Source: Page 70 of White Noise Keywords: "Elvis," "thoughtful," "midst"

From: "Thomas J. Poynton" Subject: Dissent Magazine Articles (well book reviews) on Bruce Date: 15 Feb 2001 Newsgroups: rec.music.artists.springsteen

from: http://www.dissentmagazine.org/archive/wi01/cowie.html DISSENT /WINTER 2001 /VOLUME 48, NUMBER 1 Fandom, Faith, and Bruce Springsteen by Jefferson Cowie REVIEWED IN THIS ESSAY: Tramps Like Us: Music and Meaning Among Springsteen Fans by Daniel Cavicchi Oxford University Press, 1998 256 pp $19.95 It Ain't No Sin to Be Glad You're Alive: The Promise of Bruce Springsteen by Eric Alterman Little, Brown, 1999 282 pp $20 When I was eighteen years old, I abandoned my small Midwestern town with a vengeance. It was a place where my friends and I joked about who would be the first to succumb to a kid, a mortgage, and a job at the local machine works, Precision Twist and Drill. I had only the slightest inkling at the time that the economic and political transformations gripping the country in the late 1970s were transforming what we most feared in life -- a good manufacturing job and an affordable home -- into one of the most coveted set of trappings in blue-collar America. Our fears were best expressed in Bruce Springsteen's haunting title cut to his 1980 album, The River. His tale of despair, entrapment, and unwanted pregnancy left him to lament, "And for my nineteenth birthday I got a union card and wedding coat/ We went down to the courthouse/ And the judge put it all to rest/ No wedding day smiles, no walk down the aisle/ No flowers, no wedding dress." Seeking to escape such a fate, I rolled out of town in a chartreuse Volkswagen detailed with cancerous rust and crammed with the possessions that only an adolescent male might deem essential. I slipped into the battered tape deck the anthem that served as the bedrock of my psychic survival throughout the trying years of adolescence. "Thunder Road," the classic opening song from Springsteen's 1975 album, Born to Run, evoked all that I sought to leave behind -- front porches, tentative girlfriends, and Roy Orbison's lonely ones. In exchange, I believed myself to be embracing "faith" and "magic in the night." Following groundwork laid by dissenting wanderers from Walt Whitman to Jack Kerouac, I pointed the car toward the west-bound side of the interstate. Rolling down the on-ramp toward California, I punctuated the last line of the song, as we always did, with head out the window and my voice straining to compete with Bruce's: "It's a town full of losers/ And I'm pulling out of here to win"! I was reminded of this awkward turning point in my life when I, along with tens of thousands of other fans, sang those same words more than two decades later at New Jersey's Meadowlands during one of the fifteen sold-out shows of the E Street Band reunion tour. The stagehands threw on the house lights for "Thunder Road" as fans united in chorus. For the first time that evening, our focus was directed toward each other rather than the stage -- a reminder of the ways in which music offered collective salvation from the isolation and loneliness of our seemingly individual struggles. "Well now I'm no hero/ That's understood/ All the redemption I can offer, girl/ Is beneath this dirty hood . . . take hold/ Thunder Road"! As our separate lives came out of the darkness for one brief, and all too rare, moment of solidarity, I realized that Springsteen had done more to help me sever my roots than he had to help me learn about the reality of social class in America. His "show a little faith" message may have been a way out of the present, but it certainly was not one of collective emancipation. Yet it resonated with me more than any political message ever had. Despite the quality of the performance that night, in which Springsteen led his loyal followers through classic hits and obscure treats like a Baptist preacher on a roll, I could not turn off my brain and surrender to the moment. What drew all of these people together and for what purpose? It was much easier to critique Springsteen's performances on political grounds or on the limits of his art in the context of race or gender than it was to understand his enormous appeal. In my own little world, Springsteen, even in his full pop presentation, had shaped a sort of modern and personalized folk culture among the alienated -- a shared discourse, a set of assumptions, a world of values that we could adopt for our own. So the harder project was not to criticize him but to understand what drew us to this "rich man in a poor man's shirt" (his own lyrical description). An impressive effort to understand the collective mind of those who have been snapping up tickets around the world in the last two years is Daniel Cavicchi's Tramps Like Us: Music and Meaning Among Springsteen Fans (his fans often call themselves "tramps"). Are the legions of Bruceheads mere dupes for an over-sold, pre-packaged pop commodity as Fred Goodman argued in his analysis of rock and commerce, The Mansion on the Hill? Or, as the neo-Marxists argue, do fans appropriate the performer for their own purposes, sifting through the record-machine hype to appropriate their own meaning in some sort of closet counter-hegemonic struggle? Fortunately, there is a paucity of academic theory in this otherwise scholarly book. What the reader culls from Cavicchi's explorations is a sense of connectedness between the performer and his fans -- a deep, felt, almost religious sense of meaning in his music and a tremendous level of participation and investment in Springsteen's performance and artistic choices. Although Cavicchi's anthropology wanders between laborious, undigested interviews with Springsteen followers and genuine insight into the nature of fandom, the issue of faith, in both the rocker's performances and the fans' understanding of them, is the most fascinating aspect of Tramps Like Us. Increasingly, as the themes of adolescence, cars, and solitary escape have faded from Springsteen's performances, in their place has risen a sense of big-tent revivalism that was never far from the surface in his early work. Consider Cavicchi's account of Springsteen's performance of the rocking "Light of Day" -- a description any fan would recognize. The concert staple, complete with screeching guitars and a thumping baseline, comes to a complete and unexpected halt after about five minutes of driving rock 'n' roll. Springsteen freezes on his knees in the middle of the stage in complete silence. The audience quickly catches on, attempting to energize him back into playing with chants of "Bruuuuuce!" With a twitch of his head he gets one side of the stadium to burst into a thunderous roar; with a subtle glance back in the other direction, he incites the remaining half of the crowd to screams and waves. After a series of titillating pauses, he slips into his evangelical preacher/prison routine, whipping the crowd into a feverish revival: I'm here because I know you're downhearted! (Yeah!) I know you're disappointed! (Yeah!) I know you're depressed! (Yeah!) I know you're low in spirit! (Yeah!) And I'm here tonight because I -- (Yeah!) I got something I need to testify to! (Yeah!) I've got something I got to tell you! (Yeah!) I got something I need to witness to! (Yeah!) ... [Pauses for crowd to cheer and then a full-throated scream] I'm just a prisoner! Of rock 'n' roll! With a crash of the cymbals the band brings the song home with the crowd on the verge of frenzy. As Springsteen exclaimed in his recent tour, he's "reborn, rededicated, resuscitated, reinvigorated and rejuvenated with the magic, the mystery and the ministry of rock 'n' roll!" In the more melancholy and claustrophobic mood of "Open All Night," the message is the same: only music can save the narrator from the desolation of the open road. "Radio's jammed up with gospel stations, lost souls callin' long distance salvation; Hey, mister D.J., won'tcha hear my last prayer; hey, ho, rock 'n' roll, deliver me from nowhere." Despite such religious overtones to Springsteen's performance and the dedication of his fans who read his lyrics with the intensity of Talmudic scholars, Cavicchi is careful not to argue that fandom is a religion, but that the deep-seated sense of belonging, shared values, and search for renewal all address concerns and engage people in the same way that religion does. The opportunity for introspection, the sources for questioning of values, the foil for an exploration of meaning, all function to scrutinize the self in relationship to an artist and a larger society (both lyrical and real). While it would be ludicrous to see popular music as religion, the mechanisms he describes do serve as a sort of constructive, therapeutic worldview for congregants that gather in the house of rock. The author never quite answers the large theoretical questions about the relationship between the production and reception of popular culture, but he does make a powerful and refreshing argument that this relationship has been over-theorized and under-appreciated. "Fandom may figure in the power of the mass culture industry, and it may also be a kind of twentieth-century cult," he claims, "but for fans, it is about devotion, creating meaning in daily life through sustained attention to musical performance." As effectively as Cavicchi has penetrated the world view of the Springsteen fan, he never quite gets to the difference between Bruce fandom, which he argues has meaningful roots in the existential struggles of everyday life, and "regular" fandom. We are left to ponder that if Springsteen fans have ignored or made their peace with the commerce of rock in their search for meaning, have Madonna fans? Puff Daddy fans? The Carpenters fans? What about pure spectacles that draw increasing numbers of fans such as professional wrestling or monster truck rallies? Or is Springsteen in his own category -- or at least among a select few? Springsteen himself may fear that he has slipped too far into the mold of a generic, aging spectacle. He began inserting a revealing jeremiad into his recent tour: "I will not abide a lack of commitment!" he proclaims to fans who are too often drifting out for beer during his performance of the overtly political "Youngstown." Still, the power and persuasiveness of both Springsteen's vision and Cavicchi's concept of fandom is best captured by the fact that as serious a critic of the American political economy as Eric Alterman is a "tramp" too. Alterman, whose books have stuck it to the media punditry and challenged the foundations of the foreign policy establishment, whose contributions to the Nation rip into the body politic, is an incurable romantic on the subject of Bruce Springsteen. "There were any number of times since I had turned fifteen when I had felt as if Bruce were somehow saving my life," explains Alterman like another crazed devotee in Cavicchi's study of fandom. "He had been a source of hope and inspiration," Alterman continues, "of friendship and fortitude, of therapy and solidarity, of consolation and exhilaration. He still was." When he finally met Springsteen briefly, I imagine Alterman had to resist the impulse to gush like Wayne and Garth, who declared themselves "not worthy" at the feet of Alice Cooper in Wayne's World. Instead, he managed to keep his poise, simply thanking him for "everything." Alterman declares that his book It Ain't No Sin to Be Glad You're Alive contains everything he would have liked to have told his hero the evening of their brief encounter. Part history, part rock criticism, part biography, part autobiography, part industry analysis, and part rumination on the state of the world, Alterman's breezy study defies simple categorization. The author will certainly take some hits from critics who will see his work as more than a bit sycophantic, but, like Tramps, this book is a testament to the importance of faith and meaning in the everyday life of a thoughtful rock fan. Take Alterman's recollection of Springsteen's breakthrough album Born to Run. That album, he writes, "offered me an alternative context for my life, a narrative in which hopes and dreams that felt ridiculous were accorded dignity and, no less important, solidarity." Having missed Yom Kippur morning with his family because he stayed late at Madison Square Garden for Bruce's appearance at the "No Nukes" concert, Alterman echoes one of Cavicchi's main themes, justifying his missed obligation on the grounds that he was already in the midst of a devoted community of epic proportions. "This was not just music anymore," he claims, "It was something bigger, more powerful, more . . . like religion." In Springsteen's world, such faith clearly trumps politics, but that does not prevent others from searching for his political core. At the height of the 1980s "Born in the U.S.A." mania, cartoonist Berke Breathed lampooned the corruptibility of Springsteen's politics in his comic strip, "Bloom County." When the character Binkley was given a look into the future, Binkley's older self prattled on about his one moment of glory -- a bit of organized resistance at the job -- that is, until "President Springsteen" fired everyone. The hilarity of the contrast between the rocker's art, popularity, and lyrical themes against the backdrop of a political vision that has always been more presumed than real, begs volumes of questions about the content of his art. If the world is as desperate and deferential as the lonely Springsteen character slogging up the hill in the "darkness on the edge of town," then what is to be done? As Alterman rhetorically asks his idol, Is the problem capitalism? Work itself? Would the workers still have deathly eyes if they were represented by powerful, militant unions . . .? What if the company established worker-ownership committees or employee stock options? None of these questions are asked, much less answered. This is, the songwriter seems to tell us, just the way things are. Indeed, there are never collective or political solutions in Springsteen's lyrical world; there is rarely even a sense of the broader social fabric that his characters inhabit. There is, however, a solidarity in the individual, perhaps uniquely American struggle to make one's way in an often mean world. It is an odd solidarity that one is not alone: that when the house lights go up, there are thousands of others singing the same lyrics and asking the same questions. It's explicitly not a path to the beloved community of the civil rights movement or the movement culture of the social gospel. Springsteen's art and popularity would suffer if it were. In the end, his politics may be of "an old-fashioned New Deal social democrat" as Alterman believes, but his true gift is in presenting paths for individual deliverance to the disorganized armies of the faithless. As Alterman suggests, Springsteen may be the last curious icon of social realism -- a connection made explicit with his recent adoption of Woody Guthrie's mantle. Springsteen sings not with metaphor, illusion, or detachment, but of populist struggles of the real and mundane. That may be why he appeals to a certain type of fan while others simply cannot relate to him. "Springsteen sings with so profound a lack of irony," Alterman explains, "that his message is nearly impossible to give credence to in a postmodern universe." It's not that the problems of social class or alienation have been solved since Springsteen's rise to the status of Dylan and Elvis, it's just that the combined sense of ennui and miscreant rage gripping the strip malls might better be captured in the fiery jabs of a Kurt Cobain, the anger of an Ice-T, or the gender-bending of a Marilyn Manson than the struggle "to find the key to the universe in the engine of an old parked car." If the bulk of Springsteen's work uses class oppression as a vehicle for exploring themes of individual survival, it works so well because the rocker absorbed his history lessons deeply. He readily sees both the distance between the promise of the United States and the often painful reality, as well as the power of music to assist in making the voyage between the two. As Springsteen told an audience in 1981: It wasn't until I started listening to the radio, and I heard something in those singers' voices that said there was more to life than what my old man was doing and the life that I was living. And they held out a promise, and it was a promise that every man has a right to live his life with some decency and some dignity. And it's a promise that gets broken every day in the most violent way. But it's a promise that never, ever dies, and it's always inside of you. Here we see Springsteen, the music fan, adopting the popular music around him for his own struggles just as Cavicchi argued that his fans continue to do to this day. And Springsteen understands that his audiences are looking to him as he looked to Elvis, Dylan, Sam Cooke, Mitch Ryder, and a host of one-hit wonders to fuel the visceral rebelliousness that is at the core of rock 'n' roll. Springsteen shoulders his responsibility to his fans with enormous fortitude, grace, and commitment -- illustrated most obviously by his tremendous physical output during shows that often last into the wee hours and continue to amaze even the most jaded critic. Springsteen knows that what was once his search is now his fans' search, and they relate to him because, first and foremost, he is the nation's number one fan of rock 'n' roll. He also happens to head up the best bar band in the country -- an unbeatable combination. The travails of Springsteen's characters may not offer any real solutions to concrete problems of working people, but they paint a portrait of alienation and a sensitivity to class not seen in popular culture since the passing of the elder Hank Williams. Few songs expose the tension between the power of the America story and its seamy underside better than Springsteen's biggest, and most misunderstood, hit, "Born in the U.S.A." Nearly lost in the tidal wave of sound pouring from the thundering guitars and the hoarse, grinding voice chanting the title lyric, is a quiet tale of despair. The story of a Vietnam vet searching for work and dignity amid the declining fortunes of an American dream gone awry is almost completely drowned out in the dominant chorus of patriotism. The wandering worker, "down in the shadow of the penitentiary," has "nowhere to run ain't got nowhere to go." Like the Springsteen listener, however, his faith in the American project remains unshaken; he's still, above all, "a cool rocking Daddy in the U.S.A." who will push forward with a fierce conviction that borders on denial. If the narrator of "Born in the U.S.A." carries his birthright as a cross to bear more than a cause for celebration, so do the individuals in the new song "American Skin (41 Shots)." Debuted amid national controversy at the end of his recent tour, the tense, stark song explores the New York City police shooting of an unarmed immigrant, Amadou Diallo. "Is it a gun?/ Is it a knife?/ Is it a wallet?/ This is your life," declares Springsteen, "Ain't no secret/ My friend my friend/ You can get killed just for living in your American skin." The mention of "skin," in the highly racialized discourse of American politics has been presumed to mean black by both critics and celebrants of the song. The president of the New York City Police Benevolent Association, for instance, called Springsteen a "dirtbag" and declared a security boycott of further shows on the assumption that the artist was mounting a direct assault on racial profiling and police violence. Those who have heralded the piece as a way to keep attention on a police force out of control have also missed the point. Springsteen is suggesting something tied less to the political moment and more transcendental and historical. As he has managed on a few other occasions, his empathetic portraiture cleverly toys with images and dialogue that privilege neither cop nor victim. Instead, as death weighs on both characters equally, the central actor is the abstract burden of race itself. The title of his song is literal: a singularly troubled American skin given shape by a history of racial unrest. "Forty-one shots my boots caked in mud," he sings in the last stanza, "We're baptized in these waters and in each other's blood." Brother Bruce's revivalist tent is thus big; the canvas stretches above both Diallo and his murderers like the American skin of which he sings. Beneath that canvas he sees the interconnectedness of white and black, worker and boss, native and immigrant, and men and women, not in nostalgic terms that seek to deny conflict, but in gritty terms that can only be explored on the level of individual despair. His live performances consistently tap into that alienation, but tease fans, at times reluctantly, into a broader sense of humanity -- "nobody wins unless everybody wins" he used to shout before launching into "Born to Run." If he rarely proselytizes about politics and collective action, his evangelical rock does preach a secular American faith through an appeal to what Abraham Lincoln called "the better angels of our nature." And that, in essence, may be what attracts people like Alterman and the countless tramps in Cavicchi's study. Bruce Springsteen doesn't provide any answers, they know. But, to quote a track from the dark and haunting Nebraska album, "Still at the end of every hard earned day people find some reason to believe." Jefferson Cowie teaches history at Cornell University's School of Industrial and Labor Relations. He is the author of Capital Moves: RCA's Seventy-Year Quest for Cheap Labor. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---- Copyright 2001 by the Foundation for the Study of Independent Social Ideas, Inc. Readers may redistribute this article to other individuals for noncommercial use, provided that the text, all HTML codes, and this notice remain intact and unaltered in any way. This article may not be resold, reprinted, or redistributed for compensation of any kind without prior written permission from the author. If you have any questions about permissions, please contact edit...@dissentmagazine.org, or write to Dissent, 310 Riverside Drive, Suite 1201, New York, NY 10025. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- ---- Comin' all the way from the UK, Tom "Diapers stink because of volatile gases released from poop, gases made of organic molecules that did not exist in the earlier stages of the cosmos, among the first generation of stars. Thus these smells are only possible after enough stars have exploded to saturate the galaxy with complex atoms; so every molecule of the scent is a sign of the immense age of the universe, and of life's likely omniprescence as a late emergent phenomenon, and taken as such a cosmological mystery, in that it indicates an increase of order in an entropic system, i.e., a miracle." Kim Stanley Robinson - The Martians

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