Theology Today - Vol 45, No.1 - April 1988 - CRITIC'S CORNER

87 - The Gospel According to Bruce

The Gospel According to Bruce

ABOUT six years ago, a couple of my student friends from New Jersey introduced me to the music of Bruce Springsteen. From his album The River through Nebraska to Born in the USA, I have been a fan, convinced that here was a contemporary artist who spoke with authority. The incredibly successful, fifteen-month international tour of "The Boss" and The E Street Band clearly confirms this conviction. Born in the USA has sold ten million copies, and Bruce was chosen "Artist of the Year" for the second straight year by The Rolling Stone magazine. In addition to all this, the release of his five record live album threatens to break all sales records. Clearly, such a phenomenon is worthy of a closer look, theologically speaking.

The focus in this essay is on the lyrics or content of Bruce's "gospel." In some ways, this is as it should be. Yet, as both contemporary hermeneutics and those who have attended a Springsteen concert will attest, the relation between the medium and the message grows tighter as the issues become more pivotal. Thus, it is essential to encounter Bruce's content as an inextricable mix of message and medium. Nevertheless, the lyrics serve as the ideational pole of this symbiotic reality, and in a sense they can be thought of as poetry as well as song. The lyrics, then, shall be the main concern here.

Springsteen's music speaks for a large segment of the American public, particularly those on the lower half of the socioeconomic spectrum, blue collar young adults. The reality of such folk is a far cry from the yuppie world of Madison Avenue and prime-time television. It is also very much out of step with the up-beat flavor of other current music about contemporary America. In connection with the anniversary of the Statue of Liberty, we were subjected to B.J. Thomas' rendition of a new song which interprets freedom in terms of stardom and commercial success. We've already had our fill of half-time shows and automobile ads brimming with pseudo-patriotic tripe about the virtues of being "Born in America." Even James Brown, who ought to know better, got into the act with "Living in America."

Springsteen focuses on the personal dimension of the American dream gone sour, against the backdrop of a severe economic recession and urban wastelands. County roads, criss-crossing between deserted farmlands, polluting oil refineries, and boarded-up textile mills, comprise the warp and woof of Bruce's vision of "America on the move."

Jerry H. Gill teaches philosophy and religious studies at the College of St. Rose in Albany, New York. His most recent book is Faith in Dialogue (1987).

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And yet, there is a transformative or redemptive quality within his music, which goes beyond mere social commentary and critique. He not only laments certain aspects of American life, but he affirms specific values and creates opportunities for renewal as well.

Before moving to such considerations, however, it is important to take a look at the images through which Springsteen experiences and expresses contemporary American life. These images revolve around the theme of bondage and can be summarized briefly as follows. First, there is the bondage of place. Over and over again, in Springsteen songs, we are introduced to people who are prisoners within the walls of their own town, neighborhood, or home. This is especially evident in "Born in the USA." Ronald Reagan's superficial misreading to the contrary notwithstanding. The scars of the Vietnam fiasco are still very evident in the lives of those who returned home to end up a "long gone daddy in the USA."

Repeatedly, the protagonists in Bruce's songs speak of their home as a "valley," a "cage," or a "killing floor." In "Jackson Cage" (from The River album):*

You can try with all your might
but you're reminded every night
That you've been judged and handed life
Down in the Jackson cage

In what may well be the most moving song on the Born in the USA album, "My Hometown," Bruce contrasted the simple life of a pre-sixties boyhood with that of a contemporary youth. The race riots, boarded up Main Street, and lay-offs at the mill that came between the generations alter completely the meaning of the opening and closing refrain, "Son, take a good look around-this is your hometown."

Another prominent set of images related to bondage is that of roads, streets, and cars, each of which promises escape from the bondage of place, but fails to deliver. The Nebraska album is dominated by stories of losers on the road, though this is anticipated in The River album. For example, the driver in "Stolen Car" cries:

I'm driving a stolen car
On a pitch black night
and I'm telling myself I'm gonna be all right
But I ride by night and I travel in fear
That in this darkness I will disappear.

In another song on The River album, Springsteen longs for the freedom that being "out in the streets" affords from the drudgery of manual labor:

When that whistle blows
Girl, I'm down in the street
I'm home, I'm out of my work clothes

*All quotations from Springsteen's lyrics are used by permission of Jon Landau Management, Inc.

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When I'm out in the street
I walk the way I wanna walk
I talk the way I wanna talk

But even the freedom of the streets turns out to be a trap in "Working on the Highway" (Born in the USA). "Laying down the blacktop, blasting through the bedrock" keeps you thinking of "a pretty little miss" and hoping for "a better life than this," whether you work for the foreman or the warden!

Another mode of bondage in the Springsteen vision is bondage in time, especially the past. Sometimes it is tradition that does you in, the established ways of doing things. The opening lines of "The River" (The River) state it well: "I come from down in the valley, where mister when you're young, they bring you up to do like your daddy done." Other times, it is bad luck, the twist of fate, as in "Downbound Train" (Born in the USA):

I had a job, I and a girl
I had something going, mister, in this world
I got laid off, down at the lumber yard
Our luck went bad, times got hard
Don't you feel like a rider on a Downbound Train?

It can even be the bondage of your own memories, especially if they turn out to be all you've got left. "Glory Days" (Born in the USA) touches a chord that lies deep within nearly all of us, whether we were sports heroes, romantic idols, or just wished we were. As Springsteen puts it:

Glory Days, they'll pass you by
In the wink of a young girl's eye
Just sittin' back, trying to recapture a little of the Gloria
The time slips away, leaves you with nothin'
Mister, but boring stories of Glory Days.

Still another dimension of bondage is romantic love. On the one hand, Bruce affirms the positive value of love and marriage. On The River album, he sings that "Two Hearts are Better Than One" and "Little Girl, I Wanna Marry You." On the other hand, many of his songs are filled with images of love gone sour and broken vows. Far too often, relationships are short term, eaten up by lack of will or by circumstance. In "I'm Goin' Down" (Born in the USA), this form of bondage is experienced as particularly sad and vicious:

When we kiss I can feel the doubt
I remember when my kisses used to turn you inside out
I'm sick and tired of you settin' me up
Just to knock-a, knock-a, knock-a me down

On this same album, Springsteen mourns for a former sweetheart who has left home with no forwarding address. After having been so close, they can no longer communicate and all he can say is: "I miss you baby; good luck, good bye, Bobby Jean."

The only escape from this type of bondage is yet another form of

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bondage, one which may well be worse. On the Born in the USA album, there are two songs that cry out for any kind of romantic contact as a relief from emptiness and hostility. In "Dancing in the Dark," Springsteen sings:

I ain't nothing but tired
Man I'm tired and bored with myself
Ya can't start a fire without a spark
This gun's for hire, even if we're just Dancin' in the Dark.

And in "Cover Me," the plea is for "a lover who will come on in and cover me."

This overall theme of bondage is captured powerfully in the image of darkness. Very frequently the setting for these songs is nighttime, and the general mood of many others is one of gloom and grey despair. The opening line of "Independence Day" (The River) puts it well: "There's a darkness in this town that's got the best of us."

In the midst of all these images of bondage, Springsteen still expresses hope and affirms redemptive values. To begin with, the very energy and joy of his music, as well as his performances, celebrate the healing and creative powers of art and the human spirit. Springsteen's poetic and musical talent generates the enthusiasm and sense of renewal matched only by the Beatles, the original Motown sound, and Elvis himself. In "The Gospel According to Bruce," the medium is, to a large degree, both the message and the massage!

A second dimension of the affirmative and redemptive motif in Bruce's work is his emphasis on the power and importance of individual decision and responsibility. Throughout these albums, it is perfectly clear that even though the circumstances of life seem to conspire against certain folks, one can choose to meet such developments with integrity and loyalty. Through all the ups and downs, and without pulling any punches about who is responsible for what, it never occurs to Springsteen's protagonists to give up hurting and caring for the people involved. Nearly every song virtually aches with the pain of estrangement and the desire for reconciliation. Loyalty in commitment and the integrity to pay the price for the decisions we make, as well for "the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune," predominate in the Springsteen vision.

The first cut on the second side of Born in the USA ("No Surrender") puts it forcefully:

blood brothers in the stormy night
with a vow to defend
We made a promise,
No retreat, baby, no surrender.

Perhaps the first stanza of "The Price You Pay" (The River) focuses it

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best:

You make up your mind, you choose the chance you take
You ride to where the highway ends and the desert breaks
Out on to an open road you ride until the day
You learn to sleep at night with the price you pay.

And later in the same song:

Now they'd come so far and they'd waited so long
Just to end up caught in a dream where everything goes wrong
Where the dark of night holds back the light of the day
And you've got to stand and fight for the price you pay.

In addition, there is a great deal of stress in Springsteen's songs on the significance of family ties and realistic love. "The Ties That Bind" (The River) expresses the same commitment to loyalty of kin as several of the songs on the Nebraska album. This family connection greatly intensifies the bondage to place mentioned earlier, since people and location so often go together. In "My Hometown" (Born in the USA) and "Independence Day" (The River), the intergenerational fabric is greatly valued and only painfully severed. In the latter, the estrangement between father and son is off-set by their common life and oppression, and the departing son says: "They ain't gonna do to me what I watched them do to you." In the former, we are left wondering whether a young father will ever actually be able to separate his young son from their common hometown and family ties.

Although he generally seems both weary and wary of romantic love, Springsteen expresses subtle belief in a realistic love that is aware of its own limitations and common difficulties. In "Glory Days," there is a lasting and potentially romantic friendship with the girl from high school who turned "all the young guys heads, who now lives alone with her small children and laughs about the old days in order to keep from crying." "Bobby Jean" also represents a "post-romanticist" friendship that is capable of renewal on the basis of deep and realistic caring and understanding.

The possibility of true love among the ambiguities of life is affirmed forcefully in "Two Hearts Are Better Than One" (The River):

Though this world turns you hard and cold
There's one thing, Mister, that I know
That's if you think your heart is stone
And that you're rough enough to whip this world alone
Alone, buddy, there ain't no peace of mind
That's why I'll keep searching 'til I find
My special one.

On the same album, Springsteen sings: "To say I'll make your dreams come true would be wrong, but maybe, darlin', I could help them along" ("I Wanna Marry You"). It is evident that, for Springsteen, the love that will work is one that a person grows into, rather than falls into. Indeed, his latest album, entitled Tunnel of Love, develops this realism

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quite explicitly. While the themes of romantic disappointment and betrayal continue to be heard, the overall stress in this work is on the possibility of growth and maturity based on honesty and commitment. These two emphases are intertwined in the last stanza of the title song, even as they must be in a successful relationship.

It ought to be easy ought to be simple enough
Man meets a woman and they fall in love
But the house is haunted and the ride gets rough
And you've got to learn to live with what you can't rise above
If you want to ride on down in through the tunnel of love.

Finally, there even are places where Springsteen's songs hint at the possibility of religious faith as a viable source of renewal. To be sure, the biblical imagery scattered throughout his albums, emerging from his Catholic upbringing, is frequently negative in quality. Thus, "My Father's House" and "Reason To Believe," from the Nebraska album, both speak cryptically of traditionally religious themes, raising the question of their meaning and value in contemporary life. At the conclusion of his nightmare, in the first of these two songs, the singer is told that his father "doesn't live here anymore." And in the second song, we are not told what to make of the fact that, despite the seeming evidence to the contrary, people continue "to find a reason to believe." Here, again, the most recent album, Tunnel of Love, is relevant. In nearly every song there is some specific reference to God, faith, or prayer. These are not focal references, but they do contribute to the general positive spiritual background of Springsteen's presentation of realistic love and marriage. Specifically, in these songs prayer seems to function as a natural aspect of day-to-day commitment, rather than as a substitute for it.

III

Perhaps the most powerful use of religious imagery is found in the song, "The River." Here nearly all the negative images discussed previously converge: bondage to place, to circular mobility, to the past, to romantic love, and to the American dream of personal freedom and opportunity. I can do no better at this point than quote the lyrics of this deeply moving song, concluding with a few remarks about the religious significance of Springsteen's music.

I come from down in the valley
Where, mister, when you're young
They bring you up to do like your daddy done
Me and Mary we met in high school
When she was just seventeen
We'd drive out of this valley down to where the fields were green
We'd go down to the river
And into the river we'd dive
Oh down to the river we'd ride.
Then I got Mary pregnant
And, man, that was all she wrote
And for my 19th birthday I got a union card and a wedding coat.

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We went down to the courthouse
And the judge put it all to rest
No wedding day smiles, no walk down the aisle
No flowers, no wedding dress.

That night we went down to the river
And into the river we'd dive
Oh down to the river we did ride.

I got a job working construction for the Johnstown Company
But lately there ain't been much work on account of the economy
Now all them things that seemed so important
Well, mister they vanished right into the air
Now I just act like I don't remember
Mary acts like she don't care

But I remember us riding in my brother's car
Her body tan and wet down at the reservoir
At night on them banks I'd lie awake
And pull her close just to feel each breath she'd take.
Now those memories come back to haunt me
They haunt me like a curse
Is a dream a lie if it don't come true
Or is it something worse,
that sends me
Down to the river
Though I know the river is dry
That sends me down to the river tonight
Down to the river
My baby and I
O down to the river we ride.

The axial image here is, of course, the river, one which obviously carries many religious connotations. The centrality of the river Jordan in biblical stories and traditional hymns lies just beneath the surface of our common cultural heritage. In this song, the river clearly serves as a source of cleansing and renewal; at least it is remembered as such, even though it has now dried up. The traditional sources of cleansing and renewal in our culture, including religion, are experienced by many as having dried up. In spite of this, the couple in the song continue to return to these sources. Is it only out of habit? Is it because of a curse or something worse? What is it? It is hard to tell.

Something very positive is going on here, something which stimulates sensitivity to the needs of those "caught in a dream where everything goes wrong" and awakens us to the possibility of reconciling activity in relation to them. In both his lyrics and his music, Springsteen insists that things can and should be different, and that caring can make a difference. It is only a human vision, to be sure, one which may well call for more, but one which demands no less.

When all is said and done, Bruce Springsteen is a storyteller. He creates concrete stories about people we know and places we have been.

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They are stories by means of which we confront ourselves and the issues of daily existence in contemporary America. Like all works of art, Springsteen's stories are limited in scope and depth by their very concreteness. Yet, their unique texture and thrust render them powerful and authentic. These are "parables" like those of a certain carpenter, meant not so much to be interpreted as they are to be encountered, engaged, and incorporated.

Strictly speaking, the message mediated in and through Springsteen's parables" is not "gospel" at all. He hardly can be hailed as bearer of glad tidings." Neither, however, is his message all gloom and doom. As has been indicated, there are several redemptive chords and progressions at the core of his music. Although these are decidedly humanistic or "horizontal" in character, they are in harmony with those of a more theistic or "vertical" vision. There are no direct references to or signals of transcendence, but they are not rejected or necessarily excluded.

The simple fact is that even a transcendent vision must be spoken of and experienced in concrete, human language and life. Divine love and grace, as well as judgment, cannot exist in a vacuum or entirely separate from their human forms. The latter do not exhaust the former, but they are essential to them. Thus, wherever human commitment, love, and hope are affirmed and embodied, there too is God. In this way, Springsteen's work can be understood as creating a space where divine reality may be encountered, albeit indirectly.

This brings us back to the story-telling theme. As Emily Dickinson put it: "Tell all the truth but tell it slant." It may well be that spiritual truth can only be expressed indirectly, on the "slant." Before too many questioning eyebrows are raised over the lack of direct connection between the gospel according to Bruce and those according to Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, it should be acknowledged that not only did Jesus teach primarily in parables, but none of his parables contained any direct reference to God. The connection between Jesus' parables about everyday human life and divine reality was left to the hearer to make on the basis of the context in which they were offered.

My point is not that Bruce's gospel and the Christian gospel are essentially the same, nor that the differences do not matter. The point is, rather, that because of its authentic expression of the limitations and possibilities of contemporary human existence, the music of Bruce Springsteen creates opportunities for encountering the reconciliation of God in Christ. Moreover, these opportunities serve as well to help us interpret the character of this divine reconciliation. In the idiom of Tillich, there is indeed a correlation between the questions raised by existence and the answer of the gospel. But the correlation is always a two-way street; each sheds light on the other. Thus, though the "gospel" of Bruce Springsteen, is surely not the last word, it is significant in our contemporary context.