18. Wrecking Ball - Bruce Springsteen

 I’m relatively new to the Bruce Springsteen collective. 

I mean, sure, I knew Dancin’ in the Dark, Born in the USA (embarrassingly, I’d always made the same mistake as Reagan - until I knew better), Streets of Philadelphia, Born to Run and Glory Days. 

But he’d always felt like yesterday’s artist, a great chronicler of the 80s, but not terribly relevant now.

I was, it’s fair to say, quite wrong.

* * *

He and his band had released their Wrecking Ball album in 2012.

I didn’t know he had, but my father-in-Law (one of the great music fans) told me I should check it out. Being a dutiful son in law, I gave it a try. 

And I found out that it’s a pretty good album. Even without Rolling Stones ridiculous level of fanboy bias, it’s a decent listen. 

We Take Care of Our Own, which I’ve always taken to be a sarcastic statement on American hypocrisy, does a jaunty job of mixing irony and anger.

Shackled and Drawn calls back to his Pete Seeger sessions with Bruce in his preaching robes, backed by a choir, sounding fresh from a rendition of We Shall Overcome. It’s simple, but it’s angry. 

And I think it’s that anger that makes this album so powerful for me. 

It was released in 2012.

We were three years past the start of the GFC and it was becoming clear that - typically - the ones that have we’re going to get away scot free, while the ones that have not would be stuck cleaning up yet another mess. 
 
Despite the clear disparity between his personal wealth and the workers he’s so closely identified with, Springsteen remains angry at the continued destruction of the middle and working classes. 
 
As well he should be - I tried to avoid Marxist theory at university, but geez it’s hard to see what’s going on and not see it as a class conflict. 
 
Anyway - Jack of all Trades, with its plaintive hope that ‘we’ll be alright’ is a frightfully sad plea, from the view of somebody with no strict skills, but plenty of know how.
 
American Land, with that fiddle line, is just begging to ­soundtrack a jig dancing scene in the next Scorsese film. 
 
But it’s also a loud scream into the face of anti-immigration, dog-whistling, entitlement, and those happy to exploit cheap labour while bathing in ignorant xenophobia.

And, finally, there’s the title track, Wrecking Ball.

It’s not a bad song, but I remember thinking it was a little naff, a bit formulaic. And when I read it was about the destruction of a football stadium in New Jersey, I switched off.

“Another nothing song”, I thought to myself.

*                             *                             *

We were lucky enough to go to the Springsteen concert at Rod Laver in Melbourne at the start of 2013, March I think it was. 

I was excited – I’d been listening to his back catalogue for months waiting for this. Nebraska remains my favourite of his albums – Open All Night all the way – but I was pumped to hear any number of his songs.

Things had taken a bit of a turn in my practice, no longer were we rapidly going backwards; we were doing good work and getting paid for it. 

Things were improving and it looked like maybe, just maybe, the worst of it was behind us. This night was all about enjoying it, celebrating the start of a new chapter.

We had some dinner and walked down to the stadium, with a crowd that kept growing.

Occasionally somebody that looked as if they should know better would shout out ‘Bruce!’ and a short chant would go up, which was a bit discomforting.

I’m not one for public displays of enthusiasm, let alone crowd chanting, but on we walked.

We found our seats and settled in, excitedly talking about what we’d heard, the songs we were hoping for and what might happen.

Then, on came the band.

Now, it’s not often that I’m dragged out of my seat to dance and clap and sing and carry on, but it was like that from the first damned song. 

And not just me - the ENTIRE audience was up. The sound from the crowd was incredible, even in the audio black hole that is that tennis stadium. 

The feeling was electric, rapturous, joyous, ecstatic. There were the classics, the deep cuts and the new songs. 

15,000 people clapping, not-quite-but-near-enough in time, is something to experience. Strangers grinning at people, cheering, slapping each other on the back.

It was incredible.

All the usual applies - Springsteen’s guitar work was incredible, the drummer, Max Weinberg (The Librarian to me) ran like a Swiss clock the entire time, there was banter and there was Clarence Clemons nephew hitting the saxophone while the audience remembered the late giant. 

Then we came to Wrecking Ball. 

*                             *                             *

The lights drop, and it starts with Springsteen’s guitar playing that wobbly guitar line. 

Here comes His voice. 

The first verse is quiet, it takes a few lines before the strings come in. It’s just that voice and the floppy guitar line. 

The strings start whispering - their sound thickens as we move along.

People are fidgeting. The clapping begins, led by the steady beat on the drum.

The triangle is in there, and now here comes the Librarian. Bring up the lights.

A flourish on the guitars, hi-hat smash.

Bruce: “A 1, a 2, a 1,2,3,4!”

Drum fill, and then the brass hits!

Bruce is dancing around, returning to the mike between glances with his band mates to hit the occasional – “HA!”

The stage is fully lit now, everyone’s playing their hearts out. There’s Tom freaking Morello over there, brandishing his guitar like a weapon. Nils Lofgren spinning and strumming, Weinberg pounding on that drum set. The choir is soaring, bolstering Bruce’s voice.

The entire crowd is up, waving their arms, clapping - in time now - and stomping in their aisles. It feels like the whole place is shaking.

It’s dark in the stadium, but the glow of the stage lights is bathing the whole crowd in participatory glory. 

Under it all is a 1-2 clap beat off the drums, hypnotising the audience into their own rapture. People clapping their hands above their heads, tears, laughing and singing, so much singing.

Then it’s quiet again, just strings and that drumbeat. 

Bruce is back at the mike now, singing that verse:

All these steel and stories / Have faded away to rust

All our youth and beauty / Has been given to the dust

The game has been decided  / And we’re burning down the clock

All our little victories and glories / have turned into parking lots

When your best hopes and desires / have been scattered to the wind.

Then we’re in the bridge:

Hard times come
Hard times go
And hard times come
And hard times go

And slower, quieter, peacefully.

Then a pause. 

Longer.

Bit longer.

Softly - Bring on your wrecking ball…then,’ a 1, a 2, a 1,2,3,4!’

And the crowd goes fucking ballistic. 

We’re in the choir scene from Blues Brothers, the dance scene from Slumdog, the fist pumping crescendo at the end of every sports movie ever made. 

It’s tears and cheers and screams and ecstasy.

It continues, building, building, building, more instruments coming in, The Librarian keeping perfect time.

Waaahaaohhh
Waaahaaohhh
Waaahaaohhh

I look at my TGNW, she’s caught in the moment, dancing in the aisle, clapping, grinning.

Through tears in my eyes, I look over to the people we came with and even they’re dancing and clapping.

The chant’s started, everyone else bellowing that…sound along with the band.

 And there I was, screaming along with them all, clapping, stomping, dancing, waving, cheering.

Waaahaaohhh

Waaahaaohhh

Waaahaaohhh

It went on and on, the band extending the crescendo for seconds, bars, minutes. The crowd is a seething mass of joy, roiling up and down the aisles. 

It couldn’t go for long enough, but it had to end.

So then they hit that last note – the strum on the guitar, the breath on the sax – and it was over.

Bruce was smiling at the band, the Librarian even had a slight grin on his face. They were all catching their breath, as was the crowd.

In. Out.

In. Out.

People had their hands on their knees, and I saw many, many people with tears on their cheeks, catching the light.  

In. Out. In. Out.  

Bruce walks up to the mike.  

Waits a beat.  

 “Thank you, Melbourne.”

 And we were off again.

 The 17 people on that stage played 27 songs that night, 21 after Wrecking Ball.

 It was incredible.

*                             *                             *

Whenever I hear this song kick into the waaahaaoohhh, it sends shivers down my neck.

I’m taken – immediately – back to that aisle, standing next to my TGNW, dancing and clapping and chanting along with the whole crowd.

I’ve never ‘sung’ (shouted) that loud in public before. I’ve never been so close to being totally swept up in emotion before.

It was a cathartic experience, that 10 minutes of shared participation.

Hard times come,

Hard times go

That refrain hit me so hard I was shocked.

It reminded me of all the tough times we’d been through in the last few years, the difficulties, the challenges, the setbacks, the frustrations, disappointments and shame.

But that was all – or at least that part! – behind us. The future was shiny again and we could be excited again.

 Hard times come,

Hard times go. 

 It was also a collective scream for action, for resistance against the nonsense that plagues us at a personal, group, community and social level.

It was a clenched fist, high in the air, declaring that we’re still here, we’re still going, we haven’t been beaten. 

It was a reminder that music matters, and that the shared experience can still be magical, even in this time of know-everything, nothing-new cynics like me.

This song and this performance wasn’t an actual turning point in my life.

But it bookmarked it so well that I’ll always associate this song with that moment of release, standing in the aisle, screaming at a millionaire in a room full of strangers.  

A song, I should point out, I considered a ‘nothing’ song about the demolition of a football stadium in New Jersey.