Bruce Springsteen: The Rising
Columbia CK 86600
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 I should know better than to
believe mainstream media hype on Bruce Springsteen by now. The mainstream press has never
once gotten Springsteen right. Not back in 1975, when Time and Newsweek simultaneously
canonized him, not when the press dubbed him the "Boss" -- which was the band's
private name for him and was not appropriate for anyone not on his payroll -- and not this
time out, either, when grandiose claims are being made to the effect that The Rising
"shows us how to cope with the aftermath of 9/11." Or something to that effect.
I was an early convert, having walked into UVA's Memorial
Gymnasium one Friday night in May 1973 with no expectations whatsoever. All I knew was
that for $2 I could hear a singer from New York or someplace. I staggered out three hours
later convinced of the transformational power of rock'n'roll.
I bought Springsteen's album and it was nothing like what
I'd experienced at his show.
I heard him again six months later, promoting The Wild,
the Innocent, & the E Street Shuffle, and again he pulled out all the stops. He
rocked, he played lead guitar, he acted out the stories he sang, and quieting the crowd,
he told tales of growing up angry at his father for not understanding that rock was not
cheap, evil music, but a joyous howl at the moon, filled with the joy of being young and
alive.
And again I bought the record, and although it was better
than the first, it was nothing like what I'd experienced at the show.
Then came his breakthrough album, Born to Run, the
one that prompted both Time and Newsweek to declare it more important than
anything else that happened in the world that week. I hated it. (Springsteen
opposed its release, feeling it needed more work. Jon Landau and the label outvoted him.)
It was overblown and overbearing and the romanticism that made the songs of Greetings
From Asbury Park, NJ and The Wild, the Innocent, & the E Street Shuffle
sound like street poetry had curdled into rage at his loveable losers for being losers.
It is now widely regarded as a masterpiece, my cavils
notwithstanding. Shows what I know, I guess. But what surprised me was the way mainstream
critics found Springsteen visionary, revolutionary even. It seemed exactly the opposite to
me. I went to Springsteen concerts because he always knew what he was. He was a
lucky, lucky man who got paid for doing what he loved to do.
Far from revolutionizing rock, Springsteen's music with the
E Street Band was deeply rooted in '60s rock with a heavy dose of classic R&B. He
didn't see rock as high art so much as he saw it as a job and he worked hard at it.
Uncomfortable with both his immense popularity and with the arena-sized venues it forced
him to play in, he was committed to giving his fans their money's worth. Shows lasted
three and four hours, and if he wasn't staggering with fatigue and drenched in sweat by
their completion, he'd keep taking encores until he couldn't squeeze out another chord.
His fans got that. We paid a lot of money to see him
and we worshipped him for wanting to earn it. He was like James Brown in that regard --
and it was another feather in Springsteen's hat that he loved rock'n'roll enough to know
that, for a working performer, there was no higher praise than that.
Of course, Springsteen broke up the E Street Band 15 years
ago, feeling the need to collaborate with new players and to stretch himself in new
directions.
The press never got that either. He was accused of going
Hollywood, of abandoning his roots. I suspect he was simply tired of having to shout at
30,000 fans every night. His songs took on a new intimacy. They grew more specific. They
showed him struggling with his place in the world as a rich rock star, who had held
precisely one non-music job in life, writing about working-class concerns. "It's a
sad funny ending to find yourself pretending," he sang in "Better Days."
"A rich man in a poor man's shirt."
And his concerts during the '90s were still nothing like
his records -- it was just Springsteen and a guitar and every time out 3000 individuals
felt he was speaking directly to them.
When the press began to bombard us all with news about
Springsteen's reconvening the E Street Band to record The Rising, which was
supposed to "deal with" last September's terrorist attacks, I have to admit I
lost faith. I'm not sure I'm ready to "deal with" 9/11 yet. I still tear up when
I see the impromptu shrines to the dead around the city. I still search the skyline for
the twin towers as I take the BQE into Manhattan. I don't want someone else to tell me how
to feel about the attack -- I'm still trying to find a way to feel about it on my own.
But John Atkinson quietly suggested I listen to The
Rising before dismissing it out of hand. I certainly couldn't argue with the fairness
of that suggestion, but while I went out and bought the disc, I still couldn't bring
myself to listen to it. Finally, steeling myself, I played it. The first thing I noticed
was the sound. It's certainly effective -- and it may be the best sound on a Springsteen
album to date, although that's not saying much. It's not audio verite, but it
sounds very natural for the most part, aside from some
"constructed-in-the-studio" flatness and some deliberate phasing effects.
For such a bruited "big theme" record, The
Rising initially struck me as kind of low key. I played it a second time. I was
impressed by how different "Worlds Apart" sounded, with its blend of Max
Weinberg's propulsive processional drumming over tablas and a sufi chorus led by Asif Ali
Khan -- Springsteen has never dabbled with polyrhythms or world music before, and the way
producer Brendan O'Brian swirls these sounds in and out of the E Street Band's 4/4 shuffle
lends the song an almost hallucinatory edge.
And, as the record became one of my most-played staples, I
came to realize that, once again, the buzz about Springsteen was wrong -- The Rising
acknowledges the events of 9/11, but it isn't about them. It's a snapshot of life
after the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, full of loss and
uncertainty, but also desirous of hope and redemption.
Loss and redemption are at the core of Springsteen's best
work and some of the songs on The Rising surely will take their place in that
company. "My City in Ruins," which closes the album, was written about
Springsteen's hometown of Asbury Park -- it describes industrial flight, not the terrorist
attacks, but listeners are free to let it mean whatever they want it to mean.
Similarly, songs like "Mary's Place,"
"Lonesome Day," and "Further On (Up the Road)" are infused with loss,
longing, and dread, but reflect the general tone of the day more than any specific events.
And some of the songs are obviously directly about the
events surrounding September 11. "Into the Fire" celebrates the scarcely
credible self-sacrifice of the emergency workers who climbed into the burning buildings. A
widow speaks to her dead husband, "I need your kiss/but love and duty called/you
someplace higher/Somewhere up/the stairs, into the fire. . ." The song's chorus is an
invocation that builds in power with repetition (both literally and figuratively, since
the band swells to a crescendo behind it), "May your strength bring us strength/May
your faith give us faith/May your hope give us hope/May your love give us love."
It's a classic E Street moment -- and incredibly moving.
As is "You're Missing," a portrait of profound
loss which gains its power from specific details of everyday life, "Coffee cup's on
the counter/jacket's on the chair/Paper's on the doorstep/but you're not there/Everything
is everything/Everything is everything/But you're missing."
But Springsteen's religion -- rock'n'roll -- is founded
upon the power of transcendental joy, and that is represented best in the disc's title
song, an all-out rocker that describes a fireman climbing into the smoke-filled towers.
"Can't see nothin' in front of me/Can't see nothin' coming up behind/I make my way
through this darkness/I can't feel nothing but this chain that binds me/Lost track of how
far I've gone/How far I've gone, how high I've climbed/On my back's a 60-pound stone/On my
shoulder a half mile of line."
His final vision is one of transcendence. "I see you
Mary in the garden/In the garden of a thousand sighs/There's holy pictures of our
children/Dancin' in a sky filled with light/May I feel your arms around me/May I feel your
blood mix with mine/A dream of life comes to me. . ."
Springsteen, the band, and a huge chorus start the
exhortation to "Come on up for the rising/Come on up, lay your hands in mine/Come on
up for the rising/Come on up for the rising tonight . . ." It repeats and builds in
intensity and urgency. It's a call to surrender to a greater power -- whether to religion
or to rock'n'roll is left unsaid.
You might think that sounds contrived or disrespectful, but
it truly doesn't come across that way. It's touching and it's uplifting. Somehow, while
the media got the specifics about it all wrong, the buzz on The Rising also got it
right. The disc doesn't show us how to cope with the events of 9/11, but it doesn't ignore
them either. It's a testament to the fact that things have changed and, quite possibly,
that we have changed. And it's an affirmation that life -- all of it, from the big
questions to the most trivial pleasures -- goes on.
Somehow I find that powerfully comforting.
...Wes Phillips
wes@onhifi.com
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