2020 Music Talk: Springsteen's "No Surrender"

(Hi, everybody. I haven't used this website in years; go to adamchicago.com for current stuff. But this week my usual spring travel gigs are postponed or canceled. I'm hoping to launch some virtual tours and other ventures very soon, but for I need an outlet and something to work on, so I'm going to do some more music writing.)

"And Hear Your Sister's Voice Calling Us Home" - Springsteen's "No Surrender" 


When I think about the time when I first got into music, I usually think of the summer of 93, when a slightly older guy made me a tape of Metallica, Megadeth, and Nine Inch Nails songs. That was the year when the only acceptable answer to “what kind of music do you like?” was “Metal, alternative.” You could be into rap, too, and not lose any social status, but “pop” was a totally unacceptable answer. You could still like Billy Joel, though. 

But really I first got into music in 1987, when I got my first clock radio and listened religiously to the Top Ten at 9 on Q102. That was the year of Tiffany, George Michael, Belinda Carlisle. And Def Leppard and the last gasp of what we’d later call “hair metal.” I remember “Tunnel of Love” coming on the radio when it first came out, but I’d arrived a bit too late for Bruce Springsteen. My only exposure to him was the Kids, Inc rendition of “Thunder Road,” sung by Martika (in character as “Gloria”) and leaving out most of the best lyrics.  I liked it, though. I played “Kids Inc Sing the Chart Hits” to death and I liked every song. 

My first concert, in 1990, was Billy Joel. I knew every song he played.  

I suppose I knew the chorus to “Born in the USA” like everyone else who attended a parade, fireworks display, or grocery store in those days, but Bruce had sort of peaked in mainstream popularity a few years before, and by the time I got more serious about music in the early 90s, he was sort of floating around the ether - still selling out stadiums to the faithful, but not huge with teenagers anymore. The E Street Band was on hiatus, and his two early 90s albums didn’t make a dent. I knew and sort of liked “Streets of Philadelphia,” but Bruce was started to be lumped in with acts like Bryan Adams and Rod Stewart. It seemed absurd that less than a decade before there’d been pinups of him in magazines aimed at your average teen. The classic rock station in Des Moines never really played him. Even as I began to get really into Led Zeppelin, Bob Dylan, and the other classic rock greats, I didn’t know “Born to Run” or “Dancin’ In the Dark,”  and certainly not “Rosalita” or “Fourth of July, Asbury Park.”  There was a terrific young adult novel called “Dear Bruce Springsteen” that was written in the form of a teenage boy’s letters to Bruce (by Kevin Major, check it out) that got me more interested, but the only way I could really hear the music, without shelling out 15 bucks for a CD, was watching some of the mid-90s “E Street Reunion” specials on VH1 from around the time Bruce’s “Greatest Hits” came out. I liked “Two Hearts” and “Murder Inc” and especially “This Hard Land.” But I didn’t buy the CD.

When I bought my first car and started being able to haunt thrift stores at will, I took a chance on a cassette of “Born in the USA” at Goodwill. The cassette was sort of warped and half the songs were distorted, so I didn’t play it much, but one song, “No Surrender,” broke through. It’s the kind of rock anthem Bruce can seemingly write in his sleep. 

I finally got into Bruce a few years later, when a friend played me the “Live in New York City” album in 2001, and the next year, while delivering pizza in a prison town, I got deeply into his first couple of albums before working through the rest. I finally got to see the opening night of the 2003 tour, right after “The Rising” had lost for “Best Album.” He come onstage and said “I would like to thank…absolutely…fucking….no one!” before launching into “No Surrender.” 

Bruce’s career took off when Jon Landau reviewed a 1974 club gig and included the line “I saw rock and roll future, and its name is Bruce Springsteen.” The record company latched right onto that one, and used it to make Bruce a star. It’s such a punchy line that it’s easy not to notice that it was taken way out of context: Bruce’s early music was a lot of things, but it wasn’t exactly innovative, musically. And Landau didn’t mean he felt like he was seeing the next superstar.  Landau was 27 that night - old for a rock fan in 1974. Sure, the Beatles and the Beach Boys had grown beyond songs about cars and girls, and even further back Buddy Holly had touched on adult themes with “Peggy Sue Got Married,” but people still thought of rock as music for teenagers, really.  Bruce’s set that night made him feel like rock could still feel fresh, and still grow up with him. 

“No Surrender” is, on the surface, a basic rock and roll anthem. When it was released in 1984, the chorus “No retreat, baby, no surrender” and the most famous line of the song, “We learned more from a three minute record, baby, than we ever learned in school,”  could have easily been the basis for a Twisted Sister number. Maybe even an upper-tier KISS tune. 

The twist is that it’s a song about being old and remembering the feeling of taking on the world, and trying to get that feeling back. It functions just fine as a call to arms, but dig into the lyrics and there are lines like “There’s a war outside still raging, you say it aint ours anymore to win,” and “now young faces grow sad and old, hearts of fire grow cold.” It's trying to get that feeling back and trying to persuade others to want it back, as well. 

Bruce excels at this, hiding meaning in plain sight behind catchy tunes. Most famously, “Born in the USA” is not a patriotic anthem at all, it’s a song about the plight of Vietnam veterans. “Thunder Road” is a great car song, but it’s really a religious song (I mean, it’s a car song that includes the words “Mary,” “vision,” “magic,” “crosses,” “savior,” “redemption,” “heaven,” “promised land,” “wings,” “ghosts,” and “gown.”) On the same album, "Glory Days" does the same sort of thing, but with a more jovial, smirking tone. 

I’m writing this on 3/13/2020. A few days ago I watched the livestream of an 80s themed Purimspiel where they sang "No Retreat, Haman, No Surrender." It feels like ages ago.  Yesterday was 3/12, which felt like 9/11. Broadway went dark, large gatherings were canceled, and we all bunked down for “social distancing” to try to mitigate the spread of COVID-19. All of my travel clients for the next month cancelled and I don’t know how many more might. On the way home from picking up supplies for a more isolated couple of weeks, “No Surrender” came on in my car. These days I usually feel like it’s the sort of song Bruce can write in his sleep; he recorded literally dozens of good pop rock songs for “Born in the USA” that didn’t make the cut - many just as good or better, and many touching on the same basic theme of growing old and trying to hold on to the feeling of being young. 

But as the world around started to crumble, along with all of my usual sources of income, a seemingly random line hit me so hard I had to pull over and sob a bit: “I’m ready to grow young again / and hear your sister’s voice calling us home across the open yards.”   It was the “hear your sister’s voice calling us home” that did it.  

I’ve always thought it was a good line - something about the image it conjurs up. It would have been easy for him to use one of his go-to names in this line - “Hear Maria’s voice calling us home” - but somehow “your sister” makes it all seem so much more real to me. Personally I can’t recall hearing my sister, or anyone’s sister, calling me home across the open yards, but that line, more than any other, makes me feel like I know these guys he’s talking to. Or I don’t KNOW them, but I can picture their whole lives, their childhoods, and those little things that draw you back in time.  

I'm more than a decade older than Landau was when he wrote that review, and at least five years older than Bruce was when he wrote this song about aging. On a day when it seemed like things might never go back to normal, it’s a longing for just one simple thing, one simple feeling, that reminds us of what it felt like to be young and ready to take on the world. We have to feel like that. We made a promise and swore we’d always remember. No retreat, baby, no surrender.

I’m still at my usual uncrowded morning coffee shop, but wishing this guy standing near me would take a few steps further away. Maybe in a few days even this level of interaction will be too risky, too. But what the hell am I going to do? How long will this be the new normal? We’re going to fight this as best we can, standing together (though six feet apart) and hopefully finding something new on the other side - and maybe, in Bruce’s words, in the darkness there’ll be hidden worlds that shine. But right now all I want do is grow young again and hear your sister’s voice calling us home.