We Need Bruce Springsteen
The biggest Boss fan I know creates a Springsteen playlist for the pandemic
That picture below is of Bruce Springsteen crowdsurfing over my friend Bob Doyle, the biggest Springsteen fan I know. He says that now is the time we need Bruce Springsteen. From time to time, Bob, as a way of nourishing his soul and, in some small way, put some points on the board for humanity, likes to share his thoughts about the Boss. Much is demanded of the reader who chooses to walk beside this writing to the bitter end. Bob’ll throw a punch or two, revel in obscure references to the Bruce anthology, and share his thoughts about how Springsteen’s music brings meaning to his life. And because he’s a mensch, Bob did us up a playlist of all the songs referenced herein.
by Bob Doyle
Let’s get down to business.
When it became clear that this virus was about to reshape our lives in profound ways – you know, when it was merely a hoax inspired by the Democrats – one of my first thoughts was that I wouldn’t be seeing Bruce in 2020. No tour. Likely no new music, though new material was supposedly recorded late last fall. Darkness. Then a few days later I heard a live interview with Bruce on E Street Radio discussing his thoughts and how he was passing his time these days…and tears rolled down my face: alas, this is probably as close as I’d get for some time and the uncertainty of the future added to the shifting sands beneath my feet. Point Blank.
A day or two later: enter a serendipitous email from Brother Mark. On it a link to a perfectly innocuous column in a Canadian online news outlet from a writer – plainly a Bruce fan – with a suggested Bruce “playlist” to help one “escape in a time of isolation.” My first thought was a powerful one…”escape” for escaping’s sake during this time of existential challenge seemed off-key to my trained Bruce ear. Now, Bruce, I posit, would absolutely lead us to find – among other things – transcendence in the face of such mortal threat. That, I guess is a form of escape. But there’s a lot more work that goes into transcendence from what I’ve heard. In truth, the writer had some fine suggestions…”Racing”? Ok. “Human Touch”? Sure. But others…”Saint in the City”? No. “Two Faces”? Close. “Dry Lightning”? Please.
So, after a couple email exchanges, Brother Mark and I agreed that should I take on this challenge and apply myself, we might have an interesting result. So, bully for you, this essay is really an extended DJ session around 20 or so – I just added one after the second graph – tracks for your consideration as a true, essential, life-giving, hard-rocking, pants-dropping Bruce playlist for our days of essential travel only.
Before we get started, that it please the court, a couple self-imposed ground rules: I stuck with tracks from major album releases (no matter how much I wanted to include great material like “Whitetown”…”ain’t no answers here/only the past and fear”…see how I cleverly added another track to the playlist?); I largely omitted covers (even though we could all agree that “When the Saints Go Marching In” with all its New Orleans-historic-Bruce-significance to loss, perseverance, community and recovery in the days post-Katrina would be a welcome addition…ibid) and, finally, the playlist has a progression, a narrative from my perspective…so no “shuffling” of the tracks, if you please. Start at the top and proceed.
To begin I start at the beginning with a song Bruce famously defined as “an invitation” to what turned out to be an extended conversation about love, belonging, community, perseverance and faith – seems we have the time these days to have that conversation. So we’ll start by “singing for the lonely” with “Thunder Road”. And, let’s not settle for the original album track or the latter day arena sing-alongs…let’s go back and pull out a circa 1975 live version with just Bruce and The Professor. Next, the “vacant stores” and shuttered textile mill of “My Hometown” will help set the scene for what’s to come. These days we likely have more time to reflect on what home feels like. Not necessarily a bad thing.
Time to shift gears early on with some deeper cuts to stoke some righteous indignation and flat out anger as we think about the total lack of national leadership and the criminal ineptitude, mismanagement, indifference and out and out ignorance of Donald Trump. Truth. “Your Own Worst Enemy” is one of several tracks on Magic that stubbornly fits the bill here. I like the inference that said enemy came to town through a self-inflicted act (“your fingerprints on file/left clumsily at the scene”) which conveys to us some sense of responsibility and therefore suggests a common-sense resolution. As it should be. The poor and people of color will bear a disproportionate share of the physical and economic pain of this virus. So next we are compelled to go to “The Ghost of Tom Joad” as re-imagined on High Hopes with Morello on guitar – an electric embodiment of rage at injustice. Bruce says of “Stones” from Western Stars…”faith, hope, trust: lies make a fool out of those things and all you are left with is stones”…true in love, true in life, true in the Oval…so we’ll go there next with the haunting version Bruce sings with Patti on the “Western Stars” movie. Because I’m not quite ready to be less mad, I’m lashing out at institutional indifference and “stumblin’ on good hearts turned to stone” in “We Take Care of our Own” from Wrecking Ball. Going with that emotion, let’s feel the despair of a man who doesn’t recognize his surroundings or his place in the world anymore because of some fundamental change. The feeling – shit, I’ve felt it for three and a half years – that something elemental of what it means to be a citizen, an American, has been perverted…in all its shame…so we go back to Magic and turn it up loud for “Long Walk Home” – because there’s something here for us to cling to: the notion that some measure of restoration of those values can be realized with some hard work and faith in one another. Heck, let’s play that one again.
We’re more than a half dozen in. Stretch. Go ahead. Pour that second martini. As a palate cleanser let’s go to “Waitin’ on a Sunny Day” from The Rising as we mix, shake and pour. A quick cut to Born in the USA’s “Cover Me”…where we find a passionate distraction from the pain and uncertainty of the outside world…”turn out the light, bolt the door/I ain’t going out there no more.” Heard.
Time to get serious. Let’s wade into the deep waters of Darkness for some needed soul cleansing. Here we face some hard truths through characters who are consistently knocked down and counted out…but who choose to stand their ground. Darkness in its raw, spirit-rattling reality can push you to the limit until Bruce allows faith and resilience to win the day, but the fight is a close one. Dave Marsh famously said that Darkness, I’m paraphrasing here, asks Men to question the direction of their lives. Many of our fellow citizens will have to ask themselves some very tough questions in the coming months. For them, we’ll do “The Promised Land” – written soon after Elvis’ death – and “Darkness on the Edge of Town” as a gritty, defiant two-pack of perseverance and toughness.
When talking about The River, Bruce said that life is full of paradoxes, and you’ve got to live with them. Clearly that resonates throughout the marvelous 20-song double opus: joy and life next to hardness and loneliness. So it’s here where I make my stand with the beating heart of this playlist. 36 years after The River’s release, we were gifted a revival of the music through new releases and a spectacular, dramatic new live show…punctuated nightly by Bruce’s explanation of the album’s subtext: The River was about time. One’s mortality. The notion that we all have a limited amount of time to do the things that bond us to a fuller life: family, work, the opportunity to do something good. So, I’m pulling out fully 5 tracks from The River for the times we are in. A shout out to co-producer Little Steven whose presence here is a tonic of harmony.
I suggest all live tracks from the 2016 tour…personally I’ll choose the March 28 MSG show. “The Ties That Bind” – one of Bruce’s most unabashedly pop inspired songs – sets the tone and establishes the stakes for the album…the push and pull between the seductive freedom of solitude or the risks of human connection…”we’re runnin’ now but baby we will stand in time to face the ties that bind.” From the first note of “Stolen Car”, The Professor sets a mood of brooding, of tension – something big is obviously happening here – as Bruce, in his words, asks the question if you lose your love, do you lose yourself? And that coda from The Professor. Let’s keep that unnerving, ominous feel with “Point Blank” and its searing, quiet explosion of anger, vulnerability and despair that is present in the lyrics and the performance…probably my favorite of the tour: Bruce at the mic, eyes closed (Read: sit down and listen).
Emerging ever so tentatively from those shadows, in “The Price You Pay” we’re back on the open road and all its freedoms with “hands held high” and again we feel that conflict in the gap between dreams and actions. But it is here, as the album builds to its messaging crescendo, where a decision seems to have been made: Bruce’s character can’t “walk away from the price you pay” and he sells it with a full-throated, sign-throwing punctuation at the top of his range…leaving only a two lap, full band coda to make your hair stand on end. Just breathe. And we’ll close The River as Bruce does, with what has to be one of the most unorthodox songs ever to end a Rock album, “Wreck on the Highway.” Gone are the subtleties and the tension. A life changing event brings clear answers to the tough questions posed throughout. Loss defines meaning in life. The musical resolution here is palpable, the reaction is almost physical. Wow.
Lots to process there, friends. But let’s gather ourselves…
It’s simple now…we close the playlist with a summary of selections that embody the values of this music: friendship, love, transformation, community and perseverance. On the occasion of reuniting the E Street Band, “Blood Brothers” is perhaps Bruce’s singular definition of friendship. The idea that maintaining friendships aren’t easy amid life’s challenges, responsibilities and diversions… “it’s a ride, ride, ride, and there ain’t much cover with no one ridin’ by your side my blood brother.” So, we’ll cross the river to the other side with our friendships strengthened listening to Bruce’s version from Live in New York City from the reunion tour…now some 20 years past. The “power of love revealed” in “This is Your Sword” from High Hopes seems to answer in the affirmative the question Bruce poses in “Thunder Road”: love is real. “My City of Ruins” is bathed in the soul/chorale style of Curtis Mayfield and brings us a kind of renewal and transformation that touches on the Divine, though I’m surely not an expert on that subject. The Celtic-arranged “American Land” is a glorious, foot-stomping affirmation of the American ideal of inclusion. It is so badly needed today as we try to repair the damage a Demagogue has done by normalizing hate and redefining our national character in a way that undermines our humanity. So, middle finger extended toward 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, turn up the Live from Dublin version with the Seeger Sessions Band.
I decided to close things out with a Bruce cover that I hope to see live on the next tour…underscoring the anticipation and excitement that we will all be feeling again hopefully soon about a resumption of a life more normal. You’ve got to have something to look forward to.
Bruce sets up the final song on the Western Stars movie like this:
“So when the music is over at the end of the day, life’s mysteries remain and deepen. It’s answers unresolved. But if your heart is open and you’re thinking hard and living and loving in good faith, the questions you are asking yourselves grow deeper, better. So, you walk on in pursuit of these better questions, tentatively putting one foot in front of the other through the dark because that’s where the next morning is.” Emphasis added.
Wishing that all of us will endure, shine and thrive like a “Rhinestone Cowboy.”
I feel better. I hope you do too.
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