This particular "Born in the U.S.A." lyric has probably been talked about before, maybe even by me, asking this very question on either her or the other place.
Basically, this line always gets me thinking. Is Bruce talking about a typical picture of a happy couple standing together, momentarily free from the perils life brings; or is the picture more depressing, as in this woman is cradling her dead lover and his dead brother, despondent over the fact their once happy life together is done?
Have any of you heard this line in different ways before? What do you think?
I always imagined a photo of an American soldier, lovingly holding a Vietnamese woman...
And the narrator having nothing but this photo to hold on to... And naming him a brother, I believe he was a brother in arms, not a genuine brother...
I love the line, it smells of regret...not even a real picture, one where thought, obsession, and memory are all mixed up.
So much of that classic era gets cooked up in the same way for me.
Driving today, listening to Something in the Night. Those wails and the thoughts...being born with nothing, and the reflection of being better off that way. Then I heard Night, reminds me of living in that death trap town, searching for the heart of Saturday night...
I've gone back and forth in my mind about it. My first thought--and the one to which I think I default--is of her cradling his dead body. But, realistically, that doesn't seem likely to have been captured on film—sure, it's possible, but not likely. So what I think I think the line means is that "now all I have of him, all that's left, is this photograph of him and the woman he loved in Saigon."