Last month, Bruce Springsteen sat in an armchair on Monmouth University’s auditorium stage and fielded questions, in an “intimate” conversation event with Bob Santelli, Executive Director of the Grammy Museum.
A telling moment arose near the end of the career-spanning interview, when Santelli asked Bruce which of his 1980s albums — “‘Nebraska,’ ‘The River,’ ‘Born in the U.S.A.'” as Santelli listed — strikes him today as most impressive.
“I always roll with ‘Nebraska,’ personally,” Springsteen said. But before Santelli could pose his next inquiry, Springsteen made a clarification: another ’80s record had been left out of the list of multiple choice options.
That forgotten piece, Springsteen noted, was “Tunnel of Love,” 1987’s synth-bathed successor to “Born In The U.S.A.”
There are reasons, perhaps, the album’s reputation is so diminished. This was the album before which The E Street Band would splinter and separate for more than a decade. And where the ultra-pleasing stadium-rock of “U.S.A.” scored him millions of new, casual listeners, the somber quality of “Tunnel” surely turned them back off.
For many fans and critics, the album also functions as an emblem of Springsteen’s short-lived tabloid days. His unsteady marriage to model/actress Julianne Phillips and growing fondness for E Street member Patti Scialfa — a tryst immortalized by some scandalous photos snapped from a balcony in Rome — were the day’s salacious celebrity gossip.
But Bruce caught in his underwear or a looming band hiatus had little to do with what his “Tunnel of Love” album actually was: a soul-dredging plunge into Springsteen’s emotional psyche, and introspection unlike anything his guarded “man of the road” archetype had ever attempted before.
Deep-seated fears of domesticity and doubts shadowing his marriage to Phillips spurred a new rawness and concentration in his songwriting, and though much of “Tunnel of Love” is now left off Springsteen’s set lists in favor of his earlier, more celebrated jams, his mid-career probing of “Bruce, the Husband” remains The Boss’s most under-appreciated album to date.
“(‘Tunnel of Love’) was a very consciously adult record, it was less escapist,” Springsteen said at January’s Monmouth event. “I can listen to it now and I just like the writing. That record is very powerful to me.”
“Tunnel of Love” — which will turn 30 in October — feels especially worth revisiting on Valentine’s Day. Listen closely to the album, which appropriately features a song named for the holiday, and you may just learn (or relearn) something about trust, romance and, as Bruce describes in his new autobiography, “my first full record about men and women in love.”
There is strength in the album’s universal truth; sure, fans can well-enough relate to the pounding redemption of “Born To Run” or the folksy character narratives of “The River” or “Nebraska,” but every listener age 9 to 99 knows what love feels like, the felicity and torment, the hope and skepticism. And “Tunnel of Love” rarely strays from its heart-shaped topic.
Consider the extraordinary Top 10 hit “Brilliant Disguise,” where trust — a relationship’s ultimate foundation — is brought into question: Springsteen wonders how can anyone can ask a partner to remove his/her mask and be completely honest, when you are still wearing a veil yourself.
“So tell me who I see / When I look in your eyes / Is that you baby / Or just a brilliant disguise?”
The greatest validity in Springsteen’s pondering is that he provides no answer — “God have mercy on the man who doubts what he’s sure of,” he finishes the balmy track — because really, there is no fair answer. A relationship ever-balancing multiple selves has little chance of survival.
The sentiment grows in “Two Faces,” a maudlin, Orbisonian warbler with the brooding refrain, “two faces have I”: One half of his emotional being looks to destroy the other, despite Springsteen’s pleading.
Whether these apprehensive lyrics jab right at his tumultuous marriage, his mental well-being or both isn’t clear, but this writing certainly spurred in Springsteen a realization: this state of shielding feelings left a man unfit for a happy household.
He divorced Phillips before things went too far, if they hadn’t already. And in his anguish lies a teaching moment: if you cannot find your own peace, how can expect to give yourself to another?
“Filled with inner turmoil, I wrote to make sense of my feelings,” Springsteen says in his autobiography, and while “Tunnel” is full of mid-tempo ambivalence — the album’s most striking dirges croon “one step up and two steps back,” or tell tales of a husband character Bill Horton, a man with the words “love” and “fear” tattooed across his hands — Bruce still allows for hope on “Tunnel,” for himself and all the world’s hopeless romantics.
“Ain’t Got You” chugs and rumbles at the top of the album with a more familiar Boss style, pining after a special girl — perhaps Scialfa — despite famous Springsteen already possessing all the female attention his “Greetings”-era self could have ever imagined.
And the record’s closer, the ballad “Valentine’s Day” wraps the idea that even for all terror and questioning, love and companionship are ultimately what he craves most.
“Hold me close honey say you’re forever mine / And tell me you’ll be my lonely valentine.”
Of course it was The Beatles, not Bruce, who coined “love is all you need,” but “Tunnel of Love” hits that point over and over: when your relationships aren’t working, nothing really is.
“Trust is a fragile thing,” Springsteen’s autobiography reads. “It requires allowing others to see as much of ourselves as we have the courage to reveal.”
Now, Bruce isn’t exactly Oprah or Dr. Phil, but he makes a good point. If you truly love someone this Valentine’s Day, open up a little. Tell the person how you feel. You’ll both be better for it, and it’ll make the day’s amalgam of crimson bouquets and dinner reservations all the more meaningful.
At the very least, cue up “Tunnel of Love” for them on the playlist — revel in the fact that your romantic anguish doesn’t match that of sad-sack Springsteen.
Bobby Olivier may be reached at bolivier@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @BobbyOlivier and Facebook. Find NJ.com on Facebook.
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