As I look back on the Bruce Springsteen concert last Thursday, there’s a loved song he didn’t sing. It’s one of my two favourites.
There is such sadness here … racial violence, vacant stores on Main Street, companies closing, young people leaving.
There’s the love of your home. Saying goodbye to all you’ve known. A chapter ending. Years later you remember.
Here are the lyrics:
I was eight years old
And running with a dime in my hand
To the bus stop to pick
Up a paper for my old man
I’d sit on his lap in that big old Buick
And steer as we drove through town
He’d tousle my hair
And say, “Son, take a good look around
This is your hometown
This is your hometown
This is your hometown
This is your hometown”
In ’65 tension was running high
At my high school
There was a lot of fights
Between the black and white
There was nothing you could do
Two cars at a light on a Saturday night
In the back seat there was a gun
Words were passed in a shotgun blast
Troubled times had come
To my hometown
To my hometown
To my hometown
To my hometown
Now Main Street’s whitewashed windows
And vacant stores
Seems like there ain’t nobody
Wants to come down here no more
They’re closing down the textile mill
Across the railroad tracks
Foreman says, “These jobs are going, boys
And they ain’t coming back
To your hometown
To your hometown
To your hometown
To your hometown”
Last night me and Kate we laid in bed
Talking about getting out
Packing up our bags, maybe heading south
I’m thirty-five, we got a boy of our own now
Last night I sat him up behind the wheel
And said, “Son, take a good look around
This is your hometown”
This is your hometown … your hometown
And here is the song, performed by Bruce and the E Street Band in London in 2013. Especially listen to the last minute, to the audience joining in.
I wonder what was in the heart of each person who sang along
Bruce's Blog 