Bruce Springsteen and the Paradox of Pickiness

I got a chance to see Springsteen the other night, in New Jersey no less, and it was transcendent as always. As Nate Chinen wrote in the New York Times about the same show, "He gave his usual force-of-nature performance." The man is a whisper away from 60 years old and he still rocks the house like no other human being. His shows are an hour shorter than in the old days, but the intensity is still breathtaking. To my mind, it's more difficult to understand his stage energy now than when he was in his 20s or 30s.

It's also mind-bending how Bruce transforms a giant auditorium into a back patio. An 18,000-seat arena seems tiny when he's on stage. I think it's because you can actually feel him connecting with every person in the room. It's a cathartic experience, a celebration of the struggle and sadness of being alive. I used to run away from the comparison of music to religion; but now I think they are often the same thing.

I could go on and on about Springsteen's virtues, but that would be boring. You've heard it all before. It also wouldn't be completely honest, because the truth is that I've come away from the last several tours feeling quite critical of him too. Being in the presence of greatness can have that paradoxical effect: it can raise a person's standards and expectations to such a level that small disappointments become a part of the experience. Some call it being "picky," but really it's just holding certain things you love to a higher standard. I wouldn't want to waste thirty seconds of my life critiquing the production of a Barney episode. But the sublimity of Springsteen invites a passionate and critical assessment. It's so close to perfection that you can't help but notice what's missing.

What's often missing these days, sadly, is the NOW. In this latest whirlaround with the "legendary" E Street Band,[1] Springsteen is waste deep in his fans' nostalgia. He spends an extraordinary amount of energy trying to live up to the Legend of Bruce -- striking the expected poses, playing the expected tunes, giving the audience not just the spirit of what they came for, but the precise letter of it as well.

I'm not saying the man doesn't care about his music. He does, deeply, and it doesn't suffer in these performances.[2] But in his and the band's preening, Springsteen is moving away from the raw and powerful experience of a *Springsteen show* and replacing it with a pitch-perfect template of The Bruce Springsteen Experience.

This may be inevitable. Though still a vital musician -- he's as original as ever in his recent records -- Springsteen recognizes that he has dug a very deep groove in the American psyche. He's a known and revered quantity, and audiences badly want to hear those old songs; they want to see Springsteen leap on the piano. They want Clarence to lean on Bruce's shoulder. They want Steve to share his mic. It's harder to be Bruce Springsteen now than it was thirty years ago. All he had to do then was worry about creating vital music. Now he has to worry about being vital and meeting very specific demands.

I was lucky enough to see Springsteen many times in his prime (from the mid-'70s to the early '80s).[3] Those shows were all-consuming and exhausting. But they also had an organic pace. They would explode out of the gate with two or three roof-shaking numbers, and then we'd all catch our breath. The musicians would tune. Bruce would tell a little story, or send one out to a local fan he'd met the night before. Then another great song, and then another breath. 

Today's shows don't catch a breath. There's no space to talk, or drink, or tune. The pace is relentless, as if taking a few moments here would someone deflate the experience. Even the song requests are incorporated into the show without actually stopping the music -- Springsteen plucks a sign from the audience, shows it to the band, and they storm into it.

This relentlessness strikes me as ironic, because what Springsteen and the fans have come together to relive was actually a very different sort of experience. Back in the day, the band was well-prepped, but each show unrolled in the moment, with plenty of real interaction between the band and the crowd. Bruce was conversational, humble, and willing to let moments of reflection creep into his head and onto the stage.

Taped to the side of my desk is one of my favorite Springsteen remarks: "I cannot promise you everlasting life, but I can promise you life RIGHT NOW." That, to me, is the essence of what Springsteen has been able to deliver all these years. The show I saw the other night was powerful, and spiritual. But it was also staged to the nanosecond. No room for error, no room for reflection, no room for the NOW.

It's easy to be a critic and hard to be an artist. I know Springsteen would be criticized for whatever he does, or doesn't do. I offer these thoughts more out of affection than anything else. Greatness is terribly difficult to achieve, and perhaps even tougher to manage.[4]

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[1] The "legendary" part is now official:

 

 

[2] One nostalgic decision does actually hurt the music: One the giant anthems (about half the show), the band often now features an oppresive melange of five guitars: Bruce, Steve, Nils, Patti, and Soozie. The music usually calls for two, or a carefully arranged three. 

[3] First show: 10/10/1976, Oxford OH.

[4] Thanks to Dan L. for the ticket and for his thoughts, some of which I've stolen here.

Comments

[Louise]

One of my long standing dreams was to attend Bruce Springsteen concerts live. . I know all the words of his songs by heart …well he is performing this year. Next weekend I’m going to visit my sister and we will attend his
Bruce concert; someone recommended me Ticketsinventory.com to get cheap tix.
http://www.ticketsinventory.com/concert/bruce-springsteen-tickets/
So I'll be analyzing as well as enjoying the concert.

[Greg B.]

david, if i'm not mistaken, this is the first time i can remember you saying a discouraging word about the boss. (i'm still waiting for you to say something critical about obama.) to be honest, while i was once a big fan, i long ago ceased to be enthralled by springsteen. in the past, i've always blamed bruce for this -- i thought there were just too many moments on too many albums that veered into self-parody over the past decade. reading your post though, i came to a different conclusion: that the fault is mine. springsteen, like most artists, has only a handful of weapons in his arsenal: the dumb rocker (Ramrod), the mid-tempo piece about a specific American moment (glory days, atlantic city, thunder road), the quiet personal relationship song (brilliant disguise), and the big political gesture (ghost of tom joad, streets of philadelphia, american skin) being the principal ones. once i had heard him write 6-7 variations of these genres that bruce lost a great deal of his power over me. but again, reading your post, i think that's less about him and more about me: as i grew older, i just naturally needed different sensations. similarly, i wonder how a fan seeing springsteen for the first time would have reacted to the concert you saw. you are comparing him to more than three decades worth of live performances and bootlegs -- it is basically impossible not to repeat yourself or to have some of the spontaneity sucked out of your performances across that a career of that length. my sense, and i could be wrong, is that springsteen has done a fairly remarkable job of not becoming just a nostalgia act. he continues to release new music, add news songs to his pantheon (as an aside, i like My City of ruins as much as anything from his late 70s-mid 80s prime), and attract new converts -- maybe not as many as he once did, but still.

[Jon Greer]

Nice post David. I generally agree with the thrust of your well-written post. Much of the NOW is missing from this tour, it seems, because the new music he released didn't jibe with the times we are in, so he has ditched most of it. A bummer, but understandable. And while the NOW is diminished, it is not gone altogether. There are moments of spontaneity at every show -- not rehearsed, not expected, just things that happen. Many fewer than in the past, but hey, he's a lot more grown up than he was. People mature and change.

[David Shenk]

Thanks, and thanks for your thoughts. I don't mean to sound cynical, but yes, I think everything that happens on that stage is very, very well thought out by Bruce. Sure, many of the gestures are natural and were once spontaneous. In that sense they have fallen into a groove, and that's unavoidable and a perfectly reasonable thing after all these years. But to the extent that Bruce is invoking the "legend" rather than creating a new authentic moment, it rubs me the wrong way.

[Barbara J]

Hey- really interesting reflections on Bruce/ESB. I grew up in NJ, have been "with" (emotionally) the band since the 70s, though I'm only in the low double digits in terms of shows attended (started back at Rutgers in the 70s; three on the Rising tour, two so far on the current tour).

I have never liked kneejerk refusal to think critically about Bruce and the band. And I do see the same-old same-old patterns of habits, gestures, poses that you mention. But does this have to mean there's a strategically managed Experience going on? Could it mean instead that the band members have fallen into a groove that feels right and natural to THEM? Not stale, but a kind of foundational synergy that lets them concentrate on ths music? For anyone (like me) into dynamic systems theory, their patterns are like an attractor: it's a natural system (the band) and their members fall into a natural pattern that then strengthens over time, i.e., it gets more and more canalized and resistant to change. Just a thought. Thanks... Barbara (fellow Doubleday author!!)