Driving to work yesterday in The Peace Mobile listening to The River. Springsteen.
Started thinking about how a skinny young rocker evolves into a worldwide icon and what that does to the music.
You start a rock band as a kid on purely idyllic footing. That is assuming you are not a fraud. I think if you go into it expecting to get rich and famous, you will not get there. That's because it has to come from the heart. You have to to do it for love and from love. That is what connects music to an audience. Adele is not kicking ass because her music is pretty. She kicks ass because her songs come from the heart; she is expressing raw emotion, taking pain and converting it like a musical alchemist into universal understanding.
Adele kicks ass because her audience - male and female - raise their fists and metaphorically shout "Goddamn right! Take that, a**hole!" Coming straight from their own hearts.
You start out as this guy Bruce Springsteen, you put together an awesome band because talent attracts talent, you write from the heart, you perform with everything you got (Bruce looks like his head is going to explode every time he rocks; he gives it his all; I dig that) and suddenly you have an audience. Because they identify with what you are saying.
I identify with the songs and I have only been a blue collar worker accidentally in my life. Even as a pampered white collar professional I was still stuck in something I didn't understand, I worked for the boss man who didn't know or care that I existed, I hated my job and felt trapped with limited choices.
And still when I'm out on the street I walk the way I want to walk, when I'm out on the street I talk the way I want to talk.
That's the point. He hits universal points, universal concerns, universal confusion, disappointment and suffering.
And suddenly the whole world loves your music, your band and you become BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN.
The man assumes great responsibility and addresses mature themes, political agendas, human injustices and still his music rocks and still his audience loves him. He is maturing, they are maturing, the music and the message are maturing.
Nobody saw this coming when The Beatles took the world hostage. Not in 1963. By the end of their career it was obvious that there is a magical, mystical relationship between how a human changes and how the music changes.
Springsteen handles this gracefully. He has gravitas but I sense that he is still grounded. I love U2 but sometimes Bono comes across as a pompous ass.
I was listening to an album released in 1980 and was right there with it. I listen to and love his new stuff. I love what this band has to say and I love to just lose myself in the music sometimes. Listening to Independence Day yesterday, a song about change, a song about moving on, a song about a Dad and his son going in different directions. An achingly emotional song. The Big Man cranks up his sax for a solo and it just aches with emotion. No words, just a man and his sax, and it is every bit as emotional as the words themselves.
Connecting on every level. That is real, it is honest, it is the human experience expressed in a raw and elemental way.
This man and his band have become bigger than rock 'n roll, bigger than the music industry, bigger than a success story and they still maintain a sense of perspective. They still rock and they still connect with their audience.
Amazing stuff and food for my soul. Contunuously evolving. Probably into my twilight years.
That is one hell of a statement and light years down the road from where that skinny kid got his inspiration.
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