There's a Reckoning on the Edge of Town
Bruce Springsteen's Darkness on The River
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 22996367 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Larry David Smith (Ball State University), Jon David Rutter (Ball State University), Jon Rutter |
| Year | 2008 |
| Volume | 20 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 109-128 |
| Publication date | 2008-06-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Journal of Popular Music Studies (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1524-2226 • E-ISSN: 1533-1598 |
| Publisher | Wiley (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1111/j.1533-1598.2008.00153.x |
| OpenAlex | W2063237355 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
| References cited | 8 |
argues that Dylan and Springsteen are auteurs in the mold of the Woody Guthrie celebrity-singer-songwriter tradition.Building upon his study of Pete Townshend's lifework (Smith 1999)-and setting the methodological table for his subsequent study of Elvis Costello's and Joni Mitchell's songwriting careers (Smith 2004)-Smith marries the conceptual principles associated with auteur theory to his analytical technique, narrative synthesis, to interpret the stylistic signatures through which these acclaimed writers articulated stories throughout their respective oeuvres.Smith's extensive treatment of Bob Dylan's historic career (Smith 2005) applies the auteurnarrative methodological scheme to a prolific body of work and, in so doing, demonstrates his perspective's interpretive power.In all cases, studies of authorship appeared as Smith unveils the narrative strategies through which these renowned songwriters systematically framed their art.A primary finding from the Dylan-Springsteen study maintains that Springsteen's career represents an extensive narrative which Smith designates as the musical world's first "soap opera" (2002: 157), "The Worker's Elegy."A pivotal portion of that protracted melodrama involves Springsteen's fourth and fifth albums, 1978's Darkness on the Edge of Town and 1980's The River.There the characters that populate Springsteen's promising account of youthful exuberance and its belief in a divined economic prosperity experience a decisive turning point as they come to grips with the realities of their emotionally-laden fantasies.These albums present characters standing on the edge of a psychological abyss contemplating their next move.That is, there is a darkness on the edge of Springsteen's New Jersey river town and these albums chronicle that story.This article explores the internal workings of this phase of Springsteen's soap opera by using Smith's narrative technique to interpret the characters, values, and plots associated with these projects.Such a strategy not only unveils the breadth and scope of Springsteen's melodramatic narratives, Darkness on The RiverThe academic and popular literature on Bruce Springsteen's career is both plentiful and diverse.For example, music critics explore the Springsteen phenomenon from a host of journalistic perspectives (Alterman 2001; Cullen 1992; Guterman 2005; Marsh 2003; Sawyers and Scorsese 2004), two authors offer photographic accounts of his public image (Springsteen, Stefanko, and Murray 2003; Marsh 2006), and yet another writer uses Springsteen's career to contemplate the entire music industry (Goodman 1998).Predictably, the scholarship on Springsteen's work varies according to methodological orientation.Cavicchi (1998) and Coles (2003) trace the semantic connections between Springsteen's songs and his audiences; Garman (2000) considers Springsteen's adaptation of "the hurt song" and its musical heritage; Lyons and Lewis (1981) conduct a content analysis of three albums (Born to Run, Darkness on the Edge of Town, and The River); McGuire (1984) provides a thematic interpretation of those three albums (identifying themes of optimism, despair, and responsibility); Sellnow and Sellnow (1991) examine Springsteen by way of a content analysis that embraces both lyrics and musical form; and Sellnow (1996) discusses Springsteen's work in terms of individual phases that represent variations in the songwriter's rhetorical strategy.Most assuredly, this is but a partial listing of the various writings associated with Springsteen's extensive career; nevertheless, it reveals the diverse qualities of those projects.This effort complements those endeavors by way of its concentrated focus on the artist's songwriting.Springsteen conveyed his songwriting ambitions to Kurt Loder in 1984: "I guess what I was always interested in was doing a body of work-albums that would relate to and play off of each other.And I was always concerned with doin' albums, instead of . . .collections of songs . . . .I was very concerned about gettin' a group of characters and followin' them through their lives" (21).He pursued these creative ends by developing a plot with a specific objective: "I wanted to document what it felt like to grow up in America during the time that I was growing up in.And I wanted to follow those characters, not just when they were teenagers or in their 20s, but into the middle parts of their lives, into their 40s and on" (Bream 1992).True to his inspiration, Springsteen's narrative traces his characters' lives as they move through their respective lifecycles and portrays
Art · Art history · Cartography · Geography · Performance art · Rutter · History · Music History and Culture
| Unique citing works | 1 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,07 |
| Citation span | 2011 - 2011 (1) |
| Citation velocity | historical |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 1 |