[On May 21, 1901, Connecticut enacted the first speed-limit law in American history (freakin’ Connecticut, am I right anyone who has to drive through New England?!). So for the 125th anniversary of that groundbreaking legislation, this week I’ll AmericanStudy cultural representations of fast cars, leading up to a weekend post on the Fast & Furious franchise!]
AmericanStudies analyses of three of Springsteen’s many songs about fast cars (in addition to “Racing in the Street,” which will be featured in the weekend post).
- “Night” (1975): Born to Run has no shortage of car songs, including the title track (about which I wrote a bit yesterday) and of course “Thunder Road” (now that I think about it, “heaven’s waiting down on the tracks” could be read as a predecessor to the final image of Grease about which I wrote on Wednesday). But I’m not sure there’s ever been a more distilled musical reflection of both the promise and the danger, the thrills and the threats, of drag racing than “Night,” as captured by lines like “And the world is busting at its seams/And you’re just a prisoner of your dream/Holding on for your life/’Cause you work all day to blow ‘em away in the night,” “And you’re in love with all the wonder it brings/And every muscle in your body sings as the highway ignites,” and “Somewhere tonight, you’ll run sad and free/Until all you can see is the night.” I especially love how Springsteen’s relatively rare use of second-person here makes each listener this dreamy, doomed dragster.
- “Wreck on the Highway” (1980): Interestingly enough, especially given the long history of rock songs that feature or at least conclude with car crashes (yes, two of those are actually motorcycle crashes, but you get my point), Springsteen doesn’t have too many of them across his car-tastic oeuvre. Which makes “Wreck on the Highway,” a spare, solemn, and damn sad track from the final side of The River, stand out even more than it already does. As Bruce’s story songs (another very prolific part of his songwriting career) go, this is a quite straightforward one: the speaker is driving home from work, sees the wreckage of a car accident, and comforts the young man who was driving before he dies from his injuries. Certainly the final verse, in which the speaker recounts how much the memories of that night have stayed with him and lead him to see and hold his own significant other differently, adds an interesting layer. But I would also argue that the song’s existence itself offers a compelling commentary on Springsteen’s obsession with fast cars, and that the speaker, realizing their potential for wrecks on the highway, might well be a maturing Bruce himself.
- “Drive Fast (The Stuntman)” (2019): I wrote in this post about the whole of Western Stars, my wife Vaughn Joy’s favorite Bruce album and one she’s gotten me to reexamine and enjoy a lot more than I initially had. But even when I wasn’t as sold on the whole thing, I knew I really liked “Drive Fast (The Stuntman),” a fascinating story song from the perspective of an aging Hollywood stuntman that is also a deeply thoughtful reflection on one of the most consistent themes across this entire weeklong blog series: the duality of promise and peril at the heart of fast cars. Springsteen has never captured that duality better than he does in the song’s chorus: “Drive fast, fall hard/I’ll keep you in my heart/Don’t worry about tomorrow, don’t mind the scars/Just drive fast, fall hard.” And across the arc of the speaker’s life that the verses trace, from nine to nineteen to an adult romance with an actress who “liked her guys a little greasy, ‘neath her pay grade,” it is cars and speed that consistently embody elements both internal (“I liked the pedal and I didn’t mind the wall”) and external (“I was looking for anything, any kind of drug to life me up off this ground”). Like so many of Springsteen’s speakers and subjects (and so many iconic American characters, as we’ve seen all week and will see again this weekend), that search is a profoundly automotive one.
Last car culture conversation this weekend,
Ben
PS. What do you think? Car culture works you’d highlight?
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