About The Song
“Glory Days” is a song written and performed by American rock singer Bruce Springsteen. In 1985, it became the fifth single released from his 1984 album Born in the U.S.A.
The single peaked at #9 on the Cashbox Top 100 and #5 on the Billboard Hot 100 in the summer of 1985. It was the fifth of a record-tying seven Top 10 hit singles to be released from Born in the U.S.A.
The song is a seriocomic tale of a man who now ruefully looks back on his so-called “glory days” and those of people he knew during high school. The lyrics to the first verse are autobiographical, being a recount of an encounter Springsteen had with former Little League baseball teammate Joe DePugh in the summer of 1973.
The music is jocular, consisting of what Springsteen biographer Dave Marsh called “rinky-dink organ, honky-tonk piano, and garage-band guitar kicked along by an explosive tom-tom pattern”.
An alternate mix of the song includes an extra verse about the narrator’s father, who worked at the Ford auto plant in Metuchen, New Jersey, for twenty years and who now spends most of his time at the American Legion Hall, thinking about how he “ain’t never had glory days.” However, after Springsteen realized that this verse did not fit with the song’s storyline, it was cut out.
Video
Lyrics
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 wasGlory days, well they’ll pass you by
Glory days, in the wink of a young girl’s eye
Glory days, glory daysWell 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 boutGlory days, well they’ll pass you by
Glory days, in the wink of a young girl’s eye
Glory days, glory daysMy old man worked 20 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 9 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 mindGlory days yeah goin back
Glory days aw he ain’t never had
Glory days, glory daysIn fact I think I’m going down to the well tonight
And I’m gonna drink till 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 yeah
Well time slips away and leaves you with nothing, mister, but
Boring stories ofGlory days, well they’ll pass you by
Glory days, in the wink of a young girl’s eye
Glory days, glory days