![]() Feeling like Elaine May’s “Mikey and Nicky” (1976) set to words and music by Leonard Cohen, the song remains haunting and mysterious all these years later. ![]() ![]() You don’t know exactly what Eddie and Springsteen’s narrator are up to, but you get the sense it’s not going to end well. The details of the narrative are vague, but the tone, underscored by that piano and trumpet tandem, is mightily foreboding. The word’s been passed, this is our last chance.” Hey Eddie, this guy, he’s the real thing, so if you want to come along you gotta promise you won’t say anything, ’ cause this guy don’t dance. Springsteen starts the song with a couple of requests - “Hey Eddie, can you lend me a few bucks, tonight can you get us a ride?” - followed by a potentially ominous modus operandi: “ Gotta make it through the tunnel, got a meeting with a man on the other side. While both of those are stellar examples of sweeping rock storytelling, “Meeting Across the River” is something different. With ‘(Meeting) Across the River,’ it’s like the piano comes in, it’s sitting smoothly, and then you’ve got the horns giving the accents every now and then, and it’s like you’ve really got a humble Bruce.” “With ‘Born to Run’ and ‘Night’ and ‘Thunder Road,’ I felt like as soon as it comes on it’s blaring at you, you know what I’m saying? It’s like. “The piano itself serenades you, you know what I’m saying?” said Asbury Park singer Alexander Simone, grandson of the legendary Nina Simone, who called “Meeting Across the River” one of his favorite songs from a production standpoint. ![]() This is “Meeting Across the River,” the penultimate track on “Born to Run” that serves as the album’s dark night of the soul before a single lyric is uttered. Turn audio on Turn audio offĪfter starting 1975’s “Born to Run” with the determination of “Thunder Road” to pull out of a town full of losers, then serving six consecutive offerings of go-for-broke, anthemic rock ’n’ roll, Bruce Springsteen shifted gears in the home stretch.Ĭue a haunting trumpet, echoing out at the listener as if through a foreboding tunnel, underscored by some delicate grand piano. Except for one thing: ‘Your flag flyin' over the courthouse means certain things are set in stone: who we are, what we'll do, and what we won't.’ It’s a haunting line, and one of his best.This audio enhanced story is best with headphones. But on ‘Long Walk Home,’ from ‘Magic’ (his most underrated album) he doesn’t back down from his convictions, telling the tale of a guy who returns to his hometown and doesn’t recognize anything, or anyone. He certainly didn’t need to challenge his audience, particularly after upsetting fans with ‘41 Shots’ and speaking out against President George W. By the 2000s, Springsteen would have been forgiven for taking a long victory lap and playing the greatest hits on tour. When the E Street Band were inducted into the Rock And Roll Hall of Fame in 2014, Steven Van Zandt noted that the band maintained a huge worldwide fanbase, which he said was ‘Due, directly, to our leader’s relentless striving for greatness, his insistence on our constantly evolving musical excellence and his continuing to write songs at an unnecessarily high level of quality.’ 2007’s ‘Magic’ was a great example of that.
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