepj

General thoughts

• I don't think we should be so dead set on exact recording dates. Maybe we can have them to start but once everything is put together if they are too distracting we can be more general. I say this because I was told too many specific dates could be a problem during the FACs for The Next Day and This Year's Model. Just something to keep in mind. – zmbro _{(talk) (cont)} 18:08, 14 March 2024 (UTC)
• I have sometimes done this and sometimes haven't (so far not with Springsteen), but should we include music and lyric info about the outtakes and B-sides? Or is that too much? – zmbro _{(talk) (cont)} 19:06, 24 March 2024 (UTC)
• How in-depth should Steven Van Zandt's departure from the E Street Band be delved into? It obviously worth a mention, as both "No Surrender" and "Bobby Jean" are about him, but the question is...how in depth? – zmbro _{(talk) (cont)} 17:33, 27 March 2024 (UTC)
• I really like this quote that you've included: "By [1983], I'd recorded a lot of music (see Disc three of Tracks). But in the end, I circled back to my original groups of songs. There I found a naturalism and aliveness that couldn't be argued with. They weren't exactly what I'd been looking for, but they were what I had." Moisejp (talk) 16:13, 5 April 2024 (UTC)

• Maybe we can find a way to tie that quote together with "I put a lot of pressure on myself over a long period of time to reproduce the intensity of Nebraska on Born in the U.S.A. I never got it. But 'Born in the U.S.A.' is probably one of my five or six best songs, and there was something about the grab-bag nature of the rest of the album that probably made it one of my purest pop records." and "He wrote in Songs that the title track "more or less stood by itself" and that "the rest of the album contains a group of songs about which I've always had some ambivalence".[48] He further said: "I wanted to take [Nebraska] and electrify it. But it really didn't flesh out like I had hoped it would." "

Marsh (I copied this text using a photo scanning tool, and it didn't render perfectly—if there are bits we decide are good candidates to quote or paraphrase, I can go back and correct these bits to be the exact text):

• The conversation ran deeper than that, though. In the course of it, Landau and Springsteen talked also about all the changes that had occurred since Born to Run. In a sense, the conversation was a way of reassuring each other about the new album's potential to create a massive, really disruptive success.
• From the time they'd begun, Bruce had never been sure that he wanted to release such an album. "And then, of course, Jon tends to argue for the other idea, the louder noise. A lot of the things that I'm verbalizing now were implied at the time. And I'd bring up whatever-the ghost of '75 and say, 'Oh, that was a pain.' There were a lotta consequences that Jon was arguing for. And generally I guess I felt I'm the guy that has to face 'em," he said many months later. "And I was right." He laughed. "So on one hand, this always undercuts Jon's arguments in these areas, a little bit but not that much,' he added, sobering up again.
• Bruce's arguing position was in favor of quiet, personal music-soft noises that satisfied him and kept his profile low; it was all he needed to do. He stuck to it as he and Landau talked the matter through not one time or ten but over and over again for weeks. He simply wasn't sure that he wanted to be that big, that exposed.
• "We had made a record that was pretty off center for me, it which I think is good. And I think those records should and I want to make other ones. But they're not the only make, Bruce said. "But that's where I was left I was over there. And I spent a lotta time by myself, for a long where I did not have a lotta contact with everybody else. 1 really that great a place to be left hung out at. But that's was and so then when we began to make a new album, the the process was one of slowly kinda moving back, until locked in, I knew what we were gonna do, I knew what I wanted to do. So Jon's place in this is he's just kinda coachin' me. And we do this through arguing, and sometimes just have to say a bunch of things and then once I say em, they're over. I'm arguing with myself is what I'm doin'.
• "Part of myself is saying, 'Hey, don't do that, why do that? 16 nice like this.' And then the other part of me is saying, 'Yeah, if you could pull this off.' And then the other side: 1f you do that you know, you're hangin' way out there and who needs it?" Г- sure it goes on inside of anybody who's a public figure and I suppose it goes on inside of everybody to one degree or another."
• It went on with special relevance around the issue of what as kind of record Born in the U.S.A. was going to be, however. The new trend in the record industry was for blockbuster albums keyed to a string of hit singles Michael Jackson's Thriller, which produced seven Top Ten hits, is the archetype-resulting in mega-platinum sales: 5 to 15 million copies (Thriller sold 38 million). Coupled with the heightened visibility due to video exposure (in the wake of MTV, music video programs had proliferated from the networks to local cable channels), the result was the most intensely saturated sort of fame. Just the kind thing that Bruce had been dodging since Born to Run.
• As finally released, Born in the U.S.A. had numerous poten tial singlesseven of its songs became Top Ten hits and there were at least two others ("Bobby Jean" and "No Surrender") which would have had a good shot if they'd been issued on 45. Clearly, if Bruce allowed this music to reach the public, his public profile would soar, and that was something that always- and justifiably-made him skittish.
• "But at the same time, the big question came up. I had worked hard to get through a certain door and I had an opportunity that I had created for myself." Consciously or unconsciously, Bruce's image of standing in a doorway, trying to decide whether to walk through, again threw him into the realm of John Ford's The Searchers.
• In that film, John Wayne spends five years tracking his young niece, who has been kidnapped by Indian raiders who massacred the rest of her family. Wayne doesn't play an uncomplicated good guy; he is an unreconstructed Confederate soldier, there are indications that he may be a highwayman, he is a racist, and although he initially intends to rescue his niece, he decides to kill her when he finds that she's been taken as a wife by the Indian chief. But when he finally does catch up to her, after a long ride across the desert, he sweeps her up in his arms and brings her home. In the film's final scene, all the other characters enter a house, but Wayne is left standing outside, framed in the doorway (scenes viewed through the dark side of such portals are the film's recurring motif). He adopts a noble posture, holding his left arm with his right, but the film ends with the door swinging shut on him, forever barring him from what's inside the house.
• "The John Wayne character can't join the community, and that movie always moved me tremendously,' Bruce said. But if the experiences Nebraska and its aftermath had dragged him through had any value, it was to reinforce his desire to belong to just such a community, to cut him loose from the illusion of the romantic loner, to make him understand that in real (not mythic) life, making your stand all by yourself is a miserable impossibility. "In the end," Bruce said, "it was a variety of things that kinda threw the argument in one direction, but my feeling was that I'd created an opportunity for myself and why cross the desert and not climb the mountain?" So, at the last moment when he could have turned back from superstardom and its threatened betrayal of self, class, and quality, he pushed forward precisely because it seemed the only way to preserve those things he most cherished.
• "This was '84 when this was happening and I started 1n so that had been twenty years. And where I was at that moment was the result of thousands of small decisions that I'd made daily since I was fifteen. The decision to stay inside and play guitar, the decision to watch the band all night long instead of chasin' girls around the CYO or whatever. The decision to watch the guy's hands on the guitar. The decision to quit school, to take chances. There were just hundreds, thousands of 'em, throughout my whole life. And we had 'Born in the U.S.A.'- we had that cut, and that was kinda sayin', 'All right, come on.'
• "I knew that that particular song was just a song that comes along once in a while, even if you write good songs. It had some power to it that seemed to speak to something that was 80 essential, similar to the way that 'Born to Run' did. It's not that you have better songs or worse songs, but that's a particular type of song. "And I wrote that song with an intent. I had an intent. And I put a rock and roll band together with an intent. And the intent · · · was a loud noise intent.
• He had been speaking soberly, but now he found himself cracking up at the very idea. "I guess that I felt that the rock band is there for use by the public. It is a public service situation. And I felt that essentially when it came down to it, that was my idea from the very beginning, because that was where my roots came from. The people that I admired the most were people who did that or tried to do that or made that attempt. They did not back down. Or turn away. They took it as far as they could take it. For better or for worse."
• Jon Landau was not insensitive to what an enormous decision he was prodding his best friend to make. On the other hand, he continued to push in that direction for a simple reason: "I believed with all my heart that Bruce could do this." As they tumbled around the issue, Jon reminded Bruce that they had created structures that could withstand everything a massive hit would bring, a protective community that would help deflect some of the superstardom mania and might absorb and productively channel the rest. It was a huge task and a bigger risk. The question was whether Bruce was ready to take it.
• "Me and Jon sort of get into these types of arguments," Bruce said. "And what is happening at the moment is, the answer is already there. We're not figuring something out, really. I'm in the process of centering myself and Jon is assisting me in doing this.
• "At different times in my life, because obviously you can't stay there all the time, I'll go off to this side or that side. And particularly when I'm out of contact with Jon for a long time. Basically I'm a guy [who has] extreme emotions and extreme feelings but I act right down the center, most of the time. My behavior and my actions tend to be very focused and very centered. They always have been. So I would say, Jon's daily job is essentially that he centers me. And if I get way out on one side, we may have a series of discussions and eventually I'll feel myself coming back to the middle. So at this period this is kind of what was happening.
• "It gets me in contact with what my real feelings are, what I really want to do. So essentially, it came down to a pretty simple thing. In the end, as much as I hate to say it, but in the end, what we did, that was what I wanted to do. You know, even if I had very strong feelings in the other direction-and I did. And what I wanted to do was what I'd set out to do. And if I had the opportunity to do it, I really wasn't going to be able to do anything else."
• In the end, then, Bruce Springsteen accepted the mass mania-and all its consequences, imagined and beyond belief- because he really did believe what his songs said, including the part that didn't just welcome everyone's participation but openly and actively solicited it. So he chose the Loud Noise, and Born in the U.S.A. was up and running. (Marsh, pp 181−185) Moisejp (talk) 17:17, 5 April 2024 (UTC)

Plotkin

• With Bruce uncertain of his own direction, the music they made that summer lacked the confidence necessary for great rock and roll. They made some decent tracks in those long, hot weeks—"Stand on It" and a new version of "Pink Cadillac" (the one they ultimately released) among others—but nothing was up to the level of the material they'd recorded the previous May. Plotkin, the closest thing to a newcomer in the byzantine Springsteen recording process, felt almost estranged. He just couldn’t hear the value in the songs they were cutting; he found them forced, the one thing good rock and roll can never be. Communication broke down.
• Plotkin remembered the summer with a shudder. "Bruce would ask me what I thought about a guitar solo, and I'd say, I don't know. I don't know what the song's about. I don't know whether the guitar solo's the right guitar solo, because I'm not getting any hit off the song.' He'd say, 'Well, all right then, I'll just do this guitar solo.' After two or three of those responses, he just stopped asking me what I thought. I went through a period for about two months where we hardly talked. I was there every day and hardly ever expressed an opinion because he stopped asking me, and I didn't have any opinion about anything except the songs.
• "It sounded like Bruce was trying to recover from Nebraska. He was trying to find some new footing, and he was writing stuff that was not really rocking, and it was clearly meant to rock. That was the main thing: He was ready to rock again; he wanted to and he knew that was what he was gonna have to do or he couldn't finish, and he made a valiant effort to get a series of things to rock that were written from a place inside of himself that was just not rocking." …
• But workaholics don't make it so easy on themselves. As August approached, Springsteen proposed not that they needed a vacation but that they were finished with recording and ready to start final mixes. In retrospect, even Bruce doesn't quite understand his thinking. "When we started to mix the record, I don't really know what we thought we were doing. We must have thought we had an album."
• The task of proving the point first fell to Chuck Plotkin, who began by asking Bruce to explain exactly which songs were on the record as he imagined it. "I said, 'Well, look, Bruce, you tell me what it is that we're gonna mix, what cards are on the table. I'll wade into the stuff and I'll take the best rough mixes that we have and let's string 'em together. I'd like to hear the record before we mix it.' " So Springsteen gave Plotkin a list of songs with a basic idea of their sequence.
• Plotkin and Toby Scott went back into the Hit Factory by themselves and over five days assembled Bruce's version of the new album. What Plotkin heard confirmed his worst suspicions: They were a long way from finished. "And I was scared to death because our communication had just dwindled away to nothing," Plotkin recalled with a shudder. "That was one of the low points of my involvement with Bruce, because I was just scared to death. I was in a state. I strung the stuff together, and I said, I’m gonna master these rough mixes. Because I've got to figure some way to get him to listen to this as if this is the record.' "I'm talking to Jon every day about this. 'Jon, how can tell him this?' 'You just have to tell him.' I said, 'My only hope is to get him to listen. I'm not gonna tell him anything. I'm gonna bring the disc down there, and I'm gonna say, "Bruce, look, let's just put this baby on and let's see how we're doin'." Real nice and easy. And hope that he can hear it. He'll see the disc—he's taken a week off, he'll know. 'Cause I just can't say what I have to say. I know he won't take it from me right now.’ 'Well, just go down and do your best.'
• "So we set up a meeting in New Jersey and I walked in with the reference discs. I said, 'Let's put this baby on and hear it." Bruce said, 'What do you mean?' I said, 'Well, I've got this all put together here. Let's just listen to it. We don't need to talk about it.' He says, 'I don't want to listen to it.' He says, 'Charley, you just spent five nights all by yourself in the studio, listening to this stuff. Tell me where we stand.' And I wanna go, 'But Bruce, you haven't listened to a word I've said in the last eight weeks. We haven't talked. What difference does it make what I think?' I didn't say this, but that's what I was feeling. I said, 'Geez, I really think we oughta just listen to this stuff, you know. We'll just sit here together and we'll be able to hear what it is. You don't really want me to tell ya what I think.' He said, 'What the hell do ya think I hired ya for?'
• "And I thought [groaning], 'He's not gonna listen to the thing. I'm gonna have to tell him.' So I said, 'Well, I can hear the album. I can hear the album we're making. This isn't it.' [He laughs.] Because I couldn't be negative. 'This isn't it but I can hear it; I know what this record is about. And I know what of what we have is working, and I know what isn't working and I know what's missing. And we're real close. I can make one great side out of your song list, but I can't make two great sides out of it. I can make a great opening side or a great closing side. But I have a feeling that what we have is sort of like marking posts.' I said, 'If you listen to "Born in the U.S.A." into "My Hometown," that's the whole thing. That's the record."
• "And he bought it—he bought the whole cloth."
• What Plotkin was selling (with Landau's essential concurrence) was an alternative vision of where they were at. As the producers saw it, the problem with the album was twofold. In the first place, there weren't quite enough songs that fit together in order to make a great album. In the second, a great deal of the best material they'd recorded was not on these reference discs. Springsteen's interest in "Downbound Train" had recently revived; "My Hometown" was part of the story from the time it was recorded, and Bruce had always regarded "Born in the U.S.A." and "Glory Days" as the core of the rock and roll LP. But "Cover Me," "I'm on Fire,' "Working on the Highway," "Pink Cadillac,' "I'm Goin' Down," and "Darlington County," all of them recorded more than a year before, had been abandoned. Those songs were among the best Bruce had ever recorded because they felt almost effortless—not casual or throwaway but sung as if Bruce were for once performing without burdens. In the months since, Bruce had felt just the opposite, and the new songs, no matter how hard the rhythm section kicked, showed the strain. He needed some more songs and everyone simply had to wait until he'd written the right ones.
• Bruce's response to their conversation, Plotkin recalled, was almost immediate. "Two nights later, we went into the studio and he said, 'I have a song I want to cut.' We cut 'Bobby Jean' and it was like the fever had broken." (Marsh, pp. 164−168) Moisejp (talk) 03:32, 11 April 2024 (UTC)

Notes

• Background will consist of Bruce's reading of Born on the Fourth of July and the writing of "Born in the U.S.A.", originally "Vietnam" – zmbro _{(talk) (cont)} 20:36, 28 March 2024 (UTC)
• The individual song summaries in 'music and lyrics' should be fine to start forming now (as of April 12) – zmbro _{(talk) (cont)} 19:50, 12 April 2024 (UTC)

Questions

• Moisejp What do you think about the bullets I have under singles about 'context'? I thought it could be a useful background about why U.S.A. had so many singles (especially compared to other Springsteen records), and Springsteen's first ventures into music videos (aside from "Atlantic City", which was done without his involvement anyway). – zmbro _{(talk) (cont)} 19:50, 12 April 2024 (UTC)

• I think they're good details, useful background. :-) Moisejp (talk) 15:48, 13 April 2024 (UTC)

• Do you think we need more critical reviews in reception? I wasn't able to find Billboard's. I'm sure I could find more on Newspapers.com but if you think we're good I can start forming that. – zmbro _{(talk) (cont)} 19:50, 12 April 2024 (UTC)

• Especially if we're just aiming for GA for our first round, what you have already could be a good start. Glancing quickly, I notice Harrington is negative but I didn't immediately spot other negative ones (I may have missed them). If we want possibly more reviews, without wading too deep into Newspapers.com, quickly looking at the "I'm Goin' Down" article, it looks like Bohen, M. Daly, Fine, Gill, Hinckley, Kaye, Kishbaugh, Radell, Sill, Willstein seem to mostly be reviews from summer 1984. From memory, I think Gill and Hinckley may not have been overly positive reviews. I may not have a ton of time this weekend but if I do manage to find time, I can try to sift through these and pull out some quotes. Or if you have time and happen to want to jump in and look at them, please do. Thanks Zmbro! Moisejp (talk) 15:48, 13 April 2024 (UTC)

  It's definitely a good start, as I have a basic gist of the overall reception. But more would certainly be helpful. :-) – zmbro _{(talk) (cont)} 17:03, 13 April 2024 (UTC)

• Moisejp Do you own/have access to a full copy of Himes' book? – zmbro _{(talk) (cont)} 18:08, 16 April 2024 (UTC)

Checklist

Section	Status
Lead	Not done
Background	Basic points written out
Production	TBD
Music and lyrics	song summaries should be ready
Artwork	almost done
Release and promotion	awaiting answers before forming
Reception	about ready
Tour	basic framework laid out
Legacy	TBD