THUNDER ROAD

Well, here we go with an entry created by Abel, your classmate in 2NA.

This tries to be the first entry of a series of our favourite or for-any-special-reason-I-like-it songs. So, maybe it's high time you reflect on that and start writing. This is what Abel wants to share with you all. 

Enjoy yourselves!

“THUNDER ROAD”

A harmonica and a walking piano that will quickly change to running, are the faint prologue that leads us to raise the curtain and introduces a girl who is dancing in her doorstep in front of a boy in a running car. It could be a scene captured by the lens of Scorsese in Little Italy any summer evening.

And indeed, the film is about love, like almost rock and roll songs but they aren´t  the usual lady and gallant. There are two characters physically and, above everything, spiritually beaten for life. Their prime was much time ago, with their broken dreams very far away. And indeed, the film is about love, but it´s about much more too.

Along the song, it flies over the omnipresent topic in the work of the most inspiring Springsteen: the way to fight against pain, defeat or  failure.  And of course, they are here: the, not so classic at that time, images of faith, magic, redemption or promise land to incarnate the idea of the new chance, the always opening possibility of reviving again, leaving  the past behind or understanding tomorrow as the first day of the rest of your life.

There´s only one voice in the song, the boy at the steering wheel´s one. He is telling us how he feels and, in a dangerous leap of faith for his purposes, trying to show to her loved one, which is the way to be able to understand her past and dreams.

With that series of overelaborated images that Bruce´s poetry was made of at the beginning, he will try to explain us that the exit could be there but anyway, it is never simple or easy.

To decide to fight could be dangerous and to challenge the own life could be the hardest work and he has nothing except his love and devotion; maybe the only useful fuel for the last and longest path that he will go through with her by his side. A song run through suspicious and prefabricated epic, only acceptable if it´s the voice of integrity the one that speaks, if the password to lower our guard is a telecaster again.

“And I´m pulling out of here to win” A certain Bruce sings the last verse because, at that moment, he has become the character. He has always believed in himself but, after the commercial failures of his two first albums, it looks like this one was his last chance to triumph, to prove to CBS and everybody else that he was right, that he really had the special talent that someone was talking of time ago. Indeed “Born to Run” was his first masterpiece that turned him into one of the greatest rockers of History.

It´s my favourite song and it´s probably the song that I have listened to more times but, at the same time, it is many other people´s song and it could be the song of everyone. All of us bear defeats and need to heal some hurts. It made me feel better when I was fourteen, when I didn't understand the meaning of a dream because then, I didn't know his price and it continues being useful for me, thirty years later. The song hasn't changed, it remains with the same shine and ability to thrill.

That “Thunder Road” without end is the direction that everybody looks for in their lives. Even the most self satisfied man can see the horizon in his own thunder road that would or not decide to go along. The road and the moving car will stay by our side forever. It´s everything we need. “These two lanes will take us anywhere”. We´ll never know if Mary got  into the car. Did you? Would you?

Here's a link with the lyrics in English, of course.

This is a very good song and a very good entry. Thanks Abel for your contribution to this blog, once again.

Now guys, it's your turn. Leave your comments straight away. They are really welcome.