Today’s classic song of the day is Bruce Springsteen’s “Thunder Road.” Never released as a single, “Thunder Road” was the lead cut (track one, side one) on Springsteen’s legendary Born to Run album. That album, released in late August of 1975, peaked at #3 on Billboard’s Top LPs and Tape chart and went on to sell more than 7 million copies in the U.S. alone.
“Thunder Road” is a song about being young and feeling trapped and wanting to escape from it all. It is a magnificent composition and and equally magnificent recording. The sound, like everything on the Born to Run album, is Spectoresque, with layers and layers of instruments—guitars, keyboards, organ, celeste, harmonica, held together by Roy Bittan’s elegant piano and Clarence Clemon’s plaintive saxophone wailing, topped off by the thundering drums of Mighty Max Weinberg. (Love that descending triplet fill leading into the out chorus.) Jimmy Iovine did the engineering and Jon Landau did the producing, but the song is all Bruce at his brash, youthful best. It’s a song that picks you up and lifts you up and carries you to some place you’ve always wanted to go and someone you’ve always wanted to be.
The lyrics tell a story that pulled my strings when I was younger and desperately seeking something, anything more than what there was at that point in my life:
You can hide ‘neath your covers and study your pain
Make crosses from your lovers, throw roses in the rain
Waste your summer praying in vain
For a savior to rise from these streets
Well now, I’m no hero, that’s understood
All the redemption I can offer, girl, is beneath this dirty hood
With a chance to make it good somehow
Hey, what else can we do now?
Except roll down the window
And let the wind blow back your hair
Well, the night’s busting open
These two lanes will take us anywhere
We got one last chance to make it real
To trade in these wings on some wheels
Climb in back, heaven’s waiting down on the tracks
Oh, come take my hand
We’re riding out tonight to case the promised land
Oh, Thunder Road, oh, Thunder Road
Oh, Thunder Road
By the way, while some people (including Springsteen himself, apparently) seem to think that the first line of the song goes “The screen door slams, Mary’s dress sways,” on the original recording he actually sings “Mary’s dress waves.” That’s also the lyric printed on the album cover, and that’s the way I’ve always heard it. Go ahead, argue with me.
Musically, “Thunder Road” is deceptively simple. The verse uses only I, IV, and V chords, while the chorus throws in a few passing vi and iii chords, but that’s all you really need, right?
The story goes that “Thunder Road” got its start in October of 1974 as a song Springsteen tentatively called “Chrissie’s Song.” By early the next year, Springsteen combined that one with some lyrics he’d written for another tune, “Walking in the Street,” and called the new conglomeration “Wings for Wheels.” It still wasn’t quite there, so he did some more work on it and called the final piece “Thunder Road,” after seeing the poster for the 1958 Robert Mitchum movie of the same name.
However it came about, “Thunder Road” might be the best song on an album full of classic tracks. (Born to Run is definitely one of the top five albums of the rock era, and there should be no argument about that.) Yes, the song “Born to Run” might be the ultimate rock ‘n’ roll single and “Jungleland” might be an emotionally draining rock operetta, but “Thunder Road” captures the feeling of restlessness that almost every teenager feels at one time or another. From its contemplative start (with Bittan’s classical piano and Springsteen’s haunting harmonica) to its triumphant Wall of Sound ending, it’s damned near perfect in construction, execution, and emotion. It’s a song I still sit down at the piano and play from time to time, even though I’m many decades past the ability or the desire to pull up stakes and hightail it out of town.
“Thunder Road” is so good, so memorable, and so personally uplifting that it will never grow old, even as I do. Here’s to Bruce and Mary and whatever’s out there past Thunder Road—it’s a town full of losers and we’re pulling out of here to win.
And what’s your daily bonus video of the day without a dynamite live version of “Thunder Road?” Here’s Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band playing “Thunder Road” live in concert in 1978. Damn, I’d give anything to go back in time to watch Bruce live in his prime. This is as good as it gets.
