Bruce Springsteen – Tunnel Of Love

I don't think you'll find too many people that will say that this is their favorite Bruce Springsteen album, but I'm one of them. Sure, he has better singles to be found on other earlier albums, and it's tough to beat Nebraska (my second fave) but as far as a firmly built altogether cohesive album, Tunnel Of Love holds up as my favorite. This Canadian pressing sounds great on my system, too. Stand out tracks for me are Ain't got you, Tougher than the rest, Tunnel of love, and Brilliant Disguise.

Somehow this album touched a wrong nerve for me when it came out ... I can think of a couple of reasons, some more valid than the next, but here goes. I was riding shotgun with Bruce from day one, I’d seen him before Greetings From Asbury Park was released, I was a full fledged member with the release of The Wild, the Innocent, and proudly tattooed with Born to Run. I was hard core, I had seen him with fewer than two hundred people in the room and never at an event larger than five thousand ... I knew the words to all the songs, had the air guitar nuances down pat, and could grunt out a ‘HUH’ at just the right moment.

But there was something lacking in the Darkness album, the same with The River, and with Nebraska I had never felt so let down. Of course things picked up with Born in the U.S.A., but the idea that Bruce belonged to me was long gone, millions had ed the fold, and I quietly watched my tattoo fade. With all of this disappointment, with all my longing for something similar to what had excited me with his first three releases, I was missing where he was headed ... and that I will freely it was a sad misjudgment on my part. Tunnel of Love is sensitive, sentimental, and deeply touching. But more, Bruce was moving toward reviving the core essence of traditional blues, reworked to suit his style and needs, deny it as much as I wanted to, the thread was there nonetheless ... just listen to the opening track “Ain’t Got You,” which is followed by “Tougher Than The Rest,” a knock out number that’s pure Americana. While Bruce presented his songs in the rock format, like the music of The Band or The Grateful Dead, these numbers are real and from the heart ... modern folk and blues songs from a man of our times. “All That Heaven Will Allow,” could have been written seventy years ago, and without the electric guitars would have been as stunning as anything Robert Johnson ever did, and “Spare Parts” goes on to prove it.

So today, nearly thirty years later, I’m going to say that this is an amazing album, one that will stand the test of time. Without a doubt, it’s a taste of sweet water in the desert, the wind in my hair, and a gas gauge that perpetually reads full. Bruce stepped from behind the mask that was behind the mask here, delivering an album for himself and those his age who were going through the same thing at the same time in their American lives, second marriages, divorce, children, aging parents and the realization that we had not turned out to be the people we imagined we would be in high school, that real life was somehow much different, that he [and we] needed to face these facts head-on before we would be able to more on, making the best of the years we had left, learning to smile, feeling comfortable letting our guard down, know that we were going to get hurt again, yet with the right skills [and Bruce was going through daily analysis] we could own who we are, dance on the beach again and be comfortable in our own skin ... a bit older for sure, but wiser, and that makes all the difference in the world.

Review by Jenell Kesler