New Jersey, Geelong, Melbourne, 1978-1985
It’s grainy.
It’s black and white.
It’s incomplete.
It’s just what the doctor ordered as Stage 4 hits you in the solar plexus.
It’s 1978.
You’re 15. You live in a second rate city, not quite on the edge of town but definitely on the edge of darkness.
Bruce is about to turn 29.
The sweaty band tear up the New Jersey night, Clarence in all white and a sleeveless vest. Bruce in a singlet, lean and muscled, and alive. He leaps from speaker stacks back on to the stage. Stevie, beret in place, has hair.
The piano tinkles in the quiet spaces between the saxophone.
Beneath the city two hearts beat
Soul engines running through a night so tender
In a bedroom locked in whispers
Of soft refusal and then surrender
Outside the street’s on fire in a real death waltz
Between what’s flesh and what’s fantasy
And the poets down here
Don’t write nothing at all
They just stand back and let it all be
You sneak into a pub to see a band. (Your straitlaced older brother unwilling to be a co-conspirator.)
It’s not Bruce in New Jersey, but you’ll make do with Jo Jo Zep and the Falcons in Geelong, as good a band going around then. And since.
It lights a fire within. In the next seven years you see a lot of bands, good and bad, memorable and forgettable. Until the magic days in 1985 … when Bruce comes to town. And plays Jungleland.
Stereo Story #536
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Born To Run was the monster song from the album but Jungleland was an absolutely fabulous roaring, crying, heart wrenching thing. How many great songs can one album have? No b-sides here.
Indeed, Ian. And the album was such a departure from his first two, very fine, albums.(Which were quite distinct from each other too.) Cheers.
Such an emotional and action packed musical narrative. Gee I miss Clarence.