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Today is The Boss's birthday.

Thunder Road - Bruce Springsteen

The screen door slams
Mary's dress sways
Like a vision she dances
Across the porch as the radio plays
Roy Orbison singing "For the Lonely"
Hey, that's me and I want you only
Don't turn me home again
I just can't face myself alone again

Don't run back inside, darlin'
You know just what I'm here for
So you're scared and you're thinking
That maybe we ain't that young anymore
Show a little faith
There's magic in the night
You ain't a beauty
But hey, you're alright
And that's alright with me...

( The rest here... )

I was fourteen the year Born to Run came out. Starting my sophomore year at a Catholic girls' school, shy and sheltered and knowing almost nothing of the gringo world, the album hit me like a ton of bricks. This song especially, the opener, made an enormous impression on me, one very rarely rivalled by any other music. From the first gentle, tinkling piano notes, so reminiscent of the pretty little music boxes that every young girl had on her nightstand in those days (mine was pink and had a ballerina in it), through the amazing first stanzas quoted above, through the rising passion of the verses and culminating in that intense, orgasmic door-slam of a chord that goes roaring off into the night like the singer's dark, inviting Chevy - it was a revelation, an invitation to innocence to cut loose the ties of the past and fulfill its longings via the Thunder Road: passion, speed, love, and a cry of ecstasy.

I still and will always maintain that this song is the most romantic I've ever heard in my life. The open longing, Springsteen's rough, throaty voice, and more than anything, the absolute clarity with which he sees his Mary more often than not brings a tear to my eye. That line - "you ain't a beauty but hey, you're alright" - I cannot describe what it does to me. That he sees and knows she is no princess in a fairy tale, just the girl he's come to see, and yet he still describes her as "a vision", clutches my heart every time. From the first time I heard this song, I've longed for someone to see me in just that way - honestly, completely, and still fully in love. *sigh*


Happy birthday, Bruce. What a wonderful gift you gave us. Please, Mr. Springsteen, do rock on.