Posts Tagged ‘bruce springsteen’
Why my next book will be about Bruce Springsteen
July 26, 2011
No, I’m not happy about the concessions President Obama is making to the right wing in a last, desperate attempt to save us all from a constitutional and financial meltdown whose consequences most of us can’t even imagine.
The belligerent–and (though I think it’s juvenile to make fun of people’s names) boehnheaded Republican leadership represented by John Boehner (and cheered on from afar by newly-minted millionaire Sarah Palin, who wants to keep all she’s got) would be willing to sink the ship on which we all find ourselves in 2011 in order to drown the president in 2012.
There’s a word for that. The word is “treason.”
President Obama has been forced to abandon his hopes of moving us forward. Now it’s all hands on deck to save us from drowning.
Among those whom I’d guess are sickened by the way the Republican right has dragged us all into this Sargasso Sea of self-destructive selfishness is Bruce Springsteen.
It was my admiration for the way Springsteen has maintained his artistic integrity over forty years–even as he matured and came to see that rock and roll was not in and of itself a cure for the human condition– that first interested me in writing about him.
Not to mention my flat out love for his music, both with and without the E Street Band.
But what’s come to interest me about him more, the more I’ve learned, has been my growing awareness of his unwavering concern about the gap–now a chasm–between the glorious promise that America once offered and the sordid reality of 21st century capitalism and the blighted political system that supports it.
The extraordinary journalist/essayist Mikal Gilmore interviewed Springsteen almost twenty-five years ago for a story included in Night Beat: A Shadow History of Rock & Roll.
Here’s what Bruce Springsteen said, in 1987:
“The idea of America as a family is naive, maybe sentimental or simplistic, but it’s a good idea. And if people are sick and hurting and lost, I guess it falls on everybody to address these problems in some fashion. Because injustice, and the price of that injustice, falls on everyone’s heads. The economic injustice falls on everyone’s head and steals everyone’s freedom. Your wife can’t walk down the street at night. People keep guns in their homes. They live with a greater sense of apprehension, anxiety, and fear than they would in a more just and open society. It’s not an accident, and it’s not simply that there are ‘bad’ people out there. It’s an inbred part of the way that we are all living. It’s a product of what we have accepted, what we have acceded to. And whether we mean it or not, our silence has spoken for us in some fashion.”
How much worse is it now, almost twenty-five years later?
Boehner says sink the ship and Sarah says reload.
And even those of us who can converse on the internet are not the real victims.
The real victims are those who cannot.
Posted in 2012, Joe McGinniss, Obama, Sarah Palin, Tea Party, The Rogue | 
Tags: boehner, bruce springsteen, mikal gilmore, republican, sargasso sea, treason | 
36 Comments »
Working on my Bruce Springsteen book proposal
July 20, 2011
All quiet on the Sarah front, so I’m starting to develop the proposal I’ll soon send to my publisher regarding the book I’d like to write about Springsteen.
As a fan, I go back to the beginning of Bruce’s recording history. I was living near Philadelphia and listening to Philly radio stations like WMMR when they started to play songs from his first album, Greetings from Asbury Park, New Jersey, in 1973.
We’re both in our sixties now, but both still going strong. If you drained the Great Salt Lake in Utah, you could fill the basin to overflowing with the sweat Bruce has left behind on stage over forty years, giving his every audience every bit of himself.
After three years of Sarah, it’s a joy to contemplate writing a book about someone who’s made such a difference to America in such a positive way over so many decades. In his life, his recordings, and especially in his electrifying stage performances, Bruce has shown that America still can be the land of hope and dreams.
As more and more of us find ourselves, “ten years down the road, nowhere to run…nowhere to go”–as it becomes ever more clear that our economy will never again be what it was in the 20th Century, as joblessness rises along with the costs of health care, as corporate interests crush the common man as brutally (though perhaps with more polish and finesse) as in the Robber Baron era–the strength and clarity of Bruce Springsteen’s vision of democracy and celebration of individuality and of the sheer–if only occasionally realized–joy of being alive is perhaps more vital than ever.
More on Sarah and THE ROGUE as the need arises or as the impulse occurs, but right now I feel like a guy who’s spent three years in a dark cellar and is suddenly Blinded by The Light.
Posted in Joe McGinniss, Sarah Palin | Tags: asbury park, bruce springsteen, new jersey, philadelphia, wmmr | 59 Comments »
Catching Up
July 13, 2011
It’s been a busy few days, what with the ThrillerFest award and all the discussions about heading for Arizona to write an e-single called Sarah Palin’s Arizona. The bottom line on that was that at this point in my career I’m not going to start writing without getting paid for it (except for this blog, which I’m doing, yes, to increase awareness of THE ROGUE in advance of its September publication, but also because I enjoy interacting online with all of you: or most of you, anyway.)
The way electronic publishing is evolving for magazine-length original pieces, the writer gets no fee or advance up front but is guaranteed a share in sales revenue down the line. If I did a Kindle Single directly for amazon, I’d get 70 percent of eventual revenues, but then Barnes & Noble would be unhappy because they want people to buy Nooks, not Kindles. And if you have a potentially big book scheduled for fall publication you don’t want to make Barnes & Noble–the country’s largest retailer of actual physical books–unhappy in the summer.
So you write an e-article that is not a Kindle Single exclusive and can also be downloaded on the Nook, the iPad, and across all other electronic platforms. But who pays you to do that? The answer, in this case, turned out to be no one. I was offered a deal whereby an e-partner would electronically “publish” Sarah Palin’s Arizona, but in return would take half of my 70 percent share of sales revenue. And would not pay me any sort of fee or advance for doing the three to four weeks of work involved in reporting and writing, but would only agree to pay a nominal sum to offset my expenses.
No thanks. This arrangement was described to me as a partnership, but I said, “Yeah, it’s like a partnership between a lion and a lamb.”
The further into the 21st century we progress, it seems that more people are devising more ways to not pay writers for their work. See Huffington Post as the most offensive and egregious example. And, believe me, even Daily Beast fees are–to be generous about it–minimal.
Not that it broke my heart not to spend up to two weeks in Arizona at the height of summer. The fact is that it will feel good not to have to write anything more about Sarah Palin. I’ve even spent days at a time recently not even thinking about Sarah Palin. Not thinking about her was accompanied by a strange feeling I recognized from my distant past. I asked Nancy, who’s been with me since 1970, what she thought it might be. She said, “Happiness?”
Bingo! There will come a day late this fall when I’ll be able to throw up my arms, jump in the air, and shout out, “Free at last!”
That, of course, leads to the question of what to do next.
When I met Rosanne Cash recently at her concert at Bard College, alma mater of my son James the Agent , I told her I’d like to write next about someone I admired and respected, whose life and work had inspired me throughout my own life, as did Rosanne’s father, Johnny.
Thinking more about this in recent days I’ve found myself thinking about Bruce Springsteen. I first heard his music in the mid-1970’s, when Philly radio stations started playing it and Nancy and I were living in New Jersey. (We think of the 1970s as either “Joe and Nancy: the Jersey Years,” or, more simply, “The Lost Decade.”)
But I’ve watched and listened as Bruce grew, both as musical talent and man, over the many years since. He’s become, even more than Bob Dylan (whom I consider a demigod), our Walt Whitman: poet of the common man, lover of democracy, personification of what we as a nation can be at our best.
I’ve read Dave Marsh’s excellent Two Hearts, but, especially in light of the recent passing of Clarence Clemons, I think it might be time for me to do my own celebration of BRUCE SPRINGSTEEEN: AMERICAN.
It’s sure more fun to think about than it is to think about Sarah.
And listen here to Rosanne’s great duet with Bruce on “Sea of Heartbreak.”2-17 Sea of Heartbreak (feat. Bruce Springsteen)
HOWEVER: I can’t put Sarah behind me just yet. She got that Newsweek puff cover, she’s got Greta Van Susteren saying she’s running, and the GOP field continues to display its inadequacy. At some point, she has to figure, “Why not?” If she doesn’t, Bachmann takes her mojo away. If she does, she becomes the white hot center of U.S. politics once again. I’ll have more to say about this in days to come, but for tonight I’m going to listen to Springsteen and feel happy that I don’t have to board a flight to Phoenix tomorrow morning.
Posted in Joe McGinniss, Sarah Palin, The Rogue | Tags: arizona, bard college, bob dylan, bruce springsteen, clarence clemons, johnny cash, rosanne cash, thrillerfest, walt whitman | 37 Comments »
