Wednesday, January 25, 2012

Tunnel Of Love

The other day on the treadmill this song popped up on my Ipod. I hadn't played the track in a long while, sounded great. The Boss takes the obvious metaphor of the County Fair Tunnel Of Love ride for a relationship and works it into a detailed journey of jealousy and doubt. So many great lyrics like "Fat man sitting on a little stool, takes the ticket from my hand while his eyes take a walk all over you" and that's just the start of the song!

"Tunnel Of Love" is interesting to me in a music trivia sort of way too, since I've assumed the song is written about Springsteen's first marriage to actress Julianne Phillips. The album Tunnel of Love was released while he was married and has wailing background vocals by his mistress / future second wife Patty Scialfa. In 1988 I saw Springsteen play in support of this album, it was after the tabloid pictures had broke making Springsteen / Scialfa's relationship public. Maybe because of the press my strongest mental image from the show was the two of them harmoninzing face to face at the microphone in the center of the stage (I think that was during "The River"). Their romantic chemestry was visible from where I was standing. With Scialfa singing a lot at the end of "Tunnel Of Love", it sort of makes an unintentional statement that Springsteen's tunnel of love starts with Phillips and ends with Scialfa. Or maybe I just read too much into trivial stuff.

Speaking of Julianne Phillips, the woman who I will always remember as the girl in 38 Special's "If I'd Been The One" video, I think I remember her being on a tv show in the late 80s called Sisters. It had Swoozie Kurtz in it too. Anyway, I used to like that show.

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