Gypsy Biker/Shut Out the Light comparison

I found this comparision of two of my favorite Springsteen songs, Gypsy Biker and Shut Out the Light. I liked the article, so... SWIPE!

For nearly 35 years Bruce Springsteen has been singing about the American working class, in his anthems of hope and redemption. Throughout his long and successful career, he has become not only one of popular music's most celebrated figures, but an American icon. As a songwriter, Springsteen is among Rock music's finest, a master storyteller whose songs often carry a political message that is not always obvious at first listen, but over time tends to seep in to the listener's conscience. Springsteen's latest release, 2007's Magic continues in this tradition, most notably with the sepia toned rocker Gypsy Biker, a song that in many ways can be viewed as an alternate take on the story Springsteen tells in his 1983 ballad Shut Out The Light. Though written nearly 25 years apart from one another, the two songs tell a chillingly similar story based around the same theme, though their structures and production are hardly alike. By the early 1980s, America had watched the aftermath of the Vietnam war bleed into their culture. The reality of the day began to take shape; after Vietnam, the U.S. would never again be the land of redemption for all of its people. As an artist who had made his name on the hopes and dreams of his country, this affected Springsteen not only on a personal level, but an artistic one as well. But like any great artist would, Springsteen took this harsh reality in stride and integrated it into his songs, where it would become an integral part of the work he would release in the following years. Shut Out The Light deals with the story of "a Vietnam veteran struggling to adjust to post-war life" (Graff, 46) through Johnson Leneir, a soldier returning home from war, and feeling completely adrift from reality. Fast forward twenty-four years, and Springsteen is still at it, with the War in Iraq nearly five years old, and most of the world still unsure as to why it began in the first place, Springsteen has found himself revisiting many of the themes he explored in the early 1980's. On the surface, Gypsy Biker appears to be a celebratory song, a welcome home to a relative who has been away. Upon closer examination, we find that it is actually a song of mourning, telling the story of a modern day soldier coming home from war, only this time lifeless, and in a casket. Above all, what Gypsy Biker shares with its 1980s' predecessor, is the subject matter that it is drawn from, the fact that the war America is fighting today often seems no different than the one that stole America's innocence in the 1960's. While the wars that these stories are drawn from may be the most obvious similarities between the two songs, the message they convey through their characters remains remarkably similar as well. Though the story of Gypsy Biker deals with a town's reaction to the death of one of its young men at war, the frustration felt by its characters is somewhat reminiscent of the sense of loss and confusion embodied within Johnson Lineir upon his return to his home town in Shut Out The Light. What makes Shut Out The Light so effective is the sense of aloneness Lineir seems trapped in throughout the song. The narrator's account of him entering a local bar where he "bought a drink and found a seat in the corner in the dark", accentuates to the listener that what may have originally appeared as solitude, is actually a feeling of extreme isolation. Similarly, in Gypsy Biker the fallen soldier's brother narrates a story that projects his grief and mourning. Though the song contains many characters, the lyric "Ain't nobody talkin', 'cause everybody knows, our gypsy biker's comin' home" confirms that though the characters may not be physically alone, their reaction to tragedy is much like that of Lineir's in Shut Out The Light. Just as Lineir had to struggle to get the courage to return home and no longer be alone in the physical sense, Gypsy Biker illustrates a family's struggle to find connection between one another in a time of pain. While the songs’ characters hold many similarities, there is an element far more obvious that makes for a unique link between these two tracks. That link is the repetition in Gypsy Biker of a line used in Shut Out The Light. In celebration of Johnson Lineir’s return, Springsteen sings “Bobby pulled your Ford out of the garage and polished up the chrome”. In Shut Out The Light, this line indicates what should be a happy moment for the pain stricken veteran, the sight of his beloved car being a symbol of the life his loved ones had been waiting for him to return to. However, when Springsteen sings “We pulled your cycle out of the garage and polished up the chrome” in Gypsy Biker, the line takes on a whole new meaning. What represented an act of celebration and kindness in Shut Out The Light is turned into a sad memorial for a fallen loved one. While Lineir’s Ford represented the life of freedoms he was expected to return to, the Gypsy Biker’s motorcycle stands as merely a piece of a man’s memory, being polished up in tribute to his life. These contrasting vantage points work as a haunting reminder of the harsh reality a country at war. Though the songs share many similarities thematically, their contrasting song structures are what set them apart from one another. While both songs are written in a narrative, folk influenced style, the major contrariety between the two songs' structures is the lack of a chorus in Gypsy Biker. To a first time listener, the haunting chorus of Shut Out The Light acts as a net to pull the audience further into the song. "Mama come quick, I've got the shakes and I'm gonna be sick" sings Springsteen, "Throw your arms around me in the cold dark night, Hey now Mama don't shut out the light". When this gripping chorus makes its first appearance at the one minute mark of the song, any listener who was unsure of whether or not the story was about to become a happy one, gets a wake up call. The painful ambience grows with every return to the chorus, becoming more and more powerful each time. In contrast, Gypsy Biker's lack of a hook as poignant as the one found in Shut Out The Light results in a tone less easily defined. Though the refrain "Our gypsy biker's comin' home" repeats at the end of each verse, it's repetition is much less insightful towards the song's theme than that of the chorus in Shut Out The Light. As a result, in combination with Springsteen's gritty, near mumbled vocal stylings, Gypsy Biker must be listened to far more carefully than Shut Out The Light in order to understand the full picture being created by the artist. Nevertheless, song structure is not the only major difference between the two songs; their contrasting styles of production push them towards two different genres of music all together. The dark lyrics of Shut Out The Light are accompanied by a stark arrangement "built on simple chord changes" (Sawyers, 212) played on acoustic guitars that transcribe the dark aura of the song's story into musical form. With this approach, Springsteen successfully recreates the sombre tone he mastered on 1982's critically acclaimed Nebraska, where his minimalistic approach to production complimented the message of his songs. The lack of major production on Shut Out The Light not only helps to create a mood that compliments the rest of the song, but it allows the listener to easily hear every word the singer sings, pulling the listener in with every syllable. On the contrary, Gypsy Biker takes the exact opposite approach. While Shut Out The Light recalls Folk music of the 1930's, Gypsy Biker is hard driving Rock and Roll sung by an artist on a mission. Backed by the mighty E Street Band, the song explodes into a guitar driven fury after the first verse, with Max Weinberg's drums plowing like a steam engine behind a lyric that fills the listener with a yearning for revenge. The intensity of lines like "To the dead it don't matter much, 'bout who's wrong or right" are matched by dueling guitar solos from Springsteen and Steven Van Zandt that are just as gripping as the hushed acoustics in Shut Out The Light. Though they may be polar opposites in the Springsteen canon as far as production goes, these two songs create their own unique intensity by using two completely different approaches. In conclusion, Shut Out The Light and Gypsy Biker are both similar and contrary at once. Though their story lines and characters share much in common, their production and structure are hardly related. As equally chilling tales of loss, anger and frustration, what makes these songs so remarkable is the artist. It has become rather rare in today's music scene to find an artist 35 years in to his career as a singer-songwriter that can still write lyrics as moving as he did 25 years earlier, while managing to taking a new approach to performance and production. Then again, if you look closely, Bruce Springsteen has been evolving artistically since the inception of his career, it should be no surprise that he is continuing to do so today.