The National Constitution Center's new Springsteen exhibit, "From Asbury Park to the Promised Land," seems as logical a place as any to ponder such questions. And that was happening Wednesday, as guides well-trained in hashing out the intent of a 225-year-old document debated how to interpret the 12-year-old song "41 Shots" as they prepared for the "Decoding the Lyrics" station.
"It's finding different meanings from their historical context," said Kathleen Maher, a program director at the center who proved a quick study in Springsteen, as she fired tough law-school-type questions at the guides. "Do you think it's a political statement? Is there a racial connotation in this song?"
Wow. Applying a constitutional scholar's rigor to Bruce's decision to leave out the phrase "and she was loose enough to feel" after the "I was to loose to fake" line in a handwritten draft of his song "Spirit in the Night," not to mention his excising of "Cindy" from the "Atlantic City" narrative, in favor of the generic baby, may seem like overkill, but for Springsteen fans, these debates have gone on for years.
Seeing the lyrics in Bruce's funny handwriting (a flourish on every T), his cross-outs and rewrites, the lyrics pouring out in seemingly steady prose as opposed to line by line, makes for a satisfying encounter with Bruce's mind and creative genius.
