So many of Bruce Springsteen’s songs tell stories of regular people and offer observations of everyday life. Blue-collar factory workers facing a dead-end future just aching to break out of their monotonous lives somehow come to be heroes in the songs of the working-class poet. Springsteen can bring these characters to life in a relatable way, even when they are entirely fictitious. As he sings about tragedy, love, heartbreak, missed opportunities, violence, escape, jealousy, joy, alienation, pride, brotherhood, faith, lust, anxiety, fear, and triumph, the listener can envision themselves in the song.
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Many of Springsteen’s songs are sung in the first person, but it is not always through the perspective of Springsteen himself. At times, he takes on other characters. Of course, he often draws on his own experiences, but Springsteen can create alternate universes entirely similar to our own experiences. Let’s take a look at the story behind “Glory Days” by Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band.
I had a friend was a big baseball player
Back in high school
He could throw that speedball by you
Make you look like a fool, boy
Saw him the other night at this roadside bar
I was walking in. He was walking out
We went back inside, sat down had a few drinks
But all he kept talking about was
Glory days, well, they’ll pass you by
Glory days, in the wink of a young girl’s eye
Glory days, glory days
“Saddie”
Springsteen begins the song in the first person, and, in this case, it is autobiographical. The verse recounts an event that happened on the Jersey Shore in 1973. Springsteen was leaving the Headliner in Neptune when he crossed paths with an old friend from high school. They returned to the bar and reminisced about their earlier adventures playing baseball. They had been seatmates in seventh grade at St. Rose of Lima High School in Freehold. The speedballer in question was named Joe DePugh, and he played on the same Babe Ruth League baseball team. DePugh excelled on the mound, while Springsteen played right field and earned the nickname “Saddie.”
Well, there’s a girl that lives up the block
Back in school, she could turn all the boy’s heads
Sometimes, on a Friday, I’ll stop by
And have a few drinks after she put her kids to bed
Her and her husband, Bobby well they split up
I guess it’s two years gone by now
We just sit around talking about the old times
She says when she feels like crying
She starts laughing, thinking about
Glory days, yeah, they’ll pass you by
Glory days, in the wink of a young girl’s eye
Glory days, glory days
The Boss
Springsteen had released his second album and recently opened an arena show for The Beach Boys. Springsteen’s group, who would go on to be named The E Street Band, was building a strong reputation from their live shows, and the duo stayed at the bar until it closed, looking back on their “glory days.”
Think I’m going down to the well tonight
And I’m gonna drink ’til I get my fill
And I hope when I get old, I don’t sit around thinking about it
But I probably will
Yeah, just sitting back, trying to recapture
A little of the glory of, well, time slips away
And leaves you with nothing, mister but
Boring stories of
Glory days, yeah, they’ll pass you by
Glory days, in the wink of a young girl’s eye
Glory days, glory days
Yeah, they’ll pass you by
Glory days, in the wink of a young girl’s eye
Glory days, glory days
DePugh left New Jersey and attended King’s College in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. His parents died, leaving him as the legal guardian of his two younger brothers and causing him to return to New Jersey. He worked as a substitute teacher for a while before becoming a self-employed contractor.
“That’s How I Knew Exactly that It Was Me”
Several years later, DePugh moved to Vermont. His friend Scott Wright first heard “Glory Days” and recognized the situation from DePugh’s story. In 2011, DePugh told Kevin Coyne of The New York Times, “He told me, ‘Springsteen has a new album out, and there’s a song on there about you. It’s exactly the story you told me.’ DePugh didn’t believe him, so Wright requested the song on a Montpelier, Vermont radio station. “My wife starts bawling,” DePugh said. “That’s how I knew exactly that it was me.”
In May 2005, DePugh and Springsteen met again at an Italian restaurant in Red Bank, New Jersey. “Bruce pulls in, and I point at him, and he points at me, and that’s when the hugging started,” DePugh said. They again stayed until closing just as they had three decades before. A few years later, they met up again, this time in Freehold. As they finished, they said their goodbyes at the back door. DePugh continued, “He said, ‘Always remember, I love you,’ not like some corny Budweiser commercial, but a real sentimental thing. I was dumbfounded. I said, ‘Thanks, Saddie.’ That was all I could come up with, and all of a sudden, he’s out the door. And it hit me that you’ve got to do a little better than that, so I pulled the door open and yelled down to him, ‘Sad!’ He turned around, and I pointed at him and said, ‘I love you, too, and I’m real proud of you.’ And he just waved.”
Missing Verse
When Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band recorded the song for Born in the U.S.A., it included an extra verse about his father. He edited himself and removed the verse before the final version was recorded.
My old man worked twenty years on the line
And they let him go
Now, everywhere he goes out looking for work
They just tell him that he’s too old
I was nine years old and he was working
At the Metuchen Ford plant assembly line
Now, he just sits on a stool down at the Legion Hall
But I can tell what’s on his mind
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