You can, if you wish, go back and revisit this post from October in which I went off on a little rant about one of my favorite artists Bruce Springsteen (honestly, VERY high on my list, higher even than maybe a Beatle or two) and how I once taught his song “Thunder Road” to my college freshmen as a fine example of the carpe diem theme, wherein I told them “Mary’s dress waves,” then years later, I was faced with what I was told was hard evidence that “Mary’s dress sways.” I apologized to my students all these decades later if I had misled them.
Wait. Let me pause here for a photo that recently landed in my social media feed. Taken in 1970… this lovely Irish/Italian/Dutch boy, name of Bruce… What? He was twenty-one and legal!
I, however, was not. I’ll enter the Bruce plea: Not guilty of inappropriate thoughts because it IS hard to be a saint in the city.
Moving on from all that, a couple of weeks back, Tim told me about a new used bookstore in the Heights that’s pretty cool, KABOOM. Since our two closest Half Price Books shuttered during This Pandemic™, a new used bookstore was good news to me. On my weekly outing, I went browsing.
I took several photos inside and out, and bought several books, and sooner or later, you’ll probably see a lot of that one way or another on the blog. Here is one of the books I bought, and it’s not quite as elaborate or detailed as the Paul McCartney books I recently featured here.
Then again, it’s 24 years old. Bruce has released a lot more material since then. But it is authored by the Boss himself. So….
Here it is, that song that remains forever lodged in either the first or second spot of my all-time favorite songs.
Wait, do I need to zoom in on “Thunder Road?” Her dress is WAVING? You don’t say.
I rest my case. (ETA: But y’all should read my answer to Marika in the comments.)
A few shots featuring Bruce and more of my favorite things.
I wore the album The River out when I got it. It still blows me away. Saw him on tour for that one.
Lovely, hand-scribbled lyrics for “Glory Days.”
Song “Born in the U.S.A.” misunderstood and misappropriated by political candidates. Because their teams don’t read the lyrics. Or ask Bruce.
Bruuuuuce! One of my two favorite Jersey-born boys.
VINDICATED! That is what I was hoping for
Well, honestly, not really. Springsteen’s manager Jon Landau has always held that it’s “sways” and says that all future editions of anything that uses “waves” (like this book, which probably won’t have a future edition) will be corrected. As far as I know, Bruce himself has remained silent on the subject, maybe because he likes a little mystery and maybe because with a split fan base, you want everyone and no one to be happy because it means that a song you wrote in 1975 which is a long time ago (and didn’t last as long as the year 1974 in my current WIP) is still being talked about. Since I love this song so much, I have to admit that makes me happy, too, even if I’m on the wrong side, which I contend I’m not because “waves” is the better choice than “sways” in my character analysis of Mary. (Who I hope got in the damn car.)
A humorous look at the contretemps can be found here.
There must be so many of these controversies over lyrics. The British comedian Peter Kay does a brilliant stand-up routine about misheard lyrics. You can find it on YouTube if you want a good laugh.