An infinite number of rockin' pop records can be the greatest record ever made, as long as they take turns. Today, this is THE GREATEST RECORD EVER MADE!
BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN: "Girls In Their Summer Clothes"
Only Nixon could go to China. So maybe I'm the only one who can say that
Bruce Springsteen's "Girls In Their Summer Clothes" is The Greatest Record Ever Made.
I've never really been all that much of a Springsteen fan. It's not that I dislike the Boss--I do like him, and I don't mean that as faint praise at all--but I don't have the same level of affection for his work that many of my friends and peers might eagerly proclaim. I can't explain why I don't. The only time I ever
disliked Springsteen was when I first heard him, when
WOLF-AM in Syracuse started playing "Born To Run;" I thought it must have been a joke, and I dismissed it as a bad copy of
Steppenwolf's "Born To Be Wild."
Yeah, yeah--I know. I like it better now, thanks.
I started to develop an appreciation for Springsteen when I was in college. Frank Motta, my roommate for the fall of my sophomore year in 1978, tried to interest me in some sounds beyond the silly punk and pop stuff that was (and is) the soundtrack of my life. We both dug
The Who; I favored the earlier power pop sound showcased on
Meaty Beaty Big & Bouncy, so Frank played me
Who's Next and some live bootlegs. I returned the favor with
The Yardbirds and
The Animals. He vowed to get me into
The Grateful Dead, but that was a lost cause. Her also vowed to make me a Springsteen fan, and he had a little more success with that goal. "Rosalita" was a favorite, and I was taken with "Candy's Room," an LP track from the then-recent
Darkness On The Edge Of Town. Senior year, a couple of roommates later,
The River was viewed with some suspicion in our quarters, and I despised "Hungry Heart;" I disliked it even more when I learned (much later) that the Boss had written it with
The Ramones in mind. Really, Bruce? Really? "Rockaway Beach" it was not.
That said, I was knocked out by
The River's opening track, "The Ties That Bind"--
man, that was good. My roommate Paul dismissed both "The Ties That Bind" and "Out In The Street" as Springsteen's failed attempts to be New Wave Brucie, but I liked 'em just fine. I didn't really discover
The River's "Two Hearts" until years later, and I wound up liking that, too. And my immediate affinity for the ethereal, haunting nature of "Fade Away" was my first clue that I would ultimately develop a general preference for Springsteen's softer side.
In a brief bid to be like everybody else, I willingly went along with the public's mid-'80s embrace of
Born In The U.S.A., though I no longer care to listen to it. "My Hometown" would be the only exception, another indication that I was starting to favor slower Springsteen material (an odd situation for an unrepentant punk 'n' power popper like me). "Brilliant Disguise" from 1987's
Tunnel Of Love became my all-time favorite Springsteen track. Overall, my interest in Springsteen ebbed. When a Springsteen song comes on the radio, I will usually change the station.
So, for me, "Girls In Their Summer Clothes" just about came out of nowhere. Radio Nowhere.
My friend Dave Murray is a Springsteen fan. Like Frank Motta decades before him, Dave has tried to interest me in Springsteen's music, and I readily admit I've liked some of what he's played for me. "Radio Nowhere" was the lead-off single from the 2007 album
Magic, and it was a very nice track indeed. Dave lent me his copy of
Magic to see if it might contain more of whatever the hell it is that I like.
I think I read somewhere that Bruce Springsteen was heavily influenced by
Brian Wilson--specifically, by
The Beach Boys'
Pet Sounds--while he was making
Magic. If that's not true, it should be. Its first two tracks, "Radio Nowhere" and "You'll Be Coming Down," capture that elusive wispy quality of goals just beyond our reach, happiness that escapes our grasp. The result is mesmerizing. It doesn't sound anything at all like The Beach Boys. Yet it's difficult to conceive of it existing in a world where
Pet Sounds didn't exist first.
None of this prepared me for "Girls In Their Summer Clothes."
As pop fans--dedicated, dyed-in-the-wool pop fans--there are moments we live for, moments when our grandest ideas and ideals of the universe align within the concise running time of a new song we're hearing for the very first time. These are the all-too-rare moments when an unfamiliar track annexes us as its own. Body. Mind. Heart. Soul. Sometimes the feet as well, if it happens to be a dance number.
The Greatest Record Ever Made. We mean it, wholeheartedly, each time we say it. It doesn't matter that another record may come along immediately to dethrone it; in the moment, it is the greatest record, the
only record. The purity and majesty of the experience is incomparable.
That was the feeling that engulfed me the first time I heard "Girls In Their Summer Clothes," the same feeling that still claims me every time I hear it again.
And the girls in their summer clothes/In the cool of the evening light/The girls in their summer clothes pass me by. It is a flawless, gorgeous ache, a mournful ode to that which has slipped away, that which continues to pass us by. It is, like much of Springsteen's best work, almost a drugstore-rack paperback novel brought to life as a pop song. It means more than it says. It implies more than it reveals. It's a page-turner set to music. It might be
Steinbeck. It might be
Spillane, or
Harold Robbins, or
F. Scott Fitzgerald, a
Harlequin Romance or a
Gold Medal pulp
noir potboiler.
And the girls in their summer clothes pass me by.
A few years later, when my Dad was in the last few weeks of his life, the song came unbidden into my mind. It was late March and early April of 2012, still early in the year, so the girls were not in their summer clothes. But I passed them by every day as I drove up to the VA to visit Dad in hospice, to bring him a strawberry milkshake, to make sure he was comfortable. The song's overwhelming melancholy suited my mood, my feeling of helplessness. I would stumble out of the hospital on my way to the parking garage, my eyes wet, my shoulders slumped, the weight of everything pressing down upon me with the force of all the lead in the known world. I drove away each night, passing the girls, letting go of my youth, feeling my own life passing me by. Yet the song was a comfort, a balm for my soul.
Lovers they walk by/Holdin' hands two by two. Dad slipped away, as everything we have must slip away in time.
Love's a fool's dance/I ain't got much sense but I still have my feet.
I respect Springsteen. Sometimes I even like him, and sometimes I like him a lot. I've never seen him and/or
The E Street Band live, and I'm told (by many) that's a necessary component of appreciating his work and his presumably irresistible appeal. Maybe so. For today, though, I enjoy the unlikely dichotomy of this very casual Springsteen fan celebrating a Springsteen track as The Greatest Record Ever Made. Only Nixon could go to China. Perhaps the Chinese girls are wearing their summer clothes, too. We'll smile as they pass us by. The music will make it all right.
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