The Promised Land: Bruce Springsteen
The sounds of recession have been around since before this one and will remain after but for a few nights in Dublin, all was forgotten. Ryan Jennings spends a day with Bruce Springsteen’s music and listens to what he has to say.
The man who inspires the most powerful leader in the world must have something to say, right? When Barack Obama told reporters that there was a lot of Springsteen on his iPod, you had to wonder is he more ‘Born in the USA’ or the recession-filled ‘Nebraska’?
If the media men are to be believed, it’s somewhere in between, given that ‘The Rising’ was the anthem of Obama’s campaign. Although it was fitting for 2008, it was written back in 2001. As usual – timeless.
In fact Springsteen has now supplied two would-be presidents with a campaign theme. The first was, inadvertently, for Ronald Reagan – who used ‘Born in the USA’ in 1984. The Boss got the president he wanted in the end, just 25 years later.
For many, Bruce Springsteen might remain the voice of reason in these troubled times. After all, with a career spanning over three decades he’s seen people losing jobs, having trouble with the mortgage, unrequited love, as well as requited love.
For 30 years, Springsteen’s characters have spoken of lost dreams, ‘Racing in The Street’ and before-their-time pregnancies. And just like when he let the crowd sing that line from The River in the RDS in July: “Lately there ain’t been much work on account of the economy”, we’re reminded that he really is as good a social commentator as any of those we read regularly in our papers. Perhaps better.
When ‘Born to Run’ was released in 1975, the US was at its lowest ebb since World War Two. Indeed an economic report published for President Ford in 1975 included the line: “The economy is in a severe recession. Unemployment is too high and will rise higher.” Sounds familiar.
Springsteen learned his trade in a recession and it’s no surprise his work continues to have echoes of hard times.
His breakthrough was a sociological mixed bag. Taking his most famous twosome, ‘Meeting Across the River’ and ‘Jungleland’, there was a fascination of crime, perhaps almost an aspiration to crime. But ‘Born to Run’ speaks of a young man looking to better himself; very few echoes of recession.
He returns to the more un-explosive way of life in ‘Darkness on the Edge of Town’, which saw the a tired-looking, perhaps less optimistic Springsteen express his darker side, partly influenced by the downturn of the late seventies but also after a tiff with the record company. Songs so simple, yet effective, as ‘Factory’ off that album which tells the story of one man’s working day of getting up for work, clocking in, doing the jobs and leaving. And yet it’s everyman that can relate.
That’s the pessimistic take. But ‘Badlands’ is quite another. Rather than accepting the way it is, the character wants to break out; for all the trouble that an area may see, it’s not everyone involved and not everyone understands it.
Set against another recession-fired era, ‘The River’ is an adapted account of the trouble his sister and brother-in-law endured when the construction industry took a hit in the early 80s. That, along with an unplanned pregnancy, made for a difficult time – that can certainly be seen these days.
Things didn’t get much better for the Boss’ characters in his answer to America’s uncertainty, notably auto plants closing with jobs being shipped overseas. ‘Nebraska’s self-titled track told the true story of a serial killer documented in local newspapers across the state and portrayed so well in the film ‘Badlands’ in 1973. Oddly for Springsteen, this album rarely, if ever, shows any of the grace or salvation which invariably features in his other work.
That album sets Springsteen apart as a commentator, with an almost sympathetic, though certainly open minded, take on serial killers.
Despite not being his marquee album, it has received critical acclaim for its place as a narrative and sits starkly with its successor, ‘Born in the USA’, which captured the attention of people all around the world. It has both the anti-war sentiments, which now exist for a different generation for a different war, and also tapped into the pure rock and roll culture – loud guitars, banging drums and angst.
‘My Hometown’, I’m sure, is being felt today as much as it was in 1985. Springsteen sings of ‘Main Street’s whitewashed windows and vacant stores’, as though he wrote it this year.
With the E-Street Band going its separate ways for the time being the New Jersey native moved into solo territory with ‘Tunnel of Love’ in 1987. A more grown- up theme exudes throughout this time; the wife and kids feature more than they would have previously. In fact the whole record smacks of romanticism, not in the traditional ‘romantic’ sense, you understand, given that ‘Brilliant Disguise’ marks the breakdown of his first marriage, to Julianne Phillips.
While Springsteen is certainly seen as enduring, it’s really nothing compared to the song doing the rounds on his current tour. Think of how Stephen Foster, who wrote ‘Hard Times Come Again No More’ in 1885, would feel now.
As we look toward better days it could be as apt as it was when the first bars of ‘Waiting on a Sunny Day’ rang out as the rain died away and a rainbow emerged over the Anglesea Stand that we look to that song, ‘Promised Land’ or maybe even take the view of one of his more recent works, ‘Girls in Their Summer Clothes’, where the character decided that against all odds, “things been a little tight but I know they’re gonna turn my way.”
Springsteen remains a paradox; for a man who has worked hard and, I’m sure, earned a lot of money in the last three decades, he still writes about the common man. As ever though, whether it be one of his shows or a simple CD in the living room, even after the strife in his songs you still end up feeling glad you’re alive.
The man has the tendency to take you into that world where you don’t quite remember racing in the street or sitting out on a New York street in the early hours, but you’re sure you did it.
