Bruce Springsteen has always heralded the alchemy of his E Street Band, that 1+1=3, force-of-nature magic that happens when these bar-band veterans join together at the end of the Boss’s four-count.
And after more than 50 years, Springsteen and the band still deliver that alchemy. The euphoric highs and solemn blues of a Springsteen show evoke a religious revival, albeit in the secular big tent of rock ’n’ roll. For the hardened fans, it’s why they keep coming back, ticket prices be damned.
But his current tour, incessantly and overtly political, is unique in the band’s history.
A pointed political message — anti-authoritarian invective aimed at the Trump administration — defines the set, from Springsteen’s monologues to the song selection. It stands out as an artistic artifact, both in his lengthy career and in the current popular music climate. Few artists of Springsteen’s stature have made a Trump-resistance message as central as Springsteen has since President Trump took office for a second time last year.
“We are no longer the land of the free, the home of the brave,” Springsteen said at a recent stop in his home state, New Jersey, as the opening notes to “My City of Ruins” rang in the background. It’s a line he has repeated night after night on this tour, from Minnesota to California. “To many we are now America the reckless, unpredictable, predatory rogue nation. That is this administration and this president’s legacy.”
Trump has taken notice. He has bullied the rock star on social media, calling him “a total loser” and a “very boring singer” and threatening legal retribution.
In response, Springsteen and the band appear to have only cranked their amps louder. The show begins with a thunderous cover of “War” before Max Weinberg’s rapturous snare drum launches into “Born in the U.S.A.” The purposeful placement of this antiwar anthem, often misappropriated as blindly patriotic with its upbeat synth line and rousing chorus, amounts to a reclamation of its true meaning — and a criticism of the American military offensive in Iran.
But their message remains focused solely on political differences. At his show in Austin, Texas, last Sunday, a night after gunshots rang out at the White House correspondents’ dinner, Springsteen condemned the violence and stressed the importance of peaceful debate.
“We also send out a prayer of thanks that our president, nor anyone in the administration, nor anyone attending, was injured at last night’s incident,” Springsteen said. He added, “We can be critical of those in power, and we can peacefully fight for our beliefs, but there is no place in any way, shape or form for political violence of any kind in our beloved United States.”
Hope, dreams and politics
Springsteen, of course, has never shied from politics. He’s endorsed every Democratic candidate for president since 2004. Early in his career, he joined the “No Nukes” protest concert and rallied at the Stone Pony, the Jersey Shore rock club he often frequented, in support of union workers whose factory was closing.
His 2000 song “American Skin (41 Shots)” invoked the 41 bullets that New York police officers fired in the fatal shooting of Amadou Diallo, a West African immigrant holding only a wallet. The title track of the album “Devils and Dust” explored the brutality of the Iraq war from the eyes of a soldier in 2005. A far less known track on that album, “Matamoros Banks” — a dark portrait of the dangers facing migrants trying to cross the U.S. southern border — perhaps did the most to foreshadow Springsteen’s outrage at immigration agents flooding American cities.
While those songs leaned on imagery and implications, though, “Streets of Minneapolis,” the protest song he wrote after federal agents killed two American citizens in Minnesota earlier this year, is exceptionally explicit. As it reached its climax in Jersey last month, Springsteen urged the crowd to repeat the lyric, “ICE out now.”
And yet, if the underlying cause for the tour is concern about the state of the country, the shows remain distinctively Springsteen. Like his blues-in-the-verse, gospel-in-the-chorus method of songwriting, Springsteen offers a prayer for the country not lodged in solemnity, but in jubilation. That while hard times come, hard times also go. And that while music is transformational, a concert is supposed to be joyful for the performers and, more important, for their fans.
“We never planned this tour, but we came out because I needed to feel your hope, your strength, and I needed to hear your voices,” Springsteen said near the end of the show in Jersey, a line he has used throughout the tour and will likely repeat as he performs in Pennsylvania, New York and Washington, D.C., in the coming weeks. “My wish is that we brought some hope and some strength for you tonight.”
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