Bernard Zuel
WHY SHOULD YOU BE INTERESTED IN BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN?
It’s a fair question as we prepare for an all but sold-out 10-date visit by Springsteen and his E Street Band, as part of a 133-show (and 2012’s second-highest grossing) world tour that has critics and fans of a certain age gushing.
Sure, he played at Barack Obama’s presidential inauguration. Yes, he’s been quoted, misquoted, criticised and eulogised by politicians of all stripes, from Ronald Reagan to Wayne Swan. True, he was one of the biggest stars of the 1980s – the last time the music industry ruled the entertainment world. And he certainly has inspired imitation, from Bon Jovi to Arcade Fire, from Meatloaf to Moving Pictures, from Badly Drawn Boy to the Gaslight Anthem.
But he’s in his 60s, has only toured here three times in his near-50-year career and is the quintessential American artist. How could he possibly mean anything to us?
Well, here are the reasons why New Jersey’s second-most famous son is worth talking about (and you need a ticket).
HE CARES AND FIGURES YOU WILL, TOO
Earlier this year, Springsteen was named the MusiCares Person of the Year for his efforts on gay rights, equal rights, migrant workers, support for labour, Barack Obama and just simply giving a toss about your fellow humans.
He also cares passionately about making music and what music can do for you, as a musician or a listener. As he explained in his keynote speech at the South by Southwest music conference last year, you can put that down to seeing Elvis Presley on The Ed Sullivan Show in 1956 and thinking ”a white man could make magic”
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. ”You did not have to be constrained by your upbringing, by the way you looked, or by the social context that oppressed you,” he said. ”You could call upon your own powers of imagination, and you could create a transformative self.”
Transformation, the search for it or the failure of it, is at the core of his songs and may be why people and locations rooted so completely in the American life translate in nations, and languages, far from it.
As writer and fan David James Young puts it, in Springsteen songs, ”the names may have changed, and a few steps may have been taken back in order to take in the bigger picture; but the sentiments seem to have remained intact. Small-town stories of heroes, villains, could-a-been-champions, parents, friends and lovers … find themselves attempting to escape their community or dealing with the consequences of not getting out while they could.” In other words, stories from pretty much everywhere.
In his book 31 Songs, English author and occasional songwriter, Nick Hornby, talked about how the song Thunder Road ”somehow manages to speak to me” even though Hornby is not American, young, into cars or ignorant of the fact some see Springsteen as bombastic and histrionic.
”Sometimes songs and books and films and pictures express who you are, perfectly. And they don’t do this in words or images, necessarily; the connection is a lot less direct and more complicated than that,” Hornby writes. ”It’s a process something like falling in love. You don’t necessarily choose the best person, or the wisest, or the most beautiful; there’s something else going on.”
OTHER ARTISTS LOVE SINGING HIS SONGS
David Bowie gave It’s Hard To Be a Saint in the City a glam makeover while New York Afro-beat chaps Vampire Weekend made with the pretty for I’m Going Down. Outre ’80s pop glossies Frankie Goes to Hollywood assayed Born to Run faithfully while post-rock nerds Tortoise joined indie oddball Bonnie ”Prince” Billy to make Thunder Road prog rock-like.
Pop duo-turned-dancefloor group Everything but the Girl and jangly sensitive Scots Camera Obscura both covered Tougher than the Rest. Spectral pop act Bat for Lashes sang I’m On Fire spectrally and agit-rockers Rage against the Machine heavied The Ghost of Tom Joad into a quasi-metal crunch.
Emmylou Harris went country on Racing in the Streets and Mansion on the Hill and Johnny Cash did something similar with I’m On Fire and Johnny 99. Soul sister Bettye LaVette brought extra grit to Streets of Philadelphia, and Dion recorded a doo-wop version of If I Should Fall Behind, a song also recorded by the Go-Betweens’ Grant McLennan.
OTHER ARTISTS HAVE HAD HITS WITH HIS SONGS, EVEN WHEN HE DIDN’T
Blinded by the Light bombed in 1973 as the first single from Springsteen’s debut album, Greetings from Asbury Park N.J., but became a No.1 song in 1976 for English band Manfred Mann’s Earth Band. Because the Night was a cast-off from the long sessions for what would become 1978’s Darkness on the Edge of Town; Patti Smith added a verse and some magic and the song became her biggest hit.
Fire was another song from the Darkness on the Edge of Town sessions that manager Jon Landau feared would be released as a non-representative single by the label because of its obvious hit potential. So obvious that the Pointer Sisters’ version went to No.2.
Having promised Donna Summer, but then keeping, Cover Me (which became a top 10 hit from 1984’s Born in the USA), Springsteen gave her Protection, earning her a Grammy nomination.
NO QUICK SHOWS
The man may be 63, but when he’s got the E Street Band he doesn’t play sitting down, he doesn’t play quietly and he doesn’t play short. Typical shows in the ’70s went for three hours or more. Typical shows on recent tours have been going for three hours or more. The Helsinki show of July 31, 2012, went for four hours and six minutes, the longest he’s ever done.
Guitarist Steve van Zandt, who won’t be on the Australian leg, told Rolling Stone a year ago that the band didn’t look at the clock or think about how long the show was going because they, and the audience, are being transported. ”You’re taken out of time during the show and brought to some other place, and then returned at the end of the journey, hopefully with positive energy that you then take into your regular life,” van Zandt said. All of which might be tiresome if he wasn’t the master of stadium rock shows, boasting a set-list of songs seemingly built to be sung by thousands.
IT’S A BIG BAND THIS TIME, BUT SOME FAMILIAR FACES WILL BE MISSING
Formed in 1972, the group was formally named the E Street Band in 1974 and, save for a decade’s hiatus from the mid-’80s, were the constant part of a Springsteen show. Sax player Clarence Clemons, organist Danny Federici and bassist Garry Tallent were founding members who remained by Springsteen’s side into the 21st century. The core of eight musicians behind him, which was established in 1995 when long-time foil/guitarist/consigliore van Zandt rejoined the band alongside his replacement Nils Lofgren, has been augmented at different times but never as much as now. On this current tour, there are 19 musicians on stage including brass, fiddle and backing vocalists alongside stalwarts Tallent, backing vocalist Patti Scialfa, drummer Max Weinberg and decade-old ”newbie” violinist Soozie Tyrell.
However, the E Street Band is not the same and will never be the same again. Federici died in 2008 (replaced by Charles Giordano), Clarence ”The Big Man” Clemons died in 2011 (replaced in part by his nephew Jake) and van Zandt will miss the Australian tour because of commitments with his radio show (replaced by Tom Morello).
HE STILL PULLS A CROWD
Though the last Australian tour in 2003 was a disaster for the promoter, who overestimated and picked the wrong venues, and a fizzer for many fans in Sydney in particular who got lumbered with awful sound, Springsteen’s 2013 tour looks like a safe return. The two Brisbane shows have sold out, the first two Melbourne shows and first Sydney have, too, as have the two shows at Hanging Rock in country Victoria.
Of course, we’re small beer compared with the US and European legs of the tours. According to Billboard magazine, the 2007-2008 tour grossed more than $235 million from 104 shows; the 2002-2003 tour grossed more than $221 million from 120 shows. The current tour, which began in March last year and was Billboard’s second-highest grossing tour of 2012 (behind Madonna), has clocked up 90 shows before the 10 Australian concerts with another 33 to go before the final show in Rio de Janeiro in September.
Bruce Springsteen
When: March 18, 20 and 22, Allphones Arena, Sydney Olympic Park, Homebush
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