MUSIC Legacy of activism comes from the Boss
His long rise to 'elder statesman' continues with 'Devils & amp; Dust,' his new anti-war-theme solo album.
By THOMAS PEELE
KNIGHT RIDDER NEWSPAPERS
Bruce Springsteen stood nervously at the microphone, his somber gaze fixed more on his own boots than his audience. He looked up and to his left at guitarist Steven Van Zandt, their eyes speaking for perhaps a second.
Springsteen had something to say and it was as if Van Zandt empowered it.
The night before, America had elected a president in what many saw as a critical moment in the nation's history.
he Middle East was in turmoil, U.S. foreign policy decisions there destroying the nation's credibility. Voters turned to a right-wing Republican former governor.
Conservatives, especially evangelicals, couldn't conceal their glee. Their man would fight abortion, instill their brand of flag-waving patriotism, favor big business and expand the military. Critics worried about the Republican candidate's lack of intellectual depth. America took a hard, perhaps blind, turn to the right.
"I don't know what you guys think about what happened last night, but I think it's pretty frightening," Springsteen said to the Tempe, Ariz., crowd. "You guys are young, there's going to be a lot of people depending on you coming up, so this is for you. One ... two ..."
The E Street Band exploded into "Badlands," Springsteen's 1978 rampaging, angst-riddled rocker.
The man elected the night before wasn't George W. Bush. It was Ronald Reagan.
It was one of the early moments in Springsteen's political progression. It would see him rise to the status of an elder statesman so apt at capturing the human condition in verse that John Kerry sought his support last year as he battled Bush.
The progression continued last month as Springsteen released "Devils & amp; Dust," an antiwar-themed solo album.
It is another chapter in what has become a lifetime of writing and singing about his interpretation of the American experience.
Outspoken politics
A look at Springsteen's work for the past two decades shows an unabashed record of liberal leanings and activism.
In May 2004, former Vice President Al Gore gave a searing speech in New York to members of Moveon.org. He accused Bush of numerous lies about the Iraq war and of having "twisted values and atrocious policies."
Springsteen, who had become an outspoken Bush critic, read Gore's remarks and posted them on his Web site.
He called it "one of the most important speeches I've heard in a long time. The issues it raises need to be considered by every American concerned with the direction our country is headed in."
Conservatives reacted with rancor and outrage. Internet message boards buzzed. "You need to stick to writing songs and leave the political stuff to the PROUD AMERICANS," Ralph B. of Berlin, N.J., wrote.
"Hey Bruce you were 'born to run,' right? Run back to Mother Russia where you belong," another said.
This to a performer who had grown politically active before those fans' eyes for two decades, writing and singing about AIDS victims, child prostitutes, death-row inmates and Vietnam veterans whom their country discarded like chunks of gristle.
He had toured in support of the human rights group Amnesty International, asked concertgoers every night to support local food banks and performed at dozens of benefits for flood victims, displaced factory workers, the family of a slain police officer and those with Parkinson's disease.
He performed at shows to raise awareness against nuclear power and to shed light on the way the country treated veterans.
Springsteen saw the world's richest nation with a spiraling underclass of poor and homeless, the gap between the rich and the rest of the country expanding.
He saw a ruling class grasping at economic, social and religious conservatism that seemed to him fraudulent, bigoted, greedy, even hateful. He wrote what he saw.
In "Youngstown," he compared steel barons from Northeast Ohio to Hitler.
Touring the country in 1988 while evangelicals made a power grab during that presidential election, he repeatedly said in concert that "Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell can kiss my ass."
Yet it seemed the posting of Gore's speech and his subsequent endorsement of John Kerry, more than anything he had written about, finally awakened conservatives to the fact that Springsteen is a liberal and an activist musician and has been for decades.
Humble beginnings
In the '70s, as America staggered away from the horrors of Vietnam and the shame of Richard Nixon, Springsteen seemed nearly tame. He rose without scandal from bar-band obscurity on the Jersey Shore. No drugs.
No illegitimate children. He dressed in jeans and boots and work shirts.
When he signed his first record contract in the early '70s, he admitted having only read two books: "The Godfather" and a Bob Dylan biography.
He was hungry to learn, and learned the old-fashioned way. He read books and sought out people who knew things and questioned them.
He came from a poor, lower-class New Jersey family, who lived, he has said, in a home without books or art, a place of emotional and intellectual vacancy he has worked a lifetime to fill but not to forget.
In January 1982, he recorded a batch of songs in his bedroom of a rented house in Colts Neck, N.J.
Ten were released that October as "Nebraska," a stark, brooding collection about serial killers, gamblers, thieves and growing up poor. It reflected a vision of the U.S. in pointed contrast to the "Morning in America" of which President Reagan often spoke.
One track didn't make "Nebraska" -- a bitter, bluesy piece about a Vietnam vet who couldn't find a job or justice in the country that sent him to fight the only war it ever lost.
The song was called "Born in the U.S.A."
Rise to activism
Years later, after the fame ebbed, after the album "Born in the U.S.A." became one of the biggest selling records in history, and after Springsteen was a very, very rich man, he started to discuss what he had tried to do with the song.
Played acoustically, the chorus, "I was born in the U.S.A.," is sung only once, compared with 15 booming times in the electric version. Springsteen practically spits out the words. It is so stark and angry; it is difficult to think of anyone not understanding the artist's intent.
Not even George Will.
It was Will, the Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist, who did much to lift Springsteen's false image as a conservative hero. After attending a 1984 Springsteen show in Maryland, one in which the full-band version of "Born in the U.S.A." led off the show, Will settled in to write a column:
"I have no clue about Springsteen's politics, if any," Will wrote.
"But flags get waved at his concerts while he sings songs about hard times. He is no whiner, and the recitation of closed factories and other problems always seem punctuated by a grand, cheerful affirmation: 'Born in the U.S.A.!' "
It was enough to make the ghost of Woody Guthrie weep.
A month after Will's column, Reagan evoked Springsteen's name at a campaign stop in southern New Jersey. Springsteen responded, saying it was obvious the president never listened to "Nebraska."
He didn't say more. There was money to make, and his manager, Jon Landau, wanted to make it. So did Columbia Records.
And Van Zandt was gone from the E Street Band. "Van Zandt has always been the political heart of this band," Cross said.
He left, partially to pursue an solo career and partially because of the commercial direction in which Landau was steering Springsteen's music. In the mid-'90s, Springsteen was asked to write a song for a movie about a man dying of AIDS. "Streets of Philadelphia" became a smash hit and won him an Academy Award. It also, he said, sent him "down a particular path."
He returned to writing about the downtrodden.
When he reunited the E Street Band in 1999, Van Zandt came home.
While his 2002 album "The Rising" was full of inspirations drawn from Sept. 11, Springsteen became increasingly confident about criticizing Bush.
By the time his tour ended in New York in October 2003, Al Franken was onstage and Springsteen was calling Vice President Dick Cheney a liar.
It seemed natural when Springsteen headlined the "Vote for Change Tour." Springsteen gave Kerry a full endorsement and drew tens of thousands to campaign rallies in Ohio and Wisconsin.