Barack and the Boss
- 04.17.2008 - 5:49 PMYesterday, in endorsing Barack Obama, Bruce Springsteen wrote on his website:
He speaks to the America I’ve envisioned in my music for the past 35 years, a generous nation with a citizenry willing to tackle nuanced and complex problems, a country that’s interested in its collective destiny and in the potential of its gathered spirit. A place where “. . . nobody crowds you, and nobody goes it alone.”
It’s true that Obama speaks to the America Springsteen usually writes about. But I’m not sure what he’s referring to in this description. Springsteen’s America is a soot-covered wasteland of junked cars, violent townies, shotgun weddings, racist cops, closed factories, and endless unemployment lines. If you think Obama was tough on small town mentalities, consider the lyrics of Springsteen’s “Born to Run”:
Baby this town rips the bones from your back
It’s a death trap, it’s a suicide rap
We gotta get out while we’re young
‘Cause tramps like us, baby we were born to run
Wherever the tramps wound up, let’s hope they didn’t join the work force. Being out of work in this traumatized dystopia is paradise compared to what happens if you actually ever find a job:
Early in the morning factory whistle blows,
Man rises from bed and puts on his clothes,
Man takes his lunch, walks out in the morning light,
It’s the working, the working, just the working life.Through the mansions of fear, through the mansions of pain,
I see my daddy walking through them factory gates in the rain,
Factory takes his hearing, factory gives him life,
The working, the working, just the working life.End of the day, factory whistle cries,
Men walk through these gates with death in their eyes.
And you just better believe, boy,
somebody’s gonna get hurt tonight,
It’s the working, the working, just the working life.
When, in 1980, Springsteen wrote
I got a job working construction for the Johnstown company
But lately there ain’t been much work on account of the economy
Now all them things that seemed so important
Well mister they vanished right into the air
Now I just act like I don’t remember, Mary acts like she don’t care
who could blame him? It was less than a year after Jimmy Carter had gone on television and made a speech diagnosing the country as clinically depressed and spiritually bankrupt:
In a nation that was proud of hard work, strong families, close-knit communities, and our faith in God, too many of us now tend to worship self-indulgence and consumption. Human identity is no longer defined by what one does, but by what one owns. But we’ve discovered that owning things and consuming things does not satisfy our longing for meaning. We’ve learned that piling up material goods cannot fill the emptiness of lives which have no confidence or purpose.
The symptoms of this crisis of the American spirit are all around us.
Springsteen took the nation’s pulse and wrote about it. The problem is that his sense of America–forged during the Carter years–has not changed since. Sure, he came out with an inspirational post-9/11 album. But that came and went as fast as Yasir Arafat’s blood donation to the victims.
Springsteen said in his Obama letter: “After the terrible damage done over the past eight years, a great American reclamation project needs to be undertaken.” But it’s hard to imagine what exactly he wants to reclaim. The last time Springsteen’s lyrics reflected any consistent sense of romance and adventure in connection with America was during the Nixon years. Personally, I’d love to see him make music like that again. But somehow I don’t think that’s what he’s getting at.
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April 17th, 2008 at 7:31 PM
I love much of Springsteen’s music. But listening to his articulation of the childish belief that what a politician says is sincere on the one hand, and that he is capable of effecting his sincere beliefs on the other is stunningly naive. Thank God he is a billionaire musician because he would never have made it if he had to get an actual job.
April 17th, 2008 at 8:40 PM
I have my weaknesses for popular culture and some of its practitioners, but, should “Contentions” and its readers really seriously discuss what Bruce Springsteen thinks about the present political scene. Who’s thought is next? Brittany Spears?
April 18th, 2008 at 12:17 AM
I am so grateful you took the time to write this and slog through the depressing musical nightmares of B.S. I never EVER liked B.S. or understood the mass infatuation. Have you ever read what B.S. demands back stage for a concert? Well, it’s enough to make a middleclass citizen bitter with contempt.
snip: “the Beluga caviar and Carr’s water crackers kinda fly in the face of the band’s working class image.”
http://www.thesmokinggun.com/backstagetour/bruce/bruce5.html
April 18th, 2008 at 7:34 AM
Paul: as politically juvenile and frozen in time as Springsteen is — as Abe implies, he’s a ’70s dinosaur when it comes to politics (and one who got that era completely wrong as well) — he’s no Britney Spears, and sadly far too many non-political boomers and pre-boomers take his politics seriously. Which is why Kerry wanted him so badly to perform for him at some campaign event in 2004, and why I’m guessing that Obama will want him to do the same this year.
I think it’s good every now and again for bloggers to take a look at what the cultural elites are doing and saying, in order to praise when deserved and kick ‘em for their childish worldviews unsupported by anything as tiresome as facts. For example, I’d like Bruce or any of his supporters to outline, without resort to platitudes, the “terrible damage done over the past eight years.”
April 18th, 2008 at 8:17 AM
Okay, Jon S, as long as it’s “every now and again….” By the way, a serious question: I have heard of Springsteen, but I really don’t know exactly what he does or why he is so popular? No accusations, please, of me being a snob! As I said in the above post, there are many forms and people in the popular culture that I appreciate and adore.
April 18th, 2008 at 9:12 AM
Gee… hard to imagine why after six years of war Springsteen isn’t juming for joy over “America.”
April 18th, 2008 at 9:19 AM
Well paul, Bruce has been a rock and roll star since the 70’s.. known for 3+ hour long concerts which his audience talks about as transcendental, semi-religious experiences.. the whole ‘musician and performer are one’ nonsense. He also puts a working-class persona in his mannerisms and songs which appeals to many, though he has been a multi-millionare for a long time.
I do like his records, at least the early ones, and can easily ignore his silly pronouncements. I certainly don’t blame you for not taking him seriously, any more than any other celebrity. Howver, in our American culture, celebrity is paramount, and many intellectuals do take him seriously as a spokesman for the working class. So it makes some sense to note it on this blog. Take of that what you will…
April 18th, 2008 at 11:25 AM
Paul: John Smith above said it very well. He certainly has a mystical pull on his fans, which, apart from the fine music, is … well … mystifying! I like his early songs much better, but even there his portrait of America as a bleak, uncaring, hateful place is straight out of a late ’60s/early 70s political playbook. His view of America is not that some bad things happen here — which of course is true — but rather that America is beyond hope even if occasionally some good things break through the miasma of racism, warmongering, and selfishness. The good things, clearly, are people like him, and now people like Obama, anointed by Bruce, the Almighty Boss. He’s John the Baptist, Obama is the Messiah.
April 20th, 2008 at 9:02 AM
“the Beluga caviar and Carr’s water crackers kinda fly in the face of the band’s working class image.”
Those items are on Clarence Clemmons’ porton of the rider. I’ve never known him to have a working class image, as such.
Otherwise, the rider is bog standard, in fact considerably less excessive than many of acts considerably less magnificent in stature. This is he furthest thing from incriminating.