In Music and Popular Culture
"Thunder Road" is a classic rock staple and has been covered by artists such as Melissa Etheridge, Cowboy Junkies, Badly Drawn Boy, Brazilian singer Renato Russo, Frank Turner, Tori Amos, Brian Vander Ark (Live At Eddie's Attic), Kevin Rowland, Matt Nathanson, Mary Lou Lord and Bonnie 'Prince' Billy with Tortoise. (Tortoise's version is interpreted in minor key.) Adam Duritz of Counting Crows often sings large portions of the lyrics to "Thunder Road" in the middle of their song "Rain King."
In the film Explorers, the main characters' space vessel is named "Thunder Road" after the song.
In 2008, years before ideas for his film Cemetery Junction were put down in writing, Stephen Merchant also mentioned his ambitions for the song on his self-titled BBC Radio Show: "The more you listen to it the more you realize just how extraordinar(il)y it is put together, and how it builds, and how it's just so cinematic. And that final line when he declares 'It's a town full of losers and we're pulling out of here to win', oh, goodness me! I've always wanted to make a movie of that song (...) I don't mean literally, I just mean a film that can invoke the spirit of that song. Later, in an interview with BBC Radio 2's Danny Wallace on 9 January 2010, Merchant stated the script for Cemetery Junction was loosely based upon the lyrics of the Bruce Springsteen song "Thunder Road". This sentiment was repeated by Gervais on 12 April 2010 when he appeared on The Graham Norton Show.
In the novel High Fidelity by Nick Hornby, the protagonist Rob Fleming ranks "Thunder Road" as one of his five best side one track ones.
In the Sonny with a Chance Christmas special, the sketch titled The Real Princesses of New Jersey mentions Thunder Road when Sterling Knight's character yells "I'm listening to Thunder Road! You come over here!".
A FoxTrot strip has the song playing on Peter's stereo, with a loud blast of "OH, THUNDER ROAD" sending Peter flying into his bedroom wall when Jason takes off the mute button (FoxTrot has repeatedly paid homage to Springsteen and his work, among other rock singers).
The band Phish played it in concert for the first time in their career on June 19, 2011 as a tribute to then recently departed Clarence Clemons.
During one of the opening scenes of the movie Just Friends, Ryan Reynolds' character, Chris Brander, paraphrases the last stanza of the song as he flees a party on his bicycle.
Bob Dylan seems to reference this song in his song Tweeter and the Monkey Man. The song is full of real or apparent references to Springsteen.
Read more about this topic: Thunder Road (song)
Famous quotes containing the words music, popular and/or culture:
“Music is spiritual. The music business is not.”
—Van Morrison (b. 1945)
“It is among the ranks of school-age children, those six- to twelve-year-olds who once avidly filled their free moments with childhood play, that the greatest change is evident. In the place of traditional, sometimes ancient childhood games that were still popular a generation ago, in the place of fantasy and make- believe play . . . today’s children have substituted television viewing and, most recently, video games.”
—Marie Winn (20th century)
“Here is this vast, savage, howling mother of ours, Nature, lying all around, with such beauty, and such affection for her children, as the leopard; and yet we are so early weaned from her breast to society, to that culture which is exclusively an interaction of man on man,—a sort of breeding in and in, which produces at most a merely English nobility, a civilization destined to have a speedy limit.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)