What are we to make of “American Beauty?”
On one hand, it appears to be a musical melange, with a melody lifted from “Frankie Fell in Love…”
…layered on the backing track for “My Lucky Day…”
…with lyrics lifted liberally from “Down in the Hole.”
Even its imagery is drawn from Bruce’s recent musical past: the clicking boot heels from “Livin’ in the Future” make an appearance here, and its album-mate “Gypsy Biker” contributes a recurring “white line” motif.
And then there’s the video for “American Beauty,” a live E Street Band performance filmed in an empty arena before Bruce’s 2014 concert in Charlotte but inexplicably dubbed with the studio recording featuring different musicians. (No live performance audio has ever surfaced.)
All this for a song released on an EP grab-bag of High Hopes outtakes, issued only on a limited vinyl pressing of 7,500 and digitally. If you want to buy it today, you’ll have to choose between paying collector’s prices for the vinyl or accepting the inferior sonics of the mp3 format.
And yet, for a song comprised almost entirely of recycled parts….
There’s something there.
“American Beauty” may have been a High Hopes outtake, but Bruce is on record citing the song as hailing from his time working with Brendan O’Brien, and it shows.
“American Beauty” sounds and feels like everything Bruce was reaching for on Magic. That album has some wonderful songs that work simultaneously as intimate relationship songs and pointed political commentary. “Your Own Worst Enemy” is probably the best example from that group of multi-faceted songs.
But “American Beauty” takes it even a step further. Listen to (or read) the lyrics closely:
Everything in your shadow turns to vapor
You pierce my heart like it was paper
Radio’s crackling with the headlines
Something on your shoulder, winds in the phone line
American beauty will you be mine
Out on this highway counting white lines
Hot and bloody summer, drifting blue eyes
We’re in the high grass, I finger your hemline
Boot heels click clacking, honey, when you shine
Autumn blue skies, hair sweet as the southern pines
American beauty forever in time
Out on this highway counting white lines
Your hand cups your breast, pledging your time
Things we carried, shining skylines
Falling sparrow, sky torn apart
Dark shining arrow, your kiss pierces my heart
American beauty forever mine
Out on this highway counting white lines
What is the American Beauty that Bruce is singing of?
Is it the natural grandeur of his country’s scenery, experienced from the open road?
Is it metaphorical admiration for its values and ideals?
Or is it his travelling companion that he’s so taken by, to whom he pledges his everlasting fidelity?
“American Beauty” works on all three levels at once–so seamlessly, in fact, that I have all three movies playing in my mind whenever I listen to it. And on all three levels, the are hints that the beauty of America is threatened–never overtly stated, but certainly hinted at through ominous imagery.
“American Beauty” must have been a Magic-era composition. In fact, the song works so meticulously well that one wonders if it’s truly a recycled piece or if it’s instead an original organ donor. Perhaps Bruce wrote it first and then farmed its parts to the Magic, Working on a Dream, and High Hopes songs that bear its DNA.
It must also be said: this song rocks.
Love it or hate it (and it does seem to polarize fans), Bruce’s vocal performance on “American Beauty” ranks among his most distinctive, and the passion and heartache of the narrator drip from every deliberate crack in Bruce’s voice.
And the backing track barrels forward with the power of Bruce’s most ardent anthems. Why Bruce has never performed it in concert boggles my mind.
(It still drives me crazy that the one and only time the band performed it was during a soundcheck in Charlotte on the day it was released. I was standing outside the building with the record in hand at the very moment it was being performed, and I never got to hear a note.)
So come on, Bruce: Bring “American Beauty” to the stage on your next tour. You couldn’t have known it when you wrote it, but it’s more relevant today than ever.
American Beauty
Recorded: early 2013
Released: American Beauty (2014)
First performed: April 19, 2014 (soundcheck only)
Last performed: April 19, 2014 (soundcheck only)
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“American Beauty” is the name of a rose, and Bruce has referred to Patti as “a pretty red rose.”