Everything else from Glory Days (II): Nostalgia, writing, Seeger
Sunday, Lauren Onkey, education VP at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. "Bruce Springsteen in the 21st Century." Onkey examined his changing views on involvement, openness and — indicative of both — concert signs. Her critical question: "If he started this period trying to keep nostalgia at bay, is it now deep in it?" Reunion tour in '99 saw limited use of cover songs and early material, but they began emerging over the decade as more creative Springsteen projects got underway.
He then packaged engagement with history with new work (making the reunion tour actually the least interesting connection to the past, in Onkey's opinion). On the current tour, for the first time on a Bruce tour, new material isn't driving the set. Meanwhile, older songs are getting regular play, including covers fans are requesting with signs. Why choose the oldies from the signs, an audience member asked. I love oldies but have my questions here too. Easier to play? Nostalgia? Or a band victory lap? If a victory lap, Onkey called it "an interesting choice" to play songs, even old ones, they've never played before.
Highlights from her on the rock hall exhibit: Bruce still had the red hat from the Born in the USA cover photo. Also, when they exhibit opened, the curators had the BitUSA jeans facing forward. Visitors complained. The curators turned the jeans around. An unexpected underscoring: Springsteen sent along his motorcycle, hat and photo from an 1989 long ride with friends through the Southwest. (Likely the inspiration for Goin' Cali later released on the Tracks box set and now seemingly a break point in between the E Street break-up and the replacement band formation.) Onkey flashed some great loaned childhood photos but flipped through them quickly and asked the crowd not to take pix. After Springsteen loaned his writing notebooks, he then decided to send his writing table, chair and some utility bills from the table.
Onkey also mentions a passage from the rock hall's interview with Springsteen on the exhibit, with him answering about songwriting:
It's very relaxed. It depends — you just get an idea and sit down with a guitar, and it's a meditative state. Songwriting is fundamentally a meditation. It's the exercise of your craft, your intelligence. But it's primarily meditative, in that it works best when you go into a light trance-like situation. Where you just start to sort of… you're scraping the top of your subconscious, like with a knife, and the shavings, sometimes they turn into a song. And then occasionally the knife plummets deeply in, and it's not something you — it would be like having a shapeless piece of clay or something in front of you, and you start to run your fingers over it…
Sunday, Jim Musselman, head of Appleseed Recordings. "Springsteen's Trip into the Folk Playground." Starting in the mid-90s, "the strange, bizarre story of theSeeger Sessions involves: Bob Dylan rerecording a Seeger song for a compilation ("when did Bob Dylan ever care about vocals"), passing out during the rerecording, getting spooked by the negative vibes and essentially dropping out of the project, Bruce stepping in with We Shall Overcome, the song getting criticism over adding the word "darling," Tom Brokaw calling to use the song in the NBC Sept. 11 video, then-Song chief Tony Mottola sending heavies to Musselman's house to get the masters, Bruce and Landau backing Musselman against their company, Bruce revisiting the recordings eight years later because his kids liked them, ending the album with Froggie Went A-Courtin' because of the line "if you want any more, you can sing it again," Seeger disliking the album because he disliked all tributes…
… but loving Springsteen's American Land meshing a song Seeger had learned decades earlier from a Slovak immigrant — a sad one about a friend's family finally making it over just after his friend's death in the Pittsburgh mills — with the fun Big Rock Candy Mountain, and later The Wrestler repurposing a Seeger line. Musselman remains curious at the Seeger materials' strong response in Europe compared to the USA.
January 23rd, 2010 at 11:55 AM
[...] into the Seeger Sessions, the We Shall Overcome cut became a public-facing Sept. 11 song and, as I noted in the fall, a privately wild rights battle. But just as interesting to me was another controversy Musselman [...]