Is a Dream a Lie If It Don’t Come True?
So Bruce Springsteen was doing Suicide’s “Dream Baby Dream” on his 2005 solo tour. (Thanks here to my friend Robert K., who was at the Toronto show last summer, for hipping me to this.) It’s a natural, since Springsteen likes his Suicide and sure does love his dream imagery (dream as in longterm aspiration, that is, not as in sleep narrative).
His version of “Dream Baby Dream” is starker & ostensibly darker than the Suicide original – it’s missing the sleighbell flourishes of Martin Rev’s instrumentation, not to mention that supremely comforting bassline that all but says “There, there, it’ll be OK.” But it’s warmer in other ways: Springsteen’s plaintive singing suggests an effort at connection that Alan Vega’s aloof & ambivalent vocals don’t. Same goes for his added lines – “dry your eyes” and “open up your heart” and “I just wanna see you smile” – clichés that both work with the song’s minimalist lyrics and manage to add some urgency.
Which in turn makes the song darker still, since you get the sense Springsteen has something at stake, some unmet need, whereas you’re never quite sure what Vega wants or needs when he tells you to keep dreaming. (I’m not saying one is better than the other, mind. Just different.)
Springsteen is well known to be a big fan of Suicide, especially their epic “Frankie Teardrop.” In fact, the first time I ever heard of the band, back in the early 1980s, it was because they were mentioned in a Springsteen article. But for some reason, only very recently did I clue in that “State Trooper” – one of the highlights of Nebraska and oft-covered since – is actually an OVERT Suicide homage. The backing is acoustic guitar rather than synth, but otherwise all the elements are there: the chugging rhythm; the spooky, gliding-by vocals punctuated by sudden yelps and barks; the words coming at you in short, discrete lines separated by pauses, as if the singer’s a gambler turning over one card at a time between bets.
One difference, though. Alan Vega’s antiheros, his Frankie Teardrops, feel like pure abstractions, probably even to him. Whereas even though we’re given few details about the nameless narrator of “State Trooper,” I have no doubt that Springsteen could instantly tell us where the guy went to high school, what his father did for a living, and how old he was when he stopped going to church every Sunday.
- Suicide, “Dream Baby Dream”
- Bruce Springsteen, “Dream Baby Dream” (live in Toronto, 2005)
- Bruce Springsteen, “State Trooper”
posted by DW | 15.2.06
2 Comments:
I agree with you, Derek, that the narrator of "State Trooper" feels like a specific character, rather than an abstraction, but his narration is (deliberately) oblique. There's a story that's implied in "State Trooper" that isn't directly related by the lyrics. In fact, the lyrics say very little about the narrator's situation. Our sense of the character's authenticity comes not from his story, but from the diction and vocal phrasing Springsteen uses, the narrator's vivid account of his location, and such details as the narrator's mundane complaint about the "talk show stations" on his car radio. Everyone's been bored during a long car trip, so we can sympathize with this guy. Still, the song doesn't tell us where he's coming from, where he's going, or what it is that he claims has "been botherin' me my whole life."
It's tempting to imagine that "State Trooper" is not just an homage to "Frankie Teardrop," but a kind of sequel. If we assume that the unnamed narrator of "State Trooper" is Suicide's Frankie, then we understand more of the story behind "State Trooper" than Springsteen chooses to disclose. At the same time, Springsteen gives us an opportunity to sympathize with Frankie in a way that Suicide's own song does not. And, if "State Trooper" is about Frankie, then lines like "maybe you got a kid, maybe you got a pretty wife," and "radio relay towers lead me to my baby" are especially creepy.
Of course, Frankie shoots himself in the original song, and goes to hell. So unless hell is in New Jersey, it's kind of hard to defend the argument that "State Trooper" is a sequel. I'll just shut up, now.
Maybe a prequel, or a "lost chapter"? (It's true that it would give the wife-and-kids line, which is already kind of ominous, an even more sinister edge.)
Actually, "State Trooper" most reminds me of "Ghost Riders," but that's musically more than lyrically.
The thing I always loved about Springsteen's lyrics was the way he'd drop in little details ("got a wife and kid in Baltimore, Jack..."). He doesn't do that so much here, but yeah, the narrator just talks like a real person.
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