Walk like a Man

by Robert J. Wiersema

  Springsteen’s importance to The Gaslight Anthem might be even more significant, though it’s more subtle, at least sonically. The band members grew up in New Jersey and have remained there, even as they’ve found success in the last couple of years, and their music incorporates both the Jersey Shore sound (of which Springsteen is the prime exponent) and the boozy, punky swagger of Minneapolis’s archetypal alt-rockers The Replacements. It might seem like an unwieldy blend, but The Gaslight Anthem makes it work; better, they make it sing. Their songs are hard-edged and propulsive—what Springsteen might have sounded like had he grown up listening to The Clash. Their records are strewn with references to Springsteen (“Meet Me by the River’s Edge” on The ’59 Sound, manages to name-check “No Surrender” and “Bobby Jean” in a single line, and “High Lonesome” riffs on “I’m On Fire” while also managing to quote from a Counting Crows song), but it’s more a matter of sense, of feel. There’s an urgent earnestness to The Gaslight Anthem, a fearless affixing of the band’s heart to its sleeve, that is reminiscent of Springsteen in the mid-to-late seventies.

  The sensibilities of Montreal-based art-arena rock collective Arcade Fire combine seventies art rock (including David Bowie, who has appeared with the band several times) and U2-style exuberance. (The Irish band used Arcade Fire’s “Wake Up” as their entrance music during their Vertigo tour, and the Montreal band opened several dates for them.) You can hear the Springsteen influence, though, in songs like “Keep the Car Running” and “No Cars Go,”5 and, more so, in their live performances. It’s not just in the little things—bandleader Win Butler’s nightly plunge into the audience to sing from the middle of the crowd harkens back to Springsteen’s similar excursions during “Spirit in the Night” in the mid-seventies6—but in their overall presence live. There’s a congregational aspect to the band’s performances, a sense of communion and community that will be familiar to any Springsteen fan. Arcade Fire’s goal, it seems, is to conquer any room they’re in, no matter the size, and bring every audience member into each song: they’re not performing for, they’re performing with.7

  Which brings me, inevitably, to The Hold Steady.

  The Hold Steady seems equally inspired by early eighties punk (including Hüsker Dü, who were local heroes when frontman Craig Finn was growing up in Minneapolis) and Springsteen.8 They also have the work ethic down. Widely touted as the best bar band in America, The Hold Steady are constantly on the road, touring in support of a new album or in anticipation of the next. Their setlists are fluid, filled with rarities and well-chosen covers, though their favored covers come from either punk sources or seventies vintage arena rock.

  And The Hold Steady are, like The Gaslight Anthem and Arcade Fire, part of a very small group of younger bands on whom Springsteen has bestowed his blessing. On the London Calling: Live in Hyde Park dvd, for example, you’ll see Springsteen trading verses on “No Surrender” with Brian Fallon of The Gaslight Anthem. Their performance looks suspiciously like a passing of the torch, and they produce one of the finest versions of “No Surrender” I can recall hearing, to boot. There’s also footage floating around of Springsteen guesting with The Gaslight Anthem, singing the chorus to their “The ’59 Sound.” Similarly, Springsteen and Arcade Fire have done guest spots at each other’s concerts: Arcade Fire joining Springsteen on stage to sing “State Trooper,” and Springsteen joining them on stage to sing “Keep the Car Running.”

  And The Hold Steady?

  The impetus behind the Heroes compilation was for established rock icons, including Springsteen, Bob Dylan, Paul McCartney, and Leonard Cohen, to choose a song from their own catalogues and nominate a younger performer or band to cover it. Springsteen chose “Atlantic City” for The Hold Steady to cover. The song is a perfect choice: with its squalor and vague sense of impending doom, it fits well with The Hold Steady’s own music.

  THERE’S NOTHING, for a music fan, like the thrill of discovering a new hero. It’s usually something that happens when you’re a teenager.

  From mumbling along with “Rosalita” to practicing my “Dancing in the Dark” moves in front of the full-length mirror in my mother’s bedroom and listening to those bootleg tapes with Greg, devouring every word, every note, my discovery of Springsteen and his music had a visceral, physical effect on me. My heart expanded in my chest until it seemed close to bursting.

  It was a lot like falling in love.

  No, it was exactly like falling in love.

  There are two sad things about that feeling, though.

  The first is that you grow out of it.

  As you get older, your reaction to music changes. For even the most dedicated music fan, the pleasure of a new discovery becomes less physical.9 Your responses are cerebral, appreciative, rather than passionate.

  I’m a huge Grateful Dead fan—they’re playing as I write this— but I came to them too late. I love the music, I’ve read a lot about them, I’ve listened to concerts and watched DVDs, I’ve been immersed. But it’s not the same.

  I have a similar reaction to Pearl Jam. And to Tori Amos. Ryan Adams. The Black Crowes. The Drive-by Truckers. Richard Thompson.

  I love them all, but I’m not in love with them, if you know what I mean.10

  The second sad thing about that feeling is that it’s so easy to forget. As you get older, the sense of it slips away. If you’re lucky enough to experience that passion again, though, it all comes rushing back.

  Which is how I find myself pressed up against a stage in a sticky mob of bodies, soaked with sweat, empty beer cans scattered in front of me, my arms high in the air, my head thrown back in song.

  It’s August again, almost exactly five years after the Springsteen Devils & Dust concert, and I’m back in Vancouver for a show. It’s not Springsteen this time, and I’m not at gm Place; this time it’s the Vogue Theatre and The Hold Steady.11 I’m surrounded by friends— Peter and Colin12 and Lue, and Lue’s friends Neil and Angela. It’s as hot as an oven, and the music is loud enough to almost disappear into a wall of distortion. I’m as pissed as a newt, and I’m singing along with every word.

  And I’m happy.

  How did this happen? I’m turning forty in three months, and I’m completely lost over a band? That’s not the usual way of things.

  Screw the usual way.

  I discovered The Hold Steady back in 2006, shortly after the release of their third album, Boys and Girls in America. I was drawn to them because of Craig Finn’s way with a lyric: anybody who can reference Jack Kerouac in the opening line of a propulsive, desperate song like “Stuck Between Stations” (“there are nights when i think that sal paradise was right. boys and girls in america have such a sad time together”13) was practically tailor-made for a book nerd like me.

  Boys and Girls in America is a great album. The critics loved it, and l loved it, in that late-thirties sort of rational, appreciative way. I loved the album so much that I thought their next one, 2008’s Stay Positive, was a disappointment. I played it a couple of times, liked it well enough, and then put it away. A while later, though, I gave it another try, playing it on my CD player in my office at the bookstore. I didn’t listen to anything else for almost two months.14

  I was having a hard summer, and Stay Positive, with its violence and heartbreak, its loss and pain, its overarching, fragile sense of hope, seemed to speak to something deep inside me.

  The big moment didn’t come until late September, though. I was standing outside the Doubletree Hotel in Seattle, across the street from Sea-Tac Airport—Cori, Xander, and I were down there to catch a musical, as I recall—having my last cigarette of the night. I was listening to a bootleg of a Hold Steady show from the week before, at the 40 Watt Club in Athens, Georgia, when the feeling came over me. It started in my chest, a surging, a heaving, a swelling that felt like it might crack my ribs. It traveled down my arms, down my legs, up my neck. I could barely suppress a sound midway between laughing and crying. I had to shake my head.

&
nbsp; I’d never felt like that before.

  Except . . . I had.

  It all came back to me in a rush: the blanket on the beach, the heat of the sun, the taste of a lukewarm wine cooler, and Greg’s shitty boom box playing that tape of Springsteen’s 1978 Winterland show, more than three hours of breathless rock and roll, that feeling of instant connection and deep physical understanding.

  Twenty years later, I was feeling it again.

  After that, I dove headfirst into The Hold Steady. I bought their two earlier albums,15 downloaded a bunch of shows. Every song spoke to me. Every song had lines that broke my heart.

  The preceding months had been rough ones for me, full of lengthy, dark-hued introspection at every level: personal, professional, emotional. I had no idea how to balance the very real blessings of the life I had with the despair I always seemed to be feeling.

  Into that emotional vortex came songs like “Lord, I’m Discouraged” (“excuses and half-truths and fortified wine”), “Constructive Summer” (“i went to yr schools, i did my detention, but the walls are so gray, i couldn’t pay attention”) and “Your Little Hoodrat Friend” (“it burns being broke and it hurts to be heartbroken but always being both must be a drag”).16 There was epic love and violence, emotional squalor, druggy highs, and bloody lows. Four albums’ worth of people trying to find their way in their worlds, emerging bloody and sometimes broken if they emerged at all. It was so sad and hopeless, yet strangely redemptive and affirming, all wrapped up in hook-laden pop and bar-honed musical chops.

  That November, Colin and I followed the band for a couple of nights. Seattle and Portland. Showbox SoDo and the Crystal Ballroom.

  I was pretty drunk by the time the band opened that first show with “Citrus,”17 and when Craig hit the line “lost in fog and love and faithless fear I’ve had kisses that make judas seem sincere,” something inside me broke. That line cut through the questions and the pain and made me feel young and hopeful and free. It was cheaper than therapy. And then they kicked into “Stuck Between Stations” and it was like I exploded.

  I emerged from that show drenched in whisky and Coke, throat torn apart, and mostly deaf in one ear.

  I felt reborn.

  I’ve seen The Hold Steady more times in the past two years than I’ve seen Springsteen in the last decade. Every show is different, and every show—every song—speaks to me in a different way.

  What they have in common is what Craig says at the end of every show: “There is so much joy in what we do up here.”

  To see that joy, you need to find a clip of “Rosalita,” from a Springsteen tribute show in April, 2007.18 The event, a fundraiser, featured a healthy roster of musicians, including Ronnie Spector, Steve Earle, and Badly Drawn Boy, performing tracks from the Springsteen canon. The highlight, though, was Springsteen himself showing up to lead the musicians through a sloppy, passionate version of his perennial showstopper. The video is grainy and shaky, and the sound is poor, but that doesn’t matter. What happened on that stage comes through.

  The guy with the beard in the patterned blue shirt? The one who takes the first verse of the song? That’s Craig. Keep your eye on him throughout the song, as he attempts to stay in the background, then gets called up to the mic again. Watch as he almost dissolves in happiness and abandon, completely losing any trace of self-consciousness.

  When Finn tells the audience that “there is so much joy in what we do up here,” this is what he’s talking about.

  There really is so much joy. That’s what it’s all about.

  Let’s face it—life can be pretty shitty. Often, at best, mind-numbingly routine.

  But there are moments . . .

  Some of them you see coming. The birth of your child. The sight of your soon-to-be-wife walking toward you on her father’s arm. The first copy of your first book.

  Other moments you just go with. You find the joy you can, and you hope it will sustain you through the dark.

  That’s why I’m here, pressed up against the stage, ears throbbing, hands sore from clapping, just about ready to fall over from drink.

  This moment, right now.

  The moment in “Your Little Hoodrat Friend” where Craig hits the lines “she’s got blue black ink and it’s scratched into her lower back. it said: ‘damn right i’ll rise again.’ yeah, damn right you’ll rise again,” and everyone in the audience hits them with him.19 I’m part of a sea of voices, a feast of friends. A Unified Scene.20

  The moment when Craig sings my favorite lines from the new album, from a song called “The Smidge”: “Make the sign of the cross with your cigarette. Come on, smudge a little smoke up in the night.”

  It’s the moment that they finish the show with “Stay Positive,” as if they knew it was exactly what I needed to hear.

  Yes, there is so much joy.

  In this moment, for just this moment, I’m out of my own head.

  I’m feeling the music in my soul. The kick drum is catching the light and it looks like the beating of my heart. For this moment, for just this moment, everything is all right.

  It’s grace in 4/4 time, with a back beat and a guitar solo.

  . . . the kids at the shows,

  They’ll have kids of their own,

  And the sing-along songs will be our scriptures.

  “Stay Positive,” THE HOLD STEADY

  1. I suppose I should say something about “Atlantic City,” shouldn’t I? Considering the way this chapter is going to go. Well, “Atlantic City” is one of Springsteen’s strangest singles, and one of his best known songs. Drawn from the Nebraska album, it uses the crumbling excess of the Jersey waterfront gambling mecca to chronicle two lives of desperation and possible salvation. It’s one of Springsteen’s most covered songs, having appeared in versions by Pete Yorn, The Band, and Counting Crows, among others. The version by The Hold Steady appears on Heroes, a benefit compilation of covers raising funds for War Child.

  2. Also helpful in this sort of trainspotting is to look at the covers Springsteen has chosen to perform over the course of his career, from warhorses like the “Detroit Medley” (made up generally of “Devil with a Blue Dress,” “Good Golly Miss Molly,” “C.C. Rider” and “Jenny Take a Ride”), The Beatles’ “Twist and Shout,” and Elvis Presley’s “Can’t Help Falling in Love,” to more rarely performed numbers like The Animals’ “It’s My Life,” Bob Dylan’s “I Want You” and “Chimes of Freedom,” Buddy Holly’s “Rave On,” and Chuck Berry’s “Carol.”

  3. The respect is clearly mutual: at the Grammy Awards in 2003, Springsteen and an ad hoc group that also featured Paul Simonon and Topper Headon of The Clash, Dave Grohl of Foo Fighters, Elvis Costello, and Miami Steve Van Zandt, performed the band’s “London Calling” as a tribute to Joe Strummer.

  4. There’s a great video at countingcrows.com of a 2007 performance of “Rain King” that includes “Thunder Road” in its entirety. The band segues effortlessly into the Springsteen song, incorporating it into the musical setting of their original with a deftness that makes it seem as if “Thunder Road” had been there all along. The opening line, in singer Adam Duritz’s voice, is surprising and heart-stopping every time, and the moment the band shifts from the climax of “Thunder Road” back into the climax of “Rain King” only ups the ante.

  5. Yes, they’re both car songs—I call ’em like I see ’em.

  6. That bridging of the gap between performer and audience is one of many, many dazzling moments in the 1978 Houston concert video included in The Promise: The Darkness on the Edge of Town Story box set.

  7. Two of my three major musical regrets for 2010 are my failure to venture across the strait to Vancouver to see shows by The Gaslight Anthem and Arcade Fire. The bruises I have from kicking myself may be permanent.

  8. The tension between influences in The Hold Steady’s work is addressed, with typical flair, in “Barfruit Blues,” a track from their first album Almost Killed Me: “half the crowd is calling out for born to
run and the other half is calling out for born to lose. baby we were born to choose.” You should be familiar with “Born to Run” by now; “Born to Lose” probably refers to the track by punk band Social Distortion.

  9. Two interesting exceptions to this, for me at least? Miles Davis and John Coltrane. I discovered jazz in my early twenties. Yet it took me a while to appreciate it, beyond the level of mood music. I reached a point, though, where it just . . . hit me. Listening to Davis’s Kind of Blue or Coltrane’s A Love Supreme? I get that feeling in my chest, that delicate balance between joy and weeping, every single time.

  10. That being said, I do continue to have the experience of falling in love with individual songs. I may not be head over heels with The Black Crowes, but their “Soul Singing,” well, it makes my soul sing. Lissie’s cover of Kid Cudi’s “Pursuit of Happiness” and Mumford & Sons’ “Little Lion Man” both wrecked me this year, in that musical-punch-to-the-solar-plexus way that I so love.

  11. And the one thing I know, with dead certainty, is that they’re absolutely not going to perform “Atlantic City.” As far as I know, they’ve never performed it live. So yes, this whole “bonus track” thing is a bit of a bait-and-switch. Except for this: it really is a fabulous cover, and it definitely shows the role Springsteen has had in inspiring younger groups, and you shouldn’t let the fact that I’m not really going to talk about it stop you from adding it to your version of this mix-tape. It really does round out the playlist nicely.

  12. The trouble with this book ending in 2005 is that it lacks in any substantial Colin content. Colin’s one of my closest friends, a fellow bookseller. As rare as it is to fall in love with a band in one’s advancing years, it’s rarer still to find a new true friend.