“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
