Saturday, June 15, 2013

Springsteen writes for the wrong generation

I love Bruce Springsteen's music and can listen to it all day, many songs making me stop to just enjoy the experience of listening to them, their refrains bouncing around in my head for hours afterward.

But then I pay attention to what the man is saying.

One song such as this is "American Land", a real stem-winder of a song that stirs the emotions and pride in American history through each verse. Until this stanza:
They died building the railroads, worked to bones and skin
They died in the fields and factories, names scattered in the wind
They died to get here a hundred years ago, they're dyin' now
The hands that built the country we're always trying to keep down
It was just not in the man to give our nation untainted praise.

There was a video some time back of Springsteen doing solo acoustic on a British street and asking people to make requests. If only someone could have said to him, "Man I love anything you do as long as you aren't trashing our country!"

The man just sees a different America and I don't know where he gets his impressions. Perhaps it is when he leaves his mega-million dollar estate through its locked gates to rub elbows with Pete Seeger, Bill Ayres, Reverends Wright and Sharpton, along with other liberal and entertainment elites.

Whomever has influenced "The Boss", the Great Depression is the America Springsteen visualizes and writes about, making him the darling of the guilt-ridden limousine liberals:
 
It was a good career choice because he is the darling of the left, adored in Hollywood, university campuses, liberal millionaires and the entertainment industry around the world. A musical Howard Zinn, if I may.
 
It would be courageous but not a good career move for Springsteen to write about the America we have seen all too often today:
Tom Joad would be disgusted
 
Yet here is the real story; the decline of a great nation that has always confessed its sins and worked to make them right, yet all the while being the bulwark oppressed nations rush to for comfort and protection.
 
Sadly, I do feel our nation and it's principles have generally been superior to those of most of her inhabitants. That was true during slavery and Jim Crow and is so now in our present culture which calls  good evil and evil good  

This twenty-first century decline of America is the stuff of songs, but there seems to be nobody capable of writing them, including Bruce Springsteen.
Bill Hayden, the Tunnel Dweller
 

6 comments:

Ronbo said...

Excellent article, Bill!

Re-posted on my blog with a link back to you:

http://ronbosoldier.blogspot.com/2013/06/springsteen-writes-for-wrong-generation.html

Kolani said...

You've just now noticed this? You didn't pay too much attention to the lyrics of "Born in the USA" and the inadvertent humor when Reagan used it in his campaign, did you?

the Tunnel Dweller said...

What makes you think I just noticed Springsteen's leftism?
I blogged this in early 2012: http://tunnelwall.blogspot.com/2012/03/murder-incorporated-bruce-springsteen.html
And here:
http://tunnelwall.blogspot.com/2012/08/springsteens-thunder-road-led-to.html
Here:
http://tunnelwall.blogspot.com/2012/10/bruce-springsteen-bill-clinton-join.html
There is more if you search the Tunnel Wall, but these will do just fine.

Ronbo said...

@Kolani:

I must admit that I was taken in at first by "Born in the USA" as well because I've always had a hard time understanding lyrics, which in this song are defeatist and unpatriotic.

Thus when I finally saw them printed out, Comrade Springsteen quickly became dead to me - and his records went very quickly to the city dump!

Unknown said...

No, he wrote it for the correct generation. While you can ascertain from his lyrics his anti-American Democratic left leanings, they were not as overt as later musical generations. Take Trent Reznor for example.

the Tunnel Dweller said...

Standing alone with no comparison to others, Mr. Springsteen is anti-US enough to me. Gotta run now, "Tougher Than the Rest" is starting to play.