“Bruce Springsteen on the Political Costs of Loneliness in America”
By Cyrus Ernesto Zirakzadeh
Department of Political Science, University of Connecticut
Prepared for delivery at the 2013 Western Political Science Association Meeting
(Not for Citation without Permission of the Author)
The size and behavior of audiences at Bruce Springsteen’s performances suggest that his art both echoes and informs how many in the United States think about themselves. The concert-goers, who seemingly werestrangers beforehand, scream in unison that America comprises a series of “badlands” that need to be challenged, and publicly proclaim that they are “tramps” who will “never surrender” and whose “hungry hearts” need a “home.” The energy and enthusiasm arise partly from the rhythmically catchy and bouncy feel of many of his songs. Think of “Glory Days,” “Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out,” and “Waitin’ on a Sunny Day.”
But, the palpable energy among the crowds at Springsteen’s concerts also arises from his musical accounts of how Americans live and of the world they have collectively constructed. The rhythms, cadences, instrumental arrangements, and guitar sounds are familiar to his audiences, which sometimes include a goodly number of senior citizens whose musical experiences and memories resemble those of the now sixty-year-plus Springsteen. His music comforts the audiences. His songs invite Americans to invest their emotional energies into objects and situations that they already value. His art reinforces certain conventional self-understandings of insecurely employed Americans, who are urged by the mass media to see themselves as Average Joes.
Yet, the music that Springsteen composes and performs is not simply conservative in the sense of wistful, nostalgia, or reassuring. It draws attention and emotions towardparticularsocial institutions, such as marriages, unemployment offices, and factories. Itcelebrates spaces for unregulated movement and moments of intense spontaneity. And, itgenerates targets of group anger – targets that potentially, but not necessarily, contradict the plans of the wealthy and of holders of public and private corporate power.[1]
Springsteen, in interviews and speeches, has consistently stated that he wants his music not simply to entertain and momentarily reduce listeners’ personal miseries.[2] He also wants to offer listeners an honest account about how they live; an account that may help them in their personal struggles and that one day may facilitate more ambitious collective action; and an account that conveys neither the unwavering fatalism of American country music nor the blind celebration of physical movement in classical rock-and-roll tunes but that, somehow, combines the insights of both genres.[3]
The remainder of this paper analyzes some elements of Springsteen’s musical message about American society. My method of analysis is fairly simple. Following the example of other students of Springsteen’s music, I presume that a coherent interpretation of Springsteen’s vast output of music becomes possible when his artistry is viewed as moving between poles or positions, and when his hundreds of compositions are tentatively clustered according to thematic emphases.[4] It follows from this “clustering method” of interpretation, that no single song or album captures the entirety of Springsteen’s political vision. Rather, when his dozens of his pieces are listened to, certain rhythms, waves of volume, and instrumental sounds start to stand out and then become familiar. Furthermore, certain types of situations and characters reappear in the lyrics. In addition, I borrow from the tradition of British cultural studies a predisposition to think about music in terms of expressions of affect. Stated differently, those patternsof sounds and stories that constitute Springsteen’s music convey the type of emotional investments that he perceives his fellow Americans to be making and that he wishes either to reinforce or to deflect.[5] I try to think about the arrangement of sounds in Springsteen’s music – for example, the beats that he accents, the repetition pattern in his riffs, the speed of the presentation – and about the feelings (primarily affections and fears) that the arrangement of sounds fosters. Finally, being a political theorist by training, I ponder the meaning of the words he uses, the tales he tells, and the philosophic issues that he ignores primarily in the lyrics of his songs, but also in his speeches, interviews, and, occasionally, published prose.[6]
It is my thesis that Bruce Springsteen’s music tells emotionally moving stories about two levels of struggle in the United States today. First, there are songs aboutmicro-level strugglesto remain honest, energetic, daring, and creative in a society composed largely of paid laborers on the cusp of losing their jobs. In interviews and speeches, he occasionally calls this type of struggle “being alive” orattaining a “transformative self.”[7] In his tunes, these struggles are carried out either by individuals on their own or by couples in a semi-permanent or permanent relationship. The goals of the micro-level struggles are physical liberty, domestic shelter, and staving off the temptation to hurt either oneself or others. Then, there is less comforting music about theincreasingly skewed distribution of power toward Americans who are financially independent, about the lack among the political powerful and the economically protected of empathyfor the non-wealthy, and, finally,about the need for the have-nots to band together. In his musical discussions about America on a larger scale, terrifying visions of working-class violence and more hopefulvisions of a new communal struggle see-saw. After summarizing Springsteen’s musical representation of each type of struggle, the paper will reflect on the implications of Springsteen’s music for the promotion of democratic politics in America.
- Wild Nights: SurvivingWork life
When asked to discuss the key influences on his music, Springsteen typically cites three artists: the pioneering rockabilly singer Elvis Presley, the 1960s British blues-rock musical combo “the Animals,” and the seminal country-and-western singer Hank Williams. Springsteen usually says that he learned from the Animals how to make music that captures the amazing power of machines and the endless drudgery of industrial work. He learned from Williams how to feel sorrow and remorse for moments of wildness and thoughtless acts of cruelty. And he learned from Presley how to see and convey magic.
Springsteen often refers to a performance by Presley in 1956 on Ed Sullivan’s weekly variety show. Springsteen’s mother was an avid fan of “Elvis” and often listened to his music while doing housework. So, Springsteen was at some level aware of Elvis Presley’s cultural impact on families of modest means. Springsteen’s parents broke their household rules and permitted Bruce stay up past bedtime and watch the performance on television. He remembers being stunned by what he saw.
…I realized a white man could make magic, that you did not have to be constrained by your upbringing, by the way you looked, or by the social context that oppressed you. You could call upon your own powers of imagination, and you could create a transformative self.[8]
It is unlikely that Springsteen at the age of nine could articulate such sophisticated ideas. But this statement reveals what Springsteen, now an adult anda professional musician, wants to see in Elvis. For Springsteen, Elvis provokesdeep wonder because heso openly transgressed the expectations of straight-laced, responsible society. He refused to self-regulate his body so as minimize earthly impulses; he refused to wear his hair according to expectations of economic leaders, and he refused to sing a tune from the great American song book composed by Euro-American song writers in New York. Elvis, in the adult Springsteen’s imagination, publicly spurns religious, economic, and racial rules of the time, and seems to enjoy his contrariness.
Moreover, Springsteen, when constructing childhood memories, sees in the 1950s rock crooner a cultural teacher. Springsteen believes that Elvis was doing more than entertaining and defiantlysaying “hell” to social convention. Elvis’ snarling mouth, swagger, and undignified yet seemingly heartfelt physical movements was inspiring others to act defiantly. Springsteen comments in retrospect:
Elvis was the first modern twentieth century man, the precursor of the Sexual Revolution, of the Civil Rights Revolution, drawn from the same Memphis as Martin Luther King, creating fundamental, outsider art that would be embraced by a mainstream popular culture.
Television and Elvis gave us full access to a new language, a new form of communication, a new way of being, a new way of looking, a new way of thinking – about sex, about race, about identity, about life. A new way of being an American, a human being, and a new way of hearing music. Once Elvis came across the airwaves, once he was heard and seen in action, you could not put the genie back in the bottle.[9]
The significance of Elvis’s performance, in other words, lay not in the performance alone but in its broader cultural context:in what he opposed, in his refusal to conform,and in the way his act challenged the range of life choices normally portrayed on television. His unusualperformance (like ReverendKing’s restrained, steady demeanor and erudite rhetoric) clashed with the current expectations among television owners – who at that time were largely white and holders of steady if not always well-paid job – about the about the trappings required for social success.
As the lyrics and rhythms of the Animals taught Springsteen (as well as, presumably, pre-Animals popular tunes transmitted on transistor radios, such as “Sugar Shack” and “Down in the Boondocks”), a widespread assumption in the United States during the 1950s and early 1960swas that standards of living were rising for all who would work hard, who would obey supervisors at the work site, and who would accept without dissent the dictates of the market as interpreted by webs of organizational superiors. The performances of Elvis on record consoles and television and movie screens, however, suggested that each person contained an innate ability to do the unexpected and to embrace novel values: to be “transformative.” To the nine-year-old Bruce, who soon would be laughed at and excluded in high school and whose father would seem to be forever losing low-paying jobs, the televised event was a small but important dike against the pressures to conform to middle-class dreams and norms.
This does not mean that Springsteen (or other Elvis fans, for that matter) became a revolutionary and rejected whole sale liberal values such as self-restraint, self-reliance, and limits on the exercise of public power. To be a fan of Elvis in the 1950s and 1960s was never to reject the ideological premises of American society. To want to dress, dance, and play music like Elvis was, however, a declaration about wanting – in addition to having a good job and amassing material goods – to beloose, loud, and wild; and, conversely, it was a decision to reduce one’s emotional investment in the values regimentation, discipline, and obedience. Elvis’s seemingly ear-splitting music, the slightly weird harmony of his backup singers, and his hyperactive arms and legs made it possible to imagine briefly turning one’s back on the endless tedium and obsequiousness of blue-collar work life. Presley’s performances encouraged the joyful celebration of instabilities in selected pockets of one’s life.
Springsteen sees himself as a working-class musician who composes music whose rhythms, melodies, metaphors, analogies, lyrical stories, and characters are intended to feel pleasant to those who physically labor for others and who neither own the tools of their trade, design the goods that they make, nor have a say over the process of production. The music is to be valuable to people who work hard for their money. Springsteen, when asked about possible coffeehouse influences on his career, denies that he ever was a “bohemian” who embraced contrariness for its own sake and who looked down upon those who submit themselves to a boring work life.[10] The characters in his lyrics hold low-wage, blue-collar jobs. They find the workweek unpleasant, monotonous,and regimented. Yet, they also recognize that laboring for others is necessary for survival. In some cases, they find the goods that they produce and the services that they provide, ultimately, a source of pride – regardless if the labor entails serving customers at a restaurant counter, slaughtering cattle at a corporate farm, or building a bridge.
Instead of proposing the overthrow of an enslaving system of wage labor and calling for a revolution by the have-nots, Springsteen in his musical short stories talks about ways to slyly adjust to and negotiate the challenges of surviving in the United States. He tells of daring attempts by individuals to find pockets of pleasure in an inescapably tough situation, about seeing a bit of hope in a largely frustrating series of low-paying jobs. Although there is monotony in the factories and on the docks, and at the canneries, there is freedom in the streets and the boardwalks. As Springsteen puts it, rock and rollresembles a magical elixir that revitalizeslisteners and that creates faith thatone’s closed spaces during the workday are less permanent that they seemed:
It’s a certain thing…Like rock and roll came to my house where there seemed to be no way out. It just seemed like a dead-end street, nothing I like to do, nothing I wanted to do except roll over and go to sleep or something. And it came into my house – snuck in, ya know, and opened up a whole world of possibilities. Rock and roll….Rock and roll motivates. It’s the big, gigantic motivator, at least it was for me.[11]
When describing his relationship to his audiences, Springsteen emphasizes his responsibility to help people realize that that they have options, even if they currently feel cornered: “it’s your responsibility to try and close the gap with the audience, to give them the sense that there are other possibilities than the ones they may be seeing.”[12] The blinders, he believes, are emotional and are imposed by the fears, disappointments, and petty daily insults that constitute work life at the service of others. As he states in the lyrics of such songs as “Adam Raised a Cain,” “Badlands,” “Born in the USA,” “Factory,”“The Promised Land,” “Working on the Highway,”and “Shackled and Drawn,” working dutifully all day for someone else makes one feel impotent, passive, and imprisoned. Over years,pain and anger well inside and leaves one feeling broken hearted. But, Springsteen believes, through the listening of rock and roll music, resilience is buttressed at least, in the short run.[13] Springsteen therefore compares his concerts to the stirring short speech about poor people’s capacity confront daily frustration that is added to the end of the film version of The Grapes of Wrath: “Our job is, we just blow into town, tell everybody to keep going, and then we kinda blow on out.”[14]
Springsteen’s mixes various rock and roll traditions – rhythm and blues, blues shuffles, punk– but he almost always returns to rockabilly. It is a frenetic style of music, with minimal structure. The short duration of a rock song (because of the space requirements of 45 rpm records) means that there cannot be complex shifts in tempo, lots of counter melodies and multiple stages in the composition. Everything is quick and to the point. And because it is easy to reproduce on small records, it is a portable type music that younger teenagers could play on small record players in the privacy in their basements, and that older teenagers could use as background music for dances with friends in the evenings. Through rock songs, one remembers the metamorphosis of teenage years; recalls the discovery of unexpected new interests, impulses, and desires; and celebrates unregulated movement. This is the beauty of a piece as seemingly primitive as “Wooly Booly,” one of the songs that Springsteen likes to play whenever he can jam informally at a bar. At concerts he typically will perform an “oldie” rock song from the 1950s and 1960s, such as “A Quarter to Three” by Gary “U.S.” Bonds or the Isley Brothers’ unrefined version of “Twist and Shout.” According to such tunes, it is OK to shake, rattle, and roll, and to wear unconventional hairdos and dazzling clothing after work. The only code is to be “authentic,” to be “real,” to “feel alive,” to enjoy the new urges magically surging through your body, and to dare to resist the orders by parents and other adults to control one’s self.[15]
According to the lyrics of countless of old fashion rock-and-roll songs from the twentieth century – from Chuck Berry and the Everly Brothers to the Ramones and Cyndi Lauper – unrestrained movement typically occurs late at night, in backstreets, along boardwalks and beaches, and on the edge of towns. In such circumstances – that is, when and where adult supervision is absent – individuals’ buried impulses to race, to battle, to kiss, and to dance without restraint emerge. Springsteen’s music likewise celebrates these settings. Through unexpected sounds (including accordions) and rhythms, he makes the boardwalks, alleys, and highways seem irregular, open, formless, and exciting. In his records, Springsteen’s describes events and characters in these places that are sinister unpredictable, but that are also thrilling andadventuresome. These spaces thus becomeexperienced (both by narratives and by sounds) as magical, without order, open-ended. They are, his music insists, alternative places to which one can escape from the monotonous days and demeaning shackles of paid work.[16]