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The following notes, written by Bruce, are taken from the book "Songs".
In 1981 director Paul Schrader sent me a script called Born in the U. S. A.--a film revolving around the lives of some fictional local musicians in Cleveland. He wanted me to come up with some music for the film. But the script sat on my writing table until one day I was singing a new song I was writing called "Vietnam." I looked over and sang off the top of Paul's cover page, "I was born in the U. S. A." I had cut the song for Nebraska but didn't use it. Six months later I cut it with the band and that version became the title song for my next record. (I later gave Paul a song called "Light of Day," and the film was released under that title.)
The sound of "Born in the U. S. A." was martial, modal, and straight ahead. The lyrics dealt with the problems Vietnam vets faced when they came back home after fighting in the "only war that America had ever lost." In order to understand the song's intent, you needed to invest a certain amount of time and effort to absorb both the music and the words. But that's not the way a lot of people use pop music. For most, music is primarily an emotional language; whatever you've written lyrically almost always comes in second to what the listener is feeling. Should form follow lyrical content? I had tow experiences that illustrate how this works in the real world.
The first gut I played the finished version of "Born in the U. S. A." for was Bobby Muller, a veteran and the president of the Vietnam Veterans of America. He came into the studio and sat between two large speakers at the front of the console. I turned up the volume. He sat there for a moment listening to the first couple of verses, and then a big smile crossed his face.
Also, for years after the release of the album, at Halloween, I had little kids in red bandanas knocking at my door with their trick-or-treat bags singing, "I was born in the U. S. A." They were not particularly well-versed in the "Had a brother at Khe Sahn ..." lyric. But they all had plenty of lung power when the chorus rolled around. I guess the same fate awaited Woodie Guthrie's "This Land Is Your Land" around the campfire. But that didn't make me feel any better.
A songwriter writes to be understood. Is the way you choose to present your music its politics? Is the sound and form your song takes its content? Coming off Nebraska, I'd just done it both ways. On one hand, I learned a lesson about how pop and pop image is perceived. On the other hand, I wouldn't have made either of those records differently. Over the years I've had an opportunity to reinterpret "Born in the U. S. A." many times in concert. Particularly on the Tom Joad tour, I had a version that could not be misconstrued. But those interpretations always stood in relief to the original and gained some of their new power from the audience's previous experience with the original version. On the album, "Born in the U. S. A." was in its most powerful presentation. If I tried to undercut or change the music, I believe I would have had a record that might have been more easily understood , but not as good.
Unlike "Born to Run," which set the mark and feel for the other songs that would make up the album by the same name, "Born in the U. S. A." more or less stood by itself. The rest of the album contains a group of songs about which I've always had some ambivalence.
This record was to follow Nebraska, which contained what I thought to have been a collection of some of my strongest songs. I wanted to take that record and electrify it. The framework of that idea can be found on Born in the U. S. A. with the title song and "My Hometown." But it really didn't flesh out like I had hoped it would.
Many of the songs on the album evolved out of earlier ideas I'd had for Nebraska. "Born in the U. S. A." and some part of "Downbound Train" came out of Nebraska. The original title for "Working on the Highway" was "Child Bride," also a song I'd written for Nebraska.
The rest of the songs I wrote trying to finish the album. "I'm on Fire" came to me one night in the studio when I was just goofing around with a Johnny Cash and the Tennessee Three rhythm. "My Hometown" was based on childhood memories of driving down Main Street on my dad's lap, the closing of a local mill, and a racial incident that occurred near my house in Freehold during my adolescence.
"No Surrender" was a song I didn't intend to include on the album. But Steve Van Zandt convinced me otherwise. It was a song I was uncomfortable with. You don't hold out and triumph all the time in life. You compromise, you suffer defeat; you slip into life's gray areas. But Steve talked me into putting the song on the album in the eleventh hour. He argued that the portrait of friendship and the song's expression of the inspirational power of rock music was an important part of the picture. I don't know if he was right or not, but it went on.
After Jon Landau suggested we didn't have a single for the album, I wrote "Dancing in the Dark." It went as far in the direction of pop music as I wanted to go--and probably a little farther. "Bobby Jean" was a good song about youthful friendship, and "Glory Days" was right on the money. "Darlington County," originally written for Darkness, was a slice-of-life road song. "Cover Me" I'd originally written for Donna Summer. She could really sing and I disliked the veiled racism of the anti-disco movement. When I cut the demo, it came out so good that I held on to it. I later wrote another song, "Protection," and recorded it with Donna and Quincy Jones in LA.
Many of these songs found themselves in concert with my audience. My heroes, from Hank Williams to Frank Sinarta to Bob Dylan, were popular musicians. They had hits. There was value in trying to connect with a large audience. It was a direct way you affected culture. It let you know how powerful and durable your music might be. But it was also risky and forced you to confront your music's limitations as well as your own.
I put a lot of pressure on myself over a long period of time to reproduce the intensity of Nebraska on Born in the U. S. A. I never got it. But "Born in the U. S. A." is probably one of my five or six best songs, and there was something about the grab-bag nature of the rest of the album that probably made it one of my purest pop records.
Born in the U. S. A. changed my life and gave me my largest audience. It forced me to question the way I presented my music and made me think harder about what I was doing.