The Rising
Bruce Springsteen
Sony Music
REVIEW BY
RICHARD PITHOUSE
Bruce Springsteen's new album, The Rising, has been marketed as vigorously as his 1984 Born in the USA album and, as with that album, has achieved massive commercial success.
Born in the USA's bitter attack on Reaganite nationalism was famously misunderstood as support, by Reagan and millions of others. Springsteen responded with horror and went on to produce unambiguously radical work without the sing-a-long choruses the industry thought necessary for mass appeal (and to make regular anonymous donations to striking unions and other progressive causes).
His sincerity has not been seriously questioned. After all, this is a man who has continually stood with, and challenged, his working-class audience while spurning overtures from Reagan, Bill Clinton and, after a short flirtation, Hollywood.
Some critics have suggested that Springsteen culpably underestimates the lack of attention with which a large section of the rock market receives its product. This is a little harsh. Consider the lyrics to Born to Run: Baby this town rips the bones from your back/ it's a death trap, it's a suicide rap/ we've got to get out while we're young.
On more than one occasion, New Jersey politicians have proposed that Born to Run become the official state anthem. This refusal by politicians and music critics to venture beyond the surface of Springsteen's work shouldn't surprise us too much. It is inevitable in an era where short-term profits have been fetishised to the degree that any journey beyond sound-bites and cliche has to be taken on stolen time. To demand that artists with a higher vision for humanity abandon nuance in order to avoid misinterpretation is to ask us to become our enemies in order to fight them on their terms. That makes defeat inevitable.
With the exception of the British Guardian's sneering snobbery for an album that takes the ordinary struggles of ordinary people seriously, most of the mainstream Western media have received The Rising rapturously. But many journalists have misunderstood this album as badly as Reagan misunderstood Born in the USA. Even the most cursory listen leaves no doubt that The Rising is not a rousingly patriotic tribute to a spirit of resilience imagined to be a uniquely American result of the rigours of free enterprise.
The Rising is a hymn to humanity. There is a deep and often spiritual reverence for both the victims and families of the alleged al Qaeda attacks on September 11 and a number of Arab characters, including a suicide bomber. It is his capacity for reverence that enables Springsteen to express and generate such deep respect for the lives of the ordinary, the forgotten and the despised.
Springsteen's work has always valued lives lived without glamour. But even songs like Factory (1978), about the mass sackings of workers and the closures of industries by big business, didn't move beyond tragedy and point to an identifiable enemy. In his more recent work, this has started to change and in Youngstown (1995) he was able to say, with devastating impact, Them big boys did what Hitler couldn't do.
But there are no enemies in The Rising. There is not one word about US imperialism or al Qaeda's fascist response. There are no calls for a collective engagement with the forces that put profit and power before life. There is just a feeling of tragedy, a deep reverence for the value of all human life and a longing for redemption. The Rising says much that needs to be said in America but it doesn't say everything.
It is not without politics though. A Palestinian suicide bomber is among the ultimate enemies in US President George Bush's world, so Springsteen's equal reverence for the life of a New York firefighter and a Palestinian suicide bomber is a radical statement. During performances in his current tour, Springsteen performs his tribute to the firefighters who perished at the World Trade Center back to back with American Skin (41 Shots), his ode to the Senegalese immigrant murdered by the New York Police Department.
American Skin (41 Shots) led to Springsteen being called a fucking commie dirtbag by a representative from the NYPD when it was first performed in 2000. On occasion, he has had to tell booing audiences to shut the fuck up and show some respect when he has played it. Springsteen's willingness to radically inspire, then challenge his mass audiences is a remarkable achievement. It is built on both his musical and poetic genius and his refusal to retreat from the broader we into some self-righteous avante garde that despises actually existing humanity.
However, The Rising is not Springsteen's best. While the album has some magnificent moments, like the sublime Paradise, it feels a little rushed in parts.
Worlds Apart is noble in that it gives a character the hopes and desires of a classic Springsteen hero (and even puts him on a highway rolling into the dark) but replaces a typical Springsteen reference to God with a reference to Allah. The implicit message is that the rich and complex vision of what it means to be human developed by Springsteen through 30 years of songs includes Arabs as much as Americans.
But Worlds Apart feels lyrically contrived and has none of the subtle attention to detail that has allowed Springsteen to so successfully put his narrators' voice in the bodies of everyone from a man dying of AIDS to a Vietnamese fisherman facing down the Texas Klan and a Mexican crossing the Rio Grande.
There is also something a little contrived about the collaboration with a group of Pakistani Qawali musicians on Worlds Apart. Eddie Vedder and Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan have shown that rock and Qawali can be woven together beautifully, and Springsteen himself used the harmonium very effectively on The Ghost of Tom Joad, but here the collaboration sounds like it needed a little more time to find itself.
There is a line in The Rising about making a fool of oneself for love, and there are times when one has to do the same for justice. It is better to rush out a song that makes a very necessary point than to wait for the perfect song (or article or march or strike) and miss the time. History is demanding. And justice has less patience than art.
Mary's Place puts Springsteen's moral project before his artistic project in a quite different way. The story of a bereaved person facing their first party without their lover sounds like it could have been recorded 20 years ago. No doubt that is the exact point with some courage life's familiar pleasures may endure. The words are important and will speak to the bereaved. But the music itself is very, very ordinary and must have been rushed. It wouldn't have made it on to any other Springsteen album.
The Rising uses a US tragedy to develop reverence for American lives and then extend that reverence to Arab lives. It has put these ideas in to the air and some people will listen. That matters. But if you're looking for a perfectly crafted Springsteen album you'd do better to spend your money on records like Nebraska, The Ghost of Tom Joad or the recent live album, with its sublime versions of The River, Youngstown and American Skin (41 Shots).
From Green Left Weekly, September 4, 2002.
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