When I was about 12, I fell in love with the Tiger Beat frequent cover-boy, Matt Dillon, an up and coming movie star with big brown eyes and floppy hair and a cute smile. One of the issues of Tiger Beat asked Matt Dillon what song he wanted played at his wedding and he said, "Born To Run" by Bruce Springsteen. I had never heard of Bruce Springsteen, or if I had, I hadn't paid any attention to him. But suddenly I was compelled to hear the song that was going to be played at my wedding to Matt Dillon. So I gathered my allowance/babysitting money and marched into Record Broker on White Street in Danbury, CT and purchased the album "Born To Run". I brought it home, put it on my record player and promptly forgot all about Matt Dillon and fell head over heels in love with Bruce Springsteen.
Bruce Springsteen is the only musician that has ever inspired me to write a fan letter. I threw it out when I re-read it because I felt that it was stupid and didn't want to embarrass myself. I think I wanted his respect. Bruce Springsteen is the first guy who made me yearn for something I couldn't explain, I didn't have the words for what it was I was pining for back then. But when I heard his lyrics, I felt that yearning.
I've been known to diagnose girls with something I call "Thunder Road Syndrome". In the song he claims that Mary is "waiting in vain for a savior to rise from these streets". He claims he's not a hero, but again is proposing to drive her out of town, off into the future with someone that doesn't need her to be beautiful because Eh, she's all right. He gives hope to those non rock-video-vixen-types like me that some quirky-hot romantic guy with a guitar and a car would still sweep them from off their front porch and away from their horrible rinky dink home town. Some girls are still waiting in vain, not knowing they can get their OWN guitar and their OWN car and get the hell out of dodge. BUT this syndrome only exists because the song speaks to that deep part down inside of us that wants to be rescued by someone who isn't even going to make any promises to us, adding that element of sexy insecurity and danger, allowing us to be a wild risk- taker instead of being completely taken care of like some suburban housewife. It speaks to the wild part that wants to be taken but not really kept. Bruce gets that. God, I think I still might love him a little. Well, I love the guy he was when he wrote that song, he's kind of all liberal and angry at everything now and I think he's too busy trying to make statements to notice there's magic in the night.
When I hear any song off the album "Born To Run" I am transported through time back into my bedroom that I shared with my younger sister Amy. I can smell the heat coming out of the old register in the wall, and smell the tubes of my mother's old record player, she had the kind that looked like a suitcase, it was a few years before I'd get my Emerson "stereo", so I had to be content listening to Bruce on a turntable that was capable of playing something at 78 rpms.
"Backstreets", though, is the song I loved the most. I had never been in love full of defeat. I had never gotten wasted, tried to escape my hopeless existence, and my town didn't have any back streets that I was aware of, but oh...I could just cry during the bridge, when he almost screams "When the breakdown hit at midnight there was nothing left to say, but I hated him, and I hated you when you went away." Yes. I felt that. I recognized it and while I related to the pain, it was the doomed passionate love that led to the pain that I craved.
Do you know any 12 year old boys? Then you probably know that I knew that it was hopeless for me to find anything like that in my 7th grade class. I was funny looking, talked too much, and my glasses were too big for my face. I knew the deal. None of them would be okay with me not being a beauty, but being all right. Bruce wouldn't be okay with me either, because I was 12. I could wish and hope but I knew that he would never ask me not to turn him home again.
Thus began a lifetime of unrequited love for broody musician types. Sometimes they loved me back. But not when I was 12. I mourned something I could never have at 12. My whole life ahead of me, I knew I was missing out on something that I might never have, because I wasn't the kind of girl that Bruce Springsteen would write a song about. I would get very moody and upset and take it out on my poor sister.
That piano run that Backstreets opens up with, those plaintive notes are enough to throw me right back into the heartbreak of wanting more than I can have at the stage of my life where I am. Wanting to hang out with the last of the Duke Street Kings, but knowing that can never happen, because I am too young and I don't live in New Jersey. Devastated because I am too nerdy to be one of those cool tough girls who end up in a car with Bruce Springsteen. Longing for an escape from my small town, longing for someone to see something in me that was worth breaking me out, but still not promising me anything, because that would be too easy. Longing for someone to inspire me to take a big risk for love, passion, and rock and roll.
Bruce Springsteen is the only musician that has ever inspired me to write a fan letter. I threw it out when I re-read it because I felt that it was stupid and didn't want to embarrass myself. I think I wanted his respect. Bruce Springsteen is the first guy who made me yearn for something I couldn't explain, I didn't have the words for what it was I was pining for back then. But when I heard his lyrics, I felt that yearning.
I've been known to diagnose girls with something I call "Thunder Road Syndrome". In the song he claims that Mary is "waiting in vain for a savior to rise from these streets". He claims he's not a hero, but again is proposing to drive her out of town, off into the future with someone that doesn't need her to be beautiful because Eh, she's all right. He gives hope to those non rock-video-vixen-types like me that some quirky-hot romantic guy with a guitar and a car would still sweep them from off their front porch and away from their horrible rinky dink home town. Some girls are still waiting in vain, not knowing they can get their OWN guitar and their OWN car and get the hell out of dodge. BUT this syndrome only exists because the song speaks to that deep part down inside of us that wants to be rescued by someone who isn't even going to make any promises to us, adding that element of sexy insecurity and danger, allowing us to be a wild risk- taker instead of being completely taken care of like some suburban housewife. It speaks to the wild part that wants to be taken but not really kept. Bruce gets that. God, I think I still might love him a little. Well, I love the guy he was when he wrote that song, he's kind of all liberal and angry at everything now and I think he's too busy trying to make statements to notice there's magic in the night.
When I hear any song off the album "Born To Run" I am transported through time back into my bedroom that I shared with my younger sister Amy. I can smell the heat coming out of the old register in the wall, and smell the tubes of my mother's old record player, she had the kind that looked like a suitcase, it was a few years before I'd get my Emerson "stereo", so I had to be content listening to Bruce on a turntable that was capable of playing something at 78 rpms.
"Backstreets", though, is the song I loved the most. I had never been in love full of defeat. I had never gotten wasted, tried to escape my hopeless existence, and my town didn't have any back streets that I was aware of, but oh...I could just cry during the bridge, when he almost screams "When the breakdown hit at midnight there was nothing left to say, but I hated him, and I hated you when you went away." Yes. I felt that. I recognized it and while I related to the pain, it was the doomed passionate love that led to the pain that I craved.
Do you know any 12 year old boys? Then you probably know that I knew that it was hopeless for me to find anything like that in my 7th grade class. I was funny looking, talked too much, and my glasses were too big for my face. I knew the deal. None of them would be okay with me not being a beauty, but being all right. Bruce wouldn't be okay with me either, because I was 12. I could wish and hope but I knew that he would never ask me not to turn him home again.
Thus began a lifetime of unrequited love for broody musician types. Sometimes they loved me back. But not when I was 12. I mourned something I could never have at 12. My whole life ahead of me, I knew I was missing out on something that I might never have, because I wasn't the kind of girl that Bruce Springsteen would write a song about. I would get very moody and upset and take it out on my poor sister.
That piano run that Backstreets opens up with, those plaintive notes are enough to throw me right back into the heartbreak of wanting more than I can have at the stage of my life where I am. Wanting to hang out with the last of the Duke Street Kings, but knowing that can never happen, because I am too young and I don't live in New Jersey. Devastated because I am too nerdy to be one of those cool tough girls who end up in a car with Bruce Springsteen. Longing for an escape from my small town, longing for someone to see something in me that was worth breaking me out, but still not promising me anything, because that would be too easy. Longing for someone to inspire me to take a big risk for love, passion, and rock and roll.
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