Summer in Southern California is exactly all of the clichés you have seen on TV, plastered up on billboards and postcards, or even read in the pages of an Isherwood or Pynchon novel. It’s hotter than hell, but you’d be hard pressed to find someone who would trade the magic present in those four months (yes, even May and September count as part of the summer in Los Angeles) for any other climate. With the sand filled shoes and smell of Coppertone stuck to fabrics even after a thorough wash, a Los Angeles summer is defined by what music is radiating out of your car stereo into the warm air.
While other artists have made their small mark on certain summers of our adolescents such as Sugar Ray and Girl Talk, the crown of summer will always be held by Brian Wilson and the Beach Boys sound. The combination of the subject of the surf, bikinis, fast cars, and the direct influence of the early Phil Spector sound has proven Wilson’s genius as lovely and timeless again and again. While our problems don’t actually melt away with our sunscreen, they do seem to sting less (which in itself is a miracle). It’s a fresh start that no other season can provide; the arbitrary start of each New Year in the middle of winter can’t inspire nearly as much as a drive down PCH can. The anthems of puppy love and endless sunshine has continued to represent the innocence and hope that each summer brings us.
Sometimes the tinkling sounds of Brian, Dennis, Carl, Al, and Mike just don’t cut it in the rapidly approaching “real world” that seems to encroach on even our most sugary summertime thoughts. It is when these feelings arise that we need a new summer muse; someone who understands the necessity of playfulness, but not at the expense of heavier subject matter.
Enter Bruce Springsteen.Complete with his E Street Band of misfits, Springsteen’s song book is filled to the brim with summer anthems for kids in emotional transitions, and adults in turmoil, just desperately trying to hold on to the ideals and conviction that spurred them on years ago. While the classic “Glory Days” might come to mind when thinking of our parents and their friends listening to the Boss, we can’t simplify the need for Bruce to one perfectly compartmentalized song. His early sense of struggling hope continues to push the rest of us along with a driving beat and usually a killer sax solo from the late Big Man Clarence.
From break out hits on
Born to Run and
Darkness on the Edge of Town, to the quiet and introspective
Nebraska, and even the semi recent
The Rising, Springsteen masters the artist/audience relationship building a connection to last a music lover’s lifetime. Just listening to “Badlands” once on a failing car stereo, you feel like you immediately know who Springsteen is and you understand his driving frustration when he sings lyrics like this with such fire and brimstone:
You better get it straight darling:
Poor men wanna be rich, rich men wanna be kings,
And a king aint satisfied till he rules everything.
I wanna go out tonight, I wanna find out what I got.It seems simple and cliché, but isn’t this how everyone feels when they are down on their luck? This universal connection is what keeps Bruce in our hearts and on our radios when the hot summer months aren’t as carefree as they were in our salad days.
With the passing of Clarence Clemons—the E Street Band’s saxophone player—there is a hole in the sparkling lineup of Bruce’s band that will never be fully replaced, but never forgotten. To quote my father: “energy can neither be created nor destroyed which means that the love and actions of the dead are never gone”. Every time that you drop the needle (or press play) on a Springsteen album the magic of Clemons and the heart of Bruce continue to entertain and affect us deeply.
It is in this use of the laws of energy that a summer of Springsteen is more comforting than that of the gorgeous harmonies of Wilson and the Beach Boys; it is the connection of human struggles and the triumph of the rebellious spirit.
