Surrounded by tens of thousands of fans, many of whom know the lyrics by heart, the promised land is then and there. As Springsteen belts out the lyrics – even as he approaches the fifteen hundredth time – the moment we are seeking is right now.
“The Promised Land” has never been one of Bruce Springsteen’s radio hits. The sixth track on 1978’s Darkness on the Edge of Town, it was never released as a single in the United States and didn’t reach the charts in Europe, but has remained a staple of his live shows, so much so that Springsteen has played it more times than only two other songs, the much more well known “Born to Run” and “Thunder Road.” To date, we’re talking some 1,486 times and counting, placing “The Promised Land” above even “Badlands” (1,287), “Tenth Avenue Freeze Out” (1,191), and one of his biggest hits of all time, “Dancing in the Dark” (1,130). As far as I am aware, he has played it at every show I’ve seen, across nearly forty concerts spanning four decades now, and therefore it was no surprise that he played it in the sixth slot at the MVP Arena in Albany last week. The question is, why? What is it about this otherwise reasonably obscure track that makes it such a favorite for Springsteen and the crowd? Taken literally, it is a quintessential Springsteen song with obvious parallels to many others in his canon. A young man in a rundown town defies his fate and believes there is a better life for him somewhere, if only he can find it. The story begins with a mournful, distinctive bit of harmonica on a “rattlesnake speedway in the Utah desert.” Rather mysteriously, the man picks up his money, from where we are unsure, possibly some kind of criminal activity or something more mundane, and heads back into town, but he is obviously dissatisfied with his life:
Driving ‘cross the Waynesboro county line
I got the radio on and I’m just killing time
Working all day in my daddy’s garage
Driving all night chasing some mirage
Pretty soon, little girl, I’m gonna take charge
The cause of the speaker’s dissatisfaction is unclear, except he believes there must be something better for him out there, somewhere. Like most of us in the modern world, he’s done his “best to live the right way,” “gets up every morning” and goes “to work each day,” but this simply isn’t enough to sustain him anymore. Whether one is stuck in a dead end job or otherwise, even with what most would consider an excellent career, the sheer repetition, the aggravation, the feeling of powerlessness, the lack of control, all of it and more at times, can drive us near the point of madness, where we feel helpless, trapped. As the speaker puts it in one of those classic lines that captures the desperation 99.9% of us experience at certain points throughout our lives, “your eyes go blind and your blood runs cold,” sometimes he “feels so weak,” he just wants to “explode,” “Explode and tear this whole town apart, Take a knife and cut this pain from my heart, Find somebody itching for something to start.” Much like the dissatisfaction itself, it’s unclear precisely what this means. The speaker has a job, a car, and at least some money, suggesting he’s better off than most, but still he’s missing something. The reference to finding somebody suggests that he wants a woman to share his life with, but the chorus suggests something more, a radical change in his overall philosophy, one where he forgets everything else and focuses on the moment itself:
The dogs on Main Street howl
‘Cause they understand
If I could take one moment into my hands
Mister, I ain’t a boy, no I’m a man
And I believe in a promised land
Here, we see the obvious connection to “Badlands,” as if that song, which is the first track on the album, has been revisited and extended in some way. This speaker also seeks a moment that might not come, wanting to take it in his hands somehow, and further believes this is the natural state of things, reflected both in his own mind and in the dogs on Main Street. As a listener, we can doubt that this is possible, knowing that one can experience a moment, not take it with you, at least literally, but the speaker proceeds to insist that in fact, there is truly a better life for him out there, somewhere. More importantly, he doesn’t believe this as a boy who thinks they’re going to be president or an astronaut some day. No, he’s a man, and yet he still believes in the promised land – whatever that means. The phrase itself has a biblical origin, the covenant between Abraham and the Jews that they will have a permanent place on this Earth, but it seems unlikely the speaker is referring precisely to that meaning and is instead using it in the more general sense of some better place than this. This services as direct extension of and counterpoint to “Badlands.” In that song, you have to live them everyday and the broken hearts stand for the price you have to pay, but in this, slightly more optimistic incarnation, you can escape the badlands all together and rise into the promised land. To be sure, another, earlier track on the album gives us reason to doubt this in addition to any lessons learned from “Badlands.” “Adam Raised a Cain” also features a title inspired by the bible, but in that track there can be no redemption because you “inherit the sins, you inherit the flames.” “The Promised Land” attempts to circumvent that, suggesting that escape is possible, but even then, it is not without obstacles and there is ample reason to doubt it can truly be reached:
There’s a dark cloud rising from the desert floor
I packed my bags and I’m heading straight into the storm
Gonna be a twister to blow everything down
That ain’t got the faith to stand its ground
Blow away the dreams that tear you apart
Blow away the dreams that break your heart
Blow away the lies that leave you nothing but lost and brokenhearted
In my opinion at least, this stands as one of Springsteen’s single boldest statements of defiance, one that subverts the usual trope on multiple levels. There’s a figurative storm coming, strong enough to blow everything down, but instead of fleeing, the speaker is heading right into it because he has the “faith to stand [his] ground.” At the same time, the speaker actively inverts what is generally accepted as the path to the promised land. Rather than having a dream and pursuing it to a better life, he’s urging us to do the opposite. We’re supposed to “blow away” the dreams that tear us apart and break our heart, because they are lies that leave us “nothing but lost and brokenhearted.” Ironically, a speaker who insists he believes in the promised land doesn’t believe in dreams, which might seem strange on the surface until you consider it. The speaker wants a person and a moment. While we might not be able to take a moment in our hands, we can experience it. A dream, however, is something that doesn’t truly exist, a fantasy in our own heads, that might inspire us to action but can also lead us down a false path, believing in things that aren’t true. On his next album, Springsteen would phrase this as a simple question, “is a dream a lie if it don’t come true or is it something worse?” In “The Promised Land,” he asks us to separate fantasy from reality. The speaker wants to take charge, find his love, and his moment, and believes those should be enough. They are the promised land, not some fantasy that his wishes will be fulfilled or he will be president. He’s a man and he doesn’t believe in such things because simply surviving is a battle all its own.
In concert, however, the song takes on a different meaning. Surrounded by tens of thousands of fans, many of whom like myself know the lyrics by heart, the promised land is then and there. As Springsteen belts out the lyrics – even as he approaches the fifteen hundredth time – the moment we are seeking is right now. There are no dreams of the future that turn out to be lies. There is, however, a figurative twister of music as the harmonica wails, the guitar screams, and the saxophone bursts out that will tear everything down. We all understand and we all believe in the promised land, even if only for a moment, but that ideal moment of shared experience and dare I say redemption is the point. The moments are out there, one just needs to recognize, appreciate, and make them their own. This was true the first time I saw Springsteen going on thirty years ago, and the last time I saw him just last week. Given how much both of us have aged during that period, me from young adulthood into middle age, the Boss from middle age into senior citizenhood, it is a wonder that while this song is playing, nothing at all seems to have changed. We are not older, we are not more hardened by the world, we are certainly not younger, and we’re not even necessarily better off because those things don’t matter. They’re the trapping of life, whether well-lived or completely wasted, not life itself. Life is the moment we are in right now, even if that moment has been repeated almost 1,500 times and counting. It’s a testimony to Springsteen’s enduring resilience as a performer that he’s been able to recreate that moment since 1978 without missing a beat. It’s even more insane when you consider that it’s impossible for me to judge whether or not he’s lost a step singing and playing over those years. Certainly, he no longer runs around the stage as if he himself was about to explode, but if you close your eyes and simply listen, I couldn’t say if it was the first time I heard it or the last.
The same is true of his other “table stakes” songs, those he plays every night and has hundreds of times, “Born to Run,” “Thunder Road,” “Dancing in the Dark,” “Badlands,” and more. His shows are built around playing them like the first time, every time. The rarities, however, reveal just how unique Springsteen is. Last week, he played three tracks that I hadn’t seen performed in at least a decade, if not longer. “Adam Raised a Cain,” mentioned earlier, is a hardcore, searing screamer bordering on punk, combining a thrashing guitar with lyrics belted out as though they were the speaker’s last words and his life depended on them. “Racing in the Street” is a mournful ballad that happened to be my father’s favorite Springsteen song, a metaphor for life through the eyes of a street dragster who’s love waits for him at her father’s house, not knowing if he will make it home alive. “Downbound Train” sits somewhere in the middle, a slow burn that builds to a haunting monologue of love and loss, where the speaker had something going once, but lost it all, only to relive that loss in a dream that turns into a nightmare. In the latter half of his career, none of the three have been a staple of his live shows. Last week, however, each might have been brand new, sounding perhaps better than they ever have before. This is the real magic of Springsteen, his ultimate trick: A man with nothing left to prove finds a way to prove it anyway, over and over again, making the old new and somehow sounding better than ever at the same time. Obviously, it can’t last forever, but as in “The Promised Land” itself, we must take our moments as they come.
THE PROMISED LAND
On a rattlesnake speedway in the Utah desert
I pick up my money and head back into town
Driving ‘cross the Waynesboro county line
I got the radio on and I’m just killing time
Working all day in my daddy’s garage
Driving all night chasing some mirage
Pretty soon, little girl, I’m gonna take charge
The dogs on Main Street howl
‘Cause they understand
If I could take one moment into my hands
Mister, I ain’t a boy, no I’m a man
And I believe in a promised land
I’ve done my best to live the right way
I get up every morning and go to work each day
But your eyes go blind and your blood runs cold
Sometimes I feel so weak I just want to explode
Explode and tear this whole town apart
Take a knife and cut this pain from my heart
Find somebody itching for something to start
The dogs on Main Street howl
‘Cause they understand
If I could take one moment into my hands
Mister, I ain’t a boy, no I’m a man
And I believe in a promised land
There’s a dark cloud rising from the desert floor
I packed my bags and I’m heading straight into the storm
Gonna be a twister to blow everything down
That ain’t got the faith to stand its ground
Blow away the dreams that tear you apart
Blow away the dreams that break your heart
Blow away the lies that leave you nothing but lost and brokenhearted
The dogs on Main Street howl
‘Cause they understand
If I could take one moment into my hands
Mister, I ain’t a boy, no I’m a man
And I believe in a promised land
Confessions of a Conservative Atheist 