Counting Down Bruce Springsteen by Jim Beviglia

Author:Jim Beviglia
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: undefined
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Published: 2012-09-15T00:00:00+00:00

47. “My Father’s House” (from Nebraska, 1982)

The infinite mysteries of the father-son relationship have fueled many a great rock song by some of the most successful and influential songwriters of the genre. It’s probably fair to say though that no one in the rock and pop music world has ever explored this subject matter with the thoroughness and emotional insight as Bruce Springsteen has over his long and storied career.

Without getting too far into specifics, Springsteen’s relationship with his own dad traveled an arc that is similar to that of many fathers and sons, which is perhaps why his songs on the topic so resonate with listeners. Springsteen’s father couldn’t relate to his son’s choice of career in the beginning, while Bruce in turn had a hard time understanding the way his father worked jobs that seemed to make him miserable, thus breeding distance and contempt between the two. As time passed, the younger Springsteen began to understand the sacrifices his father had made, and the relationship between the two men thawed and strengthened before the death of Douglas Springsteen in 1998.

Yet it’s also clear that it wasn’t an easy road getting to the point of understanding and reconciliation for Springsteen. In a revelatory 2012 article in the New Yorker by David Remnick, he opened up about the severe depression that hounded him throughout the most successful part of his career in the 1980s. And much of that depression was rooted in the struggle to understand his past with his father.

He eventually began seeing a psychotherapist who helped him root out where songs like “My Father’s House” were emanating from, and the article quotes Springsteen’s introduction of the song in a concert, which remembers the words of his psychotherapist, as proof. “He [the psychotherapist] said, ‘What you’re doing is that something bad happened, and you’re going back, thinking that you can make it right again,’” Springsteen said. “And I sat there and I said, ‘That is what I’m doing.’ And he said, ‘Well, you can’t.’”[26]

Songs like “My Father’s House” show that, on a subconscious level anyway, Springsteen realized this truism, even if his conscious self wasn’t ready to accept it. The song is, in many ways, the emotional climax of Nebraska. Springsteen doesn’t have to do any sort of character sketch or make his points by embodying another person in the song. As a result, the filter between himself and the song is pretty much eradicated.

There is also little blocking his listening audience from this revelation of his innermost feelings, and much of that is due to the stark nature of the acoustic backing. The melody is like a folk hymn, and Springsteen sings with the sonority of a preacher who has learned the lessons of his sermons the hard way.

In “My Father’s House,” you can tick off many of the features that have become hallmarks of Springsteen’s music since the early days. There is a dream that spurs the narrator on to take charge of his destiny. There is

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