As Vito Corleone once put it, “How did we get here?”
The current issue of Rolling Stone, just before their ridiculous four and a half star review of Bruce Springsteen’s High Hopes, printed yet another exclusive interview with Bruce and this is what Bruce had to say about unreleased songs: “I take them out just to amuse myself. Very often, if I have nothing to do late at night, I’ll take them out and look at the different bodies of music.”
I see.
I have written seven unpublished novels and I have never once taken them out and reread them just to amuse myself –I reread myself only if I have specific reason but really I never reread anything I write. And I am a nobody. You would think that after spending all day every day being Mr. Bruce Springsteen, Mr. Rock And Roll Boss, he would be as sick of himself as the rest of the world, but he just can’t get enough of that ol’ Bruce magic. Here a valentine’s letter from the fans, there a four and a half hour concert, everywhere a Jimmy Fallon appearance; the man has become this monstrous ego crushing everything it sees.
It’s not every day that you can pinpoint where a major rock and roll star loses the plot but Bruce told us himself when it happened. In late 2001, he was filling his car with gas when a fan slowed down and shouted, “Bruce, we need you back, man,” and Bruce’s head exploded as he actually believed that nonsense. The post 9-11 world might have needed many things but it didn’t need The Rising and only the most unbalanced of egos could believe it did.
Suddenly, all the contradictions that is Bruce Springsteen came together and the “walk the world in wealth” came home and then some. In the early 1990s I fell in love with a girl and I asked her to marry me and she turned me down and I swore I would never recover and today I can’t remember how it felt to love her. The same thing happened to Bruce: In the early 1970s Bruce was from a Blue Collar family and he swore he’d never forget his roots and today he can’t remember how it felt to be working class: he can’t write about the working man, he sees the working class in terms of sweat and dirty hands and common decency: as a series of tics with debts no honest man pay. Bruce can’t imagine the blue collar salt of the earth America stealing or killing for pure greed, he can’t imagine the humanness of the poor. Bruce isn’t one of us, he became a different, worse, less creative, smugger, arrogant man in 2001. Then he became politicized (how do you support John Kerry? At best with your hand holding your nose…) and whatever it meant to be Bruce didn’t mean anything anymore.
Springsteen came outta Asbury Park with one of the hottest bands in the world and after getting a little to Dylan-y with his first album, had this run:
The Wild, The Innocent, And The E Street Shuffle – 1973 – A+
Born to Run – 1975 – A+
Darkness On The Edge Of Town – 1978 – A
The River – 1980 – A
Nebraska – 1982 – A
Born In The USA – 1984 – A
Tunnel Of Love – 1987 – A
Human Touch – 1992 – B+
Lucky Town – 1992 – A
The Ghost Of Tom Joad – 1995 – B
That is a 22 year run of great albums, among them are the greatest albums of all time, and at their worst, say “Tom Joad” and throughout it Bruce tried to straddle the line between working class hero and walking in wealth and maybe he didn’t manage it but he really did try.
And then, after a seven year hiatus, he came back as Saint Bruce Of Bono. “Come back, we need you man”. And he bought it, he believed it, he dealt himself in and he hasn’t recorded a single good album since. Oh, some good songs, sure, but he has been unable to sustain it over an album in years.
In 2000, the commercial failure of his last three albums had him play 150- 180 minute sets, in 2013 he had pushed the envelope to 240 minutes. And this is how the hours cloaked in
Hour One – A
Hour Two – B
Hour Three – D
Hour Four – B
It’s the third hour, the midnight hour when Bruce is telling us how he used to buy popsicles with his Grandpa where you really begin to wonder what his problem is. You could read all Four Gospels before he has gotten through “Mansion On The Hill.” And who deserves “Mansion On The Hill” at 1230am after you’ve woken at 5am and worked all day and have work the next day. 18 hours into your work day and it feels like Bruce is punishing you for liking him. SHUT UP ALREADY.
I wouldn’t mind so much if he said doors at 630, show at 730… that takes you to 1130, and I’ll live with it. But he does doors at 7, show at 845…. Who starts a four hour show at 845? Why?
Because he understood when he was blue collar ,when he was 22 years old, but is clueless as to the sleep habits of the working class now he is 60 something.
And Bruce spends his free time listening to songs he didn’t release and reading inaccurate reviews of his music.
How did we get here?
We need you Bruce, somebody said, and Bruce believed it…
