By MATTHEW DAVID
DreamChaser Digest
Spring of Springsteen: A 2012 DreamChaser Special Edition
@MatthewDavidLIT
Bruce Springsteen, Lyrics, “Jungleland,” Born To Run, Song Meaning; Analysis:
And the Magic Rat drove his sleek machine over the Jersey state line
Barefoot girl sitting on the hood of a Dodge Drinking warm beer in the soft summer rain The Rat pulls into town rolls up his pants Together they take a stab at romance and disappear down Flamingo Lane Well the Maximum Lawman run down Flamingo chasing the Rat and the barefoot girl And the kids round here look just like shadows always quiet, holding hands From the churches to the jails tonight all is silence in the world As we take our stand down in Jungleland” These two verses introduce the ballad section of the ballad/portrait hybrid Springsteen delivers in "Jungleland." Here, Bruce mentions the rangers, the Magic Rat, the barefoot girl and the Maximum Lawman. As for the first of these, I'm inclined to believe Springsteen did not randomly choose the word rangers. Not his style. I think he wanted us to known that by rangers he meant warriors, and by any dictionary definition of the word, rangers are most often considered soldiers trained in the guerrilla style—the most vicious, cunning, deceptive and personal (hand-to-hand) method of warfare—almost always conducted in jungle terrain.
You
may think jungle terrain too obvious or literal for "Jungleland," but
Springsteen didn't ostensibly write, warriors in the jungle returned
home. He told us instead, “the rangers had a homecoming in Harlem,”
and some of the most gruesome guerrilla warfare ever executed by
mankind was still transpiring in the Vietnam War. The war raged on while Springsteen wrote
and played "Jungleland" live between 1973 and 1975, and it would end on
April 30th, 1975, incidentally only four months before Bruce and The E Street Band finished production on Born To Run. Battle-tested soldiers returned home daily, throughout the final year of Vietnam.
To think that the war Springsteen avoided decisively, as he intimated to Rolling Stone in an early 1984 interview, wasn't on his mind during his composition and recording of Born To Run is as inconceivable as it is foolish. While riding in a bus on the way to his induction physical, Bruce recalled for Rolling Stone, “I thought one thing: ‘I ain't goin.’” By pretending to be insane, because of a concussion, or on account of an ankle injury—choose your unconfirmed tale—Springsteen exited his physical knowing he would not be drafted for war. Springsteen doesn't address Vietnam directly, but the idea that it made some conscious or subconscious entry into Born To Run's text, considering that Springsteen wrote the entire album during the hell-on-Earth War's final stages, is no illogical leap.
The “rangers”
line, in my mind, could be interpreted two ways. The first is the one I'm
inclined to believe. This considers that the Magic Rat and several of
his friends, all returning home from war, were meeting in New York City to
celebrate their homecoming. Then, at some point in the evening, the Rat left the get-together after
making a short appearance because he wanted to
celebrate with the Jersey girl he left behind years before, the day he left for boot camp. The Magic Rat's love is a “Barefoot girl,” likely because she's been walking around on Jersey Shore sand all day the summer sun, and thus, she's “Drinking warm beer.”
Like
"Thunder Road's" Mary, "Jungleland's" barefoot girl refers universally
to any female everywhere. Bruce tells us she's sitting “on the hood of a Dodge,” a classically American-made car. This is an indication that what he intends to convey is an American
ballad/portrait, but the universality of this situation, the development
of which is a rich example of Bruce's keenest lyrical sensibility,
makes this song; its themes and its situations applicable to the
planet.
The
other interpretive possibility is that the Magic Rat and his friends
either already returned from Vietnam or never went and were all playing
together in a band or bands at a gig that night in Harlem. This
idea stems from the grander concept that this track is about a talented
singer-songwriter-musician (“Magic”) from small-town Jersey (“Rat,” in the romantic sense)
who's struggling with the transition to stardom and dream-pursuit in
the big city, away from everyone and everything he left behind at home.
Even though
Harlem isn't far from coastal New Jersey, only about 66 miles, or a Mapquest-estimated,
hour and a half via Jersey's Garden State Parkway, the decision to
leave all his comforts, obligations and relationships to make a
career in the music industry, considering the songwriter, definitely
involved some exhaustive soul searching.
This 2nd possible interpretation posits that on "Jungleland's" fateful
night the Magic Rat is having homesick second thoughts about stardom
and thinking, if he can't have both, that his Jersey-girl love may mean
more to him than making it in
music.
Either way, the Magic Rat attended the homecoming or gig but left and drive “over the Jersey state line,”
to meet his girl. In context of the balance of this track, meeting
the barefoot girl must've been extremely important to justify leaving a
Harlem homecoming with the rangers, which leads to the conclusion that
the Rat hadn't seen his girl for years. The idea that the Rat was
meeting barefoot girl in coastal Jersey is not only confirmed by the
lyric, “over the Jersey state line,” but also the mention of “Flamingo Lane,”
which is much more likely to be located on the Jersey Shore than on the
streets of New York City. Concordantly, the idea that the Rat, “roll[ed] up his pants” when he reached town suggests he was preparing to walk on the beach or on sandy, seaside boardwalks and paths.
The “Maximum Lawman”
most likely refers to the force of time or distance or fate, or to some combination. This character is the closest to God that
we see in Born To Run, and the idea that the Rat and his girl are
doing something illegal, a popular interpretation,
is forclosed by the idea that the Lawman is running down the street
after them. A policeman would likely be in a vehicle or on a bike. A
gang-member, for those who would see the Rat as a rival gang member
heading across town to steal another gang member's girl, would not have
received such a grandiose handle as “Maximum Lawman,” and neither would a local policeman for that matter, not from a poet of Bruce Springsteen's expansive vision.
The sense in these first two verses is that the two lovers, Rat and his girl, are giving love another shot, “tak[ing] a stab at romance,” running off together to make love “in a bedroom locked/ In whispers of soft refusal and then surrender.”
My feeling is that time has run out for these two and that either time
or fate is chasing after the Rat while he's with his girl, letting him
know that this relationship is over or that his life is leading him in
directions away from the hometown Jersey of faded dreams, and into
the lights and fury of NYC, where grand dreams have a chance to come
true.
Springsteen
gives us the sense that everything else in the world has stopped, while
the Rat and his girl negotiate their romantic encounter, figuring out if
they still have enough love or time to make it work. We
learn later that they don't, when the figurative ambulance whisks the
Rat away from his barefoot girl. But for a while, “From the churches to the jails tonight all is silence in the world.” The Rat and his girl have enough time—there is even a sense that time is standing still, silent for one momentous meeting—so that they can take one more shot at real love and true romance, one more stand together, “down in Jungleland.”
This is the Jersey Shore Jungleland, one direction of the crossroads in Rat's life, which is easily a metaphor for everyone's life—reach for the dream or let it fade because of obligations, limitations, weaknesses, fears or an infinite list of other barriers. The lyric, “And the kids round here look just like shadows always quiet, holding hands,” suggests the youth of this place, at a time in their lives when they must make the crucial decision to fight for their dream or simply to rest quietly, overwhelmed by their obstacles, holding hands in comfort. For a wide variety of reasons, over some of which they may have no control, these young men and women of promise simply allow their dreams to fade, in the wake of choosing a popular path, one whose fair passage they perceive is more realistically attainable. Springsteen, like many soulful artists, posits that everyone has a dream. The place where every man and woman faces down the barriers to achieving the dream—these demons—is their own personal "Jungleland." Again, we need to realize that Springsteen writes for the whole of man, not a single faction, locale or group. "Jungleland," like all of Born To Run, is universally applicable and, likewise, universally appealing. To suggest that this relatability is not part of Springsteen's artistic vision, either subconsciously, or more likely, consciously, is to foolishly underestimate his gifts; his talent; his vast awareness and, at only 24, his enlightened, insightful-beyond-his-years conception of the world and what inspires it. “ The midnight gang's assembled and picked a rendezvous for the night They'll meet 'neath that giant Exxon sign that brings this fair city light Man there's an opera out on the Turnpike There's a ballet being fought out in the alley Until the local cops, Cherry Tops, rips this holy night The street's alive as secret debts are paid Contacts made, they vanished unseen Kids flash guitars just like switch-blades hustling for the record machine The hungry and the hunted explode into rock'n'roll bands That face off against each other out in the street down in Jungleland
In the parking lot the visionaries dress in the latest rage
Inside the backstreet girls are dancing to the records that the D.J. plays Lonely-hearted lovers struggle in dark corners Desperate as the night moves on, just a look and a whisper, and they're gone”
These verses compose the first glimpses of the portrait section of
"Jungleland." Here, Springsteen gives us a wide-ranging view of the
city landscape in all directions. He is also telling us that, in Bruce's
vision, potential for art lives in every corner of his
realist-fantasy, city world. This is another "Jungleland," different
from the Jersey Shore "Jungleland" of the Rat and his girl, and, likely,
different from the "Jungleland" of the rangers in Harlem.
Springsteen's image is the city, probably not NYC because of Bruce's lyric, “there's an opera out on the Turnpike,” which most likely refers to the Jersey Turnpike. The line, “The midnight gang's assembled and picked a rendezvous for the night,” applies not to a single street gang, but to everyone who's alive, awake and looking for romantic passage at midnight on a soft, sweet, weekend, summer night.
There is art, romance, possibility and action everywhere in this city. The Turnpike “opera”
suggests that vehicles rushing in all directions are composing,
playing and singing the night music to their own dramatic designs all
over the city. The “ballet”
being fought in the alley may be the most definitive image of an
actual downtown gang's inclusion in the song, or it may just suggest the
possibility of alley-borne club and bar fights all over the city. These are confrontations whose
rhythms take the form of a dance, with the onlookers posing as audience
members of an artistic exhibition. The idea that this “midnight gang” meets beneath the giant “Exxon sign” suggests that everyone's filling their cars—an important Springsteen symbol and thematic character—and preparing for an evening somewhere on the town, with an agenda of infinite possibility.
Springsteen's vision of youthful city life is not unrestrained. He tells us “the local cops”
are all around, responding to situations like the alley ballets.
Conversely, Bruce explains there's plenty of illicit activity happening
as well—after all, this is a realistic romantic view of city life in the context of Springsteen's larger-than-life fantasy-drama. “Secret debts are paid,” and “Contacts made, they vanished unseen,”
likely refer to prostitution and drug-peddling, or at least
something not exactly Kosher. Why else would the debts be “secret,” and why else would people who meet each other in the night disappear, trying not to be seen, immediately after they rendezvous.
Along
with Springsteen's macro vision of nighttime city life, we also
receive a concentrated, microcosmic view, focused on some of the people
Bruce cares for most intimately, namely the musicians trying to find
greater success, while making music to entertain the sundown masses. The
line “Kids flash guitars just like switch-blades hustling for the record machine,”
refers to all the bands out there working the crowds with their own
private agenda. Bruce is comparing them to combatants in a knife fight
because they're playing at the crowds looking to get something out of
them—a
connection and a reaction, appreciation, notice, fame. Comparing
guitars to knives suggests that guitarists in bands all over the city
are looking to cut into their listeners, right to their hearts, and move
them to acknowledge, appreciate, love, even revere them.
The sense is that music is critical in this town—even of life-and-death import. It's not just about entertainment. Here, “The hungry and the hunted explode into rock 'n' roll bands.” Both musicians who desire something important to them—“The hungry”—
and musicians who are already sought after by the audience or making a
name for themselves to the degree that rival musicians want their shot
to blow them off the stage—“the hunted”—turn from ordinary mortals into superheroes of the night, when they burn on the city's metamorphic Rock stages.
In this city music is a battle, a struggle, and bands are squaring off against their audiences and “each other out in the street,”
fighting it out in this next-level "Jungleland," the forum where they'll either
become successful, even famous, or simply be overwhelmed by “the hungry,” their dreams left to fade with the kids who “look just like shadows.”
Like these unfortunates, they will remain for a lifetime, imprisoned in the first
vision of "Jungleland," the Shore version, whose young dreamers
are too constrained and affected by challenges to consummate their
dreams.
The “parking lot” Springsteen refers to places frequented by “visionaries,” a euphemism for the creative types—the artists—, perhaps members of “The hungry,”
who dress in high fashion to make a statement, evoke an attitude and
a style, or stand out from the pack, styling themselves “in the latest rage.” The sense here is that bars and clubs in the city aren't just lively, late-night refuges for members of the “midnight gang.” They're also the places to see and be seen, the venues where reputations are forged in steel moments.
A second possibility is that these “visionaries” are actually the members of the “rock'n'roll bands”
who are outside in the parking lot either on break during, or
assembling outside before or after the gig, talking about the
performances, carousing with like-minded musicians and plotting their
reemergence in the club to mix with the “backstreet girls.”
These are the ladies of this disparate vision of "Jungleland" night,
dancing to the hottest music played by the D.J. The mention of the D.J.
and not of the bands we're told are exploding all over town
suggests that the bands have already played, haven't played yet or
simply
aren't welcome to perform at this location. It's as common now as it was
then for clubs to employ both a band or bands and a D.J., one to spell
another before and after a set. Bruce's subtle implication is that “the visionaries” are the “hungry and the hunted” of the area's Rock bands.
Springsteen
also tells us there is another contingent of youths at the club who are
simply there to enjoy the music, flirt, dance and conduct the
early stages of their evening's foreplay. “Lonely-hearted lovers struggle in dark corners,”
suggests that couples and singles have materialized in
this place, crowded in tight, dancing or making out or both, growing
more and more “desperate as the night moves on”
to satisfy the desires they've been feeling all night. According to
Springsteen, it doesn't take much for the couples to take their lusty
ambitions elsewhere—“just a look and a whisper, and they're gone.”
These lovers present a different group of Springsteen dreamers, those
who aren't focused on their future plans but simply living in the
moment, acting on immediate impulse. The fact that Springsteen
describes them as “Lonely-hearted” and “Desperate” suggests that these lovers, too, will end up trapped in the corner of "Jungleland" reserved for lost and faded dreams.
Side Two, Track Five of Ten
“ Beneath the city two hearts beat
Soul engines running through a night so tender in a bedroom locked In whispers of soft refusal and then surrender in the tunnels uptown The Rat's own dream guns him down as shots echo down them hallways in the night No one watches when the ambulance pulls away Or as the girl shuts out the bedroom light Outside the street's on fire in a real death waltz Between flesh and what's fantasy and the poets down here Don't write nothing at all, they just stand back and let it all be And in the quick of the night they reach for their moment And try to make an honest stand but they wind up wounded, not even dead Tonight in Jungleland” By Bruce Springsteen. Lyrics © Bruce Springsteen. A Columbia Records Release. All lyrics are property of their rights holders and appear for educational purposes.
Just
after Springsteen tells us his desperate lovers have moved on to their evenings' carnal designs, we leave the
post-midnight city portrait and return to the ballad of Magic Rat and barefoot girl. “Beneath the city”
refers to a place under the action, lights and sounds of downtown where things are simpler. This is a place where only “two hearts beat.” The lyric, “Soul engines running through a night so tender in a bedroom locked,” suggests the Rat and his girl are living the moment only with their souls, negotiating their chance at romance on a “tender” summer night away from all the world, and hidden in the private solace of barefoot girl's bedroom.
They're debating whether they're going to do exactly what they
intended when they locked the bedroom door. The “whispers of soft refusal”
could be emanating from both partners, but because the Rat has
been the pursuer since the beginning of the piece, it's likely that
he's the more willing actor on this night. Springsteen doesn't
orchestrate an aggressive situation, however, or any degree of
licentiousness or violence. As Bruce clearly explains, the refusal comes in soft
whispers and, likewise, so does the surrender. The cleverness of this
lyric is that we don't know whether it's the Rat or the barefoot girl or
both who actually “surrender.” This image is deftly left to our imagination.
In the line's context, it appears the surrender occurs not in the bedroom but “in the tunnels uptown,”
which suggests the Rat has surrendered to his girl, quieting his
attempts to seduce her, giving up on his dream of love and leaving this seaside town through the tunnels toward the city,
perhaps even his rangers' Harlem. The line, “The Rat's own dream guns him down as shots echo down them hallways in the night,” proposes that it's the Rat's insistence on consummating his relationship with his barefoot girl, or his “own dream,” that wounds him, meaning barefoot has thrown Rat out of her house, screaming at him that their relationship is dead.
As he's leaving, these are the “shots [that] echo down them hallways in the night.” Springsteen's lyric feels like barefoot is screaming at the Rat through the halls of a seaside condo, incensed that he's pushed her to do something she doesn't want, because of which she finally closes their window to real love, hence the figurative killing shots.
The
other possibility here is that both Rat and barefoot are “surrender[ing],”
meaning that barefoot has finally relented softly, whispering that she
wants exactly what her lover wants. In this interpretation the tunnels
uptown still signify that the Rat has left, abandoning his desire to
capture the potential love he sees with the girl, but we are left to
wonder if the lovers actually made their love. It's possible they
did, and then shortly afterward the Rat left barefoot's house, returning
to the city and realizing through their physical intimacy that the
relationship doesn't involve true love. In this scenario, the barefoot
girl would be
screaming at the Rat her bitterness and disbelief that he would leave
her again,
as he did to go to war or ignite his music career.
This
mutual surrender could also mean the Rat abandoned his attempts to
make love to barefoot, even though she finally relented to him,
because he didn't sense they both shared the pure connection he'd
hoped they could still achieve. In this scenario the “Rat's own dream” signifies it's his broken vision of their potential love which figuratively wounds him.
The last possibility for this section's interpretation is that the Rat chose another version of his “dream,”
which would suggest he's decided he should instead be with his
friends, brothers, bandmates, or all of the above, in Harlem.
Essentially, under this conception, feelings the Rat thought he had for
the barefoot
girl, the ones that drove him to reunite with her, weren't actually
there after all. This might well be the definitive truth about love that
will allow him to consummate his plan for a future in music, beyond
small-town
Jersey.
Either
way, when the Rat leaves the barefoot girl he is shattered, wounded, shot down and in intense pain. He's hurt, broken,
broken-hearted or broken open to such a profound degree that he cannot drive himself from the
scene. He must, instead, resort to Springsteen's figurative
ambulance. This may be the vehicle in which the Rat pulls away from barefoot's place, no one watching because
there's no physical ambulance.
This night is so quiet, according to Bruce earlier in the song, that if an actual ambulance were called—in the unlikely event that barefoot girl fired real bullets at the Rat—someone
would've been alerted by the siren and flashing lights. Someone,
thus, would have seen the ambulance depart. The
ambulance, in the likely case that both it and the shots fired by
barefoot or by the Maximum Lawman—time, fate, distance,love, God, or all of these,—are just Springsteen's metaphorical bullets.
The
pain, however, in either case, is real, and perhaps the most fitting implication is that the
ambulance refers to the Rat's own self-soothing, as he walks
back to where he left his “sleek machine,”
presumably near the beach at the mouth of Flamingo Lane. Given this
interpretation, Bruce's ambulance is the healing process which occurs
when Rat finally sets
his mind to pursuing his dream of creative success, finally accepting
that he's made the right decision to chase his dream. Here, even after
such a special night with the barefoot girl, he knows clearly that
his artistic dream means more to him than his domestic one.
In essence, making what he loves his career—his life—is illuminated by the night as the path truly deserving of his
total commitment. The clarity of the decision is expressed by the fact
that Rat doesn't even look back to barefoot's bedroom. “No one”—including the Rat—watches “as the girl shuts out the bedroom light.”
This, of course, assumes that the girl's bedroom is visible from
Flamingo Lane. The reality is that if barefoot's home is a seaside
condo, it's likely at least one window would be visible enough to notice
the transition from light to
darkness, but only Bruce knows the physical perspective of the Rat's
last look.
The final verse is at once the perfect symbolic summary and metaphorical conclusion of "Jungleland." The lyric, “Outside the street's on fire in a real death waltz/ Between flesh and what's fantasy,”
cuts to the heart of "Jungleland's" major theme: everyone, everywhere
is embroiled in the life-making decision of whether or not to chase
their dream. This is conceptual reiteration of the first vision of "Jungleland," the rural Jersey Shore bastille where
dreams die if left to blind chance, without pursuit beyond the prison walls.
This is the place where all creative impulses and visions waste away because they are left unfulfilled, unconsummated. “The poets down here/ Don't write nothing at all, they just stand back and let it all be.” Springsteen's lyric cues the first death waltz movement, the “flesh” half, which exists in the town's limiting, cold reality.
Death
is certain in both the "Jungleland" of flesh and the "Jungleland" of
fantasy, but only one offers the possibility of achieving a
lifetime dream. The track's conclusion focuses on men and women who “reach for their moment/ And try to make an honest stand,”
left behind in this flesh "Jungleland," where their true dreams will fade and
where substitute visions, like the one Rat tried to consummate
with barefoot girl, lead only to loss and pain.
Springsteen tells us these pitiable, misguided, miserable souls will “wind up wounded, not even dead,”
forced to live the rest of their lives in pieces, without the rich
fullness
of life that dream fulfillment presents. They will lead a
creativity-crushing existence within the confining concrete walls and
barbed-wire fences of their "Jungleland's" total artistic limitation.
Bruce explains to us that it's not even possible “to make an honest stand”
in this twisted, hopeless place. It's a land of inherent inequality,
dishonesty and deceit. Reality in this prison of the
flesh, presented by the broken souls who try hardest to keep us locked up there, is as
fraudulent as the impossibly hollow promises they make.
The
defeating choice to remain in this "Jungleland" and ignore our dreams,
or succumb to an endless parade of impediments to dream fulfillment,
signifies a self-imposed life sentence to live as a fractional,
fragmented version of ourselves, without
even the rest and solace of an honorable death. Instead, these misanthropes walk the earth as shells, like ghosts forever imprisoned, blindly waltzing toward their meaningless deaths in the bent reality for which they've settled, where their fantasies—their dreams—are already dead.
Excerpted From: DreamChaser's Highway Alive, Side 2B
DreamChase Entertainment
DreamChaser Pictures © 2012 Matthew D. Anderson. All Rights Reserved. |
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