Springsteen Rises Again The Boss tries to find threads that connect us with latest CD, tour By Elysa Gardner / USA TODAY July 2002

NEW YORK--For more than 25 years, Bruce Springsteen has examined the promise and the price of American dreams through the eyes of some of the most vivid characters in popular music. In a new song, his vision is focused in part on someone whose experience might seem less readily accessible: a female suicide bomber.

"Where the river runs to black/I take the schoolbooks from your pack/Plastics, wire and your kiss/The breath of eternity on your lips," he sings at the beginning of "Paradise," a haunting ballad featured on his new CD, "The Rising," due July 30. Discussing the song in a midtown recording studio, Springsteen explains he wrote these lines after a teen-age girl blew up herself and others in Jerusalem several months ago.

The second verse was inspired by a tragedy that hit most fans closer to home. "I wrote it after I met a woman whose husband had died at the Pentagon," he says -- alluding, as he will repeatedly this afternoon, to Sept. 11. "So you have these two vignettes from completely different places. Then in the third verse, I imagined someone who had been left. The person goes into the river and goes under -- and comes back up. It's like saying, 'We're still here, and this is the only life we have.' "

These dual themes of suffering and transcendence help link the disparate voices that pop up on "Rising," Springsteen's first new album in 15 years with the E Street Band, the longtime supporting group that joined him for a triumphant reunion tour in 1999 and 2000 (and will hit the road again in August with a stop at the Palace of Auburn Hills on Aug. 15). It seems fitting that the Boss is accompanied by old friends on these songs, which study the significance of human connection in an increasingly fractured world.

While Brice Springsteen had begun working on new material prior to Sept. 11 -- the final cut on the album, "My City of Ruins," a spirited elegy that he performed Sept. 21 on a telethon benefiting victims of the attack, was actually penned a few years ago -- most songs that wound up on "Rising" were influenced by recent events.

"It was important to find the right tone, to find an emotional context that felt real to me post the 11th," says Springsteen, whose most recent collection of new material, 1995's "The Ghost of Tom Joad," offered hard-luck tales about drifters, immigrants and other disenfranchised figures. "There was less directness, often less of a literal storyline, than I had used before in some of my writing. You can read different meanings into the songs. I wanted people to be able to use the music how it suited them."

Intense, but bright
As the album's title suggests, Springsteen also wanted to avoid an overall feeling of despondency. The rural New Jersey home that he shares with wife and E Street bandmate Patti Scialfa and their three young children is within commuting distance from where the Twin Towers stood, and "there were a lot of people missing from where I live," he notes.

"I did different events in Jersey, and I met a lot of people who had lost somebody, who were coming out for a good time. And I thought that would be part of the usefulness of this record -- that the ideas and the music had to balance each other. Most of the songs are in a major key. It's intense, but it's musically bright."

At 52, Springsteen still projects the physical vitality you would expect from a man widely regarded as the most exuberant live performer in rock 'n' roll. In one-on-one conversation, though, that energy becomes more subtle, and is tempered by a folksy humility that jibes with his longstanding image as the most populist of pop stars. He seems almost embarrassed by compliments and is big on self-effacing humor. Trying to account for his lack of bad press, he quips, "I'm probably pretty boring."

But once he gets focused on a subject, Springsteen's oratory skills are as commanding from a sofa seat as they are from an arena stage. Describing the abundance of sensual imagery in his new songs, he says, "To feel loss and longing, you have to feel intimacy. What you miss the most about someone who isn't there is their presence in the physical world -- touching them, smelling them. You miss their skin, their hair, the way they made you feel. That's what you want back."

Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., who first met Springsteen when the singer performed for Vietnam veterans more than two decades ago and has also socialized with him in recent years, feels the rock icon is distinctly qualified to assess the emotional fallout of Sept. 11. "It's very much in keeping with the kind of person he is, and the things that move him," Kerry says. "He's a street poet. He's a guy who really is in touch with currents and real people's dilemmas."

Yet this quintessentially American singer/songwriter was keen that "Rising" also convey a sense of inclusiveness and universal resonance. "Maybe as I got to a certain point, I realized I had written a lot from the perspective of someone inside America, which is something I always do naturally," he says. "And I thought, 'Well, I really need something that connects the world to this in some fashion.' " He consequently wrote "Paradise," as well as "Worlds Apart," "a mixture of a relationship song and one about cultures coming together," which features a guest appearance by Pakistani singer Asif Ali Khan and his group.

Striving for clarity
Of course, some of the socially conscious statements in Springsteen's songs have been famously misconstrued in the past. "Born in the U.S.A." was perceived, by President Reagan and others, as a song about patriotism rather than the repercussions of war and hardship.

More recently, "American Skin," a plea for better race relations written after white policemen mistakenly shot and killed black immigrant Amadou Diallo, offended some members of police organizations.

"Songs are living, organic things," Springsteen reasons. "People can use them and misuse them, just like anything else. In the end, all you can do is try your best to be clear."

"Skin" was one of several songs Springsteen wrote during his latest tour, with his E Street colleagues in mind. "I write in a way when I play with them that I don't write when I'm sitting at home with my acoustic guitar," he says. "I even think differently -- a little broader, a little wider, maybe more ambitious."

When pressed to characterize his arrangement with the E Street Band, Springsteen half-jokingly admits the group was set up as "a benevolent dictatorship -- but with room for everyone's ideas."

Nearly 30 years down the line, though, that understanding has evolved and deepened, especially on personal terms. "One of the things I'm proudest of is that everyone is still healthy and on stage, and the relationships are good. There's the thrill of 'Gosh, I knew this guy when we were 22, and he's still here -- along with other people.' "

In recording "Rising," Springsteen also discovered a new musical soul mate. "I wanted to capture the spirit and passion of our playing, but to make it sound different than any other record we've made. So I needed new ears."

He found them in producer Brendan O'Brien, whose credits include some of the past decade's leading modern rock acts: Pearl Jam, Stone Temple Pilots, Rage Against the Machine. "I can't overemphasize how inspirational Brendan was. We experimented a lot, and he got a combination of exciting sonic textures while still keeping the warmth."

A new breed of rocker
Bill Flanagan, senior vice president at VH1 and author of several books about rock music, isn't surprised that Springsteen would bond with a boardsman known for his work with younger artists.

"Some people see (Springsteen) as the last of the great original rock stars, but I see him more as the first of the next breed. He took all the best pieces of rock 'n' roll and revitalized it. The basic notion of a kind of integrity and decency in rock that doesn't deny the fun and sexiness and goofiness, or the possibility of expressing something profound -- it seems pretty easy when Bruce does it. But it seemed pretty hard before that."

Predictably, Springsteen resists the notion of himself as a rock 'n' roll role model. "People tend not to see you at your worst," he insists. "I'm sure that Patti could fill in the blanks, if called on to do so."

The little Springsteens, he adds, are underwhelmed by their father's accomplishments -- "It's just Mom and Dad's job, so how cool can it be?" -- though elder son Evan, who turns 12 next week, does follow pop music avidly. "I saw him with his close friend about a week ago, poring over the record charts -- talking about guys they were rooting for, guys they were enjoying seeing fall," the singer says with a laugh. "Just like I remember doing at that age. I was fascinated by how much information they knew."

In fact, if fans would rather view Springsteen as a doting dad than one of our most astute observers of American, and human, concerns, that's fine by him.

"All artists are egotistical and self-involved in some fashion -- we want to be noticed," he muses. "But I guess I like the regularness, for lack of a better word, that I've been able to enjoy. When you're the guy getting a little wave from everybody as they pass, but you can still just go on about your business, that's a good balance. It's been a pretty charmed trip for me, you know?"

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