Bruce Springsteen explained that the lick for “Badlands” was taken from “Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood” by the Animals.
During a 2012 talk at the South by Southwest (SXSW) music conference, Bruce Springsteen explained that he found the lick for “Badlands,” which appeared on Darkness on the Edge of Town (1978), in “Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood” by the Animals. Then he exclaimed, “Listen up youngsters, this is how successful theft is accomplished!”
The video of the entire speech is no longer on YouTube, but there are segments available, including the video below, which is set to start where he begins talking about the Animals.
In the rest of the speech, Springsteen explained the role that music has played in his life, including Elvis, Roy Orbison, and the Beatles. He discussed The Animals, complete with an acoustic rendition of “We Got to Get Out of This Place,” concluding, “that’s every song I’ve every written.”
I found the story about the “Badlands” riff interesting because I had not made the connection. But one may hear it now that he pointed it out. Here are the Animals performing “Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood” on The Ed Sullivan Show. The lick appears at several points, including the beginning and the end of the song.
Here is Springsteen performing “Badlands” at the Pinkpop festival in 2009.
Can you hear it? He did not mention the lyrics, but one might wonder whether “Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood” also inspired the “understood” line in the “Badlands” chorus: “We’ll keep pushing ’til it’s understood / And these Badlands start treating us good.”
After the speech, Springsteen performed at SXSW and was joined onstage by Eric Burdon, the lead singer of the Animals (Chicago Tribune review here). So apparently there are no hard feelings about the larceny — or Springsteen’s comments earlier in the speech about how Burdon’s ugliness made him realize he could be a rock star too.
What do you think? Leave your two cents in the comments.
Although the Washington Post had called this Bruce Springsteen song “cartoonish,” to understand it as one of Springsteen’s greatest songs, one needs to look back to origins going back through Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Woody Guthrie, and Curtis Mayfield.
In 2012, Bruce Springsteen released his album Wrecking Ball (2012) to generally good reviews. Yet, the Washington Post claimed that one of the songs on the album, “Land of Hope and Dreams,” is like a “pose” full of “[c]artoonishly austere American cliches.”
Well, the Post is wrong about the song. Most of us first heard “Land of Hope and Dreams” when it was played during the 1999 reunion tour with the E Street Band. It later appeared in a live version on 2001’s Live in New York City and 2003’s Essential Bruce Springsteen before finally appearing in a studio version on Wrecking Ball in 2012.
Why would Springsteen release a studio version of a song more than ten years after it had already appeared on an album? Besides the fact that the prolific songwriter has been known to sit on songs for decades before release, the timing is perfect for this song for three reasons discussed in more detail below.
First, the new version of “Land of Hope and Dreams” is a beautiful tribute to the late Clarence Clemons. Second, the song brings a little hope to an album about hard times. Finally, the song is not a “pose;” it is one of Springsteen’s most beautiful songs, evoking Woody Guthrie and Curtis Mayfield while turning a classic folk song on its head.
(1) A Fitting Tribute to Clarence Clemons
First, the above new gospel version of the song from the new album is one of the final songs recorded with Clemons, so one may understand that it was important for Springsteen to include Clemons on the album. And because the song goes back to 1999 when Springsteen reunited with the E Street Band, it also evokes the connection among the band mates.
It was not surprising that when Dave Marsh wrote an essay memorializing Clarence Clemons that he entitled the article, “In the Land of Hope and Dreams.” Springsteen often has included references to the E Street Band members in his songs, ranging from “Tenth-Avenue Freeze-Out” to “The Last Carnival,” a tribute to deceased E Street Band member Danny Federici. Here, the placement of “Land of Hope and Dreams,” featuring Clemons’s sax solo, next to the final song on the regular album, “We Are Alive,” where Springsteen imagines his own death, connects the album to the Big Man and his sweet soul departed.
In The Guardian, Springsteen noted that when listening to the new album, “When the sax comes up on ‘Land of Hope and Dreams,’ it’s a lovely moment for me.” What a perfect tribute.
(2) A Song of Hope
Second, the album Wrecking Ball is Springsteen’s recession-era CD, and the song signals a way out of hard times. Springsteen’s last CD, Working on a Dream, came out during the recent recession, but it had been recorded during a period of hope as then Senator Barack Obama was running for president.
By the time Springsteen toured to support Working on a Dream (2009), the economy and the mood of the country had changed, leading to dissatisfaction and some despair. So Springsteen had to rework setlists from an originally upbeat theme to include more of his past songs about hard times. He even added Stephen Foster’s “Hard Times Come Again No More.” During that time, he apparently began thinking about this album, as during the tour he debuted this album’s title song, “Wrecking Ball.”
While there is a touch of sadness in almost every Springsteen song, including classics like “Thunder Road,” he often mixes dark and light. When he sings about despair and hopelessness, he is rarely hopeless. So, on an album about hard times, it is not surprising that he would signal to us that there is some hope: “Tomorrow there’ll be sunshine/ And all this darkness past.” As in the first single, “We Take Care of Our Own,” he embraces one of his common themes that hope lies in caring for each other.
(3) The American Songbook and Trains: “This Train”
Finally, we come to why “Land of Hope & Dreams,” one of Springsteen’s most optimistic songs, is also one of his greatest and not just a cartoon as the Washington Post claims. The song embraces much of the American songbook. With the song’s reference to “bells of freedom” it evokes the Bob Dylan song that inspired the name of this blog.
But, more prominently, “Land of Hope and Dreams” connects to the long tradition of songs about trains. This legacy travels from Robert Johnson, Jimmy Rodgers, and Hank Williams through songs like Cat Stevens’s “Peace Train.”
To understand “Land of Hope and Dreams,” though, we must begin with a classic folk song, “This Train,” which Springsteen has confessed helped inspire “Land of Hope and Dreams.” Big Bill Broonzy recorded the traditional song “This Train,” and the great Sister Rosetta Tharpe had a hit with “This Train” in 1939.
“This Train” goes back even further in time. Woody Guthrie adapted the traditional song as one about going to glory if you are good, because that train “Don’t carry nothing but the righteous and the holy.” The song specifically excludes gamblers, liars, smokers, con men, rustlers, side street walkers, wheeler dealers, and hustlers.
One may hear Guthrie’s version in this scene from Bound for Glory (1976), with David Carradine portraying Woody Guthrie.
It is interesting that Guthrie became associated with a righteous song, when the lyrics seem counter to many of his principles. Yet, one may also see it as attacking the con men of the establishment.
When Guthrie’s editor-agent proposed changing his autobiography’s title from Boomhchasers to Bound for Glory because of the book’s descriptions of Guthrie singing the song to homeless men, Guthrie initially balked. He was worried that readers would think he meant “Bound for Glory” to apply to himself. His understanding of the phrase from the song was that “the common people” are bound for glory. (Joe Klein, Woody Guthrie: A Life.)
“This Train” may be bound for glory, but many sinners have sung the song. Below is a performance by some of the early Sun Records rockers and admitted sinners, including Johnny Cash, Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, and Roy Orbison.
The song goes back even further in American history, as “This Train” was used by slaves to convey messages to each other on the Underground Railroad, with “glory” meaning “freedom.” Still, despite the history and inclusiveness attributed to the song, in the lyrics the train that is bound for glory limits its ridership to exclude sinners, however that term is defined.
Springsteen takes that limit and turns it on its head. As he has explained, “Land of Hope and Dreams” is a response to “This Train,” spreading a message of inclusiveness instead of a message of exclusion.
“People Get Ready”
In case anyone missed the message of “Land of Hope and Dreams,” on the new studio version one hears the Victorious Gospel Choir repeating the refrain from Curtis Mayfield’s “People Get Ready.” That song originally was a hit for the Impressions in 1955 (discussed in more detail in a previous Chimesfreedom post).
The gospel songs of Mayfield’s youth inspired him in writing “People Get Ready.” And in looking closer at the lyrics and hearing the song sung below by Alicia Keys, one may understand how the song inspired Springsteen either consciously or unconsciously in writing “Land of Hope and Dreams.”
People get ready there’s a train comin’; You don’t need no baggage, just get on board; All you need is faith to hear the diesels hummin’, You don’t need no ticket, just thank the Lord.
Mayfield did not specifically address the sinners of “This Train” in “People Get Ready.” But his song implied the sinners could still board the train as long as they had faith.
Climb On Board This Train
Springsteen, though, goes even further than Guthrie and Mayfield. His train has no requirements and calls everyone to board.
Springsteen does note that “faith will be rewarded.” Faith in what? God? Rock and roll? He does not say. And that is the beauty of the song. We are all saints and sinners and we are all welcome. Just have faith in something, even if it is each other.
Yes, Washington Post, the welcoming train in American music is an American cliche. But every decade or so it is good for us lost souls to be reminded that we all are on the same journey together.
This train Carries saints and sinners; This train Carries losers and winners; This Train Carries whores and gamblers; This Train Carries lost souls.
{This last video from a Springsteen performance at the Civic Center in Hartford, Connecticut on May 8, 2000 is the E Street Band’s wonderful guitar-heavy version of the song that also appeared on 2001’s Live in New York City album. I love the opening riff of this earlier live version of the song, but I will reserve judgment for which version I prefer after numerous more listens of the newer gospel version.}
Do you prefer the new 2012 version of “Land of Hope and Dreams” at the beginning of this post or the 2001 live version of “Land of Hope and Dreams” at the end of the post? Leave your two cents in the comments.
After hearing that Late Night with Jimmy Fallon was devoting a whole show to Bruce Springsteen, I had little doubt that they would reprise a Niel Young-Bruce Springsteen duet like they did on an earlier show with “Whip My Hair.”
But last night, instead of a Born-to-Run-era Springsteen, the Boss got out his old bandana and came as Born-in-the-USA Springsteen. This time, they sang LMFAO’s “Sexy and I Know It,” with Springsteen in on the joke making fun of his former muscle-shirted self exchanging his usual “whoa, whoa, whoa” with “wiggle, wiggle, wiggle.”
(May 2012 Update: The link from NBC apparently no longer works, but you may also see the video on YouTube here.) If you missed the show and wish to see the Springsteen interview as well as his performances with the E Steet Band of two new songs from the new album — “Death to My Hometown” and “Jack of All Trades” — as well as a rousing “E Street Shuffle” with the Roots, you may find them at Consequences of Sound and at Blogness on the Edge of Town.
What do you think of the cover of “Sexy and I Know It”? Funny or just a retread of “Whip My Hair”? Leave your two cents in the comments. If you like the post, retweet it!
This week on “Late Night with Jimmy Fallon,” John Legend and The Roots performed an excellent cover of Bruce Springsteen’s “Dancing in the Dark” from Springsteen’s Born in the USA (1984). To top it off, Legend also made the performance MP3 available to fans with a free download.
2024 Update: Unfortunately, the performance with the Roots is no longer available, but here is another performance by Legend singing “Dancing in the Dark”:
What do you think of John Legend’s cover? Leave your two cents in the comments.
Bruce Springsteen’s new album, Wrecking Ball will be released on March 6, and this week Late Night with Jimmy Fallon features a Springsteen theme, with artists covering Springsteen songs as well as the man and his band appearing last night and again on Friday. Last night, Springsteen performed the first single, “We Take Care of Our Own” as well as the title track, which is below.
The song “Wrecking Ball” may be familiar to Springsteen fans because in 2009 Springsteen debuted the song at the Meadowlands, i.e., Giants Stadium, during his final shows at the stadium before it succombed to the wrecking ball. The song maintains references to the stadium being demolished (“where the blood is spilled, the arena’s filled, and Giants played”), but it holds up on the album because the song connects the stadium’s wrecking ball to more universal themes of aging, hard times, and standing up to both.
[2020 Update: Unfortunately, the Jimmy Fallon video is no longer available so below is Springsteen performing “Wrecking Ball” at Giants Stadium.]
While the lyrics on the album are touched by our recent economic troubles, the music of several of the songs are influenced by Springsteen’s uplifting work with the Seeger Sessions Band. This recession-era CD is the first E Street band album without Clarence Clemons, so it seems appropriate that the album is tinged with sorrow while steeped in joyful horns helping us through the rough times.
will be released on March 6, and this week 