On record, Bruce Springsteen’s “Prove it All Night” was just a dude making a raw paean to the girl he loves. On the 1978 tour for the accompanying record, his introductory rap and stinging wind-up guitar solo turned it into a song of nigh religious fervor for the hard, endless work that goes into living. On the Reunion Tour of 1999-2000, it morphed again into a statement of forward-looking purpose: The E Street Band was back, and they were going to prove it all night. If reunion tours are typically cheap nostalgia, a craven payday, or lack of a better idea, this one felt different. Indeed, Springsteen closed most of those reunion shows with a new song, “Land of Hope and Dreams,” borrowing from Woody Guthrie and deploying the might of his backing band to imagine something like Walt Whitman’s America in the form of a heartland rocker. There was fear and uncertainty in the air at the turn of the century, and I always found it fascinating that Springsteen, no stranger to fatalism, shrugged off apocalyptic anxiety to envision utopia. I saw the last show of the Reunion Tour, July 1, 2000, with my friend Rory, and when we left Madison Square Garden that night, I almost felt like I could see it too.
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Content on his first few records to reconsecrate rock and roll and broader American myths, Springsteen transitioned on his next couple to sharply puncturing them. But it wasn’t until the 80s that his music became truly political even if his politics often still felt like work in progress. In a 1984 interview with Kurt Loder for Rolling Stone, Springsteen confessed to being a registered voter but not registered for one party or the other even if subsequent scattered thoughts on his belief system undoubtedly put him to the left. It reminds me of my own brief dalliance with being a registered independent, which was mere self-righteousness at staying out of the fray. But, of course, that’s where politics resides, like it or not, in the fray. And when President Reagan tried to co-opt Bruce’s masterpiece “Born in the U.S.A.” with his inane reading of it, Springsteen spoke up and hit back, and when Oliver North accomplice Fawn Hall asked the Boss if she and beau Rob Lowe could visit him backstage at a concert, he told her to take a hike. Innately, he knew the difference between right and wrong.
Gradually, his politics became more precise and pronounced. He partnered with and made substantial donations to anti-hunger and veteran organizations. On his post-E Street Band acoustic record “Ghost of Tom Joad,” he dared to empathize with the plight of immigrants, nay, illegal immigrants. In 2006, Springsteen and his Seeger Sessions Band turned the fun, frivolous Late Night with Conan O’Brien into a platform to protest the endless war into which we were lied. In-between, at the end of the Reunion Tour, Springsteen debuted a new song, “American Skin (41 Shots)” culled from the real-life story of unarmed Guinean immigrant Amadou Diallo being killed by four NYPD officers in early 1999. Even-handed and startlingly humane (and sadly, still as relevant in its righteous fury as ever), it also put him “at odds,” as the rock critic Steven Hyden would write, “with segments of his audience.” Like the Police Benevolent Association of the city of New York and Fraternal Order of Police, both of which excoriated the Boss in no uncertain terms. Still, each night for the 10-day NYC stand, Springsteen took the stage at MSG and played “American Skin.” (He also appeared in a 2021 Super Bowl spot for Jeep making a plea for America to meet in the middle that in its marriage of centrism and commercialism felt like the moving picture form of his podcast series with President Obama. Nobody’s perfect.)
In playing “American Skin,” Springsteen was content to let the music speak for itself. And maybe that’s the way it should be with music, with movies, with plays, with art, even if that art is going to be misinterpreted, whether by the head of the federal government, or a ballpark DJ on the 4th of July. But maybe, sometimes, in extreme cases, at extreme moments, letting the music speak for you just won’t do. And so, at a concert in Manchester, England in May of this year, Bruce Springsteen said this:
Present-day America is one that collectively decided over one million dead from COVID-19 wasn’t that bad and just moved on. Present-day America is one that collectively decided January 6th and a sitting President (and appreciable buffoon) seeking to overturn a free and fair election wasn’t that bad and voted him back into office. “I have this creeping feeling,” the esteemed Charles Pierce wrote last October when it was starting to become clear America was steering itself right into the iceberg, “that reality is no longer enough.” It feels as if we are on the other side of something, what, I don’t know. History will have to make sense of it. And because I won’t be here when that happens, I find it deeply important to take the time to impress upon myself the truth of what it feels like to be here right now.
Springsteen’s monologue functioned as the intro to a performance of “My City of Ruins.” He originally wrote the gospel-influenced ballad in 2000 about the decay and decline of his adopted hometown of Asbury Park, New Jersey, imploring it to rise and rebuild. After 9/11, however, when he was called upon to open the America: Tribute to the Heroes telethon 10 days later, he played “My City of Ruins,” forever altering its meaning and linking it to New York and Washington and the deadliest terror attack in American history. By playing it here, now, and providing that foreword, he was effectively altering its meaning again. “Make no mistake about it,” Hunter S. Thompson wrote in the wake of September 11th with eerie prescience. “We are At War now -- with somebody -- and we will stay At War with that mysterious Enemy for the rest of our lives.”
That mysterious Enemy has morphed in the last 25 years. The President now calls it The Enemy Within, a phrase copped from Senator Joseph McCarthy during a dark period of American history that you might have thought this country wasn’t stupid enough to repeat. And that phrase was just a variation on the phrase Enemy of the people, one put to significant use by the Soviet Union and Joseph Stalin. And Stalin instituted loyalty tests of government workers, transformed art and culture into an extension of his cult of personality, sicced troops on his own people, suppressed free speech and academic freedom, and rewrote history. That all sounds like what is happening in America right now. A day before an American ballerina was brought home from Russia after being falsely accused of high treason, the President accused former government officials of treason for not signing off on his lie that the 2020 Presidential election was stolen. My God, even George W. Bush defended the erstwhile Dixie Chicks’ right to speak their mind in 2003. When Springsteen spoke his, on the other hand, the current President offered a harebrained variation on that classic juvenile taunt If You Don’t Like It, You Can Leave and blustered about investigating him on some dubious charge extracted from the pudding where his brain should be. Springsteen answered by releasing an EP from his Manchester show including the speeches so everybody could hear.
All these reinventions of his own work underline what the esteemed Greil Marcus wrote about the Reunion Tour in 1999, noting that what set Springsteen apart from his peers was that “(he could) still fail.” In other words, Springsteen might have been frequently performing his greatest hits, but he and The E Street Band were not a greatest hits act. He was not checking songs off the setlist to satisfy fans so much as he was seeking an active connection with fans by making these songs live and breathe again, or to live and breathe in whole new way. Some were bound to fail measured against those that did not. “In a decade,” Marcus wrote, “the songs you cherish most today may be discredited by the person singing them.” And though Mr. Marcus and I probably disagreed on where Springsteen failed, and how often, I understand what he meant. “Born to Run” sung by a 50-year-old Springsteen, and a sixty-something Springsteen too (the last time I saw him live), discredits “Born to Run” sung by twenty-something Springsteen.
“Land of Hopes and Dreams,” on the other hand, was one only 50-year-old Springsteen could have sung. A song of such blunt optimism required his weathered voice, one that had endured hard times both personally and professionally, that had long since lost its innocence, paraphrasing the Boss himself, but maintained its idealism. And though it might stand to reason that the voice of 75-year-old Springsteen looking back at the last quarter-century of American life between his Reunion Tour and now, some steps up, so many steps back, would discredit it, as his Manchester performance of the song goes to show, it doesn’t. Granted, this is a different version than 25 years ago. Max Weinberg’s beat isn’t quite as big, less heartland rock, more rock and roll spiritual, inviting additional horns and voices and interpolating Curtis Mayfield’s “People Get Ready” at the end in a way that feels profound. In fact, Springsteen contradicts his own opening lyric, “Grab your ticket” giving way to “You don’t need no ticket,” as if imagining a future where his mythical train will melt all borders. And he still makes you believe that once this storm passes, the land of hope and dreams will be waiting at the end of the long, long arc of moral justice.
“Now, there’s some very weird, strange, and dangerous shit going on out there right now. In America, they are persecuting people for using their right to free speech and voicing their dissent. This is happening now. In America, the richest men are taking satisfaction in abandoning the world’s poorest children to sickness and death. This is happening now. In my country, they’re taking sadistic pleasure in the pain that they inflict on loyal American workers, they’re rolling back historic Civil Rights legislation that led to a more just and plural society, they’re abandoning our great allies and siding with dictators against those struggling for their freedom. They’re defunding American universities that won’t bow down to their ideological demands. They’re removing residents off American streets and, without due process of law, are deporting them to foreign detention centers and prisons. This is all happening now.”
In the video, you can see Springsteen is not reading a teleprompter. He even begins by sitting on the edge of the stage, as if inviting the audience in closer. It underscores how he takes what has been transpiring personally. These are his words. And he says them with an exact cadence because he wants to get them just right because he understands their weight. But it’s more than just the exactness; it’s the repetition; it’s the phrase “this is happening now” repeated three times, the last one with great emphasis.
Present-day America is one that collectively decided over one million dead from COVID-19 wasn’t that bad and just moved on. Present-day America is one that collectively decided January 6th and a sitting President (and appreciable buffoon) seeking to overturn a free and fair election wasn’t that bad and voted him back into office. “I have this creeping feeling,” the esteemed Charles Pierce wrote last October when it was starting to become clear America was steering itself right into the iceberg, “that reality is no longer enough.” It feels as if we are on the other side of something, what, I don’t know. History will have to make sense of it. And because I won’t be here when that happens, I find it deeply important to take the time to impress upon myself the truth of what it feels like to be here right now.
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Springsteen’s monologue functioned as the intro to a performance of “My City of Ruins.” He originally wrote the gospel-influenced ballad in 2000 about the decay and decline of his adopted hometown of Asbury Park, New Jersey, imploring it to rise and rebuild. After 9/11, however, when he was called upon to open the America: Tribute to the Heroes telethon 10 days later, he played “My City of Ruins,” forever altering its meaning and linking it to New York and Washington and the deadliest terror attack in American history. By playing it here, now, and providing that foreword, he was effectively altering its meaning again. “Make no mistake about it,” Hunter S. Thompson wrote in the wake of September 11th with eerie prescience. “We are At War now -- with somebody -- and we will stay At War with that mysterious Enemy for the rest of our lives.”
That mysterious Enemy has morphed in the last 25 years. The President now calls it The Enemy Within, a phrase copped from Senator Joseph McCarthy during a dark period of American history that you might have thought this country wasn’t stupid enough to repeat. And that phrase was just a variation on the phrase Enemy of the people, one put to significant use by the Soviet Union and Joseph Stalin. And Stalin instituted loyalty tests of government workers, transformed art and culture into an extension of his cult of personality, sicced troops on his own people, suppressed free speech and academic freedom, and rewrote history. That all sounds like what is happening in America right now. A day before an American ballerina was brought home from Russia after being falsely accused of high treason, the President accused former government officials of treason for not signing off on his lie that the 2020 Presidential election was stolen. My God, even George W. Bush defended the erstwhile Dixie Chicks’ right to speak their mind in 2003. When Springsteen spoke his, on the other hand, the current President offered a harebrained variation on that classic juvenile taunt If You Don’t Like It, You Can Leave and blustered about investigating him on some dubious charge extracted from the pudding where his brain should be. Springsteen answered by releasing an EP from his Manchester show including the speeches so everybody could hear.
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All these reinventions of his own work underline what the esteemed Greil Marcus wrote about the Reunion Tour in 1999, noting that what set Springsteen apart from his peers was that “(he could) still fail.” In other words, Springsteen might have been frequently performing his greatest hits, but he and The E Street Band were not a greatest hits act. He was not checking songs off the setlist to satisfy fans so much as he was seeking an active connection with fans by making these songs live and breathe again, or to live and breathe in whole new way. Some were bound to fail measured against those that did not. “In a decade,” Marcus wrote, “the songs you cherish most today may be discredited by the person singing them.” And though Mr. Marcus and I probably disagreed on where Springsteen failed, and how often, I understand what he meant. “Born to Run” sung by a 50-year-old Springsteen, and a sixty-something Springsteen too (the last time I saw him live), discredits “Born to Run” sung by twenty-something Springsteen.
“Land of Hopes and Dreams,” on the other hand, was one only 50-year-old Springsteen could have sung. A song of such blunt optimism required his weathered voice, one that had endured hard times both personally and professionally, that had long since lost its innocence, paraphrasing the Boss himself, but maintained its idealism. And though it might stand to reason that the voice of 75-year-old Springsteen looking back at the last quarter-century of American life between his Reunion Tour and now, some steps up, so many steps back, would discredit it, as his Manchester performance of the song goes to show, it doesn’t. Granted, this is a different version than 25 years ago. Max Weinberg’s beat isn’t quite as big, less heartland rock, more rock and roll spiritual, inviting additional horns and voices and interpolating Curtis Mayfield’s “People Get Ready” at the end in a way that feels profound. In fact, Springsteen contradicts his own opening lyric, “Grab your ticket” giving way to “You don’t need no ticket,” as if imagining a future where his mythical train will melt all borders. And he still makes you believe that once this storm passes, the land of hope and dreams will be waiting at the end of the long, long arc of moral justice.