Darkness Revisited

Lately I have been listening to Bruce Springsteen’s Darkness on the Edge of Town album a lot, partially because I haven’t in a long time, and partially in preparation for its upcoming re-issue. These are songs that have never left his live sets since Bruce first played them over thirty years ago. They have stuck around because they are songs that continue to resonate not only in his own life, but in the lives of his audience. After all, he continues to play them night after night not only because he particularly favors them but because they garner a certain audience response. And rock’n’roll is show business, after all.

What Lies Beneath

I know my grandfather’s name was John Edward Peters and my grandmother married him because he was a good dancer. He liked to party, but he had a dark side too, a side that remains a mystery. He, like many, lost a large fortune after the stock market crash of ’29; he married my grandmother not long after. My grandfather never recovered from the loss, and his black moods and drinking increased until finally my grandmother threw him out; she eventually divorced him when my mother was five or six years old.