Bruce Springsteen - Classic or Dud ?

also strange because *not* being from the city has been a core part of springsteen's brand for his entire career. surely dero knows what (and where) new jersey is?

Dero's from Jersey City!

"Write about what you know" is the first rule teachers give all aspiring pretentious writers. The problem with Bruce climbing inside the heads of these characters is that he has long since lost any connection to their blue-collar roots, if he ever had them.

Everything about these sentences is abysmal.

The hell is "pretentious" even doing there?

Levon Helm did not actually experience the Civil War

Don't get above your rising] raisin'

some critics really do come up with strange convoluted overbaked reasons for not liking something when the truth is usually just “don’t like the tune or his voice”

Ya think?

If he's writing that in 2005, about the stuff Springsteen was coming out with in 2005, then I think there's a part of it that I agree with, but that "if he every had them" definitely doesn't sound like someone who knows Springsteen's work at all.

Like, I do think that Springsteen in his early work is driven not just by connection to his blue-collar roots but by a sense of having just barely escaped a particular kind of working-class life that seemed to be marked out for him. And as he gets older and farther away from that life, and more comfortable with his status as a rich man, he loses that driving sense of "this could be me" that I think animates a lot of his portraits of people broken down or frustrated or limited by working-class life.

It makes me think of Dickens and the blacking factory, and one of the fundamental differences between Dickens and Springsteen (other than all the obvious ones) is that Dickens actually did work in the blacking factory, and so that experience is a foundational trauma that never quite goes away. Whereas for Springsteen it's a source of survivor guilt but not something that actually happened to him, and so its influence weakens over time.

And I think Springsteen is at his strongest when he is animated by that sense of identification with his characters, and that he finds that sense of identification, very often, through his own anxieties and obsessions. There's a feeling of "what if...?" behind a lot of Springsteen's songs, imo. Who or what would I be if I had never found music? If I had been sent to war? If I let myself drift too far away from people and couldn't find my way back?

By the time you get to Western Stars, the central "what if" has to do with marriage, and connections with people, and age, and the fear of impulsively throwing it all away and ending up alone at the end of your life. But there's a period in between Ghost of Tom Joad and Western Stars where Springsteen is still trying to be the writer of the working class, and imo you can tell that his heart isn't really in it, that the working-class experiences he's writing about are no longer the things that keep him up in the middle of the night. So on that level I don't exactly disagree with that criticism, but it sounds like it's coming from someone who wasn't going to like Springsteen no matter what.

"if he ever had them," rather

Great post lily

otm I think Tom Joan is the last time he’s really persuasive in that mode, and even there it feels more like journalism than imagined memoir — like he’s done the research and is mustering substantial empathy as an artist, but he’s not drawing from any well of experience or first-hand observations.

lol Tom Joad autocorrect

Excellent post Lily. And tipsy makes an excellent point how Joad "feels more like journalism than imagined memoir" - I've grown to like that album, but it's probably no coincidence that the best songs (at least for me) were based on stories already written in detail elsewhere. I supposed "Nebraska" can be described as such but IIRC a lot of what's memorable and haunting in that song are Springsteen's own creation. A large part of the title track of Joad translates and even transcribes what Steinbeck wrote for his novel. Then there's "Galveston Bay" which is all drawn from a real-life story - I'm not sure if any particular lyric stands out for me, but it's a great story where all the details add up to something that's left a stronger impression than anything else on the album.

Yeah, the narratives on Nebraska feel deeply inhabited in a way they don't really on Tom Joad. Like whatever he'd tapped into on Nebraska wasn't quite there anymore, artistically, so he had to use other tools.

When more details about his depression came out in his memoir, it kind of suggested that Nebraska could only be a one-time achievement. IIRC, 1982 was about the time he really hit the breaking point with his depression, and a lot of that album really sits "comfortably" in the mindset of someone who's in a really dark place. If that's what it took to get him there, I don't hold it against him if he doesn't ever reach the same harrowing depths again.

I hear a lot of depression on Tom Joad, but I agree that Nebraska was the kind of risk that he could only take once and didn't dare try for again. It was written iirc before Springsteen had his big breakdown on his cross-country drive, and I get a sense from it of Springsteen sliding into depression almost deliberately, not trying to break his fall because to him, at that moment, depression feels like creativity. There's a kind of dark energy to Nebraska, a black light of empathy that feels very seductive. You listen to a song like "Reason to Believe," which is imo the darkest song on the whole album, and it's so charged with that feeling that can accompany the beginning of depression, that the world has been revealed to you as it really is, and that there is something special, something meaningful, about this revelation. Once Springsteen has his big breakdown, I think he stops leaning into the depression in the same way, but I do think it's very much there on Tom Joad - it just has a duller, more exhausted, more lived-in quality by then.

My favorite songs on Joad are the ones that feel as if they were written out of a depression that's if anything more entrenched than that of Nebraska. "Highway 29," "Straight Time," "Dry Lightning," even "My Best Was Never Good Enough" - there's a kind of dull, nihilistic noir voice to all of them that feels like it's probably picking up something very real about Springsteen's state of mind. I agree about the working-class Social Problem songs on Tom Joad - they feel like journalism to me rather than something felt from the inside. But then there's this other side to Joad which is Springsteen writing noir, with that classic noir theme of being so isolated from normal society that all your moral/ethical landmarks disappear and you become monstrous because there is nothing around you to keep you human.

Which can also happen in the deeper journalism, like In Cold Blood. Steinbeck doesn't go deep/isolated in the same way, but he tracks bunches of Grapescharacters, and not just the Joads, through hellacious migration---all those camps, communities of night and day, strange weather, that the reader becomes familiar with, never accustomed to (interesting to compare Woody G.'s "Tom Joad" with Bruce's: Woody had more experience along the Joads' lines, although, like Bruce, he wisely got his ass to NYC and least the fringes of show biz, through he spurned some opportunities there).
I wanted Bruce to drop the Popular Front approach and write about his and my father;s generation, The Greatest Generation as for instance Reagan Democrats, who had benefited at least in part from New Deal, Gi Bill, Eisenhower's construction of the Interstates, Military-industrial Complex boosting of economy------all that, and and then they turned against Big Government, in further contradiction, very selective "conservatism."
He eventually addressed some of that in the monologues-with-piano of his Broadway stint, I think, but maybe not in songs? I haven't kept up, sorry.

I meant, *proceeded* in further contradiction, very selective "conservatism," *through the rest of their lives and in the legacy/encouragement of some descendants.*

But there's a period in between Ghost of Tom Joad and Western Stars where Springsteen is still trying to be the writer of the working class, and imo you can tell that his heart isn't really in it

this may be true but it also gives me an excuse to bring up my favorite(????) springsteen song, “long time comin” from devils & dust. i mean he was doing a lot of character work at the time, it doesn’t all work or feel grounded in its setting but that one reaches in pretty deep imo

sorry that is a totally distracting sidepoint from lily's (as usual) excellent springsteen scholarship

No, it's not! and thank you!

Springsteen just cancelled some European gigs due to voice issues after having done UK gigs. Some tweets are saying he has Covid again (but that could be just twitter x)

2024 marks the 40th anniversary of Bruce Springsteen’s ‘Born In The U.S.A.’ Although it would become his biggest selling album with seven top 10 singles on the Billboard Hot 100, Luther Dickinson of North Mississippi Allstars says “any of those songs could be played with acoustic guitar alone and still be great.” Taking this idea as its premise, ‘Dead Man’s Town: A Tribute to Born in the U.S.A’ strips the album’s twelve indelible originals to the core, with contributions from Jason Isbell & Amanda Shires, Low, Nicole Atkins, Justin Townes Earle, Blitzen Trapper, Joe Pug, Trampled by Turtles, and more.

Rolling Stone described Jason Isbell and Amanda Shires’ Dave Cobb-produced cover of “Born In The U.S.A." as “reimagining ‘Born inthe U.S.A.’... with a reduced approach more influenced by that of the acoustic ‘Nebraska.’” Isbell says of his cover, “”Born In The U.S.A.” is one of my favorites because so many people have seemingly misunderstood the lyrical content and the song’s overall tone. When you listen to the demo, the dark, minor key
arrangement makes it clear that this is not strictly a song of celebration. We wanted to stay true to that version.” Amanda Shires adds, “I love that the song paints a picture of struggle in the face of the American dream, and the irony in the chorus is delivered with such force that it nearly transcends irony altogether.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5AEqTSwtmms

RACKLIST:

Side A -

Jason Isbell & Amanda Shires - Born in the U.S.A.
Apache Relay - Cover Me
The Quaker City Night Hawks - Darlington County
Blitzen Trapper - Working On The Highway
Joe Pug - Downbound Train
Low - I'm On Fire

Side B -

Holly Williams - No Surrender
Ryan Culwell - Bobby Jean
Trampled By Turtles - I'm Goin' Down
Justin Townes Earle - Glory Days
Nicole Atkins - Dancing In The Dark
North Mississippi Allstars - My Hometown

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KuQweCkWUe0

That's on Lightning Rod Records.

I don't know. Doing a downbeat version of BITUSA because people misunderstand the lyrics kind of misses the point. The song was a huge sounding anthem with downer lyrics. The collision of patriotic fantasy and harsh reality.

Springsteen could see that that song needed a different approach than he used on the demo.

This reminds me of when Sub Pop did that Nebraska tribute and Son Volt made "Open All Night" suck.

https://www.subpop.com/releases/various_artists/badlands_a_tribute_to_bruce_springsteens_nebraska

Springsteen could see that that song needed a different approach than he used on the demo.

Was gonna say, we already have a stripped down version of BITUSA.