Albums for parents: Bruce Springsteen, Darkness on the Edge of Town
- John DeSantis
- Nov 19, 2019
- 4 min read
Updated: Mar 22
Some things change when you have kids. Well, everything changes. Your whole way of living as you know it certainly does, and it’s hard work to not let parenthood define you. It’s something we’re struggling with every day. One big change I’ve noticed since becoming a dad is my interpretation of things, particularly music. Sometimes it’s overwhelming, and gives me the same kind of feeling an album conjured when I first listened to it.
I’m digging back through albums I thought I had figured from front to back, delving into them like it’s my first time listening to them. I’m interpreting lines and deliveries in different ways, and taking something new from these old relics.
This is an attempt at a new feature of some of the most memorable such circumstances on my parenting journey. I call this “Albums for parents” because it fits the ongoing theme here, but it could just as easily be labeled “Albums for semi-self-aware adults,” at least those who know their own flaws and strengths, and how the years have shaped us into the person we are.
Bruce Springsteen’s Darkness on the Edge of Town is one of the first albums I’ve noticed this sea change in as I’ve gotten older and become a parent. The album was recorded in 1978, three years after Born to Run due to an ongoing legal battle with his first manager preventing him from releasing new music. In the 1970’s, 3 years without releasing an album was an eternity, and could have been a career ender. Bruce wrote material over those 3 years and rehearsed in the barn on the property of a house he rented on Telegraph Hill Road in Holmdel, NJ. He spent several years there while recording Darkness On The Edge Of Town, The River, Nebraska, and writing material for what would become Born in the USA. We live just a few short miles from that old house now and I enjoy anytime a drive brings me down Telegraph Hill Road because of the connections to life it’s given me through the music created there.
Bruce was almost 30 when this album was released. I had just turned 30 when I became a father for the first time. Back then it seemed like 30 was much older than it is now, more people started families earlier, my own parents were done having kids by the time they turned 30. In reality, for the most part we have a pretty good self-awareness of ourselves by that age regardless of what era we grew up in.
His first 3 albums told stories that often played like films, but this seems like his most relatable album, and the one I revisit most in adulthood. Released in 1978, everything he recorded after this album seems more tinged toward reality as a result of his first major adversity as a musician and the aftermath, and how that related to the stories of everyday people listening to his music.
My introduction to Bruce was his 1995 Greatest Hits album, mostly playing “Born to Run” and “Thunder Road” on repeat because they made me feel something most music hadn't. This album is what got me to pay more attention to the songs between the hits, which can often seem like the best ones. Darkness on the Edge of Town is still my favorite sounding Springsteen album: his vocals, the cut of the guitars, Roy Bittan’s piano as the album’s maestro, the crack of Max Weinberg’s snare drum, Clarence Clemons’s saxophone parts, sparing but purposeful, and some of Danny Federici’s best organ work. “Racing in the Street” is still one of my favorite songs of all time.
The harsh reality of dreams unfulfilled, the compromise of adulthood, but the triumph of making it all work and forging your path through the ebb and flow, the plateaus, peaks and lows that naturally or unnaturally arise in your life; these are all moments on this album any adult can relate to. The complicated relationships people have, getting a spark back, giving it another try, trusting each other, persevering through our own personal battles; these are all moments on this album any parent can relate to.
These were all new threads woven through this rugged album by a more grown-up, weathered version of the guy who recorded “Rosalita (Come Out Tonight)” just 5 years earlier. His next album, The River would continue to delve into this territory, further exploring the impression our own parents leave on our lives as we grow older, for better or worse.
I’ve enjoyed music since I was a kid, but in my time as a father, a lot of the music I used to just enjoy for cool lyrics and melody has taken on greater meaning. Or, I’ve just learned to really appreciate it more for its subtext and the different interpretation I’ve taken from it during the drastic change of parenthood.
This album is a gritty, honest look at adulthood, it’s made me look in the mirror and take stock of my own flaws. The songs started to deal with Springsteen’s contentious relationship with his father, and it served me as a cautionary tale and given some self-awareness to consciously try to be more of an open book for my sons than a closed door.
Favorite tracks:
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