Song of the Week: "4th of July, Asbury Park (Sandy)"

Playlist is right HERE under the boardwalk.

"4th of July, Asbury Park (Sandy)"

Bruce Springsteen

from The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle

1973

Bruce Springsteen is one poetic motherfucker, probably more than his Chris Christie-type fans give him credit for. Have y'all seen Springsteen on Broadway? That thing gives the Springsteen hits extra depth, more than they already had, which I didn't think was possible. The man is a poet first, guitarist second.

One song that has always struck me as particular special is "4th of July, Asbury Park (Sandy)," a song that unravels one magical night in the shore town of his (your) choice. This is Springsteen taking the camera and panning across one spellbinding boardwalk scene, where the teens are dancing and running from cops and making out underneath the boards. The details are vivid enough that you can tell that Bruce isn't just singing about such a night, he's lived it.

Now, I've had some fucking nights down the shore. But I've always held "4th July" somewhat at arm's length, because the details here don't quite match up with the details of my own youth. The most obvious difference being that I was a shoobie experiencing the seashore life one week every year, as opposed to living that life every day, like Springsteen did in Asbury. Perhaps more significantly, any Wildwood romance I've ever experienced was fleeting and only occurred because we were far from home, whereas Springsteen's protagonist is in it for the long term, and the wild, innocent shuffle of that boardwalk night is more of a backdrop to the romance, as opposed to the catalyst for it.

Still, I appreciate "4th of July, Asbury Park (Sandy)" like I appreciate a good novel. I may not have specifically chased factory girls through dusty arcades, but I know that wild abandon that seems to come to the forefront whenever we cross that bridge into North Wildwood. But a novel isn't inspiring me to yell out the window—that's another Bruce song. "Thunder Road" has been fashioned into the story of my brief occasional seashore town life.

So perhaps this entry into the Song of the Week canon can be considered a bookend to that entry a year ago. I have my Bruce Springsteen Summer Song, and Bruce Springsteen has his own Bruce Springsteen Summer Song, and we acknowledge that everyone has their own Summer Song for their own Summer Shore Town, and we appreciate that Summer is even able to exist at all this year, even in hobbled, truncated form, that we are able to enjoy that shore life, however briefly, however secluded from the boardwalk, however far away we are from the Sandys of our youth.