Everything passes, everything changes, everything that will be, won’t be someday and that’s something we have to tackle. Change. Leaving the town for the city, hitting the interstate and burning rubber like time. You can’t stop, won’t stop and will never stop. Bruce knows it, you know it.
Springsteen was found in 1972 by John Hammond – the man who gave Bob Dylan a microphone at Columbia Records when everyone else in the industry wanted bubblegum for the youth. He found him on the Jersey shoreline in a club just off of the boardwalk, a flaking white stretch of decaying and dying wood.
Now, ‘The Boss’, ironically, never worked a day outside of music in his life really. Yet, he stood up for the working-class, a shaman of answers for those in the dying industrial belts, the rusted cogs of old America. He was a man of truth and hope, who gave flame to intrigue and strapped us to the seatbelts of suicide machines. He sang about life, actual life. Scraping dimes, making moves and escaping the traps of the day-to-day.
Springsteen told us of the dream, the “American dream” but really, he told us of everyone’s dream. That story we tell ourselves of changing our name, our look, starting again by moving out, turning our back and becoming who we want, because we want, not because we have to be. He told us that there’s a better life, a better future just outside the door, moving in the wind. A future that’s underneath our noses, you can smell it. It’s like everything you’ve ever wanted, a life without walls and ceiling, full of colour and light. He wasn’t telling us where to go, just how to get there. How to leave only dust and a shadow behind you.
When it comes to luck, you make your own.
Unknown
But, he was never afraid to tell the truth. ‘Born in the USA’ is his most well-known track. It’s the kind of song people picture playing as the world series opens and jet fighters fly overhead. But listen closely and this is not patriotism. This is not sunshine and rainbows. It’s a song about war, loss of innocence and suffering, a meaning lost on many people;
Born down in a dead man’s town,
The first kick I took was when I hit the ground,
You end up like a dog that’s been beat too much,
‘Til you spend half your life just coverin’ up…
…Got in a little hometown jam,
So they put a rifle in my hand,
Sent me off to a foreign land,
To go and kill the yellow man,
‘Born in the USA’ doesn’t represent patriotism, it represents ignorance and arrogance in the White House and America. Something we need today more than ever. It is as much a homage to his country as it is defamation. Bruce captured what Vietnam did, he cut the bull and turned it on its head. Hope turned to loss, chauvinism and a drunk-in-love sense of right and wrong turned to more black bags. Gung-Ho!
There is a real patriotism underneath the best of my music but it is a critical, questioning and often angry patriotism.
Unknown
The Boss is unique. A contradiction, an enigma. A character, who continues to emphasise the power of music as a medium for creating emotions. He’s a storyteller, like an old town carnival man, but the stories he tells are not his own, they are ours. They are our moments to daydream and escape. They are also our moments to reflect and rethink who we are and what we stand for. Bruce will always be The Boss to me.
