Bruce Springsteen - American Prophet?

Bruce Springsteen
True Patriot!

View the 60 Minutes interview video HERE.




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I'm a week late on this post, but if you missed the 60 Minutes interview with Bruce Springsteen, you need to check it out HERE. A few excerpts are below; he rocks!!!! (on so many levels!)

Are rock stars serving as our most public prophets these days? Bruce seems to be calling our nation back to its original dream, its original mission and reason for being. In this interview, he mentions that things like wire-tapping and torture are not "American" but are "anti-American." His sense of where we are is insightful and fascinating. Rather than just blasting the war, and blasting the Bush Administration, he raises the question of whether we have moved off-course from our tradition -- he is rooted, deeply, in the best of the American tradition ... like the prophets of old, he may be calling us back to our original "covenant," ...

I wonder if the Church would be as willing to raise these questions as our rock stars? (and, in so many ways, represent the Church....his critique points at our politicians but also at me!)

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(CBS) It's hard to picture, but Bruce Springsteen turned 58 last month. His breakout hit, "Born
to Run," is 32 years old. While rock stars his age are content to tour with their greatest hits, Springsteen launched, last week, what may become his most controversial work as a songwriter.

Even now, Springsteen is an artist in progress, having moved from stories about girls and cars to populist ballads that echo the dust bowl days of Woody Guthrie. Springsteen has put all that together now in his first tour with the E Street Band in four years. As correspondent Scott Pelley reports, he has returned to full-throated rock and roll, and a message that's sharper than ever, damning the war in Iraq, and questioning whether America has lost its way at home.

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Springsteen told 60 Minutes his concert is part circus, dance party, political rally, and big tent revival. "You're the shaman, you know? You're the storyteller. You're the magician. The idea is whatever the ticket price, we're supposed to be there to deliver something that can't be paid for. That's our job," Springsteen says.

"You have got to be, wild guess, worth somewhere north of 100 million dollars. Why are you still touring? You don't have to do this," Pelley remarks.

"What else would I do? You got any clues?" Springsteen asks. "Got any suggestions? I mean, am I going to garden? Why would you stop. I mean, you play the music and you know, grown men cry. And women dance. That's why you do it."

"It's good to be a rock star," Pelley says.

"I would say that yes it is," Springsteen says. "But the star thing I can live with. The music I can't live without. And that's how it lays out for me, you know. I got as big an ego and enjoy the attention. My son has a word, he calls it 'Attention Whore.'"

"But you have to be one of those or else why would you be up in front of thousands of people, you know, shaking your butt. But at the same time, when it comes down to it, it's the way it makes you feel. I do it because of the way it makes me feel when I do it. It gives me meaning, it gives me purpose," Springsteen explains.

"Some of the pieces in the new record are gonna be considered controversial. Give me a sense of what you think has to be said. Why are you still writing?" Pelley asks,

"It's how I find out who you are, and who I am, and then who we are. I'm interested in that. I'm interested in what it means to be an American," Springsteen says. "I'm interested in what it means to live in America. I'm interested in the kind of country that we live in and leave our kids. I'm interested in trying to define what that country is. I got the chutzpa or whatever you want to say to believe that if I write a really good about it, it's going to make a difference. It’s going to matter to somebody." See the rest of the transcript from the video HERE.