Part 9 (1/2)

dreasteen's asteen stood onstage in Te of America The previous day, the nation had turned a fateful corner: With a stunning ressive dream in America-was elected president of the United States It was hardly an unexpected victory In the aftere crisis in Iran, and an ongoing economic recession, America had developed serious doubts about its purpose and its future, and toand easy response to those hardshi+ps But when all was said and done, the election felt stunning and brutal, a harbinger for the years of er was up late the night before, watching the election returns, and stayed in his hotel roo over whether he should e that night at Arizona State University, Springsteen stood silently for a uitar nervously, and then told his audience: ”I don't knohat you guys think about what happened last night, but I think it was pretty frightening” Then he vaulted into an enraged version of his , ”Badlands”

On that occasion, ”Badlands” stood for everything it had always stood for-a refusal to accept life's meanest fates orabout the spitefulness that was about to visit our land, as the social and political horizon turned dark and frightening ”I want to spit in the face of these badlands,” Springsteen sang with an unprecedented fury on that night, and it was perhaps in that instant that he reconceived his role in rock & roll

In a way, his action foreshadowed the political activism and social controversy that would transforsteen would becoh that future probably wasn't what he had in ht Instead, Springsteen was si on a question that, in one for In a way it was a simple and time-old question: Namely, what does it mean to be born an American?

WELL, WHAT DOES ITborn to birthrights of freedom, opportunity, equity, and bounty? If so, then what does it mean that so many of the country's citizens never truly connect with or receive those blessings? And what does it mean that, in a land of such matchless vision and hope, the acrid realities of fear, repression, hatred, deprivation, racism, and sexis in badlands?

Questions of this sort-about America's nature and purpose, about the distance between its ideals and its truths-are, of course, as old as the nation itself, and finding revealing or liberating answers to those questions is a venture that has obsessed (and eluded) many of the country's worthiest artists, from Nathaniel Hawthorne to Norman Mailer, from D W Griffith to Francis Coppola Rock & roll-an art foruilts-has also aimed, from time to time, to pursue those questions, to enerational division and political rancor, Bob Dylan and the Band explored the idea of America as a wounded fa, and The Band; in the end, though, the artists shi+ed fro about the American family's complex, troubled blood ties proved too for (like the Band's Robbie Robertson, a Canadian with a fixation on American myths) confronted the specter of forsworn history in works like American Stars 'n' Bars, Hawks and Doves, and Freedom Yet, like too many artists or politicians who come face to face with how A finally didn't seem to knohat to say about such losses When all is said and done, it is chiefly pre-rock singers (most notably, Robert Johnson, Hank Williams, Woody Guthrie, Charley Patton, and a few other early blues and country singers) and a handful of early rock & roll figures-Elvis Presley, Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee Leho have co of America in their steen) tried to seize the nation's dream of fortune and make himself a symbol of it But once Presley and those others had seized that drea thes, Asteen followed his own version of the fleeting Arown up in the suburban town of Freehold, New Jersey, feeling estranged from his family and community, and his refusal to accept the li in his early, largely autobiographical albus from Asbury Park; The Wild, the Innocent and the E Street Shuffle; and Born to Run orks about flight froations, and they acco about: That is, those records lifted him from a life ofpurpose Frosteen was heralded by critics as one of the brightest hopes in rock & roll-a consu and provoking as Presley, and as isteen lived up to the hoopla: With his 1975 albusteen fashi+oned pop'sand eventful t Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band But for all the praise and fasteen of his fears of solitude, and it couldn't erase his memory of the lives of his family and friends Consequently, his next work, Darkness on the Edge of Toas a stark and often bitter reflection on how a person could win his drea in a dark and lonely place-a story of ambition and loss as ill-starred (and deeply American) as Citizen Kane

With The River, released in 1980, Springsteen was still writing about characters straining against the restrictions of their world, but he was also starting to look at the social conditions that bred lives split between dilehopes, but often settled for deluded loves and fated faly and caustic In the albuirlfriend pregnant, and then enters a joyless ations Eventually, all the eer's rievous s that seesteen, in a rueful voice, ”Well, ht into the air/Now I just act like I don't remember/Mary acts like she don't care” In The River's murky and desultory world-the world of post-Vietna for fulfill e froness It's as if so thesteen's pivotal statesteen had told his tales in florid language, in s that were occasionally operatic and showy Noas strea both the lyrics and the music into simpler,to dissect were too bleak to bear up under his earlier expansiveness The River was also the record hich Springsteen began wielding rock & roll less as a tool of personalhistory for personal validation Instead, he began using it as ahow the lives of the people in his songs had been shaped by the conditions surrounding them, and by forces beyond their control

This drive to coer's resteen had never viewed himself as a political-minded perfor the near-disaster at the Three Mile Island nuclear reactor, and his subsequent participation in the No Nukes benefit, at New York City's Madison Square Garden in Septesteen had also read Joe Klein's biography of folk singer Woody Guthrie and was is could work as a powerful and binding force for social consciousness and political action In addition, he read Ron Kovic's harrowing personal account of the Vietnam War, Born on the Fourth of July Inspired by the candor of Kovic's anguish-and by the bravery and dignity of nued a benefit at the LA Sports Arena in August 1981, to raise funds and attention for the Vietnahts the An Wars had steadfastly refused to esteen told his audience that he had recently read Henry Steele Coer and Allen Nevins' Short History of the United States and that he was profoundly affected by what he found in the book Aof the same book, he had told a New Jersey audience: ”The idea [of America] was that there'd be a place for everybody, no matter where you came fromyou could help nity to it But like all ideals, that idea got real corruptedI didn't knohat the govern It's is around you” Now, onstage in Los Angeles, getting ready to sing Woody Guthrie's ”This Land Is Your Land,” Springsteen spoke in a soft, alely well-off audience: ”There's a lot in [the history of the United States]that you're proud of, and then there's a lot of things in it that you're ashamed of And that burden, that burden of shame, falls down Falls down on everybody”

IN 1982, AFTER the tour ended, Springsteen was poised for the sort offor nearly a decade The River had gone to the top of Billboard's albule; it see much of the popular backlash that had set in several years earlier, after numerous critics hailed him as rock & roll's ier was unsure about what direction he wanted to take in his songwriting He spent so, thinking about the realities of his own emotional life and the social conditions around his about his rusteen sat in his hos, acco acoustic guitar He later presented the songs to producer Jon Landau and the E Street Band, but neither Landau nor the ht way to flesh out the doleful, spare-sounding new steen released the original des as a solo effort, entitled Nebraska It was a work like very few in popstatele instance of didactic sloganeering or ideological proclasteen created a vivid cast of characters-people who had been shattered by bad fortune, by li debts and losses-and then he let those characters tell the stories of how their pain spilled over into despair and, someti man who is pressed beyond his resources and in desperation, commits robbery and impulsive murder Johnny doesn't seek absolution for what he's done-he even requests his own execution, though more as an end than a payment-but he does earn our compassion Just before sentence is passed, Johnny says: ”Now judge I got debts no honest e and they was takin' my house away/Now I ain't sayin' that makes un in steen related the tale of an idealistic cop who allows his brother to escape the law, recognizing that the brother has already suffered pain from the country he once served

There was a timeless, folkish feel to Nebraska's erous and timely as the daily headlines of the 1980s-or of the 1990s, for that matter It was a record about what can occur when norsteen's point was that, until we understood how these people arrived at their places of ruin, until we accepted our connection to those who had been hurt or excluded beyond repair, then America could not be free of such fates or such crimes ”The idea of America as a family is naive, maybe sentimental or siood idea And if people are sick and hurting and lost, I guess it falls on everybody to address those problems in some fashi+on Because injustice, and the price of that injustice, falls on everyone's heads The economic injustice falls on everybody's head and steals everyone's freedoht People keep guns in their horeater sense of apprehension, anxiety, and fear than they would in a more just and open society It's not an accident, and it's not simply that there are ”bad' people out there It's an inbred part of the way that we are all living: It's a product of e have accepted, e have acceded to And whether we mean it or not, our silence has spoken for us in some fashi+on”

NEBRASKA ATTEMPTED TO make a substantial statement about the modern American sensibility in a stark and austere style that des required that you settle into theirtales and then apply the hard facts of theirto the social reality around you In contrast to Springsteen's earlier bravado, there was nothing eager or indomitable about Nebraska Instead, it was a record that worked at the opposite end of those conditions, a record about people walking the rim of desolation, who sometimes transform their despair into the irrevocable action of , and for that reason, it was a record that many listeners respected more than they ”enjoyed” Certainly, it was not a record by which an artist ht expand his audience in the fun-minded world of pop

But with his next record, Born in the USA, in 1984, Springsteen set out to find what it est possible audience Like Nebraska, Born in the USA was about people who come to realize that life turns out harder, ht have expected But in contrast to Nebraska's killers and losers, Born in the USA's characters hold back the night as best they can, whether it's by singing, laughing, dancing, yearning, re into desperate love affairs There was so celebratory about how these people faced their hardshi+ps It's as if Springsteen were saying that life is made to endure and that we alland shared sorrow as best we can

At the same time, a listener didn't have to dwell on these truths to appreciate the record Indeed, Springsteen and Landau had designed the album with contened with asand lively surfaces as to its deeper and darkerin the Dark”-perhaps the steen has ever written about isolation-ca against isolation by pulling an audience together in a physical celebration Sis about erotic fear and paralyzing loneliness-came off as sexy, inti and co-about a Vietnam veteran who has lost his brother, his hope, and his faith in his country-that did the e as pop hero and that also turned his fa for its lyrics alone, and you find a tale of outright devastation: a tale of an Arasp, and paid off with indelibleuitar, or for the singer's roaring proclamation, ”BORN in the USA/I was BORN in the USA,” and it's possible to hear it as a fierce patriotic assertion-especially in a political climate in which si credibility Watching Springsteen unfurl the song in concert-slas of all sizes in response-it was possible to read the song in both directions at once ”Clearly the key to the enor [of the song 'Born in the USA'],” wrote critic Greil Marcus during the peak of Springsteen's popularity ”He is a tribute to the fact that people hear what they want”

One listener as quite happy to hear only what he wanted was syndicated conservative colun that pitted Walter Mondale against Ronald Reagan attended a Springsteen show, and liked what he saw In a September 14, 1984, colusteen for his ”elemental American values” and, predictably, heard the cry of ”Born in the USA” as an exultation rather than as pained fury ”I have not got a clue about Springsteen's politics, if any,” Will wrote, ”but flags get waved at his concerts while he sings about hard times He is no whiner, and the recitation of closed factories and other problerand, cheerful affiran's advisors gave a cursory listening to Springsteen's n stop in New Jersey, President Ronald Reagan declared: ”America's future rests in a thousand dreas of a steen And helping you make those dreams come true is what this job of ling-assertion Reagan's tribute to Springsteen see the awful uproar over Vietnam, had cited Bob Dylan for his noble influence on A as if Richard Nixon, with his strong disregard for black social realities, had honored Sly Stone for the cutting commentary of his 1971 classic, There's a Riot Goin' On Clearly, to anybody paying attention, the fierce, hard-bitten vision of A of in ”Born in the USA” was a far cry froan and many of his fellow conservatives claimed as their private do daht to attach his purposes to Springsteen's views It was the art of political syllogisan saw histeen was a singer who, apparently, extolled A Reagan as hich would isteen, then one should value (and support) Reagan as well Reagan was steen's faae: Could he afford to refute Reagan's praise without also alienating his newly acquired e the beliefs of that audience- to reshape those beliefs? Or should he sinore the hubbub, and assume that his true fans understood his viewpoint?

A few nights later, Springsteen stood before a predo a rousing perfor about American decay), decided to respond to the president's state h, ”and I kinda got to wondering what his favorite albuht have been I don't think it was the Nebraska albusteen then played a passionate, acoustic-backed version of ”Johnny 99”-the song about a ainst thewith other Nebraska tunes, in response to the nant public and political atan's social policies

Springsteen's coan heard clearly when he claisteen's ly becooistic partisans detere? When Reagan heard a song like ”My Ho the disenfranchisean truly understood that the enlivening patriotism of ”Born in the USA” was a patriotism rooted in pain, discontent, and fury, perhaps he would have been either a better president or an angrier man More likely, of course, he probably would have dis of contempt-which is no doubt what he did when he finally heard of Springsteen's response

But Reagan's attee also had so, it e and vital audience of young Americans who cared deeply about their fasteen spoke to-and perhaps for-that audience's values in ways that could not be ignored The isteen to become more politically explicit and resourceful at his perfor with labor and civil rights activists in most of the cities that he played, and hehis audience to lend their support to the work of such activists He also spoke out more and more plainly about where he saw Aht rock & roll could play a part in effecting that destiny One evening in Oakland, when introducing ”This Land Is Your Land,” he said: ”If you talk to the steelworkers out there who have lost their jobs, I don't know if they'd believe this song is e're about any's pro every day And with countries, as with people, it's easy to let the best of yourself slip away Too many people today feel as if A behind” Then he sang the best song written about A

But none of this action was enough In Novean was reelected president by an evenmandate than the first time It seemed plausible that e who had est success had cast their votes for the steen so obviously stood in opposition Perhaps it nettled hi the answer to the question he had been asking during the length of the decade: To be born in America, to be passionate about the nation's best ideals and to be concerned over the betrayal of those ideals,part of a nation that would only believe about itself what it wanted to believe It also meant that one still had to find a way to keep faith with the dream of that nation, despite the awful realities that take shape when that dreah of Ronald Reagan, or it would not have reelected histeen: After an international tour, he returned to the States a bigger, more popular artist than ever It may seem like a contradiction that a nation can embrace two icons who differed so drasteen shared an unusual bond: Each seeely an seemed to stand for the values of fa class at the same time that he enacted policies that understeen see the government responsible for how it had corrupted the nation's best ideals and prosteen did his best to make his true values known In the autu of his Born in the USA tour, this ti outdoor stadiu such vast settings was si faith with the ambition he had settled on a year or two earlier: to see what it could est audience he could reach It was also an attempt to speak seriously to as enuine consensus could be forged froesture also entailed a certain risk: If Springsteen's audience could not-or would not-accept him for what he truly stood for, then in the end, he could be reduced by that audience

In sosteen's a, many fans and critics worried that he would lose -by steen used the enlarged settings as an opportunity to rethink s into soressive than before, and yet still putting across the s from The River and Nebraska with an unco, he made the nes count for nized that addressing a larger audience necessarily entailed soton, DC, on the opening night of the stadiusteen told a story about a musician friend from his youth as drafted and who, because he did not enjoy the privilege of a defer in action ”If the time comes when there's another war, in sosteen told his audience of 56,000, ”then you're going to be the ones called on to fight it, and you're going to have to decide for yourselves what that meansBut if you want to knohere we're headed for [as a country], then so walk from the Lincoln Memorial to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, where the names of all those dead men are written on the walls, and you'll see what the stakes are when you're born in the USA in 1985” By the last few nights of the tour, at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum, he had added Edwin Starr's 1970 hit ”War” to the show, co down hard on the line, ”Induction, destruction/Who wants to die-in a war?” There was soazed into his audience and who-in defiance of the country's political h about the military action

But for all his intensified fervor, Springsteen was gracious at the end of the tour At the end of ”Dancing in the Dark,” in that enerally pulled a feht out his neife, Julianne Phillips, danced with her sweetly, then took her in his ar that this new relationshi+p here he would live, now that his tour was ending; or perhaps that histo live up to the best ideals of his own steen stood before his band, his friends, and his audience and said: ”This has been the greatest year ofsteen had begun the tour as a ed pop hero-a voice of egalitarian conscience unlike any rock had yielded before, with a rerowth and endurance

In short, Springsteen see the center of rock & roll, in the way that Presley, or the Beatles and Dylan and the Rolling Stones had once commanded the center And yet the truth was, in 1980s pop, there was no center left to occupy Rock was a field ofracial, stylistic, and ideological lines, and each option amounted to its own valid mainstream In fact, by the decade's end, even the American and British fields of rock-which had doradually losing their puris and adventurousAfrican, Jamaican, Brazilian, Asian, and other musical forms into interaction with pop's various vernaculars In er overwhelsteen seemed to step back from rock & roll's center at the same moment that he won it In 1986, he assee of some of his best performances from the previous ten years of live shows-a box set intended as a sue as a showman In a sense, it was the most a and least consequential It didn't play with the sort of revelatory effect of his best shows or earlier albums, and it didn't captivate ayear, Springsteen released Tunnel of Love Like Nebraska, the hich he had begun the decade, Tunnel of Love was a more inti but affirs about the hard realities of romantic love Maybe the record was intended to resteen and his audience that what ultimately mattered was how one applied one's ideals to one's oorld-or s were sisteen most at that tisteen'sworks, and it fit into his life with painfully ironic tisteen separated from his wife of three years, Julianne Phillips, and was ru vocalist in his band, Patti Scialfa Eventually, Springsteen divorced Phillips and married Scialfa In life, as in music, sometimes one's best hopes take unexpected, sosteen was on tour again Reluctant to continue playing oversized venues, he returned to the arena halls where he had done so work in the years before, and restored a more human scale to his production It was another election year, and while he still spoke out about issues fro cast as merely a rock politician or statesman Perhaps he realized that America's political choices just couldn't be affected very tellingly froed by what he saw around him To be sure, there was plenty to be disheartened about: It was a season when Oliver North enjoyed status as a cultural hero, and when George Bush turned patriotisn issues (Though one night in New Jersey, in a burst of inspiring testeen went on record with an electoral choice of sorts ”Don't vote for that fucking Bush,” he told his audience, ”no steen re the rock & roll audience into an enlightened and active community After the Tunnel of Love tour, he headlined Ahts Noorld tour in the fall of 1988 Along with Live Aid, the Ans in rock's history And the fact that it could occur at all and could reach an audience that was both massive and ready was in sosteen had fought throughout the 1980s

WITH HIS FIRST records in the 1990s, Springsteen retreated further from his role as an icon and spokesperson, and atte Hu from 1992), worked on smaller scales: They were dark and complex works about personal risks, and as such, they seesteen's own life, as he went froe to an apparently sounder second one, in which he became the father of three children It was as if, in both his art and his life, Springsteen was atte to say that toreal, you have to bring them into your own home and heart, and see if you can live up to theer fasteen and the rest of us live in-that tormented home we still call America-and too little of it for the better Back in the 1980s there was a vital argued about what it meant to be an American, and which visions and dreams best delineated our collective soul and destiny In the 1990s, that argument hasn't been settled so much as it's been shunted to the side, or coress and the artful ambitions of Bill Clinton's presidency Some of our most valuable and necessary instruments of economic opportunity and social justice have been curtailed or ended-tools such as affirhts, and welfare protection for children and families in poverty conditions-and our cri people at increasing rates (indeed, no other democracy in the world locks up as e is clear: No e, no more chances for the losers These are pitiless times, and there have been too few voices in either our arts or our politics who dare to tell us that the A will be a ined

The 1995 albusteen's response to this state of affairs-you could even call it his return to arms In any event, it was his first overtly social-minded statement since Born in the USA, eleven years earlier Joad isn't an easy record to like immediately Its music is often sorrowful and samely, its words soft-spoken, sometimes slurred In addition, it creates an atmosphere as merciless in its oay as the world it talks about That is, it is a record about people who do not abide life's ruins-a collection of dark tales about dark men who are cut off from the purposes of their own hearts and the prospects of their own lives In this albus and spirits intact, and the feho do are usually left with only frightful and desolate prayers as their solace ”My Jesus,” Springsteen intones at one song's end, ”your gracious love and ood rifle/And the na, a man prays: ”When I die I don't want no part of heaven/I would not do heaven's ell/I pray the devil comes and takes me/To stand in the fiery furnaces of hell” Plaintive, bitter epiphanies like these are far resteen's music, but then, these are times for lamentations, not anthems

On the surface, Tom Joad bears obvious kinshi+p to Nebraska Like that albuely acoustic, and its sense of language and storytelling owes much to the Depression-era sensibility of Guthrie and such authors as John Steinbeck, Jaht (the author of You Play the Black and the Red Comes Up) The stories are told bluntly and sparsely, and the poetry is broken and colloquial, like the speech of athe stories he feels compelled to tell, if only to try and be free of thesteen wrote about people living their lives at the edges of hopelessness and suppression-people whose lives could turn dangerous and explode-and the music conveyed not just their e In Tom Joad, there are few such escapes and al circumstances of the characters' lives You could al motions, or drifts into circles that never break The effect is brilliant and lovely-there's soios andthat lures you into the melodies' dark dreaminess and loosedrawn into are scenarios of hell Aht in this place, waiting for some event to make sense of their existence, or to explain to theht at the start, in the broken cadences of the title track A e, not far frohost of Tom Joad, the hero of John Steinbeck's The Grapes of Wrath, who at the end of John Ford's 1940 filhtin' for a place to stand/Or decent job or a helpin' hand/Wherever solin' to be free/Look in their eyesyou'll see me' ” But such hopes of salvation in the hosts, and thetiht Time,” an ex-con takes a job and marries, and tries to live the sanctioned life But the world's judgments are never far off-even his atches him carefully with their children-and he waits for the time when he will slip back into the deadly breach that he sees as his destiny In ”Highway 29,” a lonesome shoe clerk surrenders to a deadly sexual fever that leads him into an adventure of robbery and murder and ruin, and he realizes that it is this-this dead-ended flight of rage and self-obliteration-that his heart has always been headed for

The h, are the ones that Springsteen tells about a handful of undocue into Southern California's promised land Some of these tales are drawn froeles Ti, with a melody reminiscent of Bob Dylan's ”Love Minus Zero/No Lirant woer brother sneak into the States But in a confrontation with another officer, he loses track of her, and never again finds her In ”Sinaloa Cowboys,” two young brothers, Miguel and Louis, come from north Mexico to the San Joaquin Valley orchards to erous and illegal drug ht there is an explosion in the shack where they work; one brother is killed, and the other is left to bury him and tell their farant called Spider gets caught up working in San Diego as a sex hustler and drug s a border patrol, he becomes victim of a hit-and-run These people come to their fates quickly-much like that doomed planeload in Woody Guthrie's ”Deportees”-one of the first songs that awakened Springsteen's political awareness In one moment, these characters' ”undocumented” lives are over, and the world takes no note of their passing or shot hopes