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Thursday, Nov 26, 2009
His county -- and his country -- cried out for him. And Bruce Springsteen came through.
Aug 6, 2002 | On July 30, Bruce Springsteen released "The Rising" (Columbia), his first studio album with the E Street Band in 18 years. And, for the rest of that week, from the "Today" show to Ted Koppel to the cover of Time magazine, the Boss -- who has been virtually ignored, except by his fans, for years -- was everywhere.
The media hadn't gone this Springsteen-happy since Ronald Reagan misappropriated the lyrics to "Born in the USA." This time, of course, the theme of "The Rising" was the news hook; it's the first full-length Sept. 11-themed work by a rock artist of Springsteen's stature, featuring songs sung from the perspective of the dead, the grieving and the walking wounded. As Time reported, Springsteen found inspiration in part from the New York Times' "Portraits of Grief" section, the thumbnail sketches of lives in full swing that were stopped short that day.
On "Today," Matt Lauer delicately suggested that some people might take a cynical view of "The Rising" as a commercialization of the national catastrophe. But imagine for a moment that you're Bruce Springsteen reading "Portraits of Grief" and you keep coming across your own name. Your music was one victim's passion, your songs were played at another victim's memorial service. Imagine being so much a part of these people's lives that you're included in their obituaries. How do you respond to that? Isn't it more cynical not to respond?
Springsteen makes rock 'n' roll with a folkie's conscience and a soul singer's need to testify. He began his career writing cinematic songs about the fierce dreams of blue-collar kids like himself, hungry for something beyond the pinched ambitions and dead-end lives of their parents. Over the years he has remained true to those kids, and himself, by continuing the story into middle age: The characters in his songs made bad choices and lucked out, drifted and found their way, ran from adult responsibility and finally embraced it.
One hundred and fifty-eight residents of Monmouth County, N.J., where Springsteen lives, died in the Sept. 11 attacks; this was the largest concentration of victims in the state. Overall, the casualties of the attacks, in terms of age, social class and geography, were disproportionately Springsteen's people -- aging boomers who used to be wild and innocent and now got up every morning and went to work each day. People with wives and husbands and kids and mortgages and to-do lists and dreams and maybe an old guitar and boxes of vinyl albums in the attic. Any of them could have been any of us.
There are no anthems on "The Rising," no politics to be misconstrued, no Toby Keith jingoism. These are songs on a human scale; it's a work of great empathy about the attacks' effects on individual lives, and about love and security previously taken for granted. But it's also, more often than you might expect, a spirit-soaring, hip-shaking, roll-up-the-rug-and-dance record that reinforces (though in a very different context) what Springsteen sang almost 25 years ago on "Badlands" -- "It ain't no sin to be glad you're alive."
During the E Street Band reunion tour three years ago, Springsteen began closing shows with the gorgeous "Land of Hope and Dreams," a new song that swayed and bumped like a big old engine rumbling through the night. Springsteen and his longtime band mates, arrayed in a line across the edge of the stage, were a vision of lasting friendship as they sang of a forgiving train that carried "saints and sinners, losers and winners, whores and gamblers, lost souls" to a future where "dreams will not be thwarted" and "faith will be rewarded." Without "Land of Hope and Dreams," or the E Street Band reunion, I'm not sure that Springsteen's response to Sept. 11 would have been so thoughtful and sure-footed.
"The Rising" continues the chugging vision of "Land of Hope and Dreams"; the train is rock 'n' roll, and rock 'n' roll holds within it the essential American ideas: community, reconciliation, redemption, the assurance that you are not alone. "The Rising" needed to be an E Street Band record -- when the world is falling apart, you turn to familiar faces and voices. These songs performed solo by Springsteen in his "Ghost of Tom Joad" mode would have been too depressing to bear. Instead, much of "The Rising" is loud and joyous. In spirit, it reminds me of the Four Tops' "Reach Out, I'll Be There," that emphatic declaration of loyalty and compassion made during a different war, a long time ago.
Atlanta-based Brendan O'Brien (Pearl Jam, Rage Against the Machine) is the first outside producer Springsteen has ever used. And O'Brien gives "The Rising" an enormous sound that captures both the E Street Band's power and its subtlety. Although the guitars (played by Springsteen, Steve Van Zandt and Nils Lofgren) and Max Weinberg's drums are pushed forward, you can still hear each complex layer of the band in the deep, clean mix.
O'Brien's task was to make Springsteen sound "modern." But, sometimes, as on the overproduced "The Fuse" (a song that juxtaposes images of death and dread with the life force of sex), the sound is so modern -- tape-looped drumbeat and all -- it becomes generic. (Anybody who thinks a modern Boss is a swell idea is invited to dust off the disco mix of "Dancing in the Dark.") "The Rising" is not a perfect record -- it's a little schizo, in fact. The beach-ball bounce of "Waitin' on a Sunny Day" seems out of place (although I'm not sorry it's here as a mood elevator), and "Let's Be Friends (Skin to Skin)" sounds less like Springsteen than it does John Mellencamp. What's up with that?
