Springsteen, at twenty-one, made
his first foray out west with a bunch of comrades, and one of their dogs. The
three-day journey sounds like a rough ride in two vehicles, with no extra money
for stop-overs, and one of the human beings not knowing how to drive, but doing
so anyway.
In California, Springsteen says, “…we
stood speechless before what we saw. Giant old-growth trees, vegetation so lush
you’d get lost a few feet in off the walking path…I’d never stood in the midst
of nature like this and you could feel its humbling and intoxicating power. I
approached a tree the likes of which I’d never seen before…thousands of
butterflies exploded off its branches and shot into the hard blue sky. This was
another world.”
They were at a “human potential
spa”. Springsteen writes that there were “hot springs tucked into the side of a
cliff overlooking the sea. There were the springs, a cold bath, and everybody
naked.”
Their band played for the locals
and the paying guests in the evening, and “it all broke loose West Coast-style…we
played the crowd into a frenzy”. Springsteen remarks that at this place, “music
was a part of a larger tribal ‘consciousness raising’ event”.
From the grandest scale, cut to
the microscopic. He describes himself scrutinizing an army of ants as he waits
for his parents, by then in the Bay Area, to collect him from the highway. In his book, however,
Springsteen dedicates a chapter entitled Eastern Woman to his mother, and
describes her as a “raw, rough wonder”.
The elasticity in the way
Springsteen writes here about nature: grandiose descriptions of sweeping
landscapes, distant mountains and the heavens, then the (albeit unleashed)
butterflies, right down to the marching armies of ants, is mirrored by his
observations of human actions: Unhindered trance-dancers; meditative seekers; “groups
of people curled up on a green lawn in white sheets returning to their ‘amoeba
stage’”.
One would hazard a guess, and go
so far as to speculate over whether this might have, retrospectively, been a
turning-point of sorts for Bruce. A peep
into the fact that everything is possible, that while recognizing and honouring
the minutiae of things or circumstances, it was alright, and possible, and
do-able, to insist on the pursuit of the largest, the highest, the seemingly
impossible goal/s.
The frustration of a person with
high aspirations being conditioned to (and resisting) the scaling-down that one’s
circumstances, religion, socio-political order or upbringing impose on one are
hinted at at the very outset, when, in the opening paragraph of chapter one, he
writes: “…my world sprawls on into infinity, or at least to Peter McDermott’s
house…one block up”.
A rudimentary parallel might be
drawn, between the approaches of Capitalism and Communism, in the application
of the concept of absolutes having been created in terms of the individual
versus the collective; the small-scale versus the large-scale; the selfless
versus the selfish…and these may then be juxtaposed against other cultural and
social constructs that also have a bearing on how people and areas are governed
or not governed: the synthesis; the many avatars of the permutations and
combinations of the required mix of the required ingredients of the public and the
personal, whether in music, in society, or vis-a-vis the world economy.
Springsteen and his raw music
enter San Francisco, the land of not only a plethora of environmental activists
set in nature’s lap, and where “hippies ran free”, but of bands that, alas, seemed,
at that time, to play more “sophisticated” music than Bruce did.
If Springsteen experienced a
glorious desert-ride via Arizona on his first trip to California, he
experienced a snow-storm (snow-storms, he writes, can be truly unnerving) on
his ride to San Mateo, California, from New Jersey. New Jersey, the place where
he was a local star, and people stood next to him, proclaiming: King of New
Jersey! (We’re also told, in one of the early chapters, that the town of Freehold’s
first church service and first funeral were held in their family's living room).
Of snow-storms, he writes: “Back
east, we usually experience the freedom that comes with a good snowstorm. No work,
no school, the world shutting its big mouth for a while…A lot of snow, however…That
feeling of freeness turns to confinement. The sheer physical weight of the snow
becomes existential and the dread of a dark, covered world sets in. I’ve felt
it twice. Once in Idaho where it snowed circus clowns for seventy-two hours…”. Observations
such as these that run through the book convince a reader that while Bruce
Springsteen does not have any formal academic laurels to tom-tom, his analytical
abilities are not restricted to being the product of field-based research such
as knowing about the lives of common people from personal experience.
Springsteen’s environmentalism is
not restricted to him being awestruck by the natural world. His concern for
nuclear contamination is repeated in some of the imagery that he uses, such as
when he talks of the vessel that he and his father sailed in on their Mexican
holiday as “a bobbing rubber duck in a five-year-old’s bathtub". Most netizens
would’ve come across some version or the other of the story of the (i think) Chinese
cargo ship that was said to be carrying toy rubber ducks that capsized, and the
fact that these rubber ducks are said to show up on far-flung shores, and remind
humankind of the far-reaching impacts of any nuclear contamination of the seas.
The balance that must be struck between the rights of individuals, and the duties of individuals towards the community and the planet are at the heart of much of the enviornmental jurisprudence of countries such as India. These concepts require a greater amplification in order to meet challenges pertaining to human rights that people face world-wide.
Springsteen writes" "After the crash of 2008, I was furious at what had been done by a handful of trading companies on Wall Street. (The album) Wrecking Ball was a shot of anger at the injustice that continues on and has widened with deregulation, dysfunctional regulatory agencies and capitalism gone wild at the expense of hardworking Americans". Trump-esque in his concern specifically for the American working class (as perceived by an international observer). But clearly the very opposite of Trump in terms of there being no conflict of interest in the stands for the working class being taken by Bruce The Boss.
Regarding the making of the album The
River in 1979, he writes that he “began to steer the record into a rawer
direction…striking the perfect balance between a garage band and the
professionalism required to make good records…Along with ‘gravitas’, our shows
were always filled with fun…”. This was a progression (or movement, in any case), in the music and style
of performance, in comparison to what Springsteen had started out with. There are other indicators that he uses to trace movements and bolster his descriptions, and these include descriptions of garments, and of spaces.
The costumes in which he and his
musicians perform, as well as the clothes people wear in general, seem to be of
significance to the writer and the performer in him. As are the settings. Music as theatre.
In the days when he was in the
band The Castiles (the name of a brand of shampoo), they dressed “more like
a British R & B group” and played at places like the IB Club.
Closer to the present day, of when
he was about to play at the Super Bowl, he writes: “I’m sitting in my trailer
trying to decide which boots to wear. I’ve got a nice pair of cowboy boots my
feet look really good in, but I’m concerned about their stability…I better go
with the combat boots I always carry”.
Half-way through the book, one finds less of a
mention of garb, and this coincides with the overall chronology of the time
from where his music takes “an intentional left turn”. Uniforms turn to
individual choices, and Springsteen discontinues his practice of dictating
wardrobe choices to his band-members. People’s clothes are suddenly not
referred to as much as they were through the first half of the book. (He
specifically mentions that he has been writing this autobiography since 2009 in
long-hand, and one believes this, so one is convinced that the minor shift in
this aspect of the narration is not the inadvertent oversight of ghost
writers!).
The pure artistic eye for
sartorial style calls for a special mention, and comes across as being one of
the passions of the musician, worthy of follow-up commentary further on down
this read.
To be continued...you were reading Part 5 of Born to Interface
To be continued...you were reading Part 5 of Born to Interface
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