In my mind it is almost impossible to separate these two songs so I am throwing them in as one post. If you want a perfect representation of the song writer that Springsteen is, not the cheese-dick pop hero he has become of recent years; no the gritty, pensive, man who can write two minutes of music that will stop your heart....this is the proof.
I searched for a while to figure out when "A Good Man is Hard to Find (Pittsburgh)" was written since it appeared on "Tracks" which was released in 1998. I am sure I am just missing it but if I had to guess it fits in with "The River" album and some of those beauties such as "Stolen Car" and "Wreck on the Highway" That album was released in 1980 which would make sense because I am fucking confident that while writing both these songs he HAD to be watching "The Deer Hunter" which was released two years earlier, it is widely known that cinema is a huge influence on his music. Also, I always think of the classic movie "Big Wednesday" when Jack Barlow comes back from Vietnam...that's a whole different blog but it you have never seen that movie it is a masterpiece.
The meat of the song.
The first verse is an electric guitar fingerpicked while Bruce sings in a very fragile, raspy voice, he's singing this about a woman he knew or loved and it hurts him to think of her this way:
"It's cloudy out in Pittsburgh, It's raining in Saigon, snows falling all across the Michigan line."
A woman is sitting by a Christmas tree listening to a radio by herself.
The second park kicks off with that typical Jersey Shore sound and Bruce digresses into what this woman's plight is currently. What always sends spears into my heart about Bruce and this song in particular are the two or three words that take it to another level.
"Once she had a feller, once she was somebody's girl and she gave all she had that one last time"
Now he could have just said she was married, that would have been enough knowing (you know the guy is gone, I'm not giving it away here, you had to know) how hard it is to lose someone. But Bruce takes it up a step and let's you know that she's been around, she's known many men and none of them worked out, just when she was about to quit she found him. This skill, in my mind, is the difference between your standard successful song writer and men like Bruce, Dylan and Van Zandt.
The bridge is my favorite:
"Well the picturesss on the table by her bed, him in dress greens and her in her wedding whites, she remembers how the world was the day he left and now how that world is dead. And a good man is so hard to find"
Out of the over 58,000 men who died in Vietnam many of their wives possessed these same sentiments. A lot of men left and a lot of them never came back. Ever. There would be no more Christmases, no more picnics on those long summer days. The last thing these men saw was a shitty jungle in a shitty country that they were in for a shitty cause, mismanaged by shitty politicians.
So now in the song we have a woman without a husband on Christmas and his daughter asleep while she sits up and thinks about how her life has been stolen from her, with that Jersey Shore sound-Italian Accordion style music progressing in the background. The juxtaposition is chilling, happy, joyous sounds, sounds that one pictures hearing on the boardwalk eating cotton candy playing while the listener is dealing with the thought of a gaping chest wound that leaves a man's organs on the jungle grass; tie that in with the dreadful loneliness of her solitude and the dreary hard winter that exists in Pittsburgh and it is one of the most powerful images Springsteen has ever painted.
I always picture this woman as Adrienne from Rocky, someone who was misunderstood most of her life, someone the world has taken advantage of in many ways. I think what trips that thought in my head is the verse:
"She got time now for Casanovas, Yeah those days are gone. She don't want that anymore, she's made up her mind, just somebody told her, As the nights get on
When a good man is so hard to find."
I see those guys on the corner from Rocky singing around the fire in the oil drum. In my mind Philly is just as bad as Pittsburgh, and in the winter they are just so dark and cold it leaves one dead inside. I also see those single mothers with the weight of the world on their shoulders trying to find someone else and how close to impossible it is for them to have someone.
The song ends just as it began with her alone, she is in bed now and thinks about it all. The entire Vietnam War can be summed up in the last lines:
"Well she thinks how it was all so wasted and how expendable their dreams all were
When a good man was so hard to find. Well it's cloudy out in Pittsburgh"
Shut out the Light
Another Vietnam song and another one that takes its theme (almost exactly this time) from "The Deer Hunter" This one though has none of that Jersey Shore Sound, it has more of that driving tempo that was evident in the song "Devils and Dust" years later. This song was the B side to the single Born in the USA.
There is a scene in "The Deer Hunter" when Meryl Streep is getting ready for the boys to come home from 'Nam...if you remember that scene and the ten minutes or so that it encompasses you have the first verse to that song. I've been away for long periods of time in the Military and regardless of the action you saw or hadn't seen when you come home things are never as good as you hoped them to be. With a woman there is always a terrible tension and with the rest of the world it scares you to think that everyone was going about their daily lives while you were in a very bad place. The second half of the first verse represents that and just how hard it can be to come back home again.
"Well she called up her mama to make sure the kids were out of the house
She checked herself out in the dining room mirror
And undid an extra button on her blouse
He felt her lying next to him, the clock said 4:00 am
He was staring at the ceiling
He couldn't move his hands"
It is also terribly sweet and always hit me right in the heart. You know she's looking in the mirror, trying to look perfect, and you know what? She probably isn't the type of woman to dress flashy but this guy has been away for a long time and, yup he deserves it, undoes an extra button on her blouse. The thing is it doesn't matter if it was Sasha Grey waiting for him dripping wet naked on the front porch, nothing is gonna happen because even pussy isn't going to get a man's mind off the fact that he played Russian Roulette with his buddy in a POW camp and watched pieces of his head stick to the ceiling.
The next verse is a Chevy commercial, well back when Chevy actually was worth something. In America, Bruce's America the only thing that is second to a woman is a car. A car defines you, but in this light it isn't a douche bag pulling up to the club in a yellow Ferrari. This car is a piece of steel that he has worked on, that has taken him to and back from the factory, the car where he probably lost his virginity. A car back then for the working class was an heirloom, it was freedom and it was something that men took very seriously, they were chariots and they were emperors in their own lives no matter how insignificant they appeared to the outside world. If you offered a guy like this a Prius they would never stop laughing at you.
"Well deep in a dark forest, a forest filled with rain
Beyond a stretch of Maryland pines there's a river without a name
In the cold black water Johnson Lineir stands
He stares across the lights of the city and dreams of where he's been"
The above last verse is where the song goes from basic story telling into a little more poetic, non literal storytelling. Springsteen has always done a fine job of producing an unusual cadence in his music the second line sounds more like: "BeyondthestretchofMarylandPines there's ariiiiivvverwithoutanaaaaama" It works every time he does it, it just adds a lot of spice to a song that is very simple. I don't know if he is standing in that river, if it is literal. Often times I think the river flowing around him is his civilian life he has returned to and regardless of how many lights his loved ones put on for him, or how many bright lights of the city there are, for Johnson there will always be blackness flowing around him; even in his sleep his dreams will be filled with the horror he was witnessed.
In these two songs any notion of Springsteen you have acquired over the years, his "image" should be washed away. It drives me INSANE when people describe him as a Mellencamp (who has zero talent) when he is an ocean compared to that shallow puddle. What's left is the real Boss who elevated rock music out of the disco age and into the limelight where it belongs. It also drew serious attention to the Vietnam Veteran's life back in the United States and the horrors they had to deal with, all in all you are a slightly more complete person for having these two on your ipod.
