PicoBlog

Tuesday, April 4, 2023 Entry #71

I’m still writing about Bruce Springsteen and New York City, still feeling the excitement and energy of seeing the Boss here and trying to linger with the pulsating sights and sounds of the Big Apple from these past days.

I was also in New York during a very different kind of moment, the frightening and awful day day on September 11, 2001. I was in town to officiate a wedding, and Amy and I arrived a few days early to catch up with friends in the city we loved and had only recently moved away from. A few hours after the enormity of the terrorist attacks that occurred a few miles from where we were staying had started to sink in, we finally turned off CNN and headed out to donate blood at the Red Cross. In great contrast to the few days I have been here this trip, and so different from the way New York City almost always lives and breathes 24/7 (with one other notable exception, during the first throes of the recent COVID-19 pandemic), on our walk uptown on 9/11, the streets of New York felt deserted and lifeless.

On that same day, Bruce Springsteen was across the river from Manhattan in Sea Bright, New Jersey. He was staring in horror over a bridge into the billowing smoke rising up from the spot where the massive World Trade Center towers had long stood. At some point, as Springsteen relays the story, “A car careening off the Rumson-Sea Bright Bridge shot past, its window down, and its driver, recognizing me, shouted, “Bruce, we need you.”

“When that guy yelled out, “Bruce we need you,” that was a tall order, but I knew what he meant; I needed something, someone too. As I drove home on that lonely day to find my children, my wife, my people and you again, I turned to the only language I’ve ever known to fight off the night terrors, real and imagined, time and time again. It was all I could do.” -Bruce Springsteen

The “language” Springsteen was talking about was his songwriting, and how he so often crafts his compositions, lyrically and musically, to express our communal emotions, thoughts and experiences in a way that makes a direct and powerful impact. The first thing Springsteen did in response to the anonymous fan’s plea was to participate in America: A Tribute to Heroes, a benefit concert televised live on every American broadcast and cable network, held just ten days after the 9/11 attacks. Springsteen was tapped to open the proceedings and set the tone. There, he performed a song he had written the previous year about the deterioration into blight in parts of his beloved Asbury Park (a city that owes not a small debt to Bruce Springsteen for its current revitalization). “My city’s in ruins,” was one of it’s recurring phrases.

The song, “My City of Ruins,” clearly-from the title alone-described aptly what New Yorkers and Americans were feeling in the wake of so much shocking destruction and tragedy. Surrounded by candles of mourning, Springsteen introduced the song as "A prayer for our fallen brothers and sisters.” And, the song does indeed have the power of a hymn. It doesn’t turn away from the very real grief over the loss and desolation, but it also builds to a place where hope actually seems possible. “Rise up!” exhorts Springsteen over and over, but it is not about magical thinking. The possibility of renewal, Springsteen reminds us, can only be realized “with these hands,” yours and mine. For obvious reasons, “My City of Ruins” has become much more associated over the years with 9/11 than with Asbury Park, its original subject. America: A Tribute to Heroes raised $200 million for United Way’s September 11 Telethon Fund for victims and their families, particularly the New York City firefighters and New York City police officers.

Springsteen had recently finished a triumphant tour, teaming up with the E Street Band for the first time in ten years (the tour in which they premiered “American Skin (41 Shots”) see Entry #70 and another gospel-tinged song with a hopeful message “Land of Hope and Dreams” see Entry #53). Now, he called his bandmates back to record a new studio album, to be called The Rising, with songs that would be centered around the events of and responses to 9/11. As Springsteen explains, he took the responsibility invoked in the “We need you” exclamation very much to heart:

“Our band was built well, over many years, for difficult times. When people wanted a dialogue, a conversation about events, internal and external, we developed a language that suited those moments. We were there….I always believed that it was this dialogue, this language, that was at the heart of our resiliency with our audience. “The Rising” was a renewal of that conversation and the ideas that forged our band.”

With it’s easy proximity to New York City, the Jersey Shore is home to many Wall Street commuters and thus suffered tremendous loss on September 11, 2001. 150 people from Springsteen’s home county of Monmouth alone were killed on that tragic day. Springsteen wrote that after the attacks, “For weeks, the long, black limousines pulled up to churches, and candlelit vigils were held in the neighborhood park.” There were several obituaries of fire fighters killed in the line of duty on 9/11 that mentioned their love of Springsteen’s music; Bruce called their widows to offer condolences and to learn about the lives of the fallen. Out of all of this grief, the experiences of his friends, neighbors, and fellow citizens, Bruce Springsteen crafted new songs for The Rising album that were harrowing, but also somehow life-affirming as well:

“Coming from a place that had been hit so hard, speaking to firemen who served at Ground Zero, ships’ captains whose ferries crossed Sandy Hook Bay bringing back survivors, their decks inch-deep in ash, and my own desire to use the language I learned as a musician to sort through what what was in my own head turned me to writing these songs…to make sense of experience and the world around you…So I wrote rock music, love songs, breakup songs, spirituals, blues, hit songs, and I allowed my theme and the events of the day to breathe and find their place within the framework I created.”

On The Rising, there are songs that directly touch on the despair and loss that transpired on 9/11. These include “Lonesome Day,” “Into The Fire,” and “Empty Sky” (inspired by Springsteen’s view of the startling difference in the skyline from his vantage point on that fateful day). Another, “You’re Missing,” is based on Springsteen’s conversation with Suzanne Berger, whose husband Jim was an executive at an insurance company based in the south tower. After the plane hit, Berger supervised the evacuation of his colleagues, saving nearly all of the 1,100 people on his floor before the tower collapsed around him. However, even in these searing compositions, Springsteen, true to form, doesn’t neglect hope, faith and the possibility of renewal. “Into The Fire,” in particular, is a kind of secular prayer. Springsteen invokes the heroism of the rescue workers who sacrificed everything to search for survivors. The song calls on us to let those brave souls elevate us, and to let their memory inspire us to be our best selves in their honor and image. He sings, “The sky was falling and streaked with blood. I heard you calling me and them you disappeared into the dust.” And then, the liturgy:

“May your strength give us strength/May your faith give us faith/May your hope give us hope/May your love give us love.”

In his memoir, Springsteen reflected on his mindset at the time:

“Of the many tragic images of that day, the picture I couldn’t let go of was of the emergency workers going up the stairs as others rushed down to safety. The sense of duty, the courage, ascending into…what?…If you love your life or any part of it, the depth of their sacrifice is unthinkable and incomprehensible. Yet what they left behind was tangible. Death, along with all its anger, pain and loss, opens a window of possibility for the living. It removes the veil that the “ordinary” gently drapes over our eyes. Renewed sight is the hero’s last loving gift to those left behind.”

Interestingly, but also characteristic of Springsteen’s sensibilities, there are three tracks on The Rising that try to bridge the gap between East and West, attempt to understand those who consider our way of life to be their enemy. “Paradise” includes an imagining of a young suicide bomber contemplating his last moments on Earth. On “Worlds Apart,” Springsteen sings with a Pakistani Qawwali singer (Springsteen wrote that he “…wanted other voices, other situations than just American ones…I wanted Eastern voices, the presence of Allah. I wanted to find a place where worlds collide and meet.”), and “The Fuse” has a polyrhythmic, world music sound.

Finally, there are songs of experiencing uplift, celebration, and joy despite the new reality brought on by 9/11. “Waiting On A Sunny Day,” “Counting On A Miracle,” “Mary’s Place” and “The Rising” itself can all be summed up by Springsteen’s lyric from one of the songs on the album, “Tell me how do you live broken-hearted?”

The album closes in a full circle manner, with “My City Of Ruins,” the Springsteen song, because of the telethon, that first became associated with 9/11. The last words on that song and therefore the notion that ends the entire album are thus Springsteen’s urgent message undergirding it all (and mirroring the album’s title), the imperative to “Rise up!”

Many of the same New York City police officers who decried Springsteen for criticizing them with “American Skin (41 Shots)” (see Entry #70) now cheered him for championing them and the other 9/11 heroes. Springsteen has continued to perform at 9/11 commemoration events and he regularly donates generously to the continuing relief funds. These two incidents, the murder of Amadou Diallo in 1999, and the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, occurred in New York City within two years of one another. Bruce Springsteen created artistic and sympathetic expressions around both events, refusing to pigeonhole himself into any political or tribal “side.” Instead, at the dawn of a new century, Springsteen held the complexity and depth of all of it, firmly entering into a critical cultural role as one of our treasured national troubadours, a powerful and honest American voice for our times.

Bruce, it’s true, we do need you.

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