Bruce Springsteen "Valentine's Day"

I had always thought of this as one of the dire-est sounding Valentine's Day love songs around.

But I saw Springsteen in concert a few years ago, when he was doing the Solo/Arena thing, and he pulled this one out, for a special reason.

He introduced the song (which I remember from my college years), by saying that it contains a reference to his manager, who had called him when his daughter was born. Bruce wanted to play it that night, because the daughter, who was in college in the Providence area, was in the audience. He pointed her out.

The detail of "A friend of mine became a father last night/When we spoke in his voice I could hear the light" seems only ancillary to the larger theme of driving a lonely highway, missing your love.

But to have the actual "detail" sudden materialize in front of me (okay, she was probably SIXTY rows in front of me!), rendered the thing so real.

And it makes me listen to other songs and wonder if the little, throwaway details were the inspiration, instead of the major/central themes.

Is that like love? Where love isn't really about this big Soul-to-Soul connection, but more of an accumulation of inspiring details? Like, as Paul Simon sings, "The way she brushed her hair from her forehead"?


Hear the song on Youtube.