I appreciate the episodic nature of Bruce Springsteen's discography. He's obviously not the only artist to ever do this, but in putting his body of music under a microscope, I've found myself appreciating this aspect of it more and more. What I mean by "episodic" is that each album is its own separate thing, while still telling a series-long coherent story. Each episode, or album, has a hook, and is distinct—this is what I've taken to describing in this blog column, those distinctions. But they are also all part of one long narrative.
So in this context, what do we find in the episode of Tunnel of Love? What is its hook? A couple things. First, thematically, we find Springsteen looking inward in a pretty intense way. Not that he'd never done this before, but the emotional resonance of his previous work was always couched in grand narratives about the working everyman. Tunnel of Love make no effort to distance artist from the emotions in his art. If there is a song about a struggling marriage, we are led to assume that Springsteen himself was struggling in his marriage.
The second hook is that Springsteen is, musically speaking, continuing down the road of intense '80s synthesizer-led sounds, which is definitely important in our understanding of Tunnel of Love, but let's stick with the theme for a bit more. The whole "struggling with marriage" thing is not a random example. That's usually the explanation given when people talk about the purpose of Tunnel of Love. He was, according to prominent critics, "writing about 'love gone wrong' in response to changes in his personal life, particularly his crumbling marriage to Julianne Phillips." I wish I would've reread Springsteen's autobiography for this project, I feel like there would probably be some good insight into this album particularly.
But the thing is, maybe the autobiography is unnecessary, because Springsteen does such a great job of going all heart-on-sleeve with Tunnel of Love. You don't need his prose to know how Springsteen's life was changing and he was growing up and growing into an adult and he, like many of us, was struggling with that shit. You don't need the prose because you already have the poetry. There are a dozen ballad (or ballad-esque, at least) '80s pop songs to tell the story. Credit where it's due—Springsteen does a better job than many of his peers at getting to the core of his emotions, and bravely making them known to the masses through song.
I'm thinking about the new Springsteen movie that I haven't seen yet and might not ever see. The takeaway from the boomers that I know who saw it boiled down to: 1) it was fine, and 2) it was kind of interesting how much they leaned on the narrative of Bruce Springsteen's depression. Now, that movie takes place in the era spanning Nebraska and Born in the U.S.A., so that's immediately before Tunnel of Love. What, though, are you gonna try to claim that Springsteen reached his commercial peak and his depression suddenly disappeared? That's not really how any of this works. I gotta imagine that his mental health journey runs right through Tunnel of Love too. The only difference being that this time is manifests in marital distress instead of societal or political distress.
I guess what I'm getting at here is that it's too easy to say that Tunnel of Love was a pre-divorce album, even though it technically is that too. I like the idea of digging a little deeper here. The problem is that, when you do that, you start talking about the human condition instead of the music. I'm not Springsteen's therapist and I don't have any right to say what he was actually experiencing in the mid-to-late '80s, but when I listen to Tunnel of Love, the depression and anxiety and sadness is pretty evident.
The thing that sticks out to me as something that Springsteen does really well both here and on other albums, at least when he's doing the thing where he's courageously exposing what he perceives as his own faults and flaws, is that he tends to view those emotional bruises through the prism of "manliness." In other words, when Springsteen is expressing sadness, not only is he down about it and being brave in being open about how sad he is, but he's also wondering what this says about his manhood, and, more broadly, what it means to live in a society in which men who are sad are viewed as "weak."
You can see these thoughts weaved through a lot of the songs on Tunnel of Love, but most prominently it's on "Walk like a Man" and "Tougher Than the Rest." This is a man clearly raised in the art of "men don't cry." He's experiencing these internal struggles but then he's also clearly struggling with the idea that he's a man and he shouldn't be experiencing these internal struggles in the first place. So he—the character in the song—is fronting, saying that he's gonna be brave and he's gonna tough it out and there's nothing to worry about because he's a man and he's gonna be strong and he's gonna survive, but then he—the author of the song, the real person—is writing these songs with holes punctured in them, purposefully, so that we can see that maybe these characters aren't really dealing with these struggles in a healthy way.
You can see these thoughts weaved through a lot of the songs on Tunnel of Love, but most prominently it's on "Walk like a Man" and "Tougher Than the Rest." This is a man clearly raised in the art of "men don't cry." He's experiencing these internal struggles but then he's also clearly struggling with the idea that he's a man and he shouldn't be experiencing these internal struggles in the first place. So he—the character in the song—is fronting, saying that he's gonna be brave and he's gonna tough it out and there's nothing to worry about because he's a man and he's gonna be strong and he's gonna survive, but then he—the author of the song, the real person—is writing these songs with holes punctured in them, purposefully, so that we can see that maybe these characters aren't really dealing with these struggles in a healthy way.
When you're feeling this way, you start to push away the people you love. One hypothesis I've read about Tunnel of Love is that it's not only about a crumbling marriage, but also about a crumbling partnership with the E Street Band. Mostly all of the members make an appearance on Tunnel of Love to varying degrees (even Clemons, despite the lack of sax on the album, appears as a backing vocal on "When You're Alone"), but this isn't an E Street Band album. And by the time we get to the next studio album a half a decade later, Springsteen and his comrades were on temporary hiatus.
We'll get to that story next time in this column, but suffice it to say here that it makes sense, from an emotional standpoint, that Springsteen would be distancing himself from the people in his orbit. That's what we do as humans when we start to feel low and that lowness is coming from your heart and your soul. You feel down about yourself and you subconsciously convince yourself that the people who love you would be better without you, and so you push people away. Are these songs of love and loss actually about Little Steven? Yeah, maybe! I gotta assume that Tunnel of Love would have much less '80s-ness adorning it if Springsteen's underground garage rock pal was in the mix. It's a fun theory to think about, until you remember how rough severed friendship can be on one's psyche.
We'll get to that story next time in this column, but suffice it to say here that it makes sense, from an emotional standpoint, that Springsteen would be distancing himself from the people in his orbit. That's what we do as humans when we start to feel low and that lowness is coming from your heart and your soul. You feel down about yourself and you subconsciously convince yourself that the people who love you would be better without you, and so you push people away. Are these songs of love and loss actually about Little Steven? Yeah, maybe! I gotta assume that Tunnel of Love would have much less '80s-ness adorning it if Springsteen's underground garage rock pal was in the mix. It's a fun theory to think about, until you remember how rough severed friendship can be on one's psyche.
If Tunnel of Love is called "underrated" by Bruce Springsteen fans, then it must be because of people's ability, or lack thereof, to understand these intense emotions. I can see someone who doesn't like to do any sort of introspection on themselves being nonplussed at the idea of Springsteen doing his own introspection. We listen to music to empathize with the human condition, and if you can't do that with depression, then maybe you hear Tunnel of Love and only understand the drum machines and twinkling synths and how this sounds very much of its time. But the sadness and confusion embedded in these songs, that kinda shit transcends time, if you let it.
I will let it, I promise. This is a recommitment to myself, for a few reasons. One is that I am currently fearing the immediate future, and having my own anxieties about this blog, and music in general, and wondering what on this website is going to weather the incoming storm with me. Will I have the time or energy to talk about Bruce Springsteen? I think so, and I hope so, but it remains to be seen. More importantly, two, we are now entering uncharted territory for me. Human Touch is going to be the first Springsteen album we cover in this column that I am not already familiar with. I wonder if I'll be able to connect with it like I have with the albums so far. I have confidence that I will. It's Bruce Springsteen! If I learned anything from this dude, it's that it's important to put your whole self out there. It's the only way to heal.
Song for the "Tramps like Us" mixtape: "Walk like a Man"
2 comments:
his best album cover? probably?
The bolo tie really does it.
I haven't listened to it yet, but Lucky Town gives it a run for its money, in the way that it looks like an alternate universe in which the Springsteen biopic stars James Franco instead of Jeremy Allen White.
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