Bruce is Back!

What with the new Devils & Dust CD/DVD just out, recent TV appearances, a solo acoustic tour just starting, some new DVDs of past concerts arriving in the house, we've been heavily into our Springsteen obsession of late, and are once again reminded that there is no more exciting time than when Bruce is on the road with a new "album" (he still calls them that, even though he knows it's an outdated term, so I will too).

One elemental truth about a Springsteen show is that he will start at a level of intensity that any other artist would strive for as a climax and then head for peaks well beyond anything you could imagine or hope for. I remember the first Springsteen concert I saw 25 years ago, just a few days after the release of The River. Until this point he had just four albums under his belt--two acknowledged masterpieces and two early efforts filled with remarkable songs known mostly to his eastern seaboard fan base. His toe-hold on stardom, such as it was at the time, was the album Born to Run and its title song. So instead of working up to his "hit" at the end of the show, he comes onstage and says to the band, "Let's go," and kicks right into "Born to Run." He had a double album of new songs to introduce (which most of us could already sing with him word-for-word) and the standards of his repertoire to work through, but he was starting on the top floor, intending to take us upward from there.

Four years later, when "Born in the U.S.A." made him a bigger name in the music business than he'd ever desired to be, he was still working the same way--starting a four-hour marathon with a gut-busting, ear-splitting performance of the hit single and then building the show's intensity from there. No one else works this way--not musicians, not actors, not authors, not athletes, and not the rest of us working stiffs who have to pace ourselves to reach payday in one piece. But Bruce is Bruce.

We saw him two nights ago at the beautiful and remarkably intimate Pantages Theatre in Hollywood, and he did something similar, this time in the context of an evolving set list crafted out of the character driven narratives of the new solo album and surprises from his monumentally varied songbook. Until this second night in L.A., he'd been starting the show with a very unusual rendition of "Reason to Believe," a seldom performed song from Nebraska, his first shot at stripped down solo recording from over 20 years ago.

But Tuesday night he comes out and sits himself down at a humble little pump organ that looks and sounds as if it came out of some country church that had been long since pulled down. And Bruce is dressed like one of the local workmen who might have been day-hired to work the demo job and had set aside the curious relic on a whim. A few chords in and we're not sure what he's going to spring on us, but we know whatever it is, it's the first time he's tried this on anybody. When he starts singing, though, we recognize the ethereal hymn, "My Beautiful Reward," that he used to close his Human Touch/Lucky Town shows with after the raucous road-housing had worn the audiences down enough to accept the fact that it was, perhaps, time to go home.

It is a slow, almost mournful song about the insight we gain from discovering our own frailty:

"I was so high I was the lucky one
Then I came crashing down like a drunk on a barroom floor
Searching for my beautiful reward"

The song finishes, though, with a dreamlike vision of a soaring spirit:

"I'm flyin' high over gray fields, my feathers long and black
Down along the river's silent edge I soar
Searching for my beautiful reward"

This was the blessing he laid on his audience as if to say, no matter what we may go through, there will eventually be something transcendent in a life of passionate pursuit and humble acceptance. This was the note that the Lucky Town album ended with and the concert performance strove to arrive at. And it was, indeed, "beautiful."

Now, a dozen or so years later, he regards this as a starting point! In a creative tactic similar to his working backwards in time from the gruesome and tragic opening of "Matamoros Banks," he now works from the benediction back through an exploration of the peaks and valleys of human experience. The goal here is not to celebrate or protest, not to judge, exalt, or complain, and not even to understand or triumph over our condition, but to see and simply feel the complexity of humanity.

So with the pump organ notes fading, he steps out center stage and launches into the most stark and chilling performance any of us are ever likely to behold on a "concert" stage. He grabs a harmonica and a microphone that bluesmen like Paul Butterfield or "Sonny Boy" Williamson might have selected to squish and distort their harp notes for extra reediness. No guitar, no keyboard, no proper vocal mic. Just a 15-inch or so square plank sitting on the stage, mic'd so that he can stomp his foot ferociously to mark the rhythm of "Reason to Believe." He sings into the harp mic and his words comes out about 98% distortion. Under a dim amber light, Bruce alternately blows into the harmonica and sings into the same mic, looking mostly at the floor, belting out this one he's described as "a song about blind faith with tragic results...a song about believin' in ghosts." The words are all but indistinguishable from the fuzz and the boot stomping, but here's how it opens:

"Seen a man standin' over a dead dog
lyin' by the highway in a ditch
He's lookin' down kinda puzzled pokin'
that dog with a stick
Got his car door flung open, he's
standin' out on Highway 31
Like if he stood there long enough that
dog'd get up and run
Struck me kind funny, seem kinda
funny, sir, to me
Still at the end of every hard day people
find a reason to believe"

We seem to be transported back to the rural South of the Great Depression, witnessing some roadside performance on a truck bed with a cheap amp and portable speaker set up to draw in a few field hands as they file home. (Perhaps we notice John Lomax off to the side with his portable recording equipment.) His jeans are torn at the knee, the boots noticeably dusty, his plain dark shirt's sleeves rolled above the elbows, and the hair, longer and wilder than usual. Hang a cigarette from the man's lip and he's the image of Woody Guthrie.

But we are in fact in this elegant deco theatre at Hollywood and Vine watching Bruce Springsteen wail and stomp so hard that he rattles things across the stage on his piano, even seems to short out the leaded glass lamp he's borrowed from home for the bare set's centerpiece. (When it's all over and he notices the damage, he says, "Patti's going to kill me!") The drama, though, is as consummate as any piece of theatre I've experienced. This is Man crawling from the inchoate morass and defining himself as human through sheer will power and a raspy voice.

Where can Bruce go from here? Upward. He brings in the comparatively melodic "Devils & Dust" next, a new song about doubt, fear, and the loss of innocence that's as anthemic as they get on the new album. From this tale of an American G.I. serving in Iraq we move on, as if considering nominees for a geographical center for our national angst. Immediately we're back in the faded glory of rust belt "Youngstown," then in post-9/11 New York's "Empty Sky." Before long he's moved to his piano bench and in an impromptu moment pulling up his socks, reflecting that a man can't make music with his socks falling down around his shoes--a lesson, he says, his mother taught him long ago--and his mind is already absorbed with mothers and sons, a theme that comes back repeatedly throughout the evening, first in "Silver Palomino," then in "Jesus Was An Only Son" and "The Hitter," as well as remarks between songs.

Once we've contemplated death, devastation, and various dimensions of loss, only then are we allowed to mention love. The set piece introduction he'd been using of late about coming to write love songs comparatively late in his career and looking back to find them disguised in earlier work lulls us into anticipating "For You" or "Incident on 57th Street," which he's done the night before, but then he tells us he's never done this next one on the piano and he'd just have to hope for the best. And we get this lovely, more-haunting-than-ever version of "The River," followed right away, again at the piano, by "Tougher Than the Rest," and then we know for certain that this is going to be an extraordinary evening of powerful moments. The intense personal moments of the Devils & Dust material like "Reno" and "Leah" or the surprise appearance of the sad narrative of conflicted loyalties for an INS agent on "The Line" are in no way diluted by the satire of "Part Man, Part Monkey" or its introductory remarks about a President who, contrary to appearances, may actually believe in evolution while he merely "does what he has to do so he can do what he wants to do." (Karl Rove he's not as charitable to!)

This is the most significant popular music artist of our era at the pinnacle of his creative and performing powers. He is working without the support of his supremely talented back-up musicians, who have themselves refined their talents over years on stage with Bruce, but at this moment must stand aside while their leader delves even deeper into his art. He has set aside the lush sound and ensemble energy of the E Street Band, moved into much smaller venues, and asks for nothing more than quiet and attention in exchange for an exquisite performance of unbelievable complexity and emotional resonance.

And where does it end this time? The audience hasn't been dancing, jumping, waving their arms, or singing along all evening, and there isn't going to be any "Quarter to Three," "Detroit Medley," "Twist and Shout," or "Light of Day," no "Ramrod," and no rock & roll exorcism tonight to send us out the door with our spirits lifted but bodies exhausted. And we've already heard "My Beautiful Reward" two and a half hours ago.

After three encore numbers--"Johnny 99" back at the harp mic, "If I Should Fall Behind," and "Waitin' on a Sunny Day" (joined by Nils Lofgren on guitar and vocal harmony)--we get an intense blue light aimed right in our eyes, and we lose sight of Bruce, except for what's captured on the video screens left and right of the stage, while he returns to a rhythmic tapping on the guitar body and a simple patting of strings in an open tuning for a very slowed down, deliberate, almost spooky version of "The Promised Land." The light in our eyes blinds us, but forces us simply to listen, to become lost in space that his words guide us through in a mood that captures God's parental dismay at his creation and a promise of redemption:

"The dogs on Main Street howl
'Cause they understand
If I could take one moment into my hands
Mister, I ain't a boy, no I'm a man
And I believe in a promised land"

It's been an evening's journey from the side of Highway 31 with an insane figure poking at a dead dog all the way to Main Street where we find a mature protagonist forged through hard times, still in possession of fundamental beliefs. If Bruce tells us we can pull through with our spirits intact, then perhaps it's true.