Born In The U.S.A.

Rocktober 23rd! 

For the month of October, we celebrate Rock Music!

Today our song is: Born In The U.S.A. – Bruce Springsteen

Wikipedia tells us this about the song:

This song was written in 1981 as the title song for a film that Paul Schrader was contemplating making and in which Springsteen was considering starring (Light of Day starring Michael J. Fox). Springsteen thanks Schrader in the liner notes of the album Born in the U.S.A.

Casual home demos were made later that year, following the completion of The River Tour. A more formal solo acoustic guitar demo was made on January 3, 1982, at Springsteen's home in Colts Neck, New Jersey during the long session that constituted most of the Nebraska album released later that year. Acoustic versions of several other songs that eventually appeared on the Born in the U.S.A. album were also on this demo, including "Child Bride" (an early version of "Working on the Highway") and "Downbound Train". However, Springsteen's manager/producer Jon Landau and others felt that the song did not have the right melody or music to match the lyrics, and also did not fit in well with the rest of the nascent Nebraska material. As a result, the song was shelved, although the recording later surfaced in the late 1990s on the Tracks and 18 Tracks outtake collections.

Full E Street Band versions were recorded during the Electric Nebraska sessions, with the Born in the U.S.A. album take 4 completed on April 27, 1982, at Power Station studios. Much of the arrangement was made up on the spot, including Roy Bittan's opening synthesizer riff and what producer Chuck Plotkin nicknamed Max Weinberg's "exploding drums". The famous snare drum sound on this record, notable for its gated reverb, was obtained by engineer Toby Scott running the top snare microphone through a broken reverb plate with a fixed four-second decay and into a Kepex noise gate. This is the version that appeared on the Born in the U.S.A. album, a full two years later. The studio recording also originally ended with a lengthy jam session, which was later edited for the song's commercial release.

Thank you for supporting me during this month-long music fest!