You might wonder, for good reason, why we are writing about Springsteenâs Wrecking Ball five months after its release. Some of the reasons have been personal. But  there are better reasons why weâre speaking up now, and speaking in the way that we are. Part of it is that we both like to listen slow, and listen frequently. Too much music writing now seems hasty and undigested, and that takes a toll. (Deadline perceptions are fine if thereâs nothing important in the details, vastly inadequate if there is.)  More important was our  desire to hold off until weâd heard a larger dialogue: Just what would the world make of this record and what would we have to add to that conversation? But that dialogue has been slow in coming. Most of what was written and said  about the album missed the overriding sense we have that this record speaks directly to the Arundathi Roy/Grace Lee Boggs maxim: âA new world is possible. A new world is coming. A new world is already here.â
Because we listen both as long-term Springsteen fans and as activists,  thatâs what we heard here from early on. Itâs a big part of what makes Wrecking Ball something different, especially in the way these songs interact with the dialogue about the movements for social change currently taking shape in our society.  This album doesnât sound like anything else he has done, and its call stands apart, both musically and lyrically. It calls for us not only to react, emotionally, psychologically, even spiritually, but also to act, to not just stand but fight âshoulder to shoulder and heart to heart,â the last words sung on the record.
Such a call requiresâdemandsâa response in kind: detailed, direct and the result of lots of interplay between our own ideas and those of others. So weâve taken our time and as much space as we needed to use. We hope this is part of a beginning.Â
Bruce Springsteenâs Wrecking Ball opens with an alarm, with air raid sirens blaring and tribal drums kicking. The singer, recognizing the enormity of what heâs dealing with, begins in quiet caution. He knocks on the palace door; he desperately seeks a map to bring him home; he stumbles over once-kind neighbors turned callous to his suffering and their own. Like the man in âRank Stranger,â the Stanley Brothers song that influences so many rock dystopias, the singer canât believe the devastation heâs seeing, not in the streets but in the faces, the gestures, the way people are standing and moving: âWhereâs the eyes, the eyes with the will to seeâŠWhereâs the work that will set my hands, my soul freeâŠWhereâs the promise from sea to shining sea?â Thereâs one thing he needs to make sure of: He chants it obsessively, as if himself amazed that he still fully believes it, even against all this evidence that it canât be true: âWe take care of our own, we take care of our own / Wherever this flagâs flown, we take care of our own.â
Trying to figure out how to realize that promise occupies the bulk of this album, the most complete narrative work Bruce Springsteen has created since the trilogy that runs from Born to Run to Darkness on the Edge of Town to The River (1975-1980). At the end of the first two albums in that series, we found his central character left wounded and stranded, on a hilltop above those whoâd given up, with no choice but to come back down into the valley of mundane reality where he has remained ever since. But now that mundane world itself has become tinged with fantasy, swept up in a phantasmagoria of all-against-all: Marauders, carrion eaters and blank-faced rank strangers who, though some have intentions every bit as noble as those of âPromised Landâ and âBorn to Run,â find the game impossibly rigged. Those âdifferent peopleâ who came down here to âsee things in different waysâ have indeed swept all away before them. Itâs a haunted place now, beset by vultures and wrecking balls. Even with their bones picked over, it seems the dead may have better advice to offer than the living.
Determined to pull out of this world without options, Springsteen begins by deploying some of his old tools: Layer upon layer of guitar against swelling keyboard, driving percussion, exuberant backing vocals and lush strings. Weâve known this guy for decades, and part of what we know is that, at his core, heâs just as desperate as Wrecking Ballâs first track makes him appear. But heâs not nearly so bereft of new ideas as our first reaction to desperation implies. He has, as he so often does, the other possible reaction to desperation, the one that generates alternatives rather than merely succumbing to realities–the ace in the hole called hope. He also has new collaborators, who helped him find loops, samples, an array of new instrumentsâmany of them antiqueâand most startling, new beats as well. The surprise is the dawning realization, as he moves remorselessly through a dozen songs describing this grotesque landscape and its denizens, that Bruce still believes that  if we look hard enough weâll discover that we too have just as much reason for hope as for despairâand at least as many devices for realizing that hope, too. Particularly the hope that, if not America, at least Americans can remember what life is supposed to be all about, and then ⊠well, then, act like they believe it, mainly. And beyond that, can get to the hard work of change, not as rank strangers but âshoulder to shoulder and heart to heart.â
In the world Springsteen invented for himself (and us) forty years ago, hope was an abundant commodityâhope came cheap. Today, hopeâs so much harder to discover that most of the time it seems practically beyond price. Nevertheless itâs the indispensable key to solving the fundamental question posed by Wrecking Ball: Can a society thatâs torn apart âfrom the shotgun shack to the Superdomeâ function on its most basic levels? Should it? Will it? Itâs all too obvious (to everyone but the willfully blind) that we no longer take care of more than a few. But how do we admit it to ourselves and begin again?
Springsteen literally prayed for some forceâhuman or supernatural, maybe bothâto provide him with this answer a decade ago, in âMy City of Ruins.â Now, heâs telling us what he thinks. Heâs singing not just about changing the dialogue but altering the way we behave. That is, he wants to beginâhe wants all of us to begin–confronting our own weaknesses and illusions. Springsteen presses a point heâs made since he first called out and itâs fundamental to dismantling those lies we tell ourselves: âNobody wins unless everybody winsââtaking care of me and taking care of you canât be separate options. They have to become part of one process.
Like any great musicianâand this album marks him as one, not just a great songwriter or supposed poetâSpringsteenâs process begins with listening, hearing whatâs around him and whatâs within him. James Baldwin said it: â[T]he man who creates musicâŠis dealing with the roar rising from the void and imposing order on it as it hits the air.â On Wrecking Ball, Bruce creates from what he hears a catalogue of what he calls his own: a cross section of American voices and sounds that connect to various pieces of himself. And that first songâs emergent voice, proclaiming the necessity of our commonality in order to retain our ability to rave on as individuals, is an almost predictable piece of what makes Bruce Springsteen who he is.
But with his very next step, the tone turns darker. âEasy Moneyâ bursts forth with bombastic percussion accompanied by handclaps. Springsteen sings with an all-but-indecent braggadocio and a twinkle in his eyeâveteran fans may recognize the kid who tossed the bus driver a quarter and told him to keep the change. Seemingly mundane preliminaries (getting dressed, taking care of the pets) give way to busting the town wide open. It sounds like this guyâs out for nothing more or better than kicks. And then he states the grim facts as he knows them, and he knows them well: âThereâs nothing to it, mister, it wonât make a sound /when your whole world comes tumbling down.â He notices that âall the fat cats⊠just think itâs funny,â and heâs made a choice. If he has to be a fool, heâs not going to be their fool. The music evokes gangster charisma, a recklessness as infectious as it is cynical. The soaring shout and hoot and holler of his vocal, the steel guitar, fiddle and exuberant backing voices travel alongside it, taking hold before the point emerges clearly: âEasy Moneyâ tramples the line between an ordinary fool headed for destruction and a rock and roller bound for glory. Itâs anything but a plan to confront Springsteenâs own illusions, much less the illusions of the larger audience. Such a way out isnât even on offer. Yet the song does possess a seemingly unsinkable spirit. Such swagger can make holding tight to oneâs illusions seem like enough, but the way it works out, generally only the fat cats are still smiling at the end. This might well be the character in âRamrod,â except the guy in âRamrodâ wasnât looking to kill anybody. Thatâs how much or how little the world has changed.
âShackled and Drawn,â a work song through and through (like âNight,â âFactory,â and âYoungstown,â among numerous others before it), begins with a spry guitar figure over pounding percussion. This oneâs about awakening to a realization that if wages arenât quite exactly slavery, they certainly leave the worker âtrudging through the dark in a world gone wrong.â It rejects the 9mm nihilism of âEasy Moneyâ but the only replacement offered is a primitive âBadlandsâ slugged out on an anvil. When the lyric asks, âWhatâs a poor boy to do but keep singing his song?â heâs obviously asking a personal questionâbut also an ethical question and, in a collapsing economy, a practical one. Itâs certainly the only way this artist knows to move closer to taking care of his (and ostensibly our) artistic concerns while âup on Bankerâs Hill, the partyâs going strong.â He hangs onto that last word so that it all but evokes the rhyme âwrongâ before returning to the chain gang: âdown here below, weâre shackled and drawn.â But the moment of ignition comes when a female preacherâs voice calls out, âI want everyone to stand up and be counted tonight,â and Springsteen shouts back, relieved to find that somebody is alive out there.
The narrator of âJack of All Tradesâ could be any of the guys weâve met so far. But he could also be any of a hundred other characters Springsteen has created, from the little kid with his feet rooted in the earth and his head in the stars in âGrowinâ Upâ to the father who drives with his son on his lap in âMy Hometownâ and returns to walk through the town square, wondering when it all really went to hell in âLong Walk Home,â or the man in âCounting on A Miracle,â hearing a new heartbeat as he lays against his wife in their sleeping bag and tries to figure out how heâs going to take care of yet another life. âJackâ is sung in the voice of a man whose best moments have been left behind, down by the river or in the aisles of a supermarket or in the dust of IraqâŠ.or maybe there are pieces of him scattered in all those places, and many more. (Any Springsteen fan could give you a list three times this long and twice as specific.) But thereâs a reason he can speak so frankly, as he sits with his hands around a cold coffee cup, leaning across the kitchen table, looking straight into the eyes of the person he loves most and telling the biggest lie of them all: âHoney weâll be all right.â
The music uses the chords of âWhen the Saints Go Marching Inâ (in Curt Hammâs trumpet solo, it simply is âSaintsâ), and they bear what that song always carries, a vision of the certain finality of death so unquestionable that all arguing must cease. Which doesnât mean the details donât matterâthe way he sings âthe banker man goes fat,â so that it threatens to resonate as âfairâ is the best example. He sounds weary on that line, like heâs almost sighing, and the fairness is understood to be that of yet another rigged game. It just means the truth is what it is, a pitiless pathway to the grave. If you take it seriously enough, youâre likely to want to take someone else with youâand if you go one step beyond that, you wind up in the coda, a Tom Morello guitar solo so remorseful it beggars any language but its own sounds. And the violin that follows that hums the same tune, albeit maybe another verse. Maybe the one that talks about âwhen the moon grows red with blood.â
The tragedy of Springsteenâs career may be summarized in the reaction of many of his veteran American fans to the appearance of this epic song in concert: They get up and head for the toilets and the concession stalls. Itâs not that they donât get it. They wonât get it. (In the European shows, the song is accompanied by a stillness and silence so deep it carries a jolt.) And so, as Springsteen says for the first but not the last time on this album, âitâs happened before and itâll happen again.â Nowâs the time for your tears.
The shimmering starlight emanating from the final note of âJack of All Tradesâ opens the door to the full blown fight song that follows. âDeath to My Hometownâ begins in Celtic delirium, pounding drums offset by handclaps, penny whistle, a touch of banjo. Vocals enter, but theyâre chanting transcendental Pentecostal incoherencies. Thereâs a hint of cannon fire. But the clearest noise of all, perhaps unintentionally not buried in the mix (or maybe situated there with perfect calculation, like a Motown tambourine), comes almost three minutes into the song. Itâs a gun being cockedâand like the good student of Chekovian drama he is, having now mentioned the option of the gun in three out of five songs, Springsteen makes sure this one goes off, though youâll have to listen up to hear it (That this is buried in the mix cannot be accidental.)
Do we know the character Springsteen portrays here? Heâs not the guy standing by the roadside, kicking a dead dogâalthough they might be related. Heâs not the maniacal nihilist who calls himself Johnny 99. Heâs maybe more like the guy in âThe Big Muddyâ who believes âYou start on higher ground but end up somehow crawlinâ.â Except this guy refuses to crawlâthatâs what that shotgunâs for, a way of keeping him on his own two feet. Itâs how he takes care of his own.
This infuriated Irish-American damns his enemies, gives them names (âmarauders,â âvultures,â âgreedy thievesâ), declares in sputtering rage that the greatest of the injustices is that they âwalk the streets as free men now.â But what sort of justice would he have them face ? The gun goes off but without repercussionâŠand when he has the
bastards most clearly in his sights (and this guyâs vision is a lot clearer than Jackâs), he suggests that something else is what might work: âNow get yourself a song to sing / And sing it âtill youâre done / Sing it hard and sing it well / Send the robber barons straight to hell.â
Itâs a rockânâroll answer. But itâs also something else: Itâs straight out of the beloved community that produced the most effective American social change of Springsteenâs lifetime: the Civil Rights Movement. For this ever-moral (and moralizing) artist, the song is always mightier than the shotgun. Hold that thought.
Hold it tight against what comes next.
âThis Depressionâ sounds not nearly so much depressed as desperate, and not the desperation of the outlaw whoâs crossed some invisible line, more that of a man whoâs being slowly tangled by the lines of hip hop beats, ethereal keyboard washes, floating wordless backing vocals and more Tom Morello guitar, which tools through this soundscape of isolated misery as if itâs on a lonely Jersey Girlâs journey between starsâŠalthough this certainly isnât the lights of the sun, let alone where the fun is. More likely, itâs a roughly spackled ceiling dropping paint chips onto her Sistine Chapel dreams.
The nakedness of the songâs self disclosure marks it as utterly contemporary. The voice stripped of bravado, or even energy to face the struggles ahead, suggests the dead ends and bad dreams of âThe Promiseâ and (more so) âState Trooper,â where the singer declares âthe only thing that I gotâs been botherinâ me my whole life.â But whether âThis Depressionâ refers to the characterâs personal clinical depression or an international economic depression, or more likely both, itâs absolutely not a way out. In fact, itâs not even a coherent response to the threat weâve just been hearing about. He keeps declaring, to some unspecified âbaby,â âI need your heart,â although the musical heart of the song, its pulsation, stumbles around like it might give out (or give up). And you have to wonder if he might be staring into a mirror. Until you see that if thatâs so, itâs because we all are.
***
In the midst of a vinyl revival, one thing youâd imagine would be mentioned more often is that Bruce Springsteen is approximately the last artist whose records almost always divide as if Side One and Side Two were pertinent digital terms. On Wrecking Ball the turn from âThis Depressionâ to the title track clearly marks the storyâs emergence as a struggle toward light, after six songs cursing the darkness.
That light doesnât exactly pour in. These lyrics are the ultimate mixture of the personal and the political on an album where that particular combo is the daily special. Although the songâs metaphor depends on the planned demolition of Giants Stadium in the Jersey Meadowlands after the Springsteen run of shows there in 2009, even back then it wasnât âaboutâ the disappearance of a major concert venue or even a quasi-historical site. Bruce first sang it on September 30, 2009âone week to the day after his sixtieth birthday, annus horribilis for any rock star. It was also a year since Springsteen traveled the campaign trail with Barack Obama, and ten months since Obamaâs Administration had begun squandering whatever chance there may have been that the vultures of Wall Street would no longer walk the streets as free men.
Itâs a funny song, but the humorâs anything but light. For every âmosquitoes grow big as aero-planesâ and jangly guitar lick thereâs âwhen all our victories and glories have turned into parking lots,â a mordant summation of both the man and the buildingâs career highlights. We are urged to raise up our glasses to those who have fallen (âbecause tonight all the dead are hereâ), but we are much more surprisingly and unsentimentally instructed that the way out of the mess is to âhold tight to your anger and donât fall to your fears.â Thatâs not the advice of a nice guy from the backstreets. It sounds more like the admonition of a seasoned barroom brawler.
More than that, weâre told that even after the game is decided and the wrecking ball is heading straight for a sock in our eye, we have to hold tight and not fall because âhard times come and hard times go / and hard times come and hard times go / and hard times come and hard times go /Â and hard times come and hard times go / and hard times goâ and then, his voice coming down on the words like his strings on a power chord, âYeah, just to come again.â This is a man whoâs sick of laughing in the face of defeat after defeat. This is a guy who won and then watched the victory turn particularly sour. This is a guy whoâs not sure anybody within earshot (give or take the band) is on his side and isnât letting that stop him.
This is the tragic hero, finally learning the fundamental lesson that repeating the same mistakes over and over again is worse than insanity. Springsteen here is like Bo Diddley, condemned to endless repetition and delighting in it, too. Condemned to learn the lesson and to spit in the lessonâs eye. Condemned to act crazy and finding in that the greatest delight of all.
Itâs not that the endless cycle of hard times doesnât matter. Itâs that it matters so muchâand so does what so many have learned about the unsettling ways in which what matters presents itself, opportunities as well as obstacles. At the end of the song, with the whole band in full swing and a wordless chorus pressing relentlessly forward, what youâre hearing is precisely a group admitting its own (very mortal) limits in order to risk whatever it takes for hard times to come again no more.
The recordâs musical turning point hinges on not only tearing down walls but reaching through the rubble for helping hands to rebuild. âWrecking Ballâ itself shifts the focus of the horn arrangement from Clarence Clemonsâ tenor sax to Curt Rammâs trumpet, but thatâs a product of inevitability. Producer Ron Aniello is new, as are almost all the engineers and mixers. And though this is a rock album, thereâs hardly a track where the E Street Band appears intact. Instead, dozens of different musicians and singers appear, from so many different genres that many songs defy classification. The lyrics suggest that junking the whole works might be worth the risk, but heâs not just saying itâthe idea is made more plausible because it emerges from greater musical risks than Bruce usually allows himself.
Suitably then, the first song after this cataclysmic anthem is a reach of the hand. âYouâve Got Itâ begins as a wooing, with only voice over acoustic guitar. Electric guitar, piano and steel guitar turn the second verse into a country-flavored seduction, celebrating that thing the loved one has that makes her like no one else. Once the singer observes, âYou canât read it in a book/You canât even dream it,â the full weight of the albumâs sound kicks in with bluesy guitar and soulful horns. By the end, itâs apparent this songâs about the creative heart of the albumâthat individual human spark that makes us fall in love, yes, and that same spark that binds us together and lends us surprising strength in numbersâlike the massive band second lining onward into the unknown beyond the fadeout. A thing so elusive and so fundamental that itâs hardly any wonder that the first time Bruce played it live, he explained it in terms of the Higgs boson.
Springsteenâs writing has edged toward outright gospel since the turn of the century. âRocky Groundâ is the payoffâone of his most musically dramatic and emotionally lavish productions ever. The opening samples a Pentecostal preacher proclaiming, in a voice that sounds remarkably like Bruceâs own, âIâm a soldier!â over and again. The gospel choir that followsâthe Victorious Gospel choir of Asbury Park, N.J. with which Springsteenâs worked beforeâcaresses what will become the songâs chorus: âWeâve been travelinâ over rocky ground, rocky ground.â The bed is a synth echoing âStreets of Philadelphia,â before a particularly liquid guitar riff sets the stage for Springsteenâs hoarse recitation of the verse. He begins where he left off in his other gospel choir song, âMy City of Ruinsâ from The Rising, exhorting, albeit with quiet sadness, his flock to ârise up,â a term never more saturated in political and religious conflict. He shows which side heâs on immediately, invoking the expulsion of the money-changers from the Temple, as well as the prospect of (perhaps divine?) retribution, in death and in life. But the second time through, âSunâs in the heavens and a new day is rising.â
When Springsteen finishes, Michelle Moore steps out of the choir and delivers a rap. Itâs written for an impoverished woman, a mother, but she could be that âWrecking Ballâ character (âYou pray that hard times, hard times come no moreâ). Her prayer is simple: âThat your best is good enough, the Lord will do the rest.â Still, in a sleepless night, faith curdles to doubt and âonly silence meets your prayers / The morning breaks, you awake, thereâs no one there.â
âThereâs a new day cominââ the song declares but the voice sounds like Bruce Springsteen, not God. And as Michelle Mooreâs voice fades out, repeating the title phrase, whatâs left is more than a moment of doubt. The song is an answer to the challenge posed in âWe Take Care of Our Ownâ: If the cavalry stayed at home, what now? The stark answer is that all thatâs left is us.
And as the choir opens the next to last song, âLand of Hope and Dreams,â recasting a staple of Springsteenâs live shows since the E Street Band reunion in 1999, thatâs right where the answer stays. This rendition is that much more intense, edgier, louderâeven Little Stevenâs mandolin has some added urgencyâbecause that choir is present to connect Springsteenâs Woody Guthrie elements to those he took from Curtis Mayfield and the Impressions, a secular cross between âThis Train is Bound for Gloryâ and âPeople Get Ready.â What this means is that the weary traveler finds love even as the material losses multiply. But itâs not God she meets in that field where sunlight streams. Itâs just that ordinary guy, the same one weâve known since âBorn to Runâ and âThunder Road,â âa good companion for this part of the ride.â Surrounded this time by (and seemingly at one with) whores, gamblers, thieves, lost souls and just plain sinners alongside the saints and winners, the journey remains just as important as its destination.
The pledges of religions and governments are one thing. The bond between individual humans is what always seems truly sacred in Springsteen music, and it has to be carried out, step by painful step. Forgiveness is possibleâhell, forgiveness aboundsâbut the price is as high as itâs meant to be.  Those bells that ring might be the bells from the courthouse in âLong Walk Home,â because their promise is defined exactly the same way. They are âbells of freedom ringinâ.â And if, as Springsteen has long contended, the real issue in his songs is whether love is real, then the only qualification might be âin this life.â Itâs heartbreakingly real here, heartbreaking because that is one long, long ride. But it canât start unless we get on board.
However religious he may be, Bruce Springsteen for sure believes that, each and every night, all the dead should be with us. Itâs one of the joys of this record that Clarence Clemons makes his final appearance on âLand of Hope and Dreams,â in the heart of one of the bandâs greatest songs, in a performance that actually tops the live one.
But the Big Man, like Phantom Dan before him, is gone and heâs not coming back any more than your good manufacturing job is. The question isnât whether thatâs trueâonly a politician would pretend we donât know that answerâthe question is what we are going to do about it. To really set off on the trip to the Lands of Hope and Dreams, we need to find ways to accept who we really are, to fight off the vultures and the marauders, to rise up so we can hear those bells of freedom ring.
To Springsteen, the dead still have a role to playâjust as they do in âWrecking Ball,â they reappear in the finale, âWe Are Alive,â a mocking, dead-serious merger of Johnny Cash, mariachi, Morricone soundtrack music and a little of that old devil dust.
A bass note from what sounds like scratchy vinyl opens âWe Are Alive,â then folky guitar and some truly outrĂ© whistling. (The whistling could also be termed âghostlyâ and given that the E Street Bandâs onstage whistler was Clarence, maybe thatâs a better way to put it.) But then the mariachi horns arrive, and a bass and drum figure out of âRing of Fire.â The singer starts looking up at Calvary hill, but heâs immediately distracted by âa graveyard kidâ lurking among the dead, listening to corpses tell their stories. The singer kneels and places his ear to the headstones, so he can hear them too. The first three are a dead railroad striker, a little girl killed in a civil rights era bombing, and a border crosser who expired in the Southwestern desert as he attempted to reach the U.S. Itâs not much of a reach to connect the gamblers, workers, jacks of all trades, fighters and athletesâeach, like all of us, systematically isolated.
But not only are these dead not content to be silent, theyâre not even content to watch us forever screw up. They are about to issue marching orders, not in order to evoke the old days but to ensure that we have the best possible new ones. âWe are alive!â they exult. âAnd though our bodies lie alone here in the dark / Our spirits rise / To stand shoulder to shoulder and heart to heart.â
The singer dreams himself deadâcarried under to confront the worms and the dark and the loneliness. Then the voices appear again to remind him: âWe are aliveâŠour souls and spirits rise / To carry the fire and light the spark / To fight shoulder to shoulder and heart to heart.â
Call it a rockânâroll version of magic realism, if you wish, but you still wonât have nailed the biggest, most significant change Bruce Springsteen has wrought in his workâand perhaps therefore himselfâwith Wrecking Ball. The man with the amazing ability to remain a mere moralist while traveling on Presidential campaigns has finally discovered his politics. And so heâs willing to strongly suggest what we might do if we would like to rid ourselves of the vultures and thieves who pillage our lives. Even if he does put his ideas in the mouths of the dead.
Maybe thatâs as it should be, the musician listening to the voices heâs gathered and relaying what they say. Those ideas he hears are living things, never more vital than at these moments when we all feel out of options.  What matters most is not that the speakers are the dead (or even that the dead arenât in the most important sense gone), but that we are aliveâright here, right now. All of us: the Jack of All Trades, the punk in search of Easy Money, the ones whoâve got it and the victims of the death of their hometowns, the ones starving on rocky ground or discovering that the lack of a job shackles them as much as the drudgery of a job ever did. Not to mention those sure the train holds no place for them. Wrecking Ball  leaves no one untouched, unmarred or at the very least unchanged. But the people out there in the dark, listening, arenât buried. Theyâre still moving and the future lies in the ways in which they moveâtogether and apart, bonded and isolated, terrified and overjoyed, in hope and in despair–as they always have moved when hard times come and come again. Wrecking Ball dares to put all of them together on that train to the certain nowhere that is our only blessed future and then, it does the unimaginable: It tries to start a conversation.  In its own way, armed with not much more than a song to sing and a belief that if we travel over this rocky ground together there is a promised land at the other end, it aims to change the world.
Whether it succeeds in changing it, of course, isnât up to Bruce Springsteen. Itâs up to those who hear his call. Itâs up to the ones who are alive out there. Itâs up to us.
Many thanks to Daniel Wolff and Craig Werner.
Dave Marsh edits Rock & Rap Confidential, one of CounterPunch’s favorite newsletters, now available for free by emailing: rockrap@aol.com. Dave blogs at http://davemarsh.us/
Danny Alexander writes for Rock and Rap Confidential and Living in Stereo. He can be reached at: danny.dalexand@gmail.com