Fever (24 page)

But there's way too little of Springsteen describing the sounds he wants from his band, fine-tuning arrangements, and too much footage in the “midnight trip to the corner store” vein that backfires as color. There's a sequence of Jonathan Demme setting up the video shoot for a live performance of “Murder Incorporated” at a club, but no song. Later, we see Springsteen talking to fans from the stage afterwards, proudly showing his battered guitar. Like Willie Nelson, who still plays his bruised Martin acoustic with a pickup, Springsteen still plays his fifties Fender Esquire (a precursor to the Telecaster) on through to superstardom, a symbol of dues paid.

*   *   *

At the end of the decade came
Tracks,
a four-CD set that assembled the vast library of Springsteen's studio outtakes that bootleggers had been circulating for years. Springsteen throws away a dozen decent songs before his morning coffee, and this set was packed with nuggets aspiring songsters would kill to write. Still, it brought home how well Springsteen's output had been edited by Landau and how much different his career might have been without a critic at the helm. In the liner notes, Springsteen thanked Landau for his advice: “His suggestion to remix these tracks from the original masters greatly enhanced their sound.” A remix is a producer's call, and this note simply acknowledged Landau as de facto producer without giving him the actual credit.

On the heels of his
Greatest Hits
and
Tracks,
Springsteen took a page from Neil Young's playbook and simply hit the road again. His 1999–2000 tour turned into an extension of everything he had built up so far between his songs, his band, and the legions of faithful. He opened many of these shows with “My Love Will Not Let You Down,” and as the tour opened in Spain, fans across the world raced to their computers and downloaded the song to get a taste. “My Love” was originally recorded during
Born in the U.S.A.
sessions and would have held its own on that disc. But as the opening song here, it signified a renewed commitment to his audience and a way of saying “Look at how far we've all come…” Springsteen's personal life may have disappointed some people, especially some women. But some bumps in the road had barely tarnished his professional persona; this E Street Band reunion made his aesthetic inconsistencies seem of a piece with his triumphs.

To see Springsteen during this period was to witness the redemptive power of the artist in fine health taking his audience far beyond what they could have expected. Nearing fifty, and relying on a core batch of songs between ten and twenty years old, Springsteen evaded the oldies-tour trap, the nostalgia rap, and the aging-hipster curse all in one sweep of constant roaring energy. If ever a performer was born to storm the world's stages, this was the guy. And the E Street Band sounded seasoned and coiled, instead of like they had just taken ten years off from each other. Old songs sprang out with renewed vigor; new songs had a wealth of history in them. Earlier in his career, Springsteen was building an audience show by show. Now he took his act and extended it, broadened its reach, following through on its earlier promise in ways Elvis Presley denied himself. Indeed, if Springsteen's earlier subtext had been “I refuse to turn out like Elvis,” his new credo seemed to be “See how far rock can take you if you stay committed to its ideals?”

To be sure, this elder Boss only suggested the white heat of the
Darkness
shows in 1978, and he wasn't surfing his breakout moment of the
Born in the U.S.A.
world tour of 1984–85, when his generosity of spirit finally reached the masses—and the complexity of his sensibility got drowned out in the din. After all, this man had written “Glory Days” over fifteen years earlier.

With a pace that saved his energy but barely checked his enormous affection for the music and audience, this was vintage Bruce. He sang like his future depended on it, and while not a youthful rave, these renditions came off as exciting and convincing as any from his past. The set mixed regenerated B-sides (like “Light of Day” and “Don't Look Back”) with cornball redemption sermons that wound up with Bruce and the Big Man holding a clenched handshake up for spotlight (during “Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out”); authentic, working-class dread (“Darkness,” “The River,” “Youngstown,” “Lost in the Flood”) with a new touch of C&W (“Factory,” with Nils Lofgren on lap steel). A master of crowd control, Springsteen knew exactly when to lead, to sing down into a song with new phrasing, and when to let the audience have its head.

Shows pivoted off full-blown set pieces like “Jungleland,” “Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out,” and “Thunder Road” and usually closed with “Born to Run,” “Land of Hope and Dreams,” and, with the entire ensemble singing, “If I Should Fall Behind,” as if whole arenas were repledging their faith to one another. But the sequences were constantly reworked, and very few nights had the same set lists: you could catch a slapdash “I Wanna Be Where the Bands Are” or a pumping “Working on the Highway.” Most sets, though, were anchored by numbers from
The River.
“Two Hearts,” often song number 3, roaring “Point Blank,” “Out in the Street,” “Ties That Bind,” and “Ramrod.” The tormented thug in “Murder, Incorporated,” another
Born in the U.S.A.
leftover, made frequent appearances as well. Springsteen even reached as far back as
The Wild, the Innocent
for “New York City Serenade,” “Kitty's Back,” “Sandy,” and “The E Street Shuffle.” No matter how he sliced it, the whole enterprise was an embarrassment of riches.

Was there another rock star anywhere near as famous who had the humility to both open with another man's song (like he did for his last 1999 set in New Jersey, with “Jersey Girl”), then bring out Bon Jovi and Melissa Etheridge for “Hungry Heart,” the first encore? Or create a show so large and inclusive that these guest stars barely mattered? Was there another performer in any genre who made you feel as flattered to be in the audience? Could you name another rock star, or any star at all, who commanded the world's attention with such a Spartan stage set? After Jersey's set closers in 1999, Springsteen stepped to the mike. “These shows mean a lot to us; seeing the music come alive in your faces is very gratifying. There must be
some
way I can thank you—now, let me think…” And then he launched into “Rosalita” for the first time that year: “Some day we'll look back on this…” he sang—then paused and observed the singing throng around him: “… and … it
is
funny!”

The tour continued into the next year, and his final nights at Madison Square Garden in the summer of 2000 were filmed for HBO and later released as
Live in New York
on a double-DVD set, which has become a totem of everything Springsteen stands for, and a good primer for skeptics. It includes several new songs: “Land of Hope and Dreams,” a rousing finale, and “American Skin (41 Shots),” about the NYPD's Amadou Diallo scandal (“Code of Silence,” about “honor” among cops, didn't make the cut). Few white figures were writing topical material of this caliber, and fewer still took on this racially charged incident. Ingeniously, he built the song's hook, its most repeated and memorable phrase, around the number of shots fired at the unarmed Diallo. Like that of “Code of Silence,” its narration took such focused aim that it summoned the ire of its subject, and the NYPD threatened to walk out of its security obligations during his Madison Square Garden run.

“Springsteen has turned into some type of fucking dirtbag,” Bob Lucente, president of the New York State chapter of the Fraternal Order of Police, was quoted as saying. “He has all these good songs and everything, American flag songs and all that stuff, and now he's a floating fag. You can quote me on that.” The tabloid brawl earned Springsteen even more credibility among people who had learned to fear, rather than trust, the cops. (The mother in “American Skin” teaches her child to always “be polite” around policemen and always “keep your hands in sight…”) Lucente's quote made the police force sound like Neanderthals for thinking that the “fag” epithet came off as anything but pathetically homophobic.

The band's sound only deepened throughout ever-developing and spry arrangements, but the emotional richness and broad humor upstaged even the matchless playing. With Springsteen's bottomless chest of material, and an ensemble that improved each time they interacted, the DVD still fends off a lot of comers for Greatest Living Performer. (The production credits go to Jon Landau, George Travis, and Springsteen, and he talked to the
New York Times
about his return to a “rock voice.”) But perhaps more impressively, Springsteen steered his faltering nineties persona toward a safe landing. He was fifty when these shows were filmed, but his stamina still wowed, his spirit soared. The opening trio of songs (“My Love Will Not Let You Down,” “Prove It All Night,” and “Two Hearts,” with guitarist Little Steven) was volcanic rock fanfare that lived up to its heft. “Love” set the film's overarching metaphors in motion: faith in rock 'n' roll can be its own reward.

Then came several completely retooled numbers: Nebraska's “Atlantic City,” a band staple since 1984, stripped casino grandeur down to one gambler's curse; “Mansion on the Hill” became a stately country duet with wife Patti Scialfa and Nils Lofgren on sublime lap steel; and “The River” had grown so fraught it sounded like the shotgun marriage from the 1980 album had suffered another twenty years of misgivings (“Now I just act like I don't remember/Mary acts like she don't care…”). The second disc included a brutal slide acoustic “Born in the U.S.A.,” an ironic boast that only got scarier with time. Bemused by his own self-confidence, the crowd's ardor, and the telling glances between band members, this regenerated Springsteen found new confidence in the crowds' affection; in the middle of “Out in the Streets” he kissed a fan as if he were kissing the whole arena, or the whole world. As much as this footage made you wish for a big-screen concert film from 1978, or 1980, or at least 1984, Springsteen's reluctance to do a live movie may have been wise: it only strengthened his bond with his concert audience.

His stance proclaimed nothing less than a new breed of professional rock man: Springsteen had always been more comfortable onstage than anywhere else. Ironically, after he'd sorted out how to be comfortable at home, his idea of himself as a performer only grew, and brought new dynamism to a lot of his predomestic songs. If his writing had plateaued, his aim remained steady: where “American Skin (41 Shots)” was a far better song than the finale, “Land of Hope and Dreams,” another new number, “My City of Ruins,” written about Atlantic City in early 2001, became emblematic of the September 11 terrorist attacks on New York City when Springsteen performed it at the
Tribute to Heroes
broadcast. “Into the Fire” was not quite ready, so Landau suggested “Ruins,” which was originally written as a song about Asbury Park's economic downturn. “Ruins” opened the benefit, and became symbolic of 9/11 grief.

*   *   *

The terrorist attacks galvanized Springsteen's songwriting with mixed results. As a personal witness to both the tragedy and its devastating effect on his New Jersey working-class community, it would have been almost cynical if he hadn't taken it on as his new subject. Here was a working-class theme in spades: firefighters and cops and emergency crews martyred in the country's most harrowing terrorist attack.
The Rising,
released in August of 2002 amid an unprecedented media blitz, was fronted by two tracks (the title track and “Lonesome Day”) that quickened summer's bland radio fare. Both these songs fed off and enlarged a shared rock history; they surged with hard-fought optimism. And yet the concept of the larger work—9/11 and its aftermath—may have proven too ambitious even for the Boss.

The Rising
continued the revitalization of the E Street Band, Springsteen's voice was in great shape, and the sound was spare yet lush. But the CD rode on uneven and oddly sequenced material—and the portions were large (over 72 minutes, which once would have constituted a double album). For years, Springsteen's production team had been one of the closest-knit circles in the industry. And his desire to produce himself (for 1992's
Human Touch
and
Lucky Town
) looked more and more like the ebb in an otherwise remarkably consistent career. But
The Rising
's production problems fell squarely on Brendan O'Brien, the new producer Springsteen brought in. O'Brien had worked with Pearl Jam and was referred to Springsteen in part by Neil Young, who had made the capricious
Mirror Ball
with him, backed by Pearl Jam. His overall influence on Springsteen's sound proved positive; it was in preproduction—specifically, in the material—that details were left unattended.

O'Brien updated Springsteen's tone with thoughtful touches: chiming guitars, soulful organ licks, teeming vocal overdubs; the ensemble work is peerless, and the band displays sublime control even during high bombast. He also got drummer Max Weinberg to loosen up a little (especially on his hi-hat), which lifted the sound of everybody else and gave the project new poise and confidence.

But while many of these songs work outside the context of 9/11, some don't work in any context at all. “Into the Fire,” the most explicit 9/11 song, doesn't have a bridge, like several other songs here (“Waitin' on a Sunny Day,” “Nothing Man,” “Worlds Apart,” “Let's Be Friends”). Its stirring refrain (“May your strength give us faith/May your faith give us faith…”) articulated what survivors and onlookers were thinking and feeling, and nearly atones for the thin verses. In fact, the better songs work better outside the terrorist context: the empty houses in “You're Missing,” or “Nothing Man,” which could be his version of “A Day in the Life.” Likewise, a few of his earlier songs would work fine, if not better, as 9/11 anthems: “Back in Your Arms Again,” for example, or “No Surrender,” or “Land of Hope and Dreams.”