Rites of Springsteen
IF YOU WERE A NEW YORK CITY high school student and music geek at the dawn of the ’80s, it was almost impossible not to have an opinion about Bruce Springsteen. I loved the primal urgency of “Born to Run,” the Latin-tinged vibrancy of “Rosalita (Come Out Tonight),” and Patti Smith’s devastating reading of “Because the Night.” But the snob in me resisted what I heard as lyrical clichés (railroad tracks, highways, edges of towns) at a time when snarling upstarts were busy changing the language of rock.
One memorable senior trip took us to Great Adventure, an amusement park on Springsteen’s home turf of New Jersey. Playing at the amphitheater that night were Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes, whose boisterous cover of Sam Cooke’s “Having a Party” had been a local FM radio staple. At the time, I dismissed them as competent
E Street Band wannabes (Bruce and his guitarist Little Steven were even frequent collaborators). The show was fun, but felt too familiar. Back then, Springsteen’s influence could be heard in other slavish imitators, such as John Cafferty and the Beaver Brown Band, and also in Meat Loaf, who amped up the bombast to Wagnerian proportions—a variation I perversely preferred to the real thing. But that was decades ago, when Springsteen worship was at full strength, and punk and new wave were what we misfits listened to. I’ve since come to appreciate the humor and specificity of his narratives as the work of a supremely gifted storyteller.
Today, there’s a very different slew of artists who have embraced Springsteen’s widescreen Americana and Dust Bowl romanticism passionately and without irony—most notably the Hold Steady, the National, the Killers, Ryan Adams, and Canada’s Arcade Fire, whose Win Butler joins Springsteen for this month’s cover story. Filled with fascinating insights into their shared obsessions and very divergent histories, it’s a discussion that gets to the hungry heart of two of rock’s most original voices. Hope you enjoy the issue.
Editor
References:
Archives