No Surrender

And then at the very last minute, it was like...

Not nearly as big a flub as I did in our last episode about No Surrender.

But...

But the way you worded that was perfect.

that, a lot of that stuff out.

So...

Anyway, that's kind of it for the basic facts because the basic facts between this and No Surrender kind of lay on top of each other in a lot of ways.

We don't need to rehash all of that.

Today on Bruce Springsteen Sings the Alphabet, no surrender! No! Camera shook.

Yeah, I'm on a card table.

So it doesn't take much to make the camera shake.

We're going to charge ahead.

No retreat.

No surrender.

We are going to enter into this conversation one way or another.

I definitely looked away, but I did not surrender.

Yeah, it's not Born in the USA.

It would be, it might be No Surrender.

I think

that's the right answer,

We sure will.

Yeah, in fact, that is a great segue out of this episode and say, thank you everybody for listening.

On the next episode, we're going to flip the record and we're going to talk about No Surrender.

That's right.

a promise, so we'd always remember.

No retreat, baby, no surrender.

So don't let us back with the vows you did, baby.

No retreat, baby, no surrender.

A lot of those songs from that Born in the USA era had been kind of misunderstood.

For example, you know, the most obvious case being that Born in the USA had been embraced by the Republican Party as a kind of pro-USA anthem, whereas in fact it was kind of an anti-Vietnam song, you know, which they hadn't listened to the lyrics and misunderstood.

So No Surrender was embraced as a kind of, as the title suggests, an obvious, you know, nothing's going to stop us now kind of song.

But with Springsteen you always get, if not explicitly, then implicitly, you get this suggestion of a little worrying undercurrent, a little sort of suggestion that all is not triumphant, all is not all powerful.

So, you know, growing up in New Jersey, I guess there's a point when of course somebody's gonna be asking you to play some Springsteen, and you were immersed in Petty land first, but people kept requesting Springsteen.

So what were the songs that you learned? I think it was No Surrender and Thunder Road, right?

Yeah, exactly.

It, it was really funny how that all worked out, because you're right.

And so it got to a point where I just remember thinking, yeah, I, I obviously didn't really know Springsteen that well.

Uh, you know, I knew the bigger hits, but finally I went, okay, I'll, I'll learn some Springsteen.

So I, I did No Surrender and I did Thunder Road.

I, I put 'em up online and, um, you know, people really seemed to, to like 'em and I, I was, uh, really grateful for that.

So, you know, growing up in New Jersey, I guess there's a point when of course somebody's gonna be asking you to play some Springsteen, and you were immersed in Petty Land first, but people kept requesting Springsteen.

So what were the songs that you learned? I think it was No Surrender and Thunder Road, right?

Yeah, exactly.

It, it was really funny how that all worked out because you're right.

Uh, you know, playing on the streets of New Jersey as a nine-year-old with a Telecaster, you're gonna start to get some Springsteen requests.

And so it got to a point where I just remember thinking, yeah, I, I obviously didn't really know Springsteen that well.

Um, you know, I knew the bigger hits, but finally went, "Okay, I'll, I'll learn some Springsteen." So I, I did No Surrender, and I did Thunder Road.

I, I put them up online and, um, you know, people really seemed to, to like them, and I, I was, uh, really grateful for that.

... let me think of order.

It was, it was War Born in the USA, Death to My Hometown, uh, and then it was Clamp Down, No Surrender, Darkness, and I think Streets of Minneapolis was there then.

It was sort of, and then he'd go into the Promised Land and some of the more fun songs like Hungry Heart and Two Hearts.

What I always had wished for this tour was he basically had done a more, like that section that had the Promised Land, Hungry Heart, and Two Hearts, that Hungry Heart and Two Hearts were more, uh, like, variable, and, like, he had swapped those around and, like, done different stuff there.

He said that, you know, everything in that set list had its place, and it was contextualized perfectly-

Yeah

... at the moment, where even songs like No Surrender or Darkness on the Edge of Town were very deliberate in that set.

They weren't just the hits like they were a couple, you know, the last few years.