Music |
Magic
Bruce Springsteen
By
Published: Jan 01, 2007
Category:
Rock
Magic
Bruce Springsteen
Videos
Radio Nowhere
You’ll Be Comin’ Down
Magic
Long Walk Home
How does a mature, middle-aged artist working in a genre still associated to some extent with youth culture continue to flourish and remain relevant to our tumultuous historical moment? This may well be the sort of question Bruce Springsteen asks himself as he sets out to work on a new CD, though likely not in this precise language.
Springsteen’s latest answer to the question is Magic,his first album with the E Street Band since 2002’s
The Rising, which dared to address 9/11 and its aftermath. “The Rising” managed to sum up the nation’s mood while portraying a series of nuanced, adult responses to the great historical event: mourning for those lost, praise for heroes, anger at our attackers, a desire for revenge — and ways to transcend the impulse. Springsteen also nicely chronicled erotic reawakening amidst our entirely rational paranoia. The CD showed us, to use Springsteen’s words, strength, faith, hope, and love. “The Rising” was something of a masterpiece, and a very tough act to follow.
After trying his best to get John Kerry elected President, Springsteen turned to more personal perspectives in 2005 with Devils and Dust, a mostly acoustic solo album. The CD was by no means free of politics, however. In the title song Springsteen imagined the inner life of an American soldier in Iraq:
Fear’s a powerful thing
It can turn your heart black you can trust
It’ll take your God-filled soul
Fill it with devils and dust
I can’t think of many living American novelists with the confidence and talent to make the imaginative leap all the way to the battlefield. But Springsteen has a lot of hard-earned confidence. If fear’s a powerful thing, so is success: and Springsteen’s huge success has permitted him to take a series of artistic risks.
We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions
, released in 2006, is an exuberant re-imagining of classic American folk songs performed with a highly spirited 18-member band of longtime Springsteen associates. I’ve already praised that album, and I’ll add only that it was a pleasure to see Springsteen having such a good time playing those old songs in concert. Evidence of that good time can be found on Live in Dublin.
What about “Magic?” Is it up to Springsteen’s high standards and immense ambitions? I think much of it is, but first a word about those standards…
Springsteen, of course, is more than a writer of lyrics: he’s a musician and a performer with a pure love of song, and his words would not carry their huge emotional weight without the music and that great band. But if I ever teach a writing class, I’d hold Springsteen up as an example of one approach to proper storytelling. Take the opening words to “My Home Town” from “Born in the USA”:
I was eight years old and running with a dime in my hand
Into the bus stop to pick up a paper for my old man
“I was eight years old and running with a dime in my hand.” The precision of the image calls up the physical intensity of childhood. The line works because of its simplicity and its specificity-the “dime in the hand.”
So, do the songs in “Magic” exhibit the dime in the hand?
The pre-release publicity for “Magic” suggested the album would really rock — that it would be the driving E-Street Band CD that Springsteen’s devoted public has been waiting for. And Radio Nowhere, the first cut on the CD, certainly delivers on that promise. It’s the sort of ballsy, concise statement that the band usually uses to kick off its concerts. The song says, among other things: We are the E-Street band, a big rock & roll machine that knows how to kick ass.
“Radio Nowhere” alsoasks a classic Springsteen question: “Is there anybody alive out there?”In “Badlands” Springsteen famously describes “…a notion/ a notion deep inside/ That it ain’t no sin/ to be glad you’re alive.” And during concerts, he likes to ask the crowd: “Is there anybody alive out there?” The crowd, of course, makes a big noise in response. But I fear that many of us are most alive when listening to Springsteen, responding to his art, while elsewhere in our lives we are less alive than we’d like to be
“Radio Nowhere” echoes other Springsteen classics of lonely, heartsick, late night drives down the American highway, songs that often lament the dearth of good stuff to listen to on the radio. See Springsteen’s “Nebraska” album, especially “Open All Night” and “State
Trooper,” which ends with the haunting lines:
Radio’s jammed up with talk show stations
It’s just talk, talk, talk, talk, till you lose your patience…
Hey, somebody out there, listen to my last prayer
Hiho silver-o, deliver me from nowhere
A savvy friend pointed out a neat irony: radio stations all across America will now be obliged to play “Radio Nowhere”, which is, among other things, a protest against the homogenized music the narrator hears while “spinnin’ ’round a dead dial.”
Another highlight of “Magic” comes near the top of the album. “Livin’ in the Future,” in the words of the album’s producer Brendan O’Brien, is an R&B throwback to Springsteen’s hit “Hungry Heart.” In recent days, Springsteen has been telling interviewers of his desire to mix a glossy pop musical sound with the darker political implications of his lyrics. He made his intentions explicit when introducing “Living in the Future” during his “Today” show concert:
This is a song called ‘Livin’ In the Future.’ But it’s really about what’s happening now. Right now. It’s kind of about…the things we love about America, cheeseburgers, French fries, the Yankees battlin’ Boston, the Bill of Rights, v-twin motorcycles, Tim Russert’s haircut, trans-fats and the Jersey Shore… We love those things the way womenfolk love Matt Lauer.…But over the past six years we’ve had to add to the American picture: rendition, illegal wiretapping, voter suppression, no habeas corpus, the neglect of that great city New Orleans and its people, an attack on the Constitution. And the loss of our best men and women in a tragic war…
So this is a big, ambitious song, despite its pop patina. Its chorus contains a vaguely illogical, very adult conceit or wish:
Don’t worry, darlin’
No baby, don’t you fret
We’re livin’ in the future
And none of this has happened yet
That’s a lovely thought for middle-aged ears or anyone who — like Springsteen — hates the recent direction of American history.
Which other tracks stand out? There’s “Girls In Their Summer Clothes,”a touching, very specifically wrought evocation of the joys of summers past and present. It ends on this wistful note:
Love’s a fool’s dance
I ain’t got much sense but I still got my feet
Long Walk Home, which comes towards the end of “Magic,” was inspired by the country/gospel song, “RankStrangers.” This is another ambitious Springsteen piece, complete with a sax solo from Clarence Clemons, and it’s certain to be a centerpiece of the tour in support of the new album. Springsteen likely intends it as a comment on the big job ahead for America if it is to return to its best self: it will be a long walk home indeed. For me, this is a great song, a series of very real dimes in the hand.
“Magic” ends with “Terry’s Song,” a simple, moving tribute to Springsteen’s longtime friend and associate Terry Magovern. Some might find it very personal and bit of a throwaway. For me, it’s pleasure to hear Springsteen’s pure, passionate — and sometimes wry — voice, accompanied only by acoustic guitar, harmonica, and piano.
A few of the lyrics on “Magic” are more opaque or more mysterious than usual, depending on your mood. The writing is emotionally rich, but less stripped down than the straightforward, powerful classic Springsteen narratives I cited earlier. The music provides a nostalgic, bittersweet pull.
It will be fascinating to hear pieces of “Magic” develop during Springsteen’s live shows. The new songs will doubtless evolve over the course of a tour, as the dime in the hand at the center of Springsteen’s finest work gets polished to something close to perfection.
— Guest Butler Ronald Fried is the author of Christmas in Paris, 2002. He has recently polished a new novel to what, I’m sure, is something like perfection.
To buy “Magic” from Amazon.com,
click here.
To buy “We Shall Overcome:The Seeger Sessions” from Amazon.com, click here.
To buy “Devils and Dust” from Amazon.com, click here.
To buy “The Rising” from Amazon.com, click here.
To buy “Live in Dublin” from Amazon.com,
click here.
To buy “The Essential Bruce Springsteen” from Amazon.com, click here.
For Bruce Springsteen’s web site, click here.
