by Jeff Burger
Of course, for me, there were movies, films. That’s another discussion. But it was then about soul music. It’s incredibly important. The blue-collar grit of soul music. [Sings “Soul Man”:] “I was brought up on a backstreet / I learned how to love before I could eat.”
Now even though I personally learned how to eat long before I knew how to love, I knew what he was talking about. It was the music of gritty determination—of the blues, of the church, of the earth, and of the sex-soaked heavens. It was music of sweaty perspiration, and drenched demands for pleasure and respect. It was adult music, it was sung by soul men and women, not teen idols.
And then it was the silk and sequined aspirational sounds of Motown. And that was something smoother, but that was no less powerful than Stax. There’s the beautifully socially conscious soul of Curtis Mayfield and the Impressions, “We’re a Winner,” “Keep On Pushin’.” Just great, great records that just filled the airwaves at a time when you couldn’t have needed them more. You just couldn’t have needed them more.
“A Woman’s Got Soul,” what a beautiful, beautiful record to women. “It’s All Right.” It was the soundtrack of the Civil Rights Movement. And it was here, amongst these great African-American artists, that I learned my craft. You learned how to write. You learned how to arrange. You learned what mattered and what didn’t. You learned what a great production sounds like. You learned how to lead a band. You learned how to front a band.
These men and women, they were and they remain my masters. By the time I reached my twenties, I’d spent a thousand nights employing their lessons in local clubs and bars, honing my own skills. I was signed as an acoustic singer-songwriter, but I was a wolf in sheep’s clothing—signed by John Hammond at Columbia Records, along with Elliott Murphy, John Prine, Loudon Wainwright III. We were all new Dylans.
And the old Dylan was only thirty. So I don’t even know why they needed a fucking new Dylan, all right? But those were the times. Thirty was, you know … but I had nights and nights of bar playing behind me to bring my songs home. Young musicians, learn how to bring it live, and then bring it night after night after night after night. Your audience will remember you.
Your ticket is your handshake. These skills gave me a huge ace up my sleeve. And when we finally went on the road, and we played that ace, we scorched the earth, because that’s what I was taught to do by Sam Moore and by James Brown. There’s no greater performance than James Brown burning ass on the Rolling Stones at The T.A.M.I. Show. Sorry, sorry, my friends. I fucking loved the Stones. But James Brown—boys and men, you were screwed. Yeah, I think I’ll go on after James Brown.
Oh, yeah, can you put me in the schedule somewhere after James Brown? Fuck, no. Get out. Go home. Save it. Don’t waste it, man. I had a great thing with James Brown. I went to see James Brown one night, and he kind of knew me. I was sitting in the audience, and, suddenly I heard: “Ladies and gentlemen, Magic Johnson,” and Magic Johnson was onstage. And: “Ladies and gentlemen, Woody Harrelson,” and he was onstage. And then I’m sitting in my seat, watching, I hear: “Ladies and gentleman, Mr., Mr., Mr…. Born in the U.S.A.” And I realized he didn’t know my name, so I ran my ass up there as fast as I could.
I can’t tell you, man, standing onstage alongside of James Brown … it was like, “Fuck, what am I doing here? He’s such a … his influence. James Brown, underrated, still, today, underrated. He’s Elvis. He’s Dylan. Dylan from whom I first heard a version of the place that I lived that felt unvarnished and real to me.
If you were young in the sixties and fifties, everything felt false everywhere you turned. But you didn’t know how to say it. There was no language for it at the time. It just felt fucked up, but you didn’t have the words. Bob came along and gave us those words. He gave us those songs. And the first thing he asked you was: “How does it feel? Man, how does it feel to be on your own?” And if you were a kid in 1965, you were on your own, because your parents, God bless them, they could not understand the incredible changes that were taking place. You were on your own, without a home. He gave us the words to understand our hearts.
He didn’t treat you like a child. He treated you like an adult. He stood back and he took in the stakes that we were playing for, he laid them out in front of you. I never forgot it. Bob is the father of my musical country, now and forever. And I thank him.
The great trick I learned from Bob is that he still does one thing that nobody can do. He sings verse after verse after verse and it doesn’t get boring. It’s almost impossible. But he didn’t write about something, he wrote about everything that mattered at once in every song, it seemed like.
He pulled it off. I said, “Yeah, I like that. I’m gonna try that.” So now I’m in my late twenties, and I’m concerned, of course—getting older. I want to write music that I can imagine myself singing onstage at the advanced old age, perhaps, of forty? I wanted to grow up. I wanted to twist the form I loved into something that could address my adult concerns. And so I found my way to country music.
I remember sitting in my little apartment, playing Hank Williams’s Greatest Hits over and over. And I was trying to crack its code, because at first it just didn’t sound good to me. It just sounded cranky and old-fashioned. But it was that hard country voice and I’m playing it, and it was an austere instrumentation. But slowly, slowly, my ears became accustomed to it, its beautiful simplicity and its darkness and depth. And Hank Williams went from archival to alive for me, before my very eyes.
And I lived on that for a while in the late seventies. In country music, I found the adult blues, the working men’s and women’s stories I’d been searching for, the grim recognition of the chips that were laid down against you. “My Bucket’s Got a Hole in It.” “I’ll Never Get Out of This World Alive,” “Lost Highway,” the great Charlie Rich song. [Sings “Life Has Its Little Ups and Downs”:] “Like ponies on a merry-go-round / No one grabs a brass ring every time / But she don’t mind …” [Speaks:] Oh fuck, man, that was like … [sings “Life Has Its Little Ups and Downs”:] “She wears a gold ring on her finger / And it’s mine …”
Oh my God, you know, that can reduce me to tears now. It was so much. It was “Working Man’s Blues”—stoic recognition of everyday reality, and the small and big things that allow you to put a foot in front of the other and get you through. I found that country’s fatalism attracted me. It was reflective. It was funny. It was soulful. But it was quite fatalistic. Tomorrow looked pretty dark.
And the one thing it rarely was, it was rarely politically angry, and it was rarely politically critical. And I realized that that fatalism had a toxic element. If rock and roll was a seven-day weekend, country was Saturday night hell-raising, followed by heavy “Sunday Morning Coming Down.” Guilt, guilt, guilt, I fucked up. Oh my God. But, as the song says: “Would you take another chance on me?” That was country. Country seemed not to question why. It seemed like it was about doing, then dying; screwing, then crying; boozing, then trying. Then as Jerry Lee Lewis, the living, breathing personification of both rock and country said, “I’ve fallen to the bottom and I’m working my way down.”
So that was hardcore workingman’s blues, hardcore—loved it. And in answer to Hank Williams’s question: Why does my bucket have a hole in it? Why? So along with our fun, and the bar-band raucousness, the E Street Band carried a search for identity, and that became a central part of my music. Now country, by its nature, appealed to me. Country was provincial, and so was I. I was not downtown. I wasn’t particularly Bohemian or hipster. I was kind of hippie-by-circumstance, when it happened. But I felt I was an average guy, with a slightly above-average gift. And if I worked my ass off on it … And country was about the truth emanating out of your sweat, out of your local bar, your corner store. It held its gaze on yesterday’s blues, tonight’s pleasures, and maybe on Sunday, the hereafter. And I covered a lot of ground, but there was still something missing.
So, somewhere in my late twenties, I picked up Joe Klein’s
Woody Guthrie: A Life.
And as I read that book, a world of possibilities that predated Dylan’s, that had inspired him, and led to some of his greatest work, opened up for me. Woody’s gaze was set on today’s hard times. But also, somewhere over the horizon, there was something. Woody’s world was a world where fatalism was tempered by a practical idealism. It was a world where speaking truth to power wasn’t futile, whatever its outcome.
Why do we continue to talk about Woody so many years on? Never had a hit, never went platinum, never played in an arena, never got his picture on the cover of Rolling Stone. But he’s a ghost in the machine—big, big ghost in the machine. And I believe it’s because Woody’s songs, his body of work, tried to answer Hank Williams’s question: why your bucket has a hole in it. And that’s a question that’s eaten at me for a long time.
So, in my early thirties, his voice spoke to me very, very deeply. And we began to cover “This Land Is Your Land” in concert. And I knew I was never gonna be Woody Guthrie. I liked Elvis, and I liked the pink Cadillac too much. I like the simplicity, and the tossed-off temporary feeling of pop hits. I liked big, fucking noise. And in my own way, I like the luxuries and the comforts of being a star. I had already gone a long way down a pretty different road.
So four years ago, I found myself in an unusual situation. It was a cold winter day, and I was standing alongside of Pete Seeger, and it was twenty-five degrees. Pete had come to Washington. Pete carries a banjo everywhere he goes—the subway, the bus—and comes out in his shirt. I said, “Man, Pete, put on a jacket, man, it’s freezing out here.” He’s ninety years old, a living embodiment of Woody’s legacy. And there were several hundred thousand of our fellow citizens in front of us. We had the Lincoln Memorial behind us and a newly elected president to our right. And we were going to sing “This Land Is Your Land” in front of all these Americans. And Pete insisted, “We have to sing all the verses. We have to sing all the verses, man. You can’t leave any of them out.” I said, “I don’t know, Pete, there’s only”—we had, like, a crowd of six-year-old school kids behind us. He says, “No, we’re all gonna sing all the verses—all the verses.” And so we got to it. [Plays guitar and sings “This Land Is Your Land.”] This song is meant to be sung by everybody. [Plays guitar and sings “This Land Is Your Land,” with crowd singing along.]
So, on that day, Pete and myself, and generations of young and old Americans—all colors, religious beliefs—I realized that sometimes things that come from the outside, they make their way in, to become a part of the beating heart of the nation. And on that day, when we sang that song, Americans—young and old, black and white, of all religious and political beliefs—were united, for a brief moment, by Woody’s poetry.
So, perhaps Lester Bangs wasn’t completely right, for here we all are tonight in this town together, musicians, young and old, celebrating, each, perhaps in our own way, a sense of freedom that was Woody’s legacy. So, rumble, young musicians, rumble. Open your ears and open your hearts. Don’t take yourself too seriously, and take yourself as seriously as death itself. Don’t worry. Worry your ass off. Have ironclad confidence, but doubt—it keeps you awake and alert. Believe you are the baddest ass in town, and … you suck!
It keeps you honest. It keeps you honest. Be able to keep two completely contradictory ideas alive and well inside of your heart and head at all times. If it doesn’t drive you crazy, it will make you strong. And stay hard, stay hungry, and stay alive. And when you walk onstage tonight to bring the noise, treat it like it’s all we have. And then remember, it’s only rock and roll. I think I may go out and catch a little black death metal. Thank you.
Springsteen in concert, July 28, 2012, Ullevi Stadium, Gothenburg, Sweden. FRANK STEFANKO
ABOUT THE CONTRIBUTORS
Win Butler is the lead singer for the Canadian indie-rock band Arcade Fire. The group’s third album, The Suburbs, won the 2011 Grammy Award for Album of the Year.
David Corn is the Washington bureau chief for Mother Jones magazine, a former Washington editor of The Nation, and the author of several best-selling books, including Showdown: The Inside Story of How Obama Battled the GOP to Set Up the 2012 Election and Hubris: The Inside Story of Spin, Scandal and the Selling of the Iraq War.
The Dublin-based Ian Dempsey hosts The Breakfast Show on Today FM, a national commercial radio station in Ireland.
Dave DiMartino, who served as the editor of Creem from 1979 to 1986, is executive editor of Yahoo! Music in Los Angeles. He has been West Coast bureau chief for Billboard and a senior writer at Entertainment Weekly. A contributor to Rolling Stone, the Village Voice, and many other publications, he is the author of Singer-Songwriters: Pop Music’s Performer-Composers, from A to Zevon.
Robert Duncan, who was managing editor of Creem in the midseventies, is executive creative director of Duncan/Channon, a San Francisco-based ad agency. He is author of The Noise: Notes from a Rock ’n’ Roll Era, as well as the satirical biography Kiss and Only the Good Die Young. He has contributed to Rolling Stone, Circus, Life, and many other publications. His novel, Loudmouth, will be published in 2013.
Jerry Gilbert was a staff writer at Melody Maker before joining Sounds in 1970. He spent five years as its deputy editor, then wrote for such other British periodicals as Zigzag and the Daily Mirror. He later started the dance trade magazine Disco International.
Detroit-based Gary Graff is the editor of The Ties That Bind: Bruce Springsteen A to E to Z. A founding editor of the MusicHound Essential Album Guide series, he has contributed to the New York Times Syndicate, Revolver magazine, the United Stations Radio Networks, and Billboard. He coauthored such books as Rock ’n’ Roll Myths: The True Stories Behind the Most Infamous Legends and Neil Young: Long May You Run.
Mike Greenblatt is a longtime music critic and a former managing editor of New Jersey’s Aquarian Weekly.
Nashville-based Vernell Hackett, a founder of American Songwriter, edited that magazine for twenty years. She writes for Thomson-Reuters News Service, AOL’s The Boot, Country Weekly, and other outlets. She has written several books, including a biography of Carrie Underwood for ABC/Clio and Ghosts, Gangsters and Gamblers of Las Vegas (with coauthors Michelle Honick and Liz Cavanaugh) for Schiffer Publishing.
As editorial director of EMAP Magazines in the 1980s and 1990s, British journalist David Hepworth was involved in editing, launching, or directing such leading magazines as Q and Mojo. He has been a presenter on BBC’s Whistle Test and, in 1985, an anchor of Live Aid. His writing has appeared in the Guardian, the Times, the Independent, and Marie Claire.
When Philadelphia’s WMMR-FM adopted a rock format in 1968, Dave Herman was the first disc jockey on the air. His longtime morning show was also broadcast on pioneering New York radio station WNEW-FM. Its daily “Bruce Juice” segments, featuring Springsteen music, became a staple of the program.
Nick Hornby, the British novelist and essayist, is perhaps best known for High Fidelity, a rock-and-roll-inspired novel that became a film starring John Cusack. His other novels include About a Boy, How to Be Good, A Long Way Down, Slam, and, most recently, Juliet, Naked.
The UK-based Patrick Humphries is the author of acclaimed biographies of Richard Thompson and Nick Drake, as well as The Complete Guide to the Music of Bruce Springsteen. Lonnie Donegan and the Birth of British Rock & Roll, his biography of the King of Skiffle, was published in 2012. He has written for Melody Maker, New Musical Express, the Times of London, the Evening Standard, the Guardian, and Mojo. He has presented documentaries and radio series for the BBC, including the ten-part Bob Dylan Story.
Steve Kandell is a former editor in chief of Spin, the American music monthly.
Ted Koppel is best known as the anchor of ABC-TV Network’s Nightline, a job he held from its founding in 1980 until his retirement in 2005.
Gavin Martin published Alternative Ulster at the peak of Ireland’s punk rock craze in 1977. He has since contributed articles about music and film to New Musica
l Express and many other publications. Today, he is the music critic for the Daily Mirror in London.
Don McLeese, a journalism professor at the University of Iowa, has been a columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times and Austin American-Statesman and a senior editor at No Depression. He has written for Rolling Stone, the New York Times Book Review, the Washington Post, the Chicago Tribune, Entertainment Weekly, and dozens of other publications. His work has been anthologized in The Best of No Depression: Writing About American Music, Rolling Stone: The Decades of Rock & Roll, Racing in the Street: The Bruce Springsteen Reader, Rockin’ Out: Popular Music in the U.S.A., and 33 1/3 Greatest Hits, Vol. 2. He is the author of Dwight Yoakam: A Thousand Miles from Nowhere, The New York Times Arts and Culture Reader, and Kick Out the Jams.
Ian “Molly” Meldrum has been one of Australia’s best-known pop-music journalists and critics since the 1960s. He has also been a musical entrepreneur and record producer.
Singer-songwriter Elliott Murphy has released approximately three dozen albums since 1973, when his critically acclaimed debut, Aquashow, was reviewed alongside Springsteen’s second LP in Rolling Stone. Murphy, who grew up in Long Island, New York, but has lived in Paris since 1989, has recorded with Springsteen and performed with him onstage. Murphy has written for Rolling Stone, Spin, and other magazines and published several novels and short-story collections.
Ed Norton has starred in such popular films as Everyone Says I Love You, The People vs. Larry Flint, American History X, and Primal Fear. He is also a screenwriter, film director, and producer as well as a social activist and environmentalist. In 2010, he was named a United Nations Goodwill Ambassador for Biodiversity.
Will Percy is an attorney in New Orleans and a nephew of the late novelist Walker Percy.
After winning the Jerome Lowell Dejur prize for fiction at the City College of New York and the Deems Taylor award for journalism from ASCAP, Bruce Pollock served as an editor at Rock, Contemporary Music, The Funny Papers, and Penthouse’s Bravo while contributing to the New York Times, Saturday Review, TV Guide, USA Today, Playboy, and the Village Voice. He created GUITAR: For the Practicing Musician and has published three novels and eleven books on music, including Working Musicians, By the Time We Got to Woodstock, If You Like the Beatles, and The Rock Song Index: The 7500 Most Important Songs of the Rock Era. He edited the annual Popular Music: An Annotated Index of American Popular Songs for sixteen years. Recently, two of his out-of-print books have been reissued in downloadable form: When the Music Mattered: Rock in the 1960s and the novel It’s Only Rock and Roll. His next book will be on the one-hundred-year history of ASCAP.