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Photo by Cindy Hunter Morgan

Some Thoughts on Sound

Throughout the song (and throughout the album), the singularity of voice contributes to a cumulative sense of loneliness and despair, but that simplicity of voice (spare, flat, and plaintive) is set against the complexity of a much broader range of emotions (doubt and conviction, tenderness and disappointment, failure and regret, to name a few). When I listened to this album in high school, the sound of “Highway Patrolman” and other songs on this album became, for me, an acoustic representation of what I imagined the geography of Nebraska might be. In fact, nothing is quite geographically accurate in “Highway Patrolman.” There is no “Michigan County” in the United States. Perrineville is in New Jersey, and “Perronville” is in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. We must imagine a mythical map, and come to understand that the bleak territory Springsteen covers is both real and imagined.

This song is beautifully austere. It’s almost close to speech, almost monotone … but not quite. It’s tightly modulated, and it’s in the chorus that we hear something closer to what we expect to find in song. There, the pitch shifts and the vocal range expands. It’s not a wide range, but the register changes. Springsteen holds notes a smidgen longer, and in this duration we hear Joe Roberts reaching toward memory, grasping for relief.

Even in its simplicity, and partly because of its simplicity, Springsteen’s voice adds texture and sadness to the tale he shares in “Highway Patrolman.” There is no sense of embellishment. The details of the story are plain and direct, though plot as we hear it is complicated by memory and loyalty. When Joe Roberts gets the call about trouble in a roadhouse, he learns this:

There was a kid lyin’ on the floor lookin’ bad,
bleedin’ hard from his head there was a girl
cryin’ at a table, it was Frank they said

And this is how Joe responds to that news:

Well I went out and I jumped in my car and I hit the lights
I must of done 110 through Michigan county that night

These lyrics, among other things, manage end-rhyme gently and deftly. That this is a song and not a poem affects how rhyme is felt and heard, of course, but Springsteen’s even, haunting voice also tones down the rhyme, washing what might feel glib or directly manipulative into something soft and nearly subtle. And though it is true he sings fairly softly, volume is not an adequate explanation for the tone and mood he establishes. Pitch and duration have a role too.

Springsteen demonstrates exquisite control, and yet there is something expressive in his restraint. By the end of the second stanza, he moves into deeper emotional territory, and those rhymes freight emotion effectively, stretching sentiment out and complicating it. “Well if it was any other man, I’d put him straight away / But when it’s your brother sometimes you look the other way.” Here is the heart of the song, and those longer vowel sounds give us more time to hear this conflict.

How Many Lives

Photo by Cindy Hunter Morgan

Wilentz and Marcus assert, “No matter what form the ballad takes – traditional or modern, handed down or composed, national epic or local story, tale of love or true crime report – more than one life is always at stake.” How many lives are at stake in “Highway Patrolman”? In the lyrics alone, we count Joe Roberts, Franky, Maria (Joe’s wife), that kid lyin’ on the floor lookin’ bad, and that girl cryin’ at a table. Sean Penn’s film adaptation of the song, The Indian Runner, expands the story. If we look to the film to tally those lives, there are plenty more to count.

This is a distinctly American story, loaded with American images – the army vet, the lost farm, the wheat prices, the roadhouse, the crossroads, the county roads, the getaway car, and, of course, that band in the bar playing “Night of the Johnstown Flood.” These details aren’t random. They’re props in Springsteen’s story. The Johnstown Flood was an American tragedy – a catastrophic failure of engineering exacerbated by social issues of wealth, power, and irresponsibility, but “Night of the Johnstown Flood” wasn’t even a real song when Springsteen wrote “Highway Patrolman.” Springsteen is doing just what Emily Dickinson advised: he’s telling the truth, but telling it slant. It’s deeply significant, too, that Franky flees in an automobile – the quintessential vehicle of American escape.

In more ways than one, “Highway Patrolman” is an American Ballad. One could argue that its perspective – first person point of view – is the American point of view in the second half of the twentieth century: the voice of the individual, or, more damning – insular and solipsistic. But Joe isn’t either of those, though he is indeed American. He’s self-aware, but not self-absorbed. He’s also full of doubt. He’s grabbling with his understanding of fidelity as it applies to his relationship with his brother, and even his certainty – “man turns his back on his family well he just ain’t no good” – is riddled with self questioning.

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