Bruce Springsteen and Jackson Browne, "Racing In The Street"

Because I read this review yesterday and thought this was interesting:

Springsteen was moving away from kids like the lovers in "Because the Night," who want escape – the heroes of standard rock’n’roll politics, even in punk. He turned towards the viewpoints of people like his parents – his father went deaf (symbolically enough) working on a factory floor – or those even more damaged and hopeless. It wasn’t the guitar sound or the shredded larynx that made Darkness [On The Edge Of Town] seem almost more punk than punk. Its commitment to reality came with a bitter willfulness that was bigger than nihilistic escapism, the way Hank Williams' does (another new discovery for Bruce at the time).

Like his earlier work, though, and in fidelity to rock, it still sought redemption in love. When Bruce had two versions of “Racing in the Street,” one just about the two drag-racing buddies and another that adds a painful love story, he asked a longtime female fan as well as Steve Van Zandt which one they liked better. They both said, “The one with the girl.” Bruce was surprised Van Zandt said so and asked why. "Because that’s how life is: You’ve got a friend, the girl comes along, then you don’t have that friend any more."

- Carl Wilson, "Who’s the Boss? Dialectics for Peter Pan:
Revenge Fantasies of the Politically Dispossessed by
Jacob Wren and The Promise: The Making of Darkness on the Edge of Town
by Thom Zimmy (both 2010)",
Back To The World: Untimely Talk About Culture
October 29^th, 2010.

The whole review is really worth a read, it's a nice piece of rock criticism. Anyway, because of that, I went browsing YouTube, sort of looking for something else, actually, and found this: Bruce, Jackson Browne, the E Street Band and a full arena, "Racing In The Street, " East Rutherford, NJ, October 13^th, 2004: