"Do You Think This Is a Free Ride?"

Oh I just want to see you smile

Listening to a bootleg of Springsteen's famous July 1978 set at Hollywood's Roxy, I found myself wondering what the lean young killer absolutely assassinating a club audience for three hours would think of the "myth-addled softy" – Joe Strummer's initial assessment of The Boss, according to Greil Marcus – shitting out fridge-magnet poetry like "Working on a Dream", the first single from his upcoming record of the same name. Sure, "Radio Nowhere" wasn't any great shakes, but what it lacked in lyrical precision it made up for in sheer insistence. On the other hand, with lyrics like "I'm working on a dream/ Though it can feel so far away/ I'm working on a dream/ Our love will make it real someday", "Working on a Dream" almost seems like a parody of Bruce the Blue Collar Saint; it's a song that will probably sell more life insurance than rock albums - an end we can no longer put past Springsteen, given the cash grab Wal-Mart-only "best of" destined to hit the monolithic retailer's shelves in time to capitalize on his impending Super Bowl performance. Regrettably, the comp will not include "The River", a fixture on Springsteen's two prior "greatest hits" collections: presumably "The Boss" – new connotation – would not consent to airbrushing the lines "And for my nineteenth birthday, I got a union card and a wedding coat" out of the song.

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The flip side of the coin is Springsteen's live cover of Suicide's gorgeous, elegiac "Dream Baby Dream", recently released on a limited edition 10-inch on Blast First records. On paper, "Dream Baby Dream" makes "Working on a Dream" look like Proust: "They say that dreams they keep you free baby/Yeah you gotta make them dreams come true/Oh keep them dreams burnin' baby/Yeah yeah keep them dreams burnin' forever..." Yet where Springsteen's song sounds on record like a second-hand summation of his career by a third-rate imitator, Suicide's tune is a reinvention, taking what would otherwise seem like an amalgam of tossed-off cliches and investing them with an inarticulate emotional resonance. Suicide's original rendition is a surprisingly tender, if anxious, reading: Elvis coming down off of the speed. Springsteen's advantage as an interpreter is in his richer vocal instrument, which lends the song a sincerity – perhaps credibility is the right word – that elevates "Dream Baby Dream" into that rarified all-or-nothing territory; say what you will about The Boss, but when his losers lose, they lose big. But if Springsteen breathes new life into the song by locating it within the context of his own mythology, Suicide reinvigorates Springsteen by giving him a new dead end to drive to. In "Dream Baby Dream" he finds a new language in which to offer Jersey girls the old empty reassurances while sitting in a car that's forever parked in the darkness on the edge of town.