Minneapolis Star Tribune
Last update: November 03, 2007 – 7:07 PM
Trust none of what you hear
And less of what you see.
The lines are from the title track of Bruce Springsteen's new album, "Magic," and are full of dread and warning.
Springsteen, 58, is a year older than I am, but he has more hair and money and can sing. He and I once belonged to a generation that didn't trust anyone over 30. Now we don't trust anybody. Period. And we are right.
One of Springsteen's new tunes is "Livin' In the Future," a bleak vision of ill winds, blood, "faith torn asunder" and "righteousness going under."My ship Liberty sailed away," he sings, "on a bloody red horizon."
The only hope, as much a call to action as fervent prayer, is in the repeated refrain: "None of this has happened yet."
The polls show Americans believe the country is going to hell in an SUV, so we know what Springsteen is talking about. We can't figure out how these things can be happening against our will: the torture, the erosion of rights, the corruption, the lies, the wars, and the neglect of the things that are important -- the planet, the poverty, the hunger, the disease, the children, the future.
More importantly, we aren't sure what to do about it.
I've never been a rock star groupie, and I've never seen Springsteen in concert. But I've always identified with his songs. They are about being proud of where you are from, being in love, trying to be a good father, trying to keep your self-respect in a world that would rob you of everything, about being an American and what that means. Or is supposed to mean.
Springsteen makes it real. Check out the YouTube video of the Springsteen-Sting-Tracy Chapman cover of Dylan's "Chimes of Freedom."
Chokes me up every time.
Now, those chimes seem muffled.
"Magic" captures the sense many of us have that the country we love is slipping away, and the world we hoped to leave for our children is fading into despair.
"Who'll be the last to die for a mistake?" Springsteen asks in "Last to Die."Whose blood will spill, whose heart will break?"
We don't really need a celebrity to tell us what to think or how to feel about any of this. I know what I feel every time I snap off the TV or the radio so that I don't have to explain the unexplainable to the little boys that, due to accidents of birth, I find myself protecting.
They are far too young, and I'm far too worried. And I'm not the only one.
Maybe that's why the belief swept the country this past week that Springsteen's new album had been blacklisted by Clear Channel, the huge media conglomerate that owns 1,200 radio stations, including seven in the Twin Cities. Clear Channel's right-leaning ownership has been accused of purging its play lists before, notably during the furor over remarks made at a Dixie Chicks concert before the Iraq war. Banning the Boss certainly sounded like something that might happen, but the company denied any effort to keep Springsteen's new album off the air.
Still. Is there censorship in this country? You bet. And it's effective. We are innovators in America, and censorship doesn't need to come in heavy-handed edicts. It can come by making the profound trivial, by marginalizing the truth and making everything into entertainment.
Maybe they don't need to keep Bruce Springsteen off the air. Maybe they just need to keep us from thinking very much about what he is saying.
Like U2's Bono, Springsteen has managed to stay angry despite his wealth and success, and has kept his voice in service to the poor and oppressed, despite his ranking high on the charts of the powerful and the privileged. I respect him for that, but I still appreciate the irony:
According to Forbes, the Boss earned $55 million last year and is having another very good year. Choice seats for Friday's Springsteen concert at the Xcel Energy Center in St. Paul were selling on eBay for up to $350 Friday afternoon.
I didn't see him.
But I hear him. I am listening to Springsteen a lot these days, and taking what comfort I can find in that cold, final refrain from "Livin' In The Future":
"None of this has happened yet."
Nick Coleman • ncoleman@startribune.com
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