Word: springsteen
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Because of the overwhelming success of The Boss's latest tour, many of his followers--greatly swelled in number--were expecting Springsteen's next album to be a live record. But instead the 33-year old performer has taken a tack which threatens the immense popularity he has recently gained after 10 years of unrivaled performing and recording. Nebraska, released last week, is a compelling and daring solo effort featuring the most severe music of Springsteen's career; with rarely more than an acoustic guitar, Springsteen confronts his America and its fallen characters in a most disturbing, direct and effective...
...characters in Nebraska endure further hardships, and each receives fair treatment from Springsteen's restrained guitar, wailing harmonica and moaning, groaning vocals. "Highway Patrolman" is a story narrated by one Sergeant Joe Roberts who maintains a close relationship to a no-good brother. Two other characters end their stories with a similar, pathetic command directed at no one in particular: "...deliver me from nowhere...
...nature, Nebraska represents a brilliant accomplishment. From his first 1973 release--the stream of consciousness, Dylanesque Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J.-- to the spare The River in 1980, he has continually relied more heavily on the characters and moods he creates, decreasing the importance of the music accompanying them. Springsteen fully realizes his role as a songwriter and chronicler of modern day America in his new album. In this raw, folk style, he actually produces a work offering many of the benefits of his long-desired live album. Recorded in his own basement on a four-track cassette recorder, these...
...year old in 1958 killed 10 Nebraskans in eight days--all with his 14-year old girlfriend by his side. The deaths were gruesome and the body count included the girlfriend's mother, stepfather and baby half-sister. In a pattern consistent throughout the disturbing album, Springsteen adopts the voice of the protagonist and it is a sympathetic, rather unjudgmental one. Borrowing lines from the true Starkweather story which was later popularized in the film Badlands, Springsteen writes: "I can't say that I'm sorry for the things that we done At least for a little while...
...While Springsteen's sympathy for his victims does not aim to legitimize their actions, it effectively draws the connection between personal tragedies and larger social ills. The answers to these problems are not apparent and perhaps less so than they have been in less threatening times. But the despair which once prompted down trodden characters to "spit in the face of these badlands" and "take a knife and cut this pain from my heart" on previous albums now produces little of this feisty desire to combat debilitating odds. Pleads the jailed autoworker in "Johnny 99": "Then...