Springsteen's age meaningless, since his music's timeless

By GRETCHEN C. VAN BENTHUYSEN
ASBURY PARK PRESS STAFF WRITER
September 22, 2009
http://www.app.com/

Go ahead and wish Bruce Springsteen a happy 60th birthday today, but don't expect him to act like an old man any time soon.

"I think turning 60 is a milestone of some sort," said rock 'n' roll photographer Danny Clinch of Toms River. "It sure makes people who are 45 like me look bad when he can run around on a stage for 3 1/2 hours a night."

Tim Donnelly of Seaside Heights, who produced Clinch's current exhibition "Be True: Bruce Springsteen in New Jersey 1999-2009" in Asbury Park, agrees.

"When you see him perform, you know he can rock at any age, that you can't put a number on it," he said.

So why are people making such a big deal about it?

Not only is Springsteen on the cover of AARP magazine, hundreds of educators, journalists, historians and fans are expected to descend this week on the Stone Pony in Asbury Park and Monmouth University in West Long Branch for "Glory Days, a Bruce Springsteen Symposium."

Among them will be Robert Santelli, executive director of the new Grammy Museum in Los Angeles. Recently he signed to be the curator of the Michael Jackson Touring Exhibition opening in London and traveling to Tokyo and New York City.

"Bruce is a significant American music artist," said Santelli, a former music correspondent for the Asbury Park Press. "He's among American music titans such as Dylan, Muddy Waters, Woody Guthrie and Robert Johnson.

"Both his life and his legacy have impacted the American culture," Santelli said. "But most of those people have passed or been embedded into American music history. Bruce is still making history. He's active and participating."

Santelli was a Monmouth University student when the Stone Pony opened in 1974.

"I spent at least three nights a week there, religiously getting a music education seeing Springsteen and Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes," said Santelli, who returns Thursday for a panel discussion at the now internationally known rock club. On Friday, he is on the symposium panel titled "Tribute to Danny Federici."

Still relevant

Also there in the early years was Lee Mrowicki, whom Santelli nicknamed "The Voice of the Stone Pony." Mrowicki said he was playing demo tapes of Springsteen's music on Monmouth University's radio station long before his first record came out.

"Springsteen's music is still relevant today," Mrowicki said. "He's made the transition without really saying that he feels older. He's writing for us as he always has, whether we're in our 20s, 30s, 40s . . . and now 60s."

For people who live at the Jersey Shore, he said, Springsteen's music has more resonance.

"He's lived the same life we've lived," he said. "We see the same boardwalk and ocean, know the places in Freehold and Asbury and the blue-collar lifestyle.

August 25, Saratoga, New York

"Everything we have in our lives he's written about — the situations, the romance, the ups and downs — we can all relate to that."

So can about 84,000 other New Jersey residents expected to turn 60 this year as well. When they were born in 1949, Communism was on the march around the world, the Red Scare was gaining ground in the United States with celebrities such as Helen Keller being named, David Ben-Gurion becames Israel's first prime minister and both the Federal Republic of Germany and Republic of Ireland were founded.

"Any time you have a birthday with a zero at the end, it's a milestone," said Mark Bernhard, director of continuing and professional education at Virginia Tech and the "Glory Days" conference planner. "I think the older we get, the less the number really means, and we can certainly see that, in concert, Bruce doesn't act 60.

"It's amazing he's been so relevant and vibrant for so many years," he said. "His music and lyrics have influenced our culture, and that's pretty neat."

Healing powers

Donna Dolphin, a professor at Monmouth University with expertise in American roots music, sees Springsteen as our national healer.

"In times of our greatest crisis, Bruce Springsteen speaks up for us and articulates our collective pain and suffering," said Dolphin, who will address the issue as part of the symposium on Saturday. "He's becoming for us a great empathic educator."

Although Springsteen may seem ageless, she said, his music has matured as he's grown older and he's embraced the "hurt song," seen in "The Rising" after the Sept. 11 attacks and "The Seeger Sessions" after Hurricane Katrina.

"His music has become politicized, but not the finger-pointing, critical kind of stuff," she said. "He's trying to heal wounds and fractured communities by making us all feel the experience."

In other words, she added, "He's just getting better and better and better."

Now, what 60-year-old wouldn't mind getting that as a present?


Springsteen ages gracefully, work ethic intact

By MICHAEL RILEY
ASBURY PARK PRESS STAFF WRITER
September 20, 2009
http://www.app.com/

Bruce Springsteen saw this coming from way back. The Boss is turning 60 on Wednesday, Sept. 23, and there's plenty of evidence that this landmark has not snuck up on the Freehold native or scared the bejezus out of him.

August 19, Hartford, Connecticut

Rock stars are not known for this kind prescience, and the ones who die young and leave a drug-ridden, vomit-covered corpse are at least spared looking like the fools who pass their prime and keep on playing the same old stuff or new stuff that is indistinguishable from the past stuff.

Exhibit A in the "how silly it all looks now" department has to be Pete Townshend's 1966 nihilistic ode to youth, "My Generation," with its infamous line:

"Hope I die before I get old."

Oops.

Too late.

At what point in his long career did Townshend realize his prayer went unanswered?

Of course, in some ways, you can't blame young artists for their Rimbaud-like poses. It's easy to want to die early when you believe you're immortal and indestructible.

Still, contrast Townshend's half-hearted death wish with Springsteen's hope in "Glory Days":

"I hope, when I get old, I don't sit around thinking about it, but I probably will ... "

Those are two entirely different hopes.

It was 25 years ago when he wrote that song, and as he performed it in concert, he often ended it with a kind of riff with his on-stage foil, E Street Band saxophonist Clarence Clemons:

"Don't ever be stopping. Because I hear that big clock ticking away, every minute of my life, every day. It says, 'Boss, you're 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35.' Big Man ... we're adults!"

And Springsteen would shake his head ... and laugh.

Dealing with life

But you can go back to Springsteen's very first album to hear a young man in his 20s looking forward to the years ahead. In "Growin' Up" he sings:

"Well, my feet, they finally took root in the earth, but I got me a nice little place in the stars."

September 13, Ft. Lauderdale, Florida

That's not to say that Springsteen's early work isn't full of the Sturm und Drang of adolescence — the end of the world romantic break-up, the pitched father-and-son battles — but nearly always, there is a sense in the words and music that somehow, we'll get through this.

But Springsteen is no Voltaire; he knows that this is not "the best of all possible worlds." Some of the folks in his songs come to bad and tragic ends.

Of course, his attention to detail, something that comes with maturity, if not always with age, puts that worst of circumstances into a world-weary perspective that cannot, finally, extinguish hope.

"For what are we without hope in our hearts?" he asks, even on the bleakest of his albums, "The Ghost of Tom Joad."

Maybe that kind of hope only comes with the passage of time.

It was Neil Young who told us that, "it's better to burn out than fade away."

Well, of course it is. Who would deny it?

But Springsteen is one whose career has been a reminder to us that those are not the only two choices. When Springsteen was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1999, it was U2's Bono who gave the induction speech. Among the many nice things he said about his friend was this observation: "Bruce Springsteen, you always knew, was not gonna die stupid."

Bono was right, and here's why: When you frame your art in a way that keeps growing through the years, when the population of the world you've created ages as you and your audience age, when you take satisfaction in the value of good work done well, and when you make that move to bring the blessings you've banked over the decades to help others, then you've achieved something that fills your life with something close to joy.

Facing the inevitable

You get the sense sometimes, from his most recent work, that Springsteen may be, in the words of the old spiritual, ready to start "looking over Jordan."

A man does that at a certain age. Nothing wrong with that.

But at the age of 60, Springsteen seems ready to master the art of growing old. And those who are growing older with him, who have taken heart from his music for three decades now, those who understand that his anthem, "Land of Hope and Dreams," with its almost Biblical imagery, ends with the kind of excitement the Old Testament prophets tried to coax out of a hard-hearted people, that sense that Joel had when he wrote, "Old men shall dream dreams," and Isaiah's promise that all those who hope will one day "renew their strength. They will soar on wings like eagles; they will run and not grow weary; they will walk and not be faint."

And they will keep on singing.


Springsteen at 60: Not blinded by the light

By CHRIS JORDAN
ASBURY PARK PRESS STAFF WRITER
September 20, 2009
http://www.app.com/

Bruce Springsteen is a time traveler.

The essence of his early songs was the struggle to get to that next point in life, in the future, when things around him would make sense and he would feel secure in the center of it.

August 25, Saratoga, New York

That's what you have to do when you're young and bound and driven. You have to live outside yourself. Escape or explode. Springsteen, who turns 60 on Wednesday, Sept. 23, expertly articulated this — especially for his fellow New Jerseyans, whose part of the world felt like the most remote place in the universe. Back then, in the '70s, there was nothing but desperation and highways and bright lights in the distance, like the rides that flickered along the Asbury Park boardwalk. But were the lights a mirage or a destination?

While traveling into his future, the Freehold native has forged perhaps the most unique career in rock 'n' roll history. Consider his relationship with his fans, especially those in Jersey. We know the guy — he's one of us. We see him, we bump into him — who doesn't have a Springsteen story to tell? Maybe there is a PR machine at work to keep the focus on him as a regular guy, but even if there weren't, we feel — we want to believe — that the Springsteen the public sees is the real Springsteen.

There's been just enough tarnish for that to seem so. "Lucky Town" and "Human Touch" come to mind. There are other things, too, but they kind of serve to enhance a noble yet flawed character. Springsteen is the kind of guy the rest us can only pretend to be — modest, powerful, charitable, sympathetic and able to rock a stadium of 60,000 and ride away into the distance on his Harley.

Again, there's the destination. It's getting closer, but where will it be and what form will it take? Perhaps sensing this, Springsteen lately has been as active as ever and has maintained his highest profile since he started recording for Columbia Records in 1973. Life's journey doesn't last forever, and certainly Springsteen's ride with the E Street Band won't last forever either. The heartbreaking loss of band member Danny Federici in 2008 proved the tide of time is an insurmountable force.

So, too, is Springsteen, the once young time traveler who now finds himself in his future. He's a sage man who backed a future president, — no, not John Kerry — took on Ticketmaster and still rocks like a kid.

This is a busy moment, his 60th birthday. Springsteen — along with Robert De Niro, Mel Brooks, Dave Brubeck and opera singer Grace Bumbry — will be celebrated at this year's Kennedy Center Honors Gala in December. More immediately, Springsteen and the E Street Band will perform the last concerts in the history of Giants Stadium from Wednesday, Sept. 30, to Friday, Oct. 9. Recently released tickets are available for the first four shows.

Related events include "Glory Days: A Bruce Springsteen Symposium," set to take place Friday, Sept. 25, to Sunday, Sept. 27, at Monmouth University in West Long Branch and surrounding areas and the "Be True" photography exhibit by Danny Clinch, featuring Springsteen photos taken from 1999 to this year in New Jersey. It's at the Third Avenue Pavilion on the Asbury Park boardwalk through Sunday, Sept. 27.

September 16, Greenville, South Carolina

Later, Springsteen and Jerry Seinfeld co-headline a benefit show on Nov. 17 for Autism Speaks at Carnegie Hall in New York City.

After this flurry of activity and the end of the current tour in November, the band will take a year or two off, said Steven Van Zandt in a conference call with reporters on Wednesday.

"We're still making records, still making competitive records," Van Zandt said. "We just refuse to be a nostalgic act. Bruce has never stopped writing great songs."

The future is here for Springsteen, the man once dubbed the future of rock 'n' roll. The lights aren't so far off in the distance now. They've become illuminating, not disorienting.


Bruce Springsteen: Still Going Strong at Age 60

Paying Homage to a Rock Icon on his Birthday

By Louis P. Masur
http://www.popmatters.com/
21 September 2009

The key to his success is that Springsteen believes in what he does, but doesn’t try to live inside the rock ‘n’ roll fantasy that glorifies wealth, fame, and superstardom.

Rock stars about to turn 60 aren’t usually seen playing 100 shows around the world, let alone successfully completing two-year tours. Whether it be Elvis, Jimi, Janis, or Michael, most fade out or pass away long before the milestone. Some notable rockers survive past 60, but their most popular and creative days are often behind them. In 1979, Neil Young said it best, penning an apothegm for rock’s fatal romantic ideal: “it’s better to burn out than fade away.”

As Bruce Springsteen approaches 60, he has achieved what few can. He is as visible as he’s ever been, and that’s saying a lot for a superstar who graced the covers of Time and Newsweek in 1975, whose Born in the USA was the second best-selling album of the ‘80s, who won an Oscar for “Streets of Philadelphia” in 1994, and whose The Rising in 2002 offered an enduring artistic response to 9/11.

In the past 24 months alone, Springsteen has released two albums, campaigned for Barack Obama, and appeared on a Super Bowl halftime show. Not only do baby-boomers attend his concerts, but so do a growing number of younger fans. Springsteen’s influence can even be found in a new generation of bands like the Arcade Fire, the Hold Steady, and the Gaslight Anthem, all of whom pay homage to the rocker nicknamed “the Boss”.

How is it that Springsteen has managed to surf the zeitgeist for more than three decades? Part of the answer lies in his devotion to his craft and in the savvy of his management team. Thanks to the clever protection of the Springsteen brand, “Born to Run” can be downloaded as a ringtone, but it will never be used to sell an automobile.

But skill and business sense constitute only part of the story. Neither would matter if it wasn’t for Springsteen’s lifetime commitment to rock ‘n’ roll’s original promise of liberation and redemption.

It’s also true that Springsteen has consistently proved a more dynamic live performer than studio artist, and it is in concert where the electricity crackles. Springsteen screams “is anyone alive out there?!”, and after three hours of blazing guitars and pounding drums we know that we are. Springsteen offers an emotional and physical experience, one based upon songs about finding love and faith, building community, and just having a good time.

The key to his success is that Springsteen believes in what he does, but doesn’t try to live inside the rock ‘n’ roll fantasy that glorifies wealth, fame, and superstardom. These elements are what destroyed Elvis, his hero. By the same token, Springsteen has never abandoned his faith in the saving power of rock ‘n’ roll, because it saved him. It gave him a purpose, an image, and a way out—as it has for so many others.

Springsteen was seven when he first saw Elvis on The Ed Sullivan Show. Presley’s third and final appearance took place on January 6, 1957. On that Sunday night in 1957, Elvis smiled, smirked and played with the audience. Breaking from his usual attire, Presley came out wearing a bloused shirt and vest, with makeup painted around his eyes. That night Elvis sang hits like “Don’t Be Cruel”, “Love Me Tender”, and “Hound Dog”, shaking his hips and standing on his toes while girls screamed in the audience. And that guitar: it was a weapon and it was armor. This was the dream.

Watching the show, Springsteen felt mesmerized: “I couldn’t imagine anyone not wanting to be Elvis Presley,” he recalled. His mother eventually bought him a guitar and even set up lessons, but Springsteen’s hands were too small. He didn’t like structured instruction, and he put the instrument aside for sports (“I wanted to be a baseball player”).

Springsteen acquired his work ethic from his mother, Adele, along with his appreciation for working day after day. He especially enjoyed the stability, dignity, and community that comes from the commitment to one’s job. Springsteen’s relationship with his father, Douglas, was more conflicted. His father worked in a factory was something of a loner.

“I remember when I was a kid I always wondered what my old man was so mad about all the time,” Springsteen recalls. Douglas would often get in the car on Sundays and drive, family in tow, with no destination. “We would drive around the whole damned Sunday and come in the evening all exhausted,” Springsteen remembers. And yet, he also noted that the car trips were the only time his father would beam with joy. The memory would inform many of Bruce’s songs about people in cars and people on the move. He observed that “perhaps that kind of action was the only thing he needed after working the whole week at his machine in the plastics plant.”

Douglas Springsteen hated Bruce’s long hair, late hours, and endless guitar playing. It was through examining his father’s life that Bruce came to understand the underside of the American dream: “When I got to be about 16, I started to look around me and…I looked back at, I looked at my friends and tried to see what they were doing and it didn’t seem like anybody was going anyplace or had a chance of getting out of the kind of life they were living.” “When I was real young,” he said in 1981, “I decided that if I was gonna have to live that way, that I was gonna die.”

“My whole life,” Springsteen reflected, “was this enormous effort to become visible.” In 1975, he told Time magazine, “Music saved me. From the beginning, my guitar was something I could go to. If I hadn’t found music, I don’t know what I would have done.” “Music gave me something,” he added. “It was never just a hobby. It was a reason to live. The first day I can remember lookin’ in the mirror and standin’ what I was seein’ was the day I had a guitar in my hand,” he proclaimed.

Through driving ambition and limitless talent, Bruce got out, but never left his past behind. He wrote songs about place, work and religion. He wrote about the dream of escape and the longing for connection. He wrote about community and camaraderie. Most of all, he offered catharsis. He gave hope—however transitory—to those who couldn’t escape. Over time, Springsteen’s work became explicitly political, offering a critique of forces used to suppress weakened communities.

Now, after experiencing a long, successful career, Springsteen will celebrate his birthday doing exactly what he loves best—performing live. No two shows will be alike and no two set lists identical. In keeping with his likeness to the nine-to-five population, Springsteen is a working artist, searching each night for what makes the music come alive. It is that authenticity that unites him with his fans.

Springsteen still plays “Born to Run” at every concert, and the performance, most often with house lights on, levitates the arena. “The song,” he says, “transcends your age and continues to speak to that part of you that is both exhilarated and frightened about what tomorrow brings. It will always do that—that’s how it was built.”

When Springsteen was 46, someone asked him how much longer he intended to play. He replied that “at 60, I plan to be still doing it… The older you get the younger you are… It will be 80 in another five years.” Here’s hoping.

- Louis P. Masur chairs the American Studies program at Trinity College (CT) and is the author of Runaway Dream: Born to Run and Bruce Springsteen's American Vision (Bloomsbury Press, 2009).

Louis P. Masur
Runaway Dream: Born to Run and Bruce Springsteen's American Vision
(Bloomsbury Press; US: Sep 2009)
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As Bruce Springsteen turns 60, music's durability - and his - are no surprise

By David Hinckley
New York Daily News
http://www.nydailynews.com/
Updated Wednesday, September 23rd 2009, 3:13 PM



Getty/AP
Bruce Springsteen performing in 1980 (l.) and in July 2009. He turns 60 on Wednesday.

Bruce Springsteen turns 60 today, an age at which the idea of still playing rock 'n' roll once seemed as remote as still primping for the prom.

Today, however, no one thinks Springsteen is defying any unwritten laws of nature by spending his birthday week prepping for five shows starting next Tuesday at Giants Stadium.

If there's a lesson here, it has more to do with the music and the fans than with Springsteen – because their durability is more impressive than even his.

Springsteen has done an extraordinary job of keeping his music vital and fresh, and keeping himself vital and fresh enough to sing it for two and a half hours.

But from all the thousands of bands who have played rock 'n' roll over the last 30, 40, 50 years, plain old statistical probability says a few would have the combination of skill, drive and luck to keep going. The Rolling Stones. Paul McCartney. Bob Dylan. Aerosmith. Elton John and Billy Joel. The Who. Others.

What more defies the odds is the music itself, which was almost universally written off almost from birth as the temporary fascination of flighty teenagers who would tire of it as quickly as they tired of ducktail haircuts.

"I tell you flatly," Jackie Gleason is said to have declared, "it won't last."

He wasn't alone. He also wasn't right.

All that happened was that rock 'n' roll stretched. Some of stayed forever young, some of it grew up with the fans it acquired along the way.

Millions of Americans in their 50s, 60s and even 70s still love rock 'n' roll – the same way, a few years from now, the same will be true of rap, another musical style that was crucified as an alien invader when it arrived.

Bruce Springsteen isn't competing with Beyonce and Katy Perry for top-40 airplay these days. He doesn't have to. He can survive – blossom, thrive – by playing to a whole different crowd.

And that's the real story for his birthday.

The idea of musicians and singers performing into their 60s and 70s is as old as music and singing. Frank Sinatra did. Joe Turner did it.

The two main reasons it's perceived as different for rock 'n' rollers is that first, rock 'n' roll is still sometimes considered teenage music, and second, a Bruce Springsteen or Mick Jagger stage show is a little more physically taxing than a Tony Bennett stage show.

It's true that some of rock 'n' roll was and always will be for teenagers. It's truer that a lot of it always spoke to post-teens, and that's become even truer as time has passed.

Springsteen's most powerful album this decade, "The Rising," was for grownups, people who have been around long enough to think about something like 9/11 in contexts ranging from personal and political to theological. Dylan's best record this decade, "Love and Theft," was written from the perspective of someone Dylan's age – in his 60s.

Springsteen still occasionally sings "Growing Up," an hilarious and at times painful reminiscence on being the odd duck in school. Songs like "Born to Run" and "Thunder Road," or "Fourth of July (Sandy)," were songs of young, restless love.

But other songs he wrote while he was still in his 20s, like "Promised Land" or "Badlands," are contemplating matters that go way beyond that. The only thing that's changed in the 30 years since he wrote them is that they've become true in more ways.

In general, the artists who have kept performing into their 60s wrote songs that weren't just for kids. Even Chuck Berry, who is 83 and still occasionally performs though he has no voice left, didn't only write the teen anthems that made him famous.

"Johnny B. Goode" or "Maybelline" are just good stories.

Jerry Lee Lewis, who turns 74 next week, just recorded a new album. But he can still sing "Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On," because it's a party song, and a whole lotta people in their 60s or higher either still enjoy a good party or remember fondly when they did.

The general impression of many artists who perform into their 60s is that they are primarily selling memories, and it's true that if you hear a show by the Temptations or the Harptones or some splinter Beach Boys group, you'll hear very few songs that are less than 40 years old.

But those who therefore dismiss early rock 'n' roll as "oldies" or "nostalgia," as if those are frivolous indulgences of no measurable value, are kin to the same people who said rock 'n' roll had no value in the first place.

No one criticized Sinatra or Lena Horne for singing songs that were 40 or 50 years old. They were "standards" and "classics."

Bulletin: So is a whole lotta rock. Even the teenage part. A great teenage love song doesn't stop being a great love song when the listener turns 20.

Fans sometimes sneer at the Rolling Stones or Paul McCartney for "only" singing their old songs, as if singing songs that strong and resonant is just a cynical exercise in making money.

It's true enough that "Sympathy for the Devil" doesn't sound the same now as it did 40 years ago. It's a different time, a lot of things have happened - and none of them erase or diminish "Sympathy for the Devil."

The same is true when McCartney sings "The Long and Winding Road," or even "I Saw Her Standing There." Those songs last because there's something solid at the center, and hearing them sung by their creators is something that – well, let's lay it right down – isn't going to happen forever.

What price would a fan pay to hear John Lennon sing "In My Life," or Jimi Hendrix play "The Wind Cries Mary" again? We can't. They won't.

Rock 'n' roll classics now well over 50 years old are imbedded in the American DNA.

Hearing Bruce Springsteen sing his as he turns 60, and sing them well as he does, is a great bonus. It's not a surprise.