III. Artists ↑
18. Bruce Springsteen
When Springsteen first appeared on the national music scene in the mid-seventies, he seemed to have taken some separate evolutionary track from the rest of rock music. By this time, most mainstream rock performers had reduced their craft to a fairly slick formula (while newer performers were beginning to revolt against this sort of complacency). But Springsteen seemed to simply ignore most of the sixties. In some ways, his music preserved some of the best elements of early rock’n roll, capturing the energy, the ambition, and the sound of performers like Elvis Presley and Chuck Berry. Featuring two guitars, piano, organ, drums, bass guitar and saxophone, he and his band produced a rich and raucous sound that was constantly inventive and surprising. Instead of cleanly produced tracks featuring the efforts of one or two virtuoso instrumentalists (as in Led Zeppelin, let’s say), Springsteen’s efforts featured the unified sound of a band, with different instruments and parts merging together in constantly shifting patterns. The E Street Band was sort of a mobile Wall of Sound, combining the energy of early live rock’n roll performers with the unified, band sound of a great studio ensemble.
The other obvious influence was Bob Dylan. Springsteen’s lyrics were imaginative, featuring inventive wordplay and sometimes surreal imagery. And his vocals were rough and expressive, sometimes spoken as much as sung, again in apparent emulation of Dylan.
What Springsteen brought to the party that was all his own was a willingness to play with song structures. No matter how inventive rock performers had been in other areas, almost all of them clung to a rigid verse-chorus-bridge song structure like drowning sailors to a life raft. There was good reason for this conservatism: the same basic song structure had worked well in all popular musical forms of the 20th century, including the blues, bluegrass, country, folk, rhythm ’n blues, and early rock’n roll.
But if rock music is truly about liberation, then it certainly can’t hurt for an artist and his songs to at least show some signs of trying to free themselves from these traditional structures. And that is exactly what Springsteen did with his early material. Springsteen’s approach to song structure was much more fluid than that of his contemporaries, with the structure of each song adapting itself to the thematic content, rather than the other way around.
Springsteen also showed a flair in his early work for truly composing an entire sound for each track. So while “Thunder Road,” for example, is a song that tells a particular story and has a particular melody, it is also, inseparably, a song with a tentative, dancing, lonely piano part, that ends with a powerful, swooping, triumphant instrumental sound. “Meeting Across the River” is remembered as much for its haunting trumpet part and brave yet defeated vocal reading, as it is for its story and melody. And the list goes on.
Starting with Springsteen’s third album, Born to Run, Springsteen formed an interesting partnership with music critic Jon Landau. After Landau declared Springsteen to be the future of rock, he ended up co-producing his albums, and eventually assuming management responsibilities for the artist. Unfortunately the transition from early manager Mike Appel to Landau was not a smooth one. Legal issues emerged (as they always seem to in the music business), and the effect was that three years passed before Springsteen could release his next album, broodingly titled Darkness on the Edge of Town.
Springsteen’s career after Born to Run is almost a case study in the challenges facing a rock artist who wants to be true to his calling over the years. In terms of noble and earnest intent, and artistic integrity, Springsteen gets the highest possible marks. Looking at the decisions he has made, he has worked hard to avoid the most common pitfalls of a maturing rocker.
- He has stayed away from drugs, avoiding physical and mental burnout via that avenue.
- While he has enjoyed great commercial success, he has also been true to his own artistic calling, releasing not one but two albums characterized by their bleak thematic content and stark recording styles.
- He has avoided turning his backs on his friends, fellow artists and roots, keeping the E Street Band together over the years, virtually unchanged since the Born to Run days. (When guitarist Steve Van Zandt left to pursue other interests, Springsteen replaced him with Nils Lofgren, one of the great unsung guitarists in modern rock. When Van Zandt became available again, Springsteen toured and recorded with both guitarists.)
- In terms of his work before live audiences, Springsteen has earned legendary status for the energy and duration of his performances: if a fan has ever left a Springsteen concert unsatisfied, then he or she has been awfully quiet about it.
- Unable to find any real role models in rock for longevity and integrity, Springsteen has returned to folk roots, idolizing and celebrating Woody Guthrie, and in some ways trying to emulate him.
- Rather than suffer with typically ruthless management, he converted one of his generation’s finest and best known rock critics into his manager.
- In terms of songwriting skills, he has proven equally adept at crafting hit singles (for himself and other artists), “typical” rock songs celebrating love, sexual passion, community and physical movement, and more serious songs about social unrest and alienation.
- He has worked hard to maintain and build a genuine relationship with his audience, crafting songs from their point of view, and on subjects about which they care deeply.
Given this long list of virtues, practically unmatched by any other rock artist of his stature, it seems a bit ungrateful to mention any deficiencies. I do feel compelled, however, to point out a couple.
First, after Born to Run, Springsteen seemed to turn his back on the art of finely crafted studio recordings. At the same time, he seemed to abandon any inventiveness about song structure or lyric content. It was as if his aesthetic ambitions suddenly shifted. His songs became much more traditional, and his presentation of the songs seemed focused on what he could play himself, unaided, or on what he and the E Street Band could effectively deliver to a stadium full of appreciative fans.
But a more serious problem, at least in my mind, has been the devolution of the protagonists in Springsteen’s songs. In Springsteen’s early work his characters showed signs of individuality, intelligence, youthfulness and ambition. Starting with Darkness on the Edge of Town, however, the typical Springsteen protagonist seems a sort of dim-witted Neanderthal suddenly transported to a modern society he neither appreciates nor understands. Let’s look at some representative lyrics, first from “The River.”
I got a job working construction
For the Johnstown company.
But lately there ain’t been much work,
On account of the economy.
Next from “Hungry Heart.”
Got a wife and kid in Baltimore, Jack.
I went out for a ride and I never went back.
Like a river that don’t know where it’s flowing,
I took a wrong turn and I just kept going.
And now from “Nebraska.”
They declared me unfit to live,
Said into that great void my soul’d be hurled.
They wanted to know why I did what I did:
Well, sir, I guess there’s just a meanness in this world.
What I find most disturbing about these heroes is that Springsteen’s own life and behavior have been almost the opposite of those he portrays in his songs. Where he has achieved success through his own hard work, been generous with his audiences and fellow musicians, taken responsibility for his own actions, and avoided opportunities for failure through his native intelligence, his protagonists seem like amoral victims whose irresponsibility and inability to predict the consequences of their own actions are apparently justified by the unfeeling world in which they live. It is almost as if Springsteen feels guilty about his own gifts and has decided to punish himself by relentlessly celebrating the lives of those less fortunate.
Having recently seen again the classic Preston Sturges film, Sullivan’s Travels, it is hard not to picture Springsteen as the successful depression-era director suddenly feeling the urge to make a deep social statement. The difference with Springsteen, it seems, is that that no one ever stopped him from making O Brother, Where Art Thou?