When I was eight years old I had an experience that set a trajectory for my whole life. I was lying in bed, I had the radio on—this was the 1970s—and Bruce Springsteen comes on with his 70s anthem “Born to Run.” Something broke open in my soul. Something grabbed a hold of me and [...]
Bruce Springsteen sternly instructs us in his new infomercial to "find the middle" in politics. But the Founders made clear the fact that vigorous debate was critical to their vision of democracy. I can forgive Bruce for recycling footage and clothes from his Western Stars movie in that Super Bowl commercial (pulled by Jeep in [...]
Can it really be the case that Western music’s deep reservoir of creativity had, by the middle of the 20th century, almost entirely run dry? This somewhat implausible view is often implicit in conservative-leaning cultural commentary when it touches on the subject of rock music. There is, to be sure, much to despise—the peculiar rock [...]
Bruce Springsteen's unrivaled stage presence comes across remarkably well in the film "Western Stars," as he performs his recent album in its entirety. But it is the brief, meditative, and confessional vignettes he uses to introduce each song that reveal just how much the entire album serves as his own version of St. Augustine's "Confessions." [...]
As Bruce Frederick Joseph Springsteen turns 70 years old, one finds it a daunting task to make an exhaustive list of his artistic accomplishments and the accolades he has received for them: Mr. Springsteen, who has been performing live for more than a half-century now, is the 15th highest-selling artist of all-time; his first album, [...]
The old men who narrate the songs of Bruce Springsteen's cinematic "Western Stars" are broken, physically, emotionally, and spiritually. Seeking a land of sunshine, open roads, and new beginnings, they find that the fabled American West cannot provide salvation for the lost and lonely. But "Western Stars" will surely provide balm for the soul. Western Stars, [...]
Asbury Park postcard, sometime between 1930-1945. When I was a teenager, in the late 1990s, Asbury Park, New Jersey had fallen on hard times. The kinetic energy of the small shore city—Ferris wheels and carousels, breezy counters with young people selling waffle cones and hamburgers to beachgoers in the salty air—was largely gone. [...]
Here are four recently-published books and four new classical music albums that I have greatly enjoyed this past year… Books I’ve read several excellent biographies (and one great autobiography) this past year. Foremost among the former is Jan Swafford’s magisterial Beethoven: Anguish and Triumph, which could easily be termed the definitive biography of perhaps the greatest [...]
Though his fans will undoubtedly enjoy this engrossing autobiography, it deserves a broader audience because of the beauty of Mr. Springsteen's writing, his penetrating observations about human nature, and his well-crafted history of an interesting and important life. "We remain in the air, the empty space, in the dusty, roots and deep earth, in the [...]
Novelist Walker Percy was a fan of Bruce Springsteen, calling him “my favorite American philosopher.” Percy even wrote a letter to Mr. Springsteen, seeking information about his interest in Flannery O’Connor and his spiritual journey as a baptized Roman Catholic. Percy was also impressed by Mr. Springsteen’s song-writing, seeing the New Jersey native as a sort of American [...]
On July 19, 1988, Bruce Springsteen played a concert in East Berlin, telling the crowd: “I came to play rock ‘n’ roll for you East Berliners in the hope that one day all the barriers will be torn down.” The program included Bob Dylan’s “Chimes of Freedom.” An East German concertgoer recalled: “What I got [...]
Viggo Mortensen as Franky In Sophocles’ great play, Antigone, the eponymous heroine defies Creon, the ruler of Thebes, by burying her brother, Polyneices, who fought against Creon in the city’s recent civil war. Creon has decreed that Polyneices’ treachery will be avenged by allowing his exposed body to be desecrated, “chewed up by birds and [...]
“I am that gadfly which God has attached to the state, and all day long and in all places am always fastening upon you, arousing and persuading and reproaching you.” —Socrates, quoted by Plato, Apology “My work has always been about judging the distance between American reality and the American dream. There is a real patriotism underneath [...]
Born in the U.S.A., which turns 30 this week, is Bruce Springsteen’s best-selling album to date, and that should come as no surprise. Its songs—“I’m On Fire,” “Glory Days,” “Darlington County” and others—are FM radio staples, their foursquare drum, piano, base and guitar parts perfectly at home in either a Jersey Shore bar or an [...]