Bruce Springsteen and the Promise of Rock 'n' Roll by Marc Dolan

Author:Marc Dolan
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Published: 2012-05-07T16:00:00+00:00

NO ART EXISTS in a vacuum. Culture frequently changes even “finished” artworks in ways that their creators can seldom expect. It’s interesting to wonder, for example, how “Born in the U.S.A.” would have been received if it had been released in 1982 (when Springsteen first wrote and recorded it) rather than in 1984 (when the album Born in the U.S.A. was released). In the fall of 1982, in the depths of the Reagan recession, audiences might have heard more clearly the song’s lament for the plight of the Vietnam veteran. In the summer of 1984, in the midst of not only the Reagan reelection campaign but the nationalist hoopla that surrounded the Olympic Games in Los Angeles, “Born in the U.S.A.” ended up sounding more patriotic than it actually was.

Although not as well known a Springsteen song, “57 Channels” underwent a similar semantic transformation between Springsteen’s first public performance of it in November 1990 (at one of the Christic Institute shows) and its next public performances in May 1992 (at the Bottom Line showcase and on Saturday Night Live). Despite the way that Springsteen presented the song in those later cases, he had not initially intended it to be a political work. At the Christic Institute show, one of the most politically charged shows that Springsteen had ever played, he framed “57 Channels” as a comic, personal number. He introduced it with an anecdote about Bob Dylan’s being told by a film director, “Just be yourself,” to which Dylan had responded, “I was wondering ‘Which one?’ ” I knew just what he meant, Springsteen continued, and then he insisted that this next song [“57 Channels”] is the real me . . . just in case you were wondering. What he meant, of course, was that “57 Channels” was a stage exaggeration of his real life, nowhere near as real as the more directly revelatory “The Wish” or even “Red Headed Woman,” both of which he also performed that night.

As presented at the Christic shows, “57 Channels” was a goofy rockabilly piece, which invoked the blessed name of Elvis in its climactic shooting of a troublemaking television set. Most of its attention was focused on the narrator’s lost chance to get all hot and horny . . . upstairs with his disengaged baby. The song’s arresting opening lines (I bought a bourgeois house in the Hollywood hills / With a trunkload of hundred thousand dollar bills) are the clearest autobiographical reference in the song, poking fun at Springsteen’s new “mansion on the hill” as such Lucky Town tracks as “Local Hero” and “Better Days” would poke fun at other aspects of his prosperity and image making. In the Thrill Hill recording of “57 Channels” that Springsteen made in December 1990, the song became less loping and goofy, more cool and ironic, than it had been live. But even in the recorded version, the song is still a shaggy-dog story, another one of Springsteen’s dozens of Elvis pastiches. Nothing about it screams social commentary.

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