Springsteen Nashville Countdown Day 17: “Glory Days”
It’s the summer of 1985 and I’m about to enter 6th grade and middle school in Bettendorf, Iowa. I got my first 10-speed bicycle that spring and within days managed to fall off it and break my left wrist, sidelining myself for the first month of summer. When the cast was removed, a neighbor friend and fellow classmate, Danny, invited me to travel to Minnesota to visit his grandparents.
I remember a shocking amount about that trip. I nearly overdosed on Reese’s Pieces. We made snacks by heating tortillas and topping them with cheese, pizza sauce, and pepperoni and thought we were experiencing high dining. It was also the dawn of my pending teenage rebellion. A week away from my parents’ watchful eye, staying in homes with unrestricted access to cable TV meant watching an ungodly amount of MTV.
There are four songs and four videos that will be forever linked to that summer vacation from school and home: Dire Straits’ “Money For Nothing,” Tears for Fears’ “Shout,” Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers’ “Don’t Come Around Here No More,” and “Glory Days” by Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band.
I’ll never forget cracking up at the daft facial expressions Little Steve Van Zandt made every time he came to the microphone to sing some backing vocals. That video was in heavy rotation back when there was such a thing on MTV and as the hours rolled by, we’d watch that video and laugh right along with it.
I didn’t know then that a memory like that is almost what Bruce is talking about in that song. Danny moved out of neighborhood not long after that trip, although we went to the same school. As we grew older we grew apart until one day the friendship was over. Not long after that, he moved out of the state (Arizona, I think someone told me) and I never saw him again. There are days I wish I could bump into him to bring the “Glory Days” moment full circle. Even without it, at 34 I’m now old enough to appreciate that song beyond it’s great riff, great hook, and the goofiness that is Little Steve.
Filed under: Bruce Springsteen, Nashville Coundown
yeah, what is that? you hope you won’t sit around thinkin’ about it…but you probably will.
true enough.
i was just out of college. new job new wife. new appartment…life was great.
second memory: Bruce playing on the last nbc letterman show…finishes with Glory Days. a barnburning rendition, but my how things had changed…marriage gone to hell, etc. etc. …
love the video for this.
It’s true… you do sit around and think about it. That ratio gets more and more out of whack each day.
It’s a classic ’80s video. I still crack up when I watch it.
I have the version of this song that closed out Letterman’s last ‘Late Night,’ and it is too much fun, with the World’s Most Dangerous Band throwing in a little of ‘Louie Louie’ at the end for good measure.
Was ‘Louie Louie’ the first punk song? Of was it ‘Mony Mony?’ Or ‘My Generation?’
All this and more on the next ‘Donahue.’
Punk is an area I only dabble in so I don’t feel remotely qualified to answer the question. Saleski’s old. Maybe he remembers!
First punk song: Beatles version of “Long Tall Sally,” Live! at the Star Club, Hamburg, Germany, 1962.