“YOU can’t start a fire without a spark.” So sang Bruce Springsteen on Dancing In The Dark, the spark that would light the rock ’n’ roll inferno of Born In The U.S.
A, released 40 years ago today. Born In The U.S.
A. is a masterpiece. A searing songbook of hard-luck Americana that touched the souls of the 30million people — so far — who bought it and helped catapult it to No1 around the world, securing its place as one of the best-selling rock albums of all time.
And it turned the 34-year-old, bandana-wearing, ripped jeans-sporting son of Long Branch, New Jersey , into a pop superstar, turbo charging his private campaign to become a rock ’n’ roll legend, a working-class hero who, as he admits, hasn’t done a day’s real work since he was 15. Bruce had arrived on the global stage. Move over Madonna.
Jog on Jacko . Bow down to The Boss. It would take another year for the fire of June 4, 1984, to engulf me.
I “taped” Born In The U.S.A.
off a friend’s dad and played that over and over until I found my own copy at a car boot sale months later. Now that iconic album cover, shot by celebrity snapper Annie Leibovitz , was on my shelf. When I turned ten, all I wanted to be was Bruce Springsteen.
It is a mark of the — sometimes criticised — pop accessibility of Born In The U.S.A.
that it could capture my pubescent brain with its grown-up tales of working for the man. From the opening synth bars of the title track — a bombastic room shaker whose satirical d.