a 10 minute long song by Bruce Springsteen from Born To Run (1974)
one of the most epic songs ever written, up there with Lost In The Flood. the album version is great, but the NYC version is just insanely awesome.
Its about love, violence,
drugs, street racing, and the New York ghetto. A truly epic song.
"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 lawman 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 gangs assembled and picked a rendezvous for the night
Theyll meet `neath that giant exxon sign that brings this fair city light
Man theres an opera out on the turnpike
Theres a ballet being fought out in the alley
Until the local cops, cherry tops, rips this holy night
The streets alive as secret debts are paid
Contacts made, they vanished unseen
Kids flash guitars just like switch-blades hustling for the record machine
The hungry and the hunted explode into rocknroll 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 d.j. plays
Lonely-hearted lovers struggle in dark corners
Desperate as the night moves on, just a look and a whisper, and theyre 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 rats 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 streets on fire in a
real death waltz
Between flesh and whats fantasy and the poets down here
Dont 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"
