Springsteen Interviews - NY Times & Sunday Times: "... A Tallying of Cost and Loss..."

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THE TIMES, THEY ARE A-INTERVIEWIN'

Today's New York Times features a major feature on Springsteen, with A.O. Scott taking a visit to Asbury Park to speak with the man. Bruce talks about the underlying theme on the new record -- "a tallying of cost and loss... That's the burden of adulthood, period. But that's the burden of adulthood in these times, squared" -- as well as about its pop sensibility: "It was nice on this one to start to be a little bit more inclusive, with a little bit more of the poppier side of things, without losing any of the integrity... a nice change of pace to include those things and integrate them into the album, rather than having them be fun to record and then cast them aside." The article's title sums it up nicely; read "In Love With Pop, Uneasy With the World."

The Times on the other side of the pond has an interview as well -- read Dan Cairns' "We Need to Talk About America" from The Sunday Times.


From The New York Times:

And while the songs on “Magic” characteristically avoid explicit topical references, there is no mistaking that the source of the unease is, to a great extent, political. The title track, Mr. Springsteen explained, is about the manufacture of illusion, about the Bush administration’s stated commitment to creating its own reality.

“This is a record about self-subversion,” he told me, about the way the country has sabotaged and corrupted its ideals and traditions. And in its own way the album itself is deliberately self-subverting, troubling its smooth, pleasing surfaces with the blunt acknowledgment of some rough, unpleasant facts.

- snip -

“Magic” picks up where “The Rising” left off and takes stock of what has happened in this country since Sept. 11. Then, the collective experiences of grief and terror were up front. Now those same emotions lurk just below the surface, which means that the catharsis of rock ’n’ roll uplift is harder to come by. The key words of “The Rising” were hope, love, strength, faith, and they were grounded in a collective experience of mourning. There is more loneliness in “Magic,” and, notwithstanding the relaxed pop mood, a lot less optimism.

The stories told in songs like “Gypsy Biker” and “The Devil’s Arcade” are vignettes of private loss suffered by the lovers and friends of soldiers whose lives were shattered or ended in Iraq. “The record is a tallying of cost and of loss,” Mr. Springsteen said. “That’s the burden of adulthood, period. But that’s the burden of adulthood in these times, squared.”

In conversation, Mr. Springsteen has a lot to say about what has happened in America over the last six years: “Disheartening and heartbreaking. Not to mention enraging” is how he sums it up. But his most direct and powerful statement comes, as you might expect, onstage. It is not anything he says or sings, but rather a piece of musical dramaturgy, the apparently simple, technical matter of shifting from one song to the next.

From The Sunday Times:

“There are a lot of different ways I could address what had happened here over the past six years, and I realised, well, I don’t want to beat people over the head with it, first of all. Everybody’s lived through it — and, damn, that’s enough. And I’m not out there trying to replicate pop forms. I love using those sounds, but use them to what purpose, that’s the key.” It’s a furious album, I say, but surprisingly light. “Those are angry songs,” he replies, “but the lightness is intentional. It’s crucial. Because otherwise I’m on a soap-box, banging people over the head – with what? Anti-Bush messages? You have to make it personal. I love the seductive textures of pop music because they’re so beautiful and they bring you in.”

On Magic, he went back to first Bruce principles, to occupying his characters, to narrative. The “thread of realism” he sees running through the album, which culminates in the breathtaking stillness of the Iraq-vet story on Devil’s Arcade, is interrupted just once, by the upbeat 1960s pop of Girls in Their Summer Clothes. Yet that song contains possibly the most quintessentially Springsteen, lyric on an album crowded with heart-stopping images. “Things been a little tight,” says the narrator, “but I know they’re gonna turn my way.”

Better ask questions before you shoot/
The seed of betrayal is bitter fruit/
It's hard to swallow come time to pay/
That taste on your tongue don't easily slip away...

BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN - "Lonesome Day"

Released in June 2002.


What if what you do to survive/
Kills the things you love/
Fear's a powerful thing, baby/
It can turn your heart black you can trust/
It'll take your God filled soul/
And fill it with devils and dust

BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN - "Devils And Dust"

Released in April 2005.


Who'll be the last to die for a mistake/
The last to die for a mistake/
Whose blood will spill, whose heart will break/
Who'll be the last to die for a mistake

The wise men were all fools, what to do...

BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN - "Last To Die"

Released in October 2007.

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