kevineruby on Nostr: Here’s my latest essay on Springsteen’s album Nebraska. It’s about track six, ...
Here’s my latest essay on Springsteen’s album Nebraska. It’s about track six, “State Trooper.”
If you listen to Nebraska through some kind of streaming service or even on a CD, the album’s tracks just flow sequentially, one after another. At the time the album was released in 1982, however, the predominant forms of musical media were still vinyl LPs and cassette tapes, both of which had to be flipped over at a certain point in the course of playing. This structural feature afforded compositionally-minded artists something of a brief intermission.
For his part, Springsteen often uses this interlude as a kind of pivot point in constructing his albums. On Born to Run, for example, each side of the record begins with a hopeful, yearning number (“Thunder Road” and “Born to Run”) and ends with a song of regret or even death (“Backstreets,” “Jungleland”). Darkness on the Edge of Town follows a similar trajectory: on side one, the defiance of “Badlands” leads to the pattern recognition of “Racing in the Street,” while the Promised Land that kicks off side two turns out to be a spot out ‘neath Abrams Bridge.
Nebraska is no exception. “State Trooper” closes side one of the record, and Springsteen’s intentionality in arranging the album is even more apparent in the slightly awkward 6/4 split between the album’s ten total songs. Why avoid dividing Nebraska into balanced halves of five and five if not to highlight a turning point of some kind?
And a turning point “State Trooper” is, in the way that rock bottom is a turning point for people that survive it. If “Nebraska” invited us into Charles Starkweather’s reflective mind as he sat in custody awaiting execution, “State Trooper” puts the listener in the passenger seat of a stolen car with a criminal who hasn’t yet been caught. It’s immediate, creepy, and it sounds like the narrator’s mind is being wiped clean of any texture of right and wrong in front of us.
There are several lyrics in “State Trooper” that reflect and even quote verbatim bits of “Open All Night,” which is track 8 on Nebraska. It’s important to the long arc of the album that “State Trooper” presents these phrases first and that it does so in the context of a man spiraling out of control. When we get to “Open All Night” we’ll see how, true to form, Springsteen redeems his own words and presumably the narrator of “State Trooper” too. For now, though, this guy is adrift, alone and on his way down.
A couple things to look into if you’re intrigued by “State Trooper:” there’s plenty to read out there about the rockabilly drone of the guitar in this song and how it sounds like the highway under a car’s wheels in the middle of the night. There are a few Rolling Stone articles on Bruce that make it clear the band Suicide directly influenced “State Trooper.” And there’s a French/Belgian movie called Rust and Bone that features it during a silent fight montage to great effect. I’d recommend looking into all of it if you’re interested. “State Trooper” is one of those tracks people remember after their first listen to Nebraska, even more so than “Atlantic City,” which they’ve probably heard before.
Mostly, though, what I’d like to submit about “State Trooper” is that it’s the absolute bottom, the hallucinatory low point of an album that, as we’ll continue to see, represents a trip to the depths of the human psyche and back. Springsteen has spoken about how the process of writing Nebraska coincided with his first major experience with depression. Those shouts that come in at the end of “State Trooper” are the sounds of a man trying to make sure he’s still real, that his voice can still be heard by others, and it’s unclear if that man is a character or Bruce himself.
New Jersey turnpike/Riding on a wet night
‘Neath the refinery glow/out where the great black rivers flow
License registration/I ain’t got none
But I got a clear conscience/bout the things that I’ve done
Mister state trooper/please don’t stop me/please don’t stop me/please don’t stop me
Maybe you got a kid/Maybe you got a pretty wife
The only thing that I’ve got/Been bothering me my whole life
Mister state trooper/please don’t stop me/please don’t stop me/please don’t stop me
In the wee wee hours/your mind gets hazy
Radio relay towers/gonna lead me to my baby
Radio’s jammed up/with talk show stations
It’s just talk talk talk talk/till you lose your patience
Mister state trooper/please don’t stop me
Hey somebody out there/listen to my last prayer
High ho silver-o/deliver me from nowhere
If you listen to Nebraska through some kind of streaming service or even on a CD, the album’s tracks just flow sequentially, one after another. At the time the album was released in 1982, however, the predominant forms of musical media were still vinyl LPs and cassette tapes, both of which had to be flipped over at a certain point in the course of playing. This structural feature afforded compositionally-minded artists something of a brief intermission.
For his part, Springsteen often uses this interlude as a kind of pivot point in constructing his albums. On Born to Run, for example, each side of the record begins with a hopeful, yearning number (“Thunder Road” and “Born to Run”) and ends with a song of regret or even death (“Backstreets,” “Jungleland”). Darkness on the Edge of Town follows a similar trajectory: on side one, the defiance of “Badlands” leads to the pattern recognition of “Racing in the Street,” while the Promised Land that kicks off side two turns out to be a spot out ‘neath Abrams Bridge.
Nebraska is no exception. “State Trooper” closes side one of the record, and Springsteen’s intentionality in arranging the album is even more apparent in the slightly awkward 6/4 split between the album’s ten total songs. Why avoid dividing Nebraska into balanced halves of five and five if not to highlight a turning point of some kind?
And a turning point “State Trooper” is, in the way that rock bottom is a turning point for people that survive it. If “Nebraska” invited us into Charles Starkweather’s reflective mind as he sat in custody awaiting execution, “State Trooper” puts the listener in the passenger seat of a stolen car with a criminal who hasn’t yet been caught. It’s immediate, creepy, and it sounds like the narrator’s mind is being wiped clean of any texture of right and wrong in front of us.
There are several lyrics in “State Trooper” that reflect and even quote verbatim bits of “Open All Night,” which is track 8 on Nebraska. It’s important to the long arc of the album that “State Trooper” presents these phrases first and that it does so in the context of a man spiraling out of control. When we get to “Open All Night” we’ll see how, true to form, Springsteen redeems his own words and presumably the narrator of “State Trooper” too. For now, though, this guy is adrift, alone and on his way down.
A couple things to look into if you’re intrigued by “State Trooper:” there’s plenty to read out there about the rockabilly drone of the guitar in this song and how it sounds like the highway under a car’s wheels in the middle of the night. There are a few Rolling Stone articles on Bruce that make it clear the band Suicide directly influenced “State Trooper.” And there’s a French/Belgian movie called Rust and Bone that features it during a silent fight montage to great effect. I’d recommend looking into all of it if you’re interested. “State Trooper” is one of those tracks people remember after their first listen to Nebraska, even more so than “Atlantic City,” which they’ve probably heard before.
Mostly, though, what I’d like to submit about “State Trooper” is that it’s the absolute bottom, the hallucinatory low point of an album that, as we’ll continue to see, represents a trip to the depths of the human psyche and back. Springsteen has spoken about how the process of writing Nebraska coincided with his first major experience with depression. Those shouts that come in at the end of “State Trooper” are the sounds of a man trying to make sure he’s still real, that his voice can still be heard by others, and it’s unclear if that man is a character or Bruce himself.
New Jersey turnpike/Riding on a wet night
‘Neath the refinery glow/out where the great black rivers flow
License registration/I ain’t got none
But I got a clear conscience/bout the things that I’ve done
Mister state trooper/please don’t stop me/please don’t stop me/please don’t stop me
Maybe you got a kid/Maybe you got a pretty wife
The only thing that I’ve got/Been bothering me my whole life
Mister state trooper/please don’t stop me/please don’t stop me/please don’t stop me
In the wee wee hours/your mind gets hazy
Radio relay towers/gonna lead me to my baby
Radio’s jammed up/with talk show stations
It’s just talk talk talk talk/till you lose your patience
Mister state trooper/please don’t stop me
Hey somebody out there/listen to my last prayer
High ho silver-o/deliver me from nowhere