On Friday, Bruce Springsteen showed up at U2’s concert at Madison Square Garden to help out the band with “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For.” Then, they followed that up with a version of Ben E. King’s classic, “Stand By Me.”
The show was the final night of U2’s eight-show run at the Garden as part of their Innocence and Experience Tour, which will begin its second leg in Europe. So far, U2 has welcomed a number of guests on this tour, including Lady Gaga and Jimmy Fallon and the Roots. Below, check out Bono and Springsteen performing two great rock songs.
Reportedly, the power of the Boss and Bono were enough to get everyone to stand in the audience, including Bill and Hillary Clinton.
The Nebraska unicameral legislature in 2015 voted to abolish the death penalty, following a number of states that have come to realize that capital punishment is ineffective and a waste of resources. Although Governor Pete Ricketts vetoed the action, the legislature overrode his veto, making Nebraska the eighteenth state (in addition to the District of Columbia) that does not sentence human beings to death. According to a recent book on the history of the death penalty, states that have stopped sentencing people to death in recent years also include Connecticut, Illinois, New Jersey, New Mexico, New York, and Maryland.
One of the great songs about the death penalty is Bruce Springsteen’s “Nebraska,” which Springsteen based on Terrence Malick’s movie Badlands. And that movie was loosely based on the real-life case involving Charles Starkweather and Caril Ann Fugate.
The song, in the voice of the condemned, offers no straightforward judgement on the death penalty. Springsteen would address the topic again years later in his song “Dead Man Walking.”
But by taking the voice of the condemned man in “Nebraska,” Springsteen challenges the listener to find some humanity in the narrator. By the time the singer/condemned tries to explain why he did the horrific things he did, all he can come up with is “I guess there is just a meanness in this world.” Taken on its face, one might find little sympathy for the killer. But the way Springsteen sings the words, you believe that the condemned is not a personification of evil. Instead, he comes across as someone unable to understand the world because he has been on the other end of that meanness his whole life too.
Thus, it is not surprising that in the real world, Bruce Springsteen is opposed to capital punishment. Below, following an introduction about how the album Nebraska focuses on the downtrodden, Springsteen performs the song “Nebraska” on a 12-string guitar with harmonica from a benefit show in Los Angeles in November 1990.
The real Starkweather grew up with a birth defect and a speech impediment, and he was a slow learner. Nebraska executed Charles Starkweather in the electric chair, just like in Springsteen’s song. Starkweather died on June 25, 1959 at the age of 20.
The young teenaged girl who went with him on the murder spree did not die in his lap. She was eventually paroled in 1976 and lives in Michigan, which is the first state in the United States to abolish capital punishment.
Starting in the early 1980s, I haunted the used record stores of Cleveland searching for any music related to Bruce Springsteen. At the time, the Boss had released only a handful of albums, and it seemed like forever between new releases. So, I soon discovered bootlegs with their unusual titles and cheap cover art on the outside and hidden gems inside.
An Accidental Discovery
On one occasion, I found a full-sized 45-rpm album with only two songs on it. The record said it was by “Bruce Springstone” and was titled “Live at Bedrock.” But I figured it was a clever bootleg. I took the 12-inch single home and listened to the first song on side one, “Bedrock Rap/Meet the Flintstones.”
It was definitely in the spirit of Bruce Springsteen. It had a chatty introduction like the ones I had heard on the bootlegs. And there was the saxophone playing a big part just like it was Clarence Clemons. Plus, the wailing at the end was all “Backstreets.” Yet, I soon realized the voice was not actually Springsteen. But I still loved it.
Then I flipped it over to listen to “Take Me Out to the Ballgame.” I liked it even better than the A side.
Who Was Bruce Springstone?
In those days, we did not have the Internet to answer every question we had. So it would be years before I found out more about Bruce Springstone.
The record, which was released in September 1982, featured Tom Chalkley. He was a Baltimore journalist and editorial cartoonist who also drew the picture on the back of the record showing “Springstone” sliding into home plate carrying his guitar.
The idea for the record came when Chalkley and some childhood friends were playing music at a party and began goofing on Bruce Springsteen’s style. So Chalkley and his friend Craig Hankin arranged the music and released the 12-inch single with Chalkley singing and Hankin playing rhythm guitar on “Meet the Flintstones.”
“Take Me Out to the Ballgame”
Chalkley and Hankin needed a B-side for their Flintstones cover song. So, Chalkley found inspiration when he saw the 1927 lyrics for the verses to”Take Me Out to the Ballgame” on sheet music in a store. He thought that the name Nelly Kelly sounded just like a Springsteen heroine (a 1908 version featured the name Katie Casey).
So, using the little-known verse lyrics to “Take Me Out to the Ballgame,” they made the record. Among others, rock guitarist Tommy Keene played lead guitar and Ron Holloway filled in for Clarence Clemons’s saxophone
In case you are just used to hearing the chorus of the song, here is how the opening Nelly Kelly verse to “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” sounded when sung by Gene Kelly and Frank Sinatra in the movie Take Me Out to the Ballgame(1949).
Response to the Bruce Springstone Record
The album was originally released by Clean Cuts, a local jazz label, but today it is still in print by Rhino. At the time of the record’s release, Bruce Springstone’s version of “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” and “Meet the Flintstones” received airplay on various radio stations. Reportedly, Bruce Springsteen sent Chalkley a postcard complimenting his work.
Springstone’s “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” was even featured in the 1995-96 Guinness Book of Sports Records for Longest Continuous Airplay of a Sports-Related Song. It was played more than 57,000 times straight.
Hanna-Barbara approved the use of “Meet the Flintstones.” But the company complained when MTV was going to show a video that Chalkley and Hanklin made.
Chalkley did write some other songs in the Springsteen style like one called “Ugga Bugga” (excerpt below), but Bruce Springstone never released another album.
People remain curious about Bruce Springstone, so much so that a few years ago Chalkley launched a Kickstarter campaign with Craig Hankin to raise money to create a graphic comic book about the record. Or, as they describe it, the book is about “the bonds of friendship, creativity, youthful ambition and, of course, the staying power of a well-crafted novelty hit.” The book will be called, If I’d Known Back Then: A Graphic Memoir.
Chalkley and Hankin, who taught drawing and painting at the Center for Visual Arts at Johns Hopkins University from 1980-2018. received the money they needed from the Kickstarter campaign to create the book. So it is too late to pitch in now. The book is not out yet. [2024 Update: It appears the book has yet to be released, but Chalkley’s website seems to still list the book as a work in progress, although with a new name, Novelty Record.]
Meanwhile, Chalkley and Hankin continue to make music. Here, in 2015 they created a video for their 1979 song “Jackie” for the Small Guitar in Motion Project.
But their legacy will always be as Bruce Springstone for me. Who would have guessed that thirty years after its release, we would still be talking about this parody record I purchased by accident? Which song by Bruce Springstone do you like best? Leave your two cents in the comments.
Bruce Springsteen remains one of the great living artists who connects us to early rock and roll. Perhaps as part of that connection, he is the artist most likely to sing the classic rock lyrics “sha-la-la.” The lyrics have appeared in several of his performances and recordings.
“Brown-Eyed Girl” Cover
In one example from a recent tour, Springsteen sang the line while covering Van Morrison’s classic “Brown-Eyed Girl” on April 19, 2014 in Charlotte, North Carolina: “Do you remember when we used to sing / Sha la la la la la la la la la la dee dah.”
“Darlington County” and “Jersey Girl”
The two “sha-la-la” songs most identified with Springsteen, though, are “Darlington County” and “Jersey Girl.” “Darlington County” first appeared on Born in the U.S.A. (1984), recounting the travels of the singer and “Wayne” heading down South from New York City to meet some girls. “We got rock and roll music blasting off the T-top singing / Sha la la la la la la la la.”
Below is a swinging performance of “Darlington County” in London in 2013. Although the original version highlighted Springsteen’s harmonies with Steven Van Zandt, when the band plays live, everyone sings on the “sha-la-la’s.”
Although California-born Tom Waits wrote “Jersey Girl,” fans also identify Springsteen with the song from his many performances and from his close connection to New Jersey. Springsteen began performing the song during The River tour in 1981, and it appeared as a B-side to Born in the U.S.A.‘s “Cover Me.” “Jersey Girl” finally appeared on an official Springsteen album when a live version closed the box set Live: 1975-85 (1986).
In “Jersey Girl,” the singer tells us he is in love with a girl from New Jersey. It is a touching song, tinged with real-life hope and regret. The singer pleads with a single mother who is exhausted from her job, asking that she go dancing on a Saturday night where everything will be all right.
And then, apparently, they will “Sha-la-la. . .” because the singer is “in love with a Jersey girl.” As in “Brown-Eyed Girl,” one might read the “Sha-la-la’s” as rock and roll talk for sexual relations. Below is an October 2009 performance at Giants Stadium . . . in New Jersey, of course.
“Breakaway”
Springsteen used “sha-la-la” in at least one other original song besides “Darlington County.” The phrase appearing in background vocals for his song “Breakaway.”
“Breakaway” was recorded during Springsteen’s 1977-’78 recording sessions around the time of Darkness on the Edge of Town. But these sha-la-la’s did not see official release until Springsteen put together leftover songs from those sessions for the 2010 release The Promise.
Unlike the other sha-la-la’s in other songs in this post, the sha-la-la’s in “Breakaway” appear in the background, not up front in a chorus. Also, “Breakaway” is one of the rare times where “sha-la-la” does not have any sexual or love connotations.
In “Breakaway,” the “sha-la-la” phrase fills in the spaces in a song about broken dreams. Arguably, the phrase fills in for another topic we do not like to talk about: death. “Janie slid into a car last night (sha la la la, sha la la la) / In a parking lot she gave her soul away . . . .”
“Jole Blon”
On a much happier note, one of my favorite “sha-la-la” songs resulted when Springsteen joined Gary U.S. Bonds on a modern version of the Cajun classic “Jole Blon” on Bonds’s 1981 album Dedication. Among other things, Springsteen contributed some “sha la la’s.”
Here is a 2012 performance where the two men teamed up on stage at Metlife Stadium in New Jersey singing a great duet on “Jole Blon” from an excellent album. Again, it is a love song and the “sha-la-la’s” help fill in the blanks.
“Sha La La”
Finally, if “sha-la-la” is good enough for a chorus, it is good enough for a name of a song. In 1964, The Shirelles recorded a song called “Sha La La” that may have given Springsteen his first love of the “sha-la-la” phrase, even though a more famous song by The Shirelles, “Baby It’s You,” also used the phrase.
Springsteen recently performed The Shirelles’ “Sha La La” in 2009 during the Working on a Dream tour. But prior to that, all of his other known performances of the song occurred in 1975.
Below is a live version of “Sha La La” Springsteen sang by request in 2009. Again, you can figure out what “sha-la-la” means: “When I kissed you and I held you tight / Baby, you made me feel alright / So this is the song that I sang all night / Sha-la-la-la-la-la-la.”
What Sha-la-la Song Should Springsteen Sing Next?
With these six songs, four of which appear on official recordings, Bruce Springsteen may be the living artist most likely to “sha-la-la” in song. It has been awhile, though, since he has recorded a “sha-la-la” song. Let us suggest “Let’s Live for Today” (“Sha-la-la-la-la-la, live for today”) by the Grass Roots, which Springsteen apparently is yet to sing. Maybe it is time for another new sha-la-la.
Is there a “sha-la-la” Springsteen song we missed? What is your favorite Springsteen “sha-la-la”? Leave your two cents in the comments.
In the video below, Bruce Springsteen sings “Valentine’s Day,” the closing song on his Tunnel of Love album. The song captures an underlying fear of any relationship, the fear of loss (“What scares me is losin’ you”). It’s one of the saddest songs about someone in a happy relationship.
But sometimes thinking about the fear of loss can make you appreciate the value of what you have. Check it out.
The performance is from October 15, 2005 in Madison, Wisconsin. Happy Valentine’s Day.
Photo of love birds by Chimesfreedom. What is your favorite Valentine’s Day song? Leave your two cents in the comments.
The Nebraska unicameral legislature in 2015 voted to abolish the death penalty, following a number of states that have come to realize that capital punishment is ineffective and a waste of resources. Although Governor Pete Ricketts vetoed the action, the legislature overrode his veto, making Nebraska the eighteenth state (in addition to the District of Columbia) that does not sentence human beings to death. According to 
states that have stopped sentencing people to death in recent years also include Connecticut, 
(1986).
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. Among other things, Springsteen contributed some “sha la la’s.”
