“Oh won't you be my night connection--drive all night
Oh give me soul map correction--drive all night.”— “Drive All Night,” written
and performed by Elliott Murphy, from the Just a Story From America LP (1977)
From 1976 through the first half of
1978, as Bruce Springsteen sought to extricate himself from a legal hell with
his former manager-producer, many fans like myself made do with rockers
more than a little reminiscent of his sound and persona. Even after he
returned, “New Springsteens” seemed to
come out of the woodwork (see John Cafferty and Beaver Brown), the way “New
Dylans” once did (see The Boss himself).
In those restless days of waiting for
the return of the Once and Future Boss, the New York-born rocker Elliott Murphy emerged with an FM hit,
“Drive All Night.” Listen to the words (especially the overriding metaphor: cars) and give into that beat, and you’d swear
you were hearing the New Jersey rocker instead—a fact underscored years later
in this YouTube video, in which
Murphy and his grown son Gaspard play a medley of the song with “Born to Run.”(Indeed, Springsteen and Murphy were born the same year, released their first albums within 24 months of each other and have formed a kind of mutual admiration society over time.)
No matter—as you’ll discover (if you
don’t remember it from all those years ago), “Drive All Night” has its own
special, exhilarating wonder. And I can’t say enough about an expatriate rock
‘n’ roller who’s also a published fiction writer who has spoken of my literary
hero, F. Scott Fitzgerald, as an inspiration. I know what he means when he says,
“"Rock 'n’ roll is my addiction and literature is my religion."
For a fine interview with Murphy, see this post from Mick Du Russel’s “The Showbiz Wizard” blog.
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