Bruce Springsteen: The Stories Behind the Songs by Hiatt Brian

Author:Hiatt, Brian [Hiatt, Brian]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Carlton Books Ltd
Published: 2019-03-28T16:00:00+00:00

Worcester Centrum, Worcester, Massachusetts, February 25, 1988.

Springsteen and Clemons duel at the Capital Centre, Landover, Maryland, April 4, 1988.

Amnesty International Concert, Wembley Stadium, London, 1988.

As music critic Dave Marsh pointed out, “Ain’t Got You” is a riff on Billy Boy Arnold’s 1956 blues single “I Ain’t Got You,” which Springsteen no doubt encountered in covers by The Animals and The Yardbirds. By offering an amusingly cartoonish version of his actual wealth and fame—as rich as he had become, he didn’t have houses lined up across the country, “baby, end to end,” and he probably was not gobbling caviar by the pound—he both defused the lingering issue of his newfound anti-everyman success, and set up the theme of the album: He’s got everything, but love is tricky.

The song was also the first hint of an almost paralyzing self-awareness that would push Springsteen away from political songwriting for the next seven years or so. For Steve Van Zandt, who’d left the E Street Band during the recording of Born in the U.S.A., the dip into autobiography, however self-mocking, was a mistake. “We had one of our biggest fights of our lives,” Van Zandt told The New Yorker’s David Remnick. “I’m, like, ‘What the fuck is this?’ And [Bruce is], like, ‘Well, what do you mean, it’s the truth. It’s just who I am, it’s my life.’ And I’m, like, ‘This is bullshit. People don’t need you talking about your life. Nobody gives a shit about your life. They need you for their lives . . . And we fought and fought and fought and fought. He says ‘Fuck you,’ I say ‘Fuck you.’ I think something in what I said probably resonated.”

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