'This is all happening now' — Bruce Springsteen in Manchester

There have been many great speeches challenging the new totalitarianism in the United States. Few have done it more concisely, or powerfully, than Bruce Springsteen from the stage in Manchester.

My son has cerebral palsy and listens to Bruce Springsteen every day. He has since he was tiny, he’s fourteen now, and it means we subscribe to nugs.net, which is a music streaming service that offers archived live shows from many great artists, but importantly for us, hundreds of Springsteen shows.

A week or so ago, we listened to the Mancheester show from May 14th as I drove him to school, and I had a little Springsteen induced weep on a freeway in faraway Melbourne for what’s going on in the United States and the world.

Bruce did three politically themed introductions, but I’ll place them out of order, becasue the third is so incredibly beautiful, especially if you’ve got time to listen to ‘My City of Ruins’ afterwards. That song was written in 2000 as a lament for the Boss’s home town of Asbury Park falling on hard times, but it was released on his album The Rising a year later, and became tied to the tragedy and trauma of September 11th 2001.

In Manchester, I think the ‘Easy Roy’ in the direction of Professor Roy Bittan on piano suggests that the words weren’t rehearsed. It’d be interesting to know how ‘written’ it was. There’s a beautiful balance between the anaphora of ‘In America … In America … in my country’ and the epistrophe of ‘This is happening now … This is happening now … This is all happening now.’

The other thing I noted was that Springsteen didn’t mention Trump by name in any of the protest speeches from the stage. He talked about ‘a corrupt, incompetent and treasonous administration’ and ‘an unfit president’, but most commonly he just simply said ‘they’. It gave this address such a poignnacy and sadness, and it packed more political punch for the absence of Trump’s name. Because Trump distorts. He has become everything, as he always wanted to be. As soon as his name is mentioned, whatever is being spoken about gets swallowed by the gross, fluorescent, ugly, angry reality show pungency that surrounds him. You get sentences like the one I just wrote. Below, Bruce is just speaking about his country, its great democratic tradition, and the threat from totalitarianism. It’s amazing:

Before "My City of Ruins"

Now, there's some very weird, strange and dangerous shit going on out there right now.

In America, they are persecuting people for using their right to free speech and voicing their dissent. This is happening now.

In America, the richest men are taking satisfaction in abandoning the world's poorest children to sickness and death. This is happening now.

In my country, they're taking sadistic pleasure in the pain that they inflict on loyal American workers, they're rolling back historic Civil Rights legislation that led to a more just and plural society, they're abandoning our great allies and siding with dictators against those struggling for their freedom.

They're defunding American universities that won't bow down to their ideological demands. They're removing residents off American streets and, without due process of law, are deporting them to foreign detention centers and prisons. This is all happening now.

A majority of our elected representatives have failed to protect the American people from the abuses of an unfit president and a rogue government.

They have no concern or idea of what it means to be deeply American. The America that I've sung to you about for 50 years is real, and regardless of its faults, is a great country with a great people.

So we'll survive this moment.

Now, I have hope because I believe in the truth of what the great American writer James Baldwin said. He said, ‘In this world, there isn't as much humanity as one would like. But there's enough.’

Let's pray.

Before "House of a Thousand Guitars":

How we doing Manchester? All right?

The last check on power, after the checks and balances of government have failed, are the people, you and me. It's in the union of people around a common set of values. Now that's all that stands between democracy and authoritarianism.

So at the end of the day, all we've really got is each other.

The show opener was great as well, less sombre and more a defiant call to action.

Before "Land of Hope and Dreams":

Good evening. It's great to be in Manchester and back in the UK. Welcome to The Land of Hope and Dreams Tour. The mighty E Street Band is here tonight to call upon the righteous power of art, of music, of rock and roll in dangerous times.

In my home, the America I love, the America I've written about that has been a beacon of hope and liberty for 250 years, is currently in the hands of a corrupt, incompetent, and treasonous administration.

Tonight, we ask all who believe in democracy and the best of our American experience to rise with us. Raise your voices against authoritarianism and let freedom ring!

Bruce finished his show with Chimes of Freedom, the Bob Dylan classic:

Starry-eyed an’ laughing as I recall when we were caught
Trapped by no track of hours for they hanged suspended
As we listened one last time an’ we watched with one last look
Spellbound an’ swallowed ’til the tolling ended
Tolling for the aching ones whose wounds cannot be nursed
For the countless confused, accused, misused, strung-out ones an’ worse
An’ for every hung-up person in the whole wide universe
An’ we gazed upon the chimes of freedom flashing

He never named Trump. That of course, didn’t stop Trump naming Springsteen, just after he’d finished ranting that Taylor Swift was ‘not hot anymore’.

What’s the line from ‘House of A Thousand Guitars’?

The criminal clown has stolen the throne
He steals what he can never own
May the truth ring out from every small town bar
We'll light up the house of a thousand guitars.

Here is the story of Jack going to his first concert, Bruce’s show at AAMI Park on February 4th 2017. It’s from my personal writing Substack ‘Good one, Wilson’.

Jack and the Boss — A Stage in Our Life

The most recent epiosde of the podcast is another personal offering, my eulogy for my mother Margaret Wilson who died at Easter. (transcript here)