Peter Ames Carlin

At first, Bruce was really uncomfortable with this idea of having this kind of jazz trio song interrupt everything.

what he had set out to make as the greatest rock and roll album ever made.

Because this did not sound like rock and roll.

And so he and John Landau, the co-producer, you know, who had joined the team, were convinced that there's no way the song could work.

But Mike Appel stuck to his guns and said, no, no, no, no, no.

Like, this is really going to work.

And when they brought it into the studio and recorded, you know, the basic track, they

A few days later, they brought in the Brecker brother horn players and Randy plays that really beautiful trumpet part that kind of sounds like it's echoing from around the corner, you know, on a street somewhere.

And when they finally heard all the pieces come together, Bruce was like, that's yeah, that absolutely is on the album.

Well, it's definitely taking place in the same kind of down and out milieu of desperate guys doing desperate things to try to get ahead.

It's connected very closely to the feeling in Jungleland, which is, again, about a fairly kind of mysteriously desperate character who is going across the river to New York City to meet some fate or other.

There are these kind of desperate sort of penned in characters who are busting loose and are going to go meet their fate somewhere, either down the highway or in the course of

meeting across the river and Jungleland in New York City.

Jungleland was in a lot of ways, and Bruce has said this, the most autobiographical song on the album, which is interesting because it is such a gothic story of this guy, the magic rat, who drives into town and seems to meet up with a street gang of some sort.

And he meets the girl.

And they take off together and have a moment of romance and he heads off into the underground to do something and then ends up getting gunned down.

either by the police, probably in a more literal way, or in the words of the song, by his own dreams, which takes us again to the heart of Bruce's experience in 1974, 75, when he was writing and creating that song.

He was that kid.

He was the magic rat coming across the river to the city to make his big play.

And the maximum lawmen who are chasing the magic rat