Diatribune

Springsteen is coming out with a new album, made with the E Street Band, called Magic. An inspired review can be found here:

http://matt.orel.ws/blog/2007/09/bruce-springsteen-and-little-magic.html

Magic was apparently made WITH the E Street band, but, to hear Jon Landau talk, it sounds like it's mostly Bruce in the studio and the band getting plugged in from time to time:

The E Street Band mostly flew down on weekends to record, while Springsteen and O’Brien spent weekdays cutting vocals and recording overdubs. “This album is E Street Band heavy,” Landau says. “Clarence [Clemons] has some great moments on it. You could say that it’s a little more sonically guitar-driven than any past Bruce album.

http://www.rollingstone.com/rockdaily/index.php/2007/08/16/bruce-springs...

The track listing seems to run all over the place...

1. “Radio Nowhere”
2. “You’ll Be Comin’ Down”
3. “Livin’ in the Future”
4. “Your Own Worst Enemy”
5. “Gypsy Biker”
6. “Girls in Their Summer Clothes”
7. “I’ll Work for Your Love”
8. “Magic”
9. “Last to Die”
10. “Long Walk Home”
11. “Devil’s Arcade”

...which tells me that Magic could be an album designed to appeal to everybody; designed to reassure Sony (which just gave Bruce a massive new contract) that eccentricities like The Seeger Sessions weren't going to go on forever; designed to reassure Bruce's long-term fans that the Bruce Springsteen they love to love is alive and well and kicking. Long may he kick.

I personally would like to have seen Springsteen take the Seeger Sessions concept further down the road (and maybe he's done just that - I haven't heard the new album). I would like to have seen a record done with live recordings done spontaneously, by folding the E Street band into the folksy Big Band orchestra Bruce used on the Seeger Sessions record and tour, offering a mix of new songs and old songs (drawn from deeper researches into the American songbook, or - better yet - into the World songbook).

That said, I'm eager to hear whatever Springsteen has concocted lately. In the review I linked to above, Matt Orel discusses very movingly the connection he felt to his father when he discovered that his father, who recently died, felt about Benny Goodman somewhat the way Matt feels about Bruce Springsteen. I can't think of a more powerful insight into Springsteen's music, because I think that if there is one essential archetype in Springsteen's work, it is the Father Figure; and if there is one essential dynamic in Springsteen's work, it is the struggle to distance oneself from that figure, to connect with that figure, and - ultimately - somehow to BE that figure.

More than any song, the Springsteen performance that stands out in my mind is a spoken piece I first heard (as I recall) years ago on the Live boxed set. Springsteen and his father apparently fought a lot over the length of his hair when Springsteen was still at home, but in his first band, the Castiles. Here's a picture of the Castiles:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=3919240

Springsteen reportedly had a massive local reputation even as a teenager as the One Who Would Make It. I guess that didn't count for much with his Dad. Young Bruce tried to cope by staying out later and later at night. However, as Springsteen tells the story, he came in late one night to find his father waiting up for him. There was nothing to be seen except the glow of his father's cigarette in the kitchen. In Springsteen's story, a row ensues and (as I recall the story) it leads to Springsteen leaving home for good.

I've never been able to get that image out of my mind, the image of Bruce coming home to find his father silently waiting in a pitch black kitchen, invisible. It reminds of a line from a recent Springsteen song: "I am the Nothing Man." There was nothing there waiting for Springsteen but a smoldering coal of anger, apparently met by an answering fire of anger in Springsteen, a fire that has played itself out over his career in song after song of rebellion, of remorse, and of stoic determination to live a better life, to be a better man.

In a new millennium, where anger seems to have run amuck, and boiled over into war, Springsteen's body of work is more relevant than it has ever been; because fundamentally it describes a search for a way out of anger. It will be interesting to see what new insights and inspirations Magic offers for that journey.
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