A melancholy 'Boss' Republicans have praised Bruce Springsteen in the past Are they listening to him now?
Gerics, Joseph
Joseph Gerics A MELANCHOLY 'BOSS' Springsteen's new sound In 1975, New Jersey-born rocker Bruce Springsteen exploded onto the music scene with "Born to Run." As other hits followed, Springsteen...
...Despite the optimism and self-confidence of earlier songs such as "Better Days" and "Thunder Road," Springsteen's best work (including "Hungry Heart" and "The River") has always had a hard edge of yearning and lost opportunity...
...A few of the new songs echo his former lust for the open road, with lines like "the highway is alive tonight," but this time there is no "Promised Land" and darkness comes to the fore...
...Youngstown" is a wrenching story of a laid-off steelworker...
...Balboa Park" and "Sinoloa Cowboys" describe death, through hustling and in a drug factory...
...Springsteen's concert commentary made this theme explicit...
...Similar images of tranquillity and love are rare on this tour...
...Reflecting on the excesses of friends who had used hallucinogens, he disparaged their claims: "They said they saw God...
...The worker, left without job, prospects, and faith, clutches his "sweet Jenny" as he finds himself "sinkin' down...
...Describing The Grapes of Wrath as an inspiration throughout his career, Springsteen stressed that these new songs were written "with a lot of quiet...
...I would not do heaven's work well...
...I figured it couldn't have been him...
...The persistent theme of Springsteen's new songs is suffering resulting from the workings of an indifferent and therefore immoral economic order...
...The New York crowd resisted this melancholy, at times bitter, Springsteen...
...The reflective, even somber songs that dominated both evenings were uncharacteristic but not unexpected (most listeners were familiar with Springsteen's latest release, "Ghost of Tom Joad...
...This new show's raw, stripped-down version reduced his accompaniment on the last stanza to the rhythm of his first beating on his guitar, and ended bleakly, "Nowhere to run, ain't got nowhere to hide...
...Even the rollicking "Glory Days" stands just this side of sadness...
...Pausing for laughs, he continued, "It's probably a good thing I never did see God...
...Its enthusiasm recalled previous tours and the pumping fists that greeted his biggest hit, "Born in the U.S.A.," a song misinterpreted "mostly by younger children and Republicans," Springsteen joked...
...Springsteen directly connects the economic lives of workers to their experience of meaning and purpose...
...The occasions of sin are similarly illustrated in "Straight Time," which portrays the struggle of an ex-con to stay straight while tempted by the easy money of his earlier ways...
...The pumping fists have been replaced by clenched hands and teeth...
...On this tour, Springsteen forces his listeners-the beneficiaries of American prosperity-to confront the victims of the conditions that underpin that prosperity...
...A haunting song, "The Line," moves beyond mere journalism as a border guard wrestles with good and evil, deciding to help an illegal immigrant and her smuggler brother cross the border...
...A far different Springsteen takes the stage on his current tour, which opened two weeks before Christmas with shows in New York and Boston: no band, just a man with his guitar...
...Springsteen's songs have matured: first harnessing raw power and energy, then using narrative frames, then exploring commitment and relationships...
...As other hits followed, Springsteen swaggered as "The Boss" on albums and especially in concerts...
...Explicitly theological language describes the furnace smokestacks "reachin' like the arms of God into a beautiful sky of soot and clay...
...We await his next release for clearer notes of transcendence...
...I'd pick a fight with him...
...Such imagery reveals an artist struggling not only with the injustices of capitalism, but also with religious faith and the problem of suffering and evil...
...Desperation characterizes the lives of the middle class as well...
...Springsteen spoke of "real-life miracles," not violations of the laws of nature, but times when "a person does the right thing," and in so doing "changes themselves, and the world...
...Here he described people as "slipping through the cracks" in a country "split down the middle," and wondered what it would be like if he, like his characters, had to "face my children if they needed food and clothing and I couldn't give it to them...
...The new songs concern the downtrodden, typified by a set about Mexican immigrants...
...Grief at the loss of a vision of the common good underlies this song...
...I pray the devil comes and takes me to stand in the fiery furnace of hell...
...His stage commentary, nearly as important as the music, set the tone for each song...
...One example is "Galveston Bay," set amid tensions between native fishers and Vietnamese immigrants competing for a declining shrimp crop...
...He notes Tom Joad's enduring presence, "wherever somebody's struggling to be free...[T]hat's what I want to do, bring some beauty and hope...some sense of the divine life...
...Having exploited land, air, and labor, the capitalist "sir" is "rich enough to forget my [the protagonist's] name...
...Now, twenty years into his career, Springsteen intrigues his listeners with songs of existential anger and rebellion, religious doubt, and a search for faith and meaning...
...the protagonist laments that "we gave our sons in Vietnam and Korea, now I wonder what they were dying for...
...The hopelessness of his situation finally pushes him over the edge into despair: "When I die I don't want no part of heaven...
...Having previously vowed revenge on an immigrant, a Texan sheathes his knife and forgoes reprisal, returning home to kiss his sleeping wife...
...The new, prophetic Bruce may disappoint fans who recall earlier, exhilarating four-hour marathon concerts...
...Not only is this show spare in setting, sound, and duration, but Springsteen's laments for the working class and his yearning for social justice pack a different kind of punch...
Vol. 123 • February 1996 • No. 3
