The Cabernet Grapes of Wrath Tour '95
The Boss' working-stiff act is unconvincing
Illustration by Val B. Mina
By ADAM BLOCK
Twenty years ago Jon Landau penned the deathless phrase, "I have seen rock 'n' roll's future and its name is Bruce Springsteen." In return, Springsteen made the critic his manager. Now, after two dud CDs and with his creative career in limbo, Springsteen has tried to reinvent himself as "folk music past." His new acoustic LP, "Looking for The Ghost of Tom Joad," is all muffled ballads about folks paralyzed in quiet desperation: the ex-con who can't bring himself to steal; the illegal Mexicano watching his friend blow up in the meth lab they're tending; the border guard who can't do his job without aiding an illegal piece of skirt.
My guess is that after he won an Oscar for "Streets of Philadelphia," Bruce figured, "If I earn all those plaudits for impersonating a noble homo afflicted with AIDS, why not churn out an LP portraying a roster of desperate souls paralyzed on the margins of contemporary society?" And the live show, at least, has scored reverential write-ups.
God knows it's easier to listen earnestly to one of Springsteen's dark ballads than to actually talk to a homeless person and engage him as a human being. But if people start believing that the former is brave and sufficient penance for failing to do the latter, then what Bruce has proffered becomes practically pernicious. It's reminiscent of all those folks who wept after seeing "Schindler's List" and then sat idly by, or flipped the channel, as reports of ethnic cleansing, mass rape and the systematic slaughter of unarmed people poured in from Bosnia.
I don't want to be too cynical, but this is all just a little too vicariously empathetic. I thought the title cut of Springsteen's CD was an admission that Steinbeck's hero, who embodies the common cause found among outcasts, is MIA in our contemporary "Depression." But in concert Springsteen talked about being recently moved anew by the movie "The Grapes of Wrath" and recited Joad's speech about "there only being one big soul that we're all a part of" as a current truth rather than an ironic counterpoint to the distances between his songs' subjects and his well-heeled audiences on his current short series of $40-a-head acoustic recitals.
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