Paul Mulshine takes on “Devils and Dust”
last Sunday in The Star Ledger

Another song about the Southwest was titled “Reno.” The narrator is having a fine old time in a brothel in Nevada but for some reason needs to conjure up images of himself and his girlfriend riding and working with the cowboys near Amatitlan. I don’t know whether Bruce means the Amatitlan in Mexico or the one in Guatemala, but I’ve been to both. I never saw any gringos and their girlfriends riding with the cowboys. This is just an image stated for the sake of an image. So is Springsteen’s entire view of the Southwest. If he’s going to write about the place, I’d suggest he do what I used to do: Get a beater from Zeke and head over the border for a few months. The other side of the Rio Grande is a hell of a lot livelier than this side of Navesink, I’ll tell you.