by Jeff Burger
Now in my job I travel around the world and I occasionally play to big stadiums or crowds like this, just like Senator Obama does. And I continue to find out that wherever I go, America remains a repository for people’s hopes, their desires. It remains a house of dreams. And a thousand George Bushes and a thousand Dick Cheneys will never be able to tear that house down. That’s something that only we can do, and we’re not going to let that happen.
This administration will be leaving office—that’s the good news. The bad news is that they’re going to be dumping in our laps the national tragedies of Katrina and Iraq and our financial crisis. Our house of dreams has been abused, it’s been looted, and it’s been left in a terrible state of disrepair. It needs defending against those who would sell it down the river for power, and for influence, for a quick buck. It needs strong arms, strong hearts, strong minds.
We need someone with Senator Obama’s understanding, his temperateness, his deliberativeness, his maturity, his pragmatism, his toughness, and his faith. But most of all it needs us—it needs you and it needs me. And he’s gonna need us. ’Cause all that a nation has that keeps it from coming apart is the social contract between us, between its citizens. And whatever grace God has decided to impart to us, it resides in our connection with one another, and in our life and the hopes and the dreams of the man or the woman up the street or across town—that’s where we make our small claim upon heaven.
Now in recent years, that social contract has been shredded. We look around today and we can see it shredding before our eyes. But tonight and today we are at the crossroads. We are at the crossroads, and it’s been a long, long, long time coming.
I’m honored to be here on the same stage as Senator Obama. From the beginning, there’s been something in Senator Obama that’s called upon our better angels. And I suspect it’s because he’s had a life where he’s had so often to call upon his better angels. And we’re going to need all the angels we can get on the hard road ahead. So Senator Obama, help us rebuild our house big enough for the dreams of all our citizens. It’s how well we accomplish this task that’ll tell us just what it does mean to be an American in the new century, what the stakes are, and what it means to live in a free society.
So I don’t know about you, but I know I want my country back. I want my dream back. I want my America back! Now is the time to stand with Barack Obama and Joe Biden, roll up our sleeves, and come on up for the rising.
BRUCE BIT
On Barack Obama’s Election
“You see the country drifting further from democratic values, drifting further from any fair sense of economic justice…. You proceed under the assumption that you can have some limited impact in the marketplace of ideas about the kind of place you live in, its values, and the things that make it special to you. But you don’t see it. And then something happens that you didn’t think you might see in your lifetime, which is that that country actually shows its face one night, on election night.”
—interview with Mark Hagen, Observer (London), January 17, 2009
PART VI
“KINGDOM OF DAYS”
Springsteen and the E Street Band remain a powerful force, but they lose their star sax player.
“It’s great that the big crowds are there. The money’s great—we’re not handing any of it back at this late date. But the thing that moves the band on any given night is we just want to come out and be great. We want to be great for that audience and for ourselves. We’ve got something at stake.” —BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN, 2010
BRUCIE BONUS
STEVE TURNER | June 27, 2009, Radio Times (London)
In 2009, Springsteen returned to the studio with the E Street Band and producer Brendan O’Brien to make Working on a Dream, which quickly climbed to the top of the charts on the strength of such songs as “Kingdom of Days” and “Queen of the Supermarket.”
Springsteen and his group toured Europe in support of the album. That’s when London-based journalist Steve Turner—who in 1973 may have been the first European reporter to interview Springsteen (see page 8)—reconnected with him. At the time of his first interview with Turner, the artist was virtually unknown, but as the writer noted in this second piece, “What a difference a few decades and a string of hit albums make.”
Turner has fond memories of this new encounter, which took place in Stockholm. “Besides seeing two concerts, one from the side of the stage, and sitting through an afternoon rehearsal, the highlight of my visit with Springsteen here was being in one of the lead cars racing away from the arena once the concert was over,” he told me. “There was a convoy of limousines and police outriders, and for about twenty minutes I felt like royalty.
“I found Springsteen easy to talk to and especially engaging when challenged or when he felt he could learn as well as respond,” Turner added. “We had some interesting exchanges about the theme of redemption in his songs, none of which made the feature because of the need to stay on track. His parting comment after forty-five minutes of talk was, ‘That was a great interview. I really enjoyed that.’” —Ed.
I first met Bruce Springsteen backstage in Philadelphia in June 1973. He was wearing a sleeveless top, sported a scrubby beard, and was being hailed by some (mostly his record company) as “the next Bob Dylan.” His then-manager Mike Appel did all the talking for him. “Bruce is touched,” he told me. “He’s a genius. When I first heard him play, I heard this voice saying, ‘Superstar.’ I couldn’t believe it. I had never been that close to a superstar before.”
Thirty-six years later, we meet in another backstage area, in Stockholm, where he’s playing at the Olympiastadion, ahead of his date with Glastonbury. He’s still dressed in a T-shirt, but this time with short sleeves. His body is more compact and muscular than it was when he was in his midtwenties, and the slightly shy young musician has turned into a self-possessed elder statesman of rock.
He knows the precise concert I saw back in Philadelphia and chuckles at the memory. He was supporting the jazz-rock band Chicago, and it was the first time he’d played an arena. The billing was a mismatch, but his record company hoped the exposure would boost his credibility. It didn’t. “We actually got booed that night,” he recalls. “I remember someone shouting, ‘We didn’t come here to see you.’”
What a difference a few decades and a string of hit albums make. Over three nights in Stockholm, almost a hundred thousand fans will see him. The ones lucky enough to stand close to the stage will stretch out to touch a hand or embrace a leg. Springsteen will orchestrate an event that combines the physicality of a club, the spirituality of a church, the entertainment of a carnival, and the political seriousness of the campaign trail. It’s a hint of what he’ll unleash at Glastonbury on Saturday. As he says to me, “We give you something to vacuum your floor with and do your dishes, too!”
Despite his gregariousness onstage, Springsteen’s essentially a loner who enjoys self-reflection. After the late-afternoon sound check he’s locked away in a dressing room with his books, papers, and music. A sober-looking sign on the door says: “Please knock and wait for a reply before entering.” During the interview, he grips both his knees and rocks back and forth rhythmically as he carefully elucidates his thoughts and feelings.
A simple starter question about his set list leads to a detailed answer that reveals the seriousness with which he plans his performance. Each part of his two-and-a-half-hour show is there for a purpose. There’s a section of new songs to promote his latest album, Working on a Dream, a “bad news” section with songs about “the tougher stuff that’s going on” designed to “stir some anger in your heart,” a “good news” section to give the audience “sustenance and enjoyment and hopefully make the next day a little easier,” a section of more recent “summational” songs, and a request slot where fans thrust suggestions his way on homemade placards.
On a table in front of him he has a folder with lists of successful past sets. What he calls the blueprint is worked out in a ser
ies of live rehearsal shows prior to the tour, yet each night’s eventual running order is confirmed only in the hours before the show. For this tour, “Badlands,” traditionally his storming last number, comes early in the set, and he closes with his signature song, “Born to Run.” The amazing thing is that he still performs these songs with the same ferocity that brought him to fame in the 1970s and still exhibits the same intimate connection with the audience.
“I have sung ‘Born to Run’ quite a few times, but if the evening has gone well, I experience renewal rather than repetition at the moment I sing it,” he explains. “This music has not been heard at this moment, in this place, to these faces. That’s why we go out there.”
Playing Glastonbury will be something of a new experience because he’s only ever played a handful of festivals, the most recent being in Holland and Tennessee. Will the formula that gets Bruceophiles salivating work as well for the potentially less committed festival-goer? He thinks it will. In Holland his audience was partly made up of Killers’ fans and he thinks he won them over. “You come out and do the best of what you do. That’s what we try to do every night. I don’t think the fact that it’s a festival will dramatically affect the set. With an audience that may not have seen you a lot, you tend to go for the throat. It adds a bit of a thrilling challenge and edge to the playing.”
So what does his music do for people? “It entertains. It informs a little bit. We put a smile on your face and a thought in your mind. We hope to inspire. The music performs the variety of functions that music always performed for me. I go out with the intent to honor my ancestors, so to speak, by doing to the best of my ability what they did for me.”
By his ancestors he means people like Hank Williams, Woody Guthrie, Elvis Presley, the Beatles, and Roy Orbison. As a teenager he felt stifled by the low expectations of small-town America, but these artists suggested something grand about human experience that gave him hope and courage. “I felt that they had spiritual dimensions to them in that they rebelled against the life-sucking mundanity that can easily fall over you as you’re making your way through life.”
Does contemporary music give him the same feeling? He says it does and to prove the point reaches for his iPod (he’s a recent convert), pops on a pair of steel-rimmed specs and scrolls through a playlist. “I’ve got Magnetic Fields; I love that songwriting. I’ve got some Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, Th’ Legendary Shack Shakers, Old Crow Medicine Show, the Gaslight Anthem … Fleet Foxes made a great record …”
His children Evan (eighteen), Jessica (seventeen), and Sam (fifteen), from his marriage to singer Patti Scialfa, keep him plugged in. Evan takes his dad to punk gigs, Sam impresses him with his classic-rock discoveries, and Jessica keeps him clued up about artists such as Lady Gaga. They taught him how to download. “They’re not very involved with Pop’s music,” he admits, “but they don’t need a musical hero at home. They need a dad.” So are Mr. and Mrs. Springsteen the coolest parents ever, or do they make their kids squirm like other parents do? “Er … both,” he says. “One day they’ll say, ‘Man, you rock,’ then another day they’ll say, ‘You’re embarrassing me. Don’t drop me off here. I don’t want people to see you. Please don’t come in the room.’ I think we more often play the role of embarrassing parents than cool ones.”
Rock and roll came to prominence during America’s greatest period of optimism and economic growth. Times have changed. Fans of cutting-edge culture now look elsewhere in the world for inspiration. “No one could envisage the day General Motors was going to go bankrupt,” he says. “Things have happened over the past six months that are simply boggling to the mind. It’s not surprising because it was an outcome of the Reagan revolution and the deregulatory practices. It’s snowballed from there.” Yet he’s still in love with America? “Yes, of course. Hey, Barack Obama’s president!”
Obama’s audacious dream is similar to Springsteen’s. The singer performed on Obama’s campaign trail and at the Lincoln Memorial during his inauguration. Not yet close enough to be considered friends, the two men have spoken and the president has confessed to having Springsteen on his iPod.
“If you listen to his recent speech in the Middle East, that’s how an American president needs to sound. I believe that that is the position he needs to strike in the world. He’s an intelligent, smart, tough, and compassionate man. He reflects a generous-heartedness that I always felt was at the heart of the country. We have fought for that view of the country for the past twenty-five or thirty years of our band and, yes, Barack Obama has been the closest thing to a living embodiment of those ideas.” Could he ever imagine advising the president? “I don’t think so! I wouldn’t want the responsibility. I give advice through my music.”
Springsteen turns sixty in September, but he still looks and moves like a much younger man. He’s been lifting weights for decades and regularly power-walks up to five miles. He watches his diet but doesn’t rule out the occasional cheeseburger, pizza, or ice cream. “Onstage I don’t feel any different to the way I felt at thirty-five,” he says. “The number doesn’t quite make sense to me because I remember my grandfather at sixty. He’d had a stroke and could barely get around the block. Sixty is different these days, especially if you took care of yourself when you were young. I didn’t drink a lot or do any drugs. That was just my nature. If you didn’t drain your body when you were a kid, it still has a lot of resources left.”
With the interview over, Springsteen mingles with his E Street Band in the corridor as they wait to go onstage. They link arms and huddle together for an informal prayer that’s more morale-booster than divine supplication. Then Springsteen shouts, “And all the people said amen,” to which everyone responds with a loud, gospel-tinged “amen!” Then they head down the tunnel towards the lights and the screams, ready, in the words of the Boss, to “create a transformative experience.”
BRUCE BIT
On His Father
“First, he would not have known what it was [the Kennedy Center Honors, which Springsteen had just won]. After my mother got done explaining it to him, it would have been like, ‘Well, that’s nice.’ I had that experience when I won the Oscar … [and he said], ‘I’ll never tell anybody what to do ever again’ [laughs]. He took a lot of satisfaction and enjoyment out of the work that I did and the success that we had towards the whole last ten to fifteen years of his life. So, I wish he was around [for this award]…. It would have meant a tremendous amount to the two of us. My mother will be here, but I would like to have had him here.”
—interview with Joe Helm, WashingtonPost.com, November 20, 2009
INTERVIEW
ED NORTON | September 14, 2010, Toronto International Film Festival (Toronto)
By 2010, Bruce Springsteen didn’t have to “prove it all night”—or at all. He had been making landmark records for well over three decades and had sold many millions of them. Though still creating important and in some cases groundbreaking music, he was talking more about his early work, reflecting on where he’d been and what he’d accomplished. In 2005, he’d released a three-disc thirtieth anniversary edition of Born to Run, which paired a remastered version of the original album with two DVDs—a making-of documentary and a blistering 1975 London performance. (That show was his first outside the United States, and it took place only four months after the original album’s release.)
Now, in 2010, it was time for a look back at Darkness on the Edge of Town, the 1978 follow-up to Born to Run. This new retrospective, called The Promise: The Darkness on the Edge of Town Story, was another treasure trove. In addition to a beautifully remastered version of the original album, it included two CDs containing twenty-one outtakes, many of them on a par with the singer’s released material; an eighty-page facsimile of Springsteen’s notebook from the sessions, with alternate lyrics, song ideas, and more; and three fascinating DVDs (also available on Blu-ray). Among their contents: a ninety-minute documentary on the making of Darkness, an entire 1978 Houston show, a
nd a 2009 Asbury Park performance of the album in its entirety.
About two months before the release of this package, Springsteen attended the Toronto International Film Festival, where the Darkness documentary was being shown. Also there was actor, screenwriter, director, and producer Ed Norton, who had been friends with Springsteen for about ten years at this point. A few hours before the Darkness film premiered, the two talked in front of an audience about the original Darkness on the Edge of Town, the singer’s ambitions, the film, and more. —Ed.
Ed Norton: I was thinking about the record Darkness on the Edge of Town. I don’t even know if [those songs are] yours anymore. I think people own them. They’ve become part of the tapestry of their lives. And it occurred to me that deeper than even the specific songs themselves is just the theme of darkness—darkness as an approach to creative work—and that a lot of artists, in all different forms, shy away from darkness as a theme.
By that I mean, they just don’t really bother to look at the dark side of things. And if they do, sometimes they get kind of pigeonholed into that. But you have somehow managed to look at darkness, dark corners in yourself. You’ve looked, even, at the darker side of our country. What gave you the confidence to believe that rock music could go that deep, and what made you first have the impulse that you could take your music from the fun of rock into being an exploration of darker themes?