![]() 23, 1973, more than a month after the album came out, "Blinded by the Light" failed to chart. ![]() ![]() Even though it was deemed commercial enough to be released as a single on Feb. In his autobiography Born to Run, Springsteen wrote that he composed "Blinded by the Light" late in the process, after Columbia Records head Clive Davis heard nothing on Greetings that would work on the radio ("Spirit in the Night" was also penned at this time). Watch Bruce Springsteen Break Down 'Blinded by the Light' "I wanted to do things I hadn't done and see things i hadn't seen." "I wanted to get blinded by the light," he said. The chorus, Springsteen added, presaged the escapist themes that would launch him to stardom a few years later on Born to Run. As for the rest, "Don't overthink the whole thing." His scope is expanded in the next verse, where he described how New Jersey was still stuck in the late '60s, with a cat-and mouse game played between campus radicals (" Some hazard from Harvard") and FBI agents (" Scotland Yard was trying hard"). Hope arrived in the bridge, where playing music in bars put him in contact with a "silicone sister" - which Springsteen believed could be the first reference to breast implants in pop music history - and then " little Early-Pearly came by in her curly-wurly and asked me if I needed a ride." "That's self-explanatory," Springsteen deadpanned. The second and third verses were about sexual frustration, not being liked by girlfriends' fathers and dances at the YMCA where the chaperone would make sure nothing remotely sexual happened. He set the song on the boardwalks of the Jersey Shore by referencing a merry-go-round and calliope. 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.Springsteen then broke down the track, the opener and first single from his 1973 debut Greetings From Asbury Park, N.J. The "madman drummer" mentioned in the opening line was drummer Vini "Mad Dog" Lopez the Indians were Springsteen's Little League team. ![]() 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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