Bruce Springsteen: Born to Strum

By WILL HERMES
The New York Times
Published: April 16, 2006

Asbury Park, N.J. - ON a bright, brisk April afternoon in one of America's most famous faded seaside resorts, the sycamores are budding and the dogwoods are in bloom. New construction near the shore points to the town's long-rumored revitalization. Yet rows of boarded-up homes, along with the crumbling remains of the old Metropolitan Hotel and the Baronet Theater, suggest that any turnaround is still a ways off.

Over on Ocean Avenue, a patron sits with a lunchtime shot and beer in the Wonder Bar, which advertises a dance party tonight with DJ Jersey Joe. Down the block is the Stone Pony, the nightclub where Bruce Springsteen, the Jersey Shore's world-famous son, made his name. Among other acts, its marquee advertises a show by Nils Lofgren, guitarist for Mr. Springsteen's longtime collaborators, the E Street Band.

Across the street, straddling the boardwalk, is the Convention Hall-Paramount Theater complex, a majestic structure designed in the 1920's by Warren & Wetmore, the architects of Grand Central Terminal. Inside the Paramount -- which opened in 1930 with a show featuring the Marx Brothers, and which shows its age -- Mr. Springsteen, 56, is rehearsing new songs with a new band.

''Do we have an intro on this? No?'' Mr. Springsteen yells to the 17 players surrounding him onstage. ''Okay one-two-three-four!'' The band lurches -- no other word will do -- into ''John Henry,'' the folk standard about a heroic hammer-wielding railroad worker that dates to the 19th century and has remained a potent American myth.

Mr. Springsteen lifts one leg, scrunches up his face and hollers into his microphone. Behind him the fiddles of Sam Bardfeld and Soozie Tyrell conjure Texas swing, while Charles Giordano's accordion adds a Cajun-zydeco feel and the brass section (with members of the Miami Horns, longtime E Street associates) kick in some Dixieland braying. Other band members clap and shout; their boss hammers away on a battered acoustic guitar.

The rehearsal includes versions of other folk standards -- the old labor song ''Pay Me My Money Down,'' the spirituals ''O Mary Don't You Weep'' and ''Eyes on the Prize,'' the Irish war ballad ''Mrs. McGrath'' -- whose political weight is upstaged by their rousing joie de vivre. It also features radically revamped versions of Mr. Springsteen's ''Johnny 99'' and ''Open All Night'' from his 1981 album ''Nebraska.'' The band, which includes Mr. Springsteen's wife, Patti Scialfa, and Marc Anthony Thompson (who records as Chocolate Genius), makes a huge, glorious noise, full of tugging cross-rhythms and wayward notes. Coffeehouse folk music it ain't -- sports arena folk is more like it.

The traditional numbers will appear on Mr. Springsteen's new record, ''We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions,'' a collection of songs popularized by the venerable folk singer Pete Seeger, to be released April 25. Mr. Springsteen and this band begin a European tour in early May, to be followed by American dates in May and June. He plans to introduce the material at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival on April 30.

If you hear a groan off in the distance, it may be a portion of Mr. Springsteen's fan base greeting the news of his second consecutive project forsaking his well-known brand of rock, along with the E Street Band. Since his last album with the band, ''The Rising,'' in 2002, he has released a mostly acoustic solo album, last year's ''Devils & Dust,'' and an expanded reissue of his 1975 classic ''Born to Run.''

Since much of the material on ''Devils & Dust'' was written and recorded years ago, and since ''The Seeger Sessions'' is his first all-covers collection, some fans wonder not simply about the future of the E Street Band, but also if the songwriter may be running low on fuel.

''Nah, I write all the time,'' Mr. Springsteen said reassuringly, leaning back on a cream-colored couch in one of the Paramount's small, slightly grimy dressing rooms after the day's rehearsals were done. ''The stuff on 'Devils & Dust' -- I just liked those songs and didn't want to see them get lost. I have an E Street Band record that I have a lot of stuff written for. I'm just waiting for the right time to do it.''

Sporting a beatnik-style soul patch under his lower lip and with a remarkable lack of gray in his hair, Mr. Springsteen looked vigorous and pumped from his afternoon's work. He wore his usual uniform of rumpled shirt -- top buttons undone, sleeves rolled up -- jeans, boots, small hoops in both ears and macramé bracelets circling his left wrist. Holding a large bottle of Fiji water in his lap, he occasionally stared off toward some distant point during an animated hourlong conversation, searching for a word, recalling old times in the neighborhood or offering his ideas about folk music.

''The Seeger Sessions'' came about, he explained, from a clutch of songs he recorded in 1997 for a Pete Seeger tribute album titled ''Where Have All the Flowers Gone,'' released on the Appleseed label. After his ''Devils & Dust'' tour last year, he intended to take a break and to release a follow-up to ''Tracks,'' a 1998 four-disc set of rare odds and ends. He sent a bunch of recordings to his longtime manager, Jon Landau, and they both agreed there was something special in the first Seeger session.

''Whenever I'd get tired of what I was working on, I'd go back to it,'' the singer said of the session tape, which included ''Jesse James,'' ''My Oklahoma Home,'' ''Pretty Boy Floyd'' and the only song ultimately used for the ''Flowers'' tribute, ''We Shall Overcome.'' ''Listening to it was a relief, you know? It was just people playing. It sounded like fun.''

The idea for ''Tracks Volume 2'' was shelved, and seven years after the first Seeger session, Mr. Springsteen reconvened the same musicians to record again in the same setting: the living room of his farmhouse in Rumson, N.J. Microphones were set up, candles were lighted, alcoholic beverages were poured. It was quite a crowd. The horn section had to be relegated to the hall. (A DVD feature included with ''The Seeger Sessions'' shows the band at work and play; Mr. Springsteen in particular seems to have imbibed a bit.)

''It allowed me to go back to some of the musical eclecticness I enjoyed in my early days and just be musical,'' he said enthusiastically. ''There's jazz in there. Swing. Sam brings this Eastern European thing; Soozie's a totally down-home country sound. 'Jacob's Ladder' has this Kansas City-Dixieland horn thing on top of the gospel. There's no straight two-and-four, no rock tempos. This band rolls.''

Mr. Springsteen also spoke about the difficulty of tackling songs that have accrued tremendous cultural weight, like the CD's title track, a civil rights anthem in the 60's.

''When the idea came up to do 'We Shall Overcome,' I was like, 'I can't do that,' '' he said. ''Everyone knows that song as an icon. But what was it before it became that? So I went back and looked and realized: 'Oh, this is a prayer. I can do that. I know how to pray.'

''The approach to the song is, I start with this very alienated person, because that's me,'' he said, laughing. ''That never changes. And the guy can barely sing it -- he can barely believe it. But as he moves into it, and people start singing with him, he finds his place in the song, in history, and that alienation eases.''

One thing Mr. Springsteen seemed reluctant to address, except in the abstract, was the political side to the material on ''The Seeger Sessions.'' Mr. Seeger, who turns 87 next month, is of course a hero of the left, a musician, songwriter and song collector-historian who helped spur the politically tinged folk music revival of the 50's and 60's. He spoke out against the Vietnam War and has remained an activist, notably on environmental issues.

''That's there,'' Mr. Springsteen said of the political element. ''But I approached the entire thing musically. I didn't come to it with any ideological perspective, or idea of showing this or that. I just took the songs that I liked from Pete's records.''

Mr. Seeger, who declined to be interviewed, is currently busy completing an expanded edition of his autobiographical songbook ''Where Have All the Flowers Gone,'' first published in 1993. But while he was not involved in Mr. Springsteen's project, he said he was happy to hear about it.

Mr. Springsteen's own political involvement has occurred in fits and starts. He was thrust into the political spotlight in 1984 when Ronald Reagan, in his re-election campaign, tried hitching a ride on the popularity of Mr. Springsteen's huge hit ''Born in the U.S.A.'' -- a complex song about America's treatment of Vietnam veterans whose simple chorus lent itself to easy jingoism. More recently, he wrote the song ''American Skin (41 Shots)'' about the controversial shooting of Amadou Diallo by New York City police officers, and lent his support to John Kerry's presidential bid, moves that displeased some fans.

While Mr. Springsteen claims to have approached the material on ''The Seeger Sessions'' without a political agenda, he acknowledges that context can color things, and suggests that ideology is in the ear of the beholder. ''What makes these songs vital, and catch fire now,'' he said, ''is all the connections you're making, in your head, to this moment.''

Indeed. ''Mrs. McGrath,'' a mother's lament for her son who lost his legs on the battlefield, carries powerful resonance in the era of Cindy Sheehan. And one can only imagine how the boisterous Mardi Gras version of ''Pay Me My Money Down'' will go over at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival in front of thousands of locals still awaiting government relief in the wake of Hurricane Katrina.

There were many more questions worth asking Mr. Springsteen. But his associates were pounding on the dressing room door. There was plenty of work to do before their day was done.

So, to cut to the chase: Has he been following this season of HBO's New Jersey gangster drama, ''The Sopranos,'' in which the guitarist Steve Van Zandt -- Mr. Springsteen's right-hand man in the E Street Band -- plays Silvio Dante, right-hand man to the mob boss Tony Soprano?

''You know, I missed the last two episodes, what with working on all this, but someone told me Stevie's been having aspirations to boss-dom,'' said the artist still known to fans as the Boss, with a grin. ''I got to see this!''