Heroes Dream
Bruce Springsteen in the city of ruins
Some might question Springsteen‘s right to the subject, but he is, after all, besides being a millionaire rock star, a New Jersey family man, who as a father and neighbor has had to consider the fallout. His great constant theme -- not even of his songs, particularly, but of his career -- is “There but for the grace of God (and Leo Fender) go I.” And though he’s not exactly an average Joe -- he‘s got more talent and energy and ambition and, yes, money than you and you and you and me -- he’s kept in touch with his inner average Joe, the one that didn‘t become the Boss. He’s just another guy (one feels he likes to feel) doing his job -- which is to take you somewhere higher, somewhere deeper, than you could get on your own, to get you up off your ass and walk you to the edge. He is magnified by and magnifies his audience, from whom he is inextricable, each bound to the other by mutual recognition.
Springsteen is on tour now with his new album, and it is perhaps not such an odd thing that a work woven from sudden mass extermination will provide the occasion and soundtrack for the clapping of hands and punching of air and shaking of rear, not to say the buying of merch and chanting of “Bruuuuuuce.” Well, why not? As the subject at hand sang many long years ago, “It ain‘t no sin to be glad you’re alive.” Ultimately The Rising is about the same thing as every other Bruce Springsteen record -- the fight against despair, against the big black nothing the world is always threatening to become. The weapons are the same as they ever were: love, sex and rock & roll, and some kind of faith, whether it‘s that there’s magic in the night, or that -- for the living at least -- death is not the end, or even that you can grow up to lead a band.
BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN | The Rising | (Columbia)
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