Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band – Jungleland – The Street’s On Fire in a Real Death Waltz

“Jungleland” conveys Springsteen’s Runyonesque Born to Run-era urban aesthetic through his most complicated storytelling and perhaps his most transcendent poetry. He wanted grimy, realistic, lumpenprole art on the order of Last Exit to Brooklyn. As the years pass, it’s becoming clear he achieved it. The story about the Magic Rat and his sleek machine may seem quaint now, almost precious, and sanitized beyond contemporary belief, but in the late 70s, this was urgent mythmaking. This bleak drama was craved and fervidly believed by the (shrinking) numbers of urban-based, Euro-descended, rust-belt born children of blue collar parents, firmly on the way up to better lives and jobs in the then-growing American service economy. Springsteen’s hot rod operas were how 70s bourgeoisie visualized their origins just as fifties kids had looked to horse plays (westerns) for a shared and commonly believed, but not historically accurate, past.

And oh, “Jungleland” sings that song of the concrete jungle more delicately than any of the Boss’s other tunes, even if it’s hard to remember, at this late date, what all the fuss was about. “Jungleland” is still, and will always be, a powerful tune due to its dramatic structure, its incandescent poetry, and that engaging, masterful saxophone solo by Clarence Clemons.

[Many thanks to John Markuson for his expert copy editing on this piece.]

Outside the street’s on fire In a real death waltz Between what’s flesh and what’s fantasy And the poets down here Don’t write nothing at all They just stand back and let it all be And in the quick of the night They reach for their moment And try to make an honest stand But they wind up wounded Not even dead Tonight in Jungleland

Bruce Springsteen – Jungleland

Lyrics:

The Rangers had a homecoming

In Harlem late last night

And the Magic Rat drove his sleek machine

Over the Jersey state line

Barefoot girl sitting on the hood of a Dodge

Drinking warm beer in the soft summer rain

The Rat pulls into town rolls up his pants

Together they take a stab at romance

And disappear down Flamingo Lane

Well the Maximum Lawmen run down Flamingo

Chasing the Rat and the barefoot girl

And the kids round here look just like shadows

Always quiet, holding hands

From the churches to the jails

Tonight all is silence in the world

As we take our stand

Down in Jungleland

The midnight gang’s assembled

And picked a rendezvous for the night

They’ll meet ‘neath that giant Exxon sign

That brings this fair city light

Man there’s an opera out on the Turnpike

There’s a ballet being fought out in the alley

Until the local cops

Cherry Tops

Rips this holy night

The street’s alive

As secret debts are paid

Contacts made, they vanish unseen

Kids flash guitars just like switch-blades

Hustling for the record machine

The hungry and the hunted

Explode into rock’n’roll bands

That face off against each other out in the street

Down in Jungleland

In the parking lot the visionaries

Dress in the latest rage

Inside the backstreet girls are dancing

To the records that the DJ plays

Lonely-hearted lovers

Struggle in dark corners

Desperate as the night moves on

Just one look

And a whisper, and they’re gone

Beneath the city two hearts beat

Soul engines running through a night so tender

In a bedroom locked

In whispers of soft refusal

And then surrender

In the tunnels uptown

The Rat’s own dream guns him down

As shots echo down them hallways in the night

No one watches when the ambulance pulls away

Or as the girl shuts out the bedroom light

Outside the street’s on fire

In a real death waltz

Between what’s flesh and what’s fantasy

And the poets down here

Don’t write nothing at all

They just stand back and let it all be

And in the quick of the night

They reach for their moment

And try to make an honest stand

But they wind up wounded

Not even dead

Tonight in Jungleland