The lyrical arc of Bruce Springsteen's 1984 commercial explosion mirrors the history of the city that inspired
An ode to Cleveland, Ohio—the city at the beating, beloved heart of the Boss’s tome certified Platinum 65 times over—the lives entangled in its history, and the lives left just outside it.It is July of 2018 and Bruce Springsteen takes the stage at the Walter Kerr Theatre on West 48th Street in Manhattan.
Eternal—it’s a word I think of often when listening to Bruce’s music, because his songs so often serialize and document parts of the world that, like that great tree, are not always destined to stand as long as we’d like them to. Asbury Park remains, and a friend of mine recently sent me a photo of Madame Marie’s, which sits on the boardwalk and sells merch now. When captured on an iPhone, the magic doesn’t pour out of the screen.
But in one of the coolest turns a rock superstar had ever made, Bruce eventually returned to the Colts Neck material and, after opting to not release a double-album of acoustic and electric tracks, collected nine demos, recorded “My Father’s House” in May 1982, and released all 10 songs by themselves—just as he’d recorded them months prior—asconcept of party songs and plainspoken, raw-edged ballads slowly unfurling just as America’s industrial meccas had.
The Rust Belt then looked a lot different than the Rust Belt does now. Drive through Northeast Ohio these days and you’ll be convinced the whole region is under construction indefinitely. All the steel plants are either demolished or shrinking into skeletons. The Cuyahoga River—more than a century after Mayor Rensselaer R.
Being a fan of Bruce Springsteen’s music means you have to suspend belief here and there, depending on what part of this land you call home. To be an Ohioan means you must enterlike you would a fable. You’re not from Jersey, and the only pier lights nearby are the lambent turnstiles at the once-a-summer country fair. There’s no ocean to straddle, no overpass connecting you into a city plump with dreamers.
But Cleveland once was as dead as Bruce says. In-between World War II and the Vietnam War, its economy started evaporating. The city added more federally subsidized highways and de-industrialized the area slowly, stripping away steel and automotive industries from the region.
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