American lonesome : the work of Bruce Springsteen by Gavin Cologne-Brookes

Author:Gavin Cologne-Brookes [Cologne-Brookes, Gavin]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Louisiana State University Press
Published: 2018-09-03T16:00:00+00:00

In the 1990s Springsteen came to realize that there’s more to life than rock and roll. In Bruce, Carlin quotes him musing on his writing. As early as 1977 he’d been interested in how he might bring “adult concerns” into his music “without losing its vitality.” Far from thinking that “the future ain’t any damned thing,” as the years passed he began to focus on the fact that he and his audience were aging. It plainly matters to Springsteen that his music and lyrics brighten lives, not least those whose existence tends otherwise to be relentlessly dark. Carlin asserts what Springsteen has often confirmed since, that he’s “committed to the idea that music, particularly his music, really does have the power to change lives.” If this wasn’t obvious early in his career, it became so sometime after Born to Run, helped by viewing The Grapes of Wrath, and later distilled in the title of The Ghost of Tom Joad. “Something in that picture,” he’s said, has “resonated” through subsequent work. He realized not just who he was but what he could do with that fact. What matters, he decided, is the galvanizing effect on others. Carlin describes tour director George Travis making sure “that every new crew member, or a down-in-the-dumps veteran, walks with him to the back of the arena in midshow.” He explains that between them and Springsteen “stand x thousand people,” of whom “a small but important segment will go home with something that will be with them their entire lives.” That, he reminds them, is “what makes their job, no matter what it is, important.”39

I’ve pondered the role performance plays in Springsteen’s “real job” (TAD 256). When he reunited the band in 1995, and then consolidated that reunion at the end of the century, something must have brought him back to a renewed sense of how important that role is. The pragmatist thrives on work that’s productive for the individual and the community. Surveying or recalling Springsteen’s concerts in the new millennium, from Live in New York City, recorded in 2000, through Live in Barcelona, and the Live in Dublin show with the Sessions Band, to London Calling: Live in Hyde Park and beyond, as well as my experiences in Cardiff, Coventry, and Paris, means facing the gallop of time. The reuniting of the E Street Band, recorded in the 1996 Blood Brothers documentary, came toward the end of the twentieth century. Perhaps the fin de siècle, as well as the death of his father in 1998, sharpened Springsteen’s focus. The events of 9/11 must only have added to the sense of urgency about using as best he could the time that “heaven will allow.” Settled domestically, and with some sort of work and personal life behind you, the question becomes: what else am I here for? Live in New York City is most notable for its political edge, especially with “Youngstown,” “Murder Incorporated,” and “American Skin (41 Shots),” offset by the entertainment of Springsteen’s quasi-evangelical fervor.

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