;—;——;——;——;——;——;——;——;——;——;——;——;——;——;——; ——;——;——;——;——;——;——;—
——;——;——;——;——;——;——;——;——;——;——;——;——;——;——; ——;——;——;——;——;——;——;——;——;——;——;——;——;——;——; ——;——;——;——;——;——;——;——;——;——;
——;——;——;——;——;——;——;——;——;——;——;——;——;——;——; ——;——;——;——;——;——;——;——;——;——;——;——;——;——;——; ——;——;——;——;——;——;——;——;——;——;
On the Garden State Parkway in New Jersey, 1979. His first number one
album, The River, would come out the following year.
——
Springsteen, right, meets Bob Dylan—
one of his biggest influences—in 1975.
——
The laptop video is shaky, and
I’ve seen the song performed a
dozen times—so my tears catch me
by surprise. When Bruce Springsteen wrote “Badlands” more than
30 years ago, he said he was in-spired by the “everyday kind of
heroism” of family and friends he
saw struggling to eke out a living
in the decaying, blue-collar, north-central New Jersey neighborhoods
where his father worked as a bus
driver. Today, in the wake of the
financial meltdown, Springsteen’s
badlands have a longer reach.
The middle-of-the-night fears
the lyrics describe mirror the
experiences of many of us now.
36 AARP SEPTEMBER&OCTOBER 2009
But “Badlands” is an anthem, not a
dirge. Its bitter observations are buoyed
by ringing guitars. Sitting in my Los Angeles apartment, I watch the vast, mul-tigenerational crowd on the computer
screen shout the chorus as Springsteen
performs in April in San Jose. Their excitement grabs me and pulls me in. My
tears are happy ones. Hope, the song
insists, is possible. Change can come.
This September, Springsteen will turn
60. In the months before his birthday,
he will have traveled across America
and Europe, putting on more than 50
concerts. At every one he will play
several roles—hero, leader, preacher,
rebel—the performances unfolding
like a novel. His audiences will hold
up homemade signs naming rare
B sides and rock classics, and he and the
band will play them from memory. He
will ask fans to “remember your neighbors,” and food-bank reps will traverse
the crowds in search of donations.
By writing about his roots, he moved
from seedy shore-town gigs to the steps
of the Lincoln Memorial. His first hero
was Elvis, yet the songs—such as “It’s
Hard to Be a Saint in the City”—that
won him a recording contract were full
of religious imagery, The first time I
heard one of those songs, the pounding
