"I never wrote in that style again. Once the record was released, I heard all the "new Dylan" comparisons, so I steered away from it. But the lyrics and spirit of Greetings came from a very unselfconscious place. Your early songs come out of a moment when you're writing with no sure prospect of ever being heard. Up until then, it's just you and your music. That only happens once."

Spirit in the Night is another song in which Springteen describes places, people and events that he experienced. A teenage drinking party at "Greasy Lake" is the subject. Over the years it's become a cult tune, and the real-life Greasy Lake has been located by fans. "Hazy Davy" even has his own web page. A major Springsteen tribute site bears the Greasy Lake moniker. In fact, an online-tour of the Jersey shore focuses on "Springsteen history" sites. What needs are fulfilled by the tendency to give into this "field of dreams" syndrome? Apparently, fans feel a need to "experience" what was viewed by Springsteen as something important enough to write and sing about. Elvis fans journey to Graceland. Baseball fans trek to Iowa to visit the cornfield. What would Springsteen think of fans trekking down Route 88 to find the lake? One can only guess, but considering Bruce's 1976 climbing of Graceland's fence at 3 a.m. and his subsequent eviction from the grounds by Presley's security guards, it is safe to surmise that he understands those types of "false intimacies" with cultural icons. Springsteen commented on the incident at a concert a few years later. His thoughts about cutural icons in general, and Elvis in particular, showed a deep-seated recognition of why we climb fences.

"Later on, I used to wonder what I would have said if I had knocked on the door and if Elvis had come to the door. Because it really wasn’t Elvis I was goin’ to see, but it was like he came along and whispered some dream in everybody’s ear and somehow we all dreamed it. And maybe that’s why we’re here tonight, I don’t know. I remember later when a friend of mine called to tell me that he’d died. It was so hard to understand how somebody whose music came in and took away so many people’s loneliness and gave so many people a reason and a sense of all the possibilities of living could have in the end died so tragically. And I guess when you’re alone, you ain’t nothin’ but alone."

Hazy Davey at Greasy Lake

CLICK TO PLAY SONG

Crazy Janey and her mission man
Were back in the alley tradin' hands
'long came Wild Billy with his friend G-man
All duded up for Saturday night
Well Billy slammed on his coaster brakes
And said anybody wanna go on up to Greasy Lake
It's about a mile down on the dark side of route eighty-eight
I got a bottle of rose so let's try it
We'll pick up Hazy Davy and Killer Joe
And I'll take you all out to where the gypsy angels go
They're built like light
and they dance like spirits in the night
(all night) in the night (all night)
Oh, you don't know what they can do to you
Spirits in the night (all night), in the night (all night)
Stand right up now and let it shoot through you

Well now Wild young Billy was a crazy cat
And he shook some dust out of his coonskin cap
He said, "Trust some of this it'll show you where you're at,
Or at least it'll help you really feel it"
By the time we made it up to Greasy Lake
I had my head out the window and Janey's fingers were in the cake
I think I really dug her 'cause I was too loose to fake
I said, "I'm hurt." She said, "Honey let me heal it"
And we danced all night to a soul fairy band
And she kissed me just right like only a lonely angel can
She felt so nice, just as soft as a spirit in the night (all night)
In the night (all night). Janey don't know what she do to you
Like a spirit in the night (all night), in the night (all night)
Stand right up and let her shoot through me.

Now the night was bright and the stars threw light
On Billy and Davy dancin' in the moonlight
They were down near the water in a stone mud fight
Killer Joe gone passed out on the lawn
Well now Hazy Davy got really hurt,
He ran into the lake in just his socks and a shirt
Me and Crazy Janey was makin' love in the dirt
Singin' our birthday songs
Janey said it was time to go
So we closed our eyes and said goodbye to gypsy angel row,
Felt so right
Together we moved like spirits in the night, all night
Baby don't know what they can do to you
Spirits in the night, all night
Stand right up and let it shoot right through you

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West Chester University
History 650
Seminar in 20th Century
American Popular Culture
Dr. Charles Hardy
Fall 2003
Joseph O'Brien