I have to confess to being a Bruce Springsteen fan, at least a fan of his earlier albums back in the 1970s and early 80s. The turning point was the release of his sixth album, Nebraska, in 1982. This was very different to what had gone before.
Rolling Stone reviewed it like this:
After ten years of forging his own brand of fiery, expansive rock & roll, Bruce Springsteen has decided that some stories are best told by one man, one guitar. Flying in the face of a sagging record industry with an intensely personal project that could easily alienate radio, rock’s gutsiest mainstream performer has dramatically reclaimed his right to make the records he wants to make, and damn the consequences. This is the bravest of Springsteen’s six records; it’s also his most startling, direct and chilling. … Nebraska comes as a shock, a violent, acid-etched portrait of a wounded America that fuels its machinery by consuming its people’s dreams. It is a portrait painted with old tools: a few acoustic guitars, a four-track cassette deck, a vocabulary derived from the plain-spoken folk music of Woody Guthrie and the dark hillbilly laments of Hank Williams.
I’m afraid that something very different to what had gone before wasn’t for me which meant that Bruce’s music and I parted company although we have remained acquaintances through the ensuing years.
I recently saw the film ‘Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere’ which is based upon a 2023 book by Warren Zanes that documents what Bruce was going through and his state of mind during the recording of Nebraska. The film depicts him in a dark place, suffering from depression, revisiting childhood trauma and facing up to the implications of becoming a global superstar. That darkness is channelled into the words and music of the album and, as I watched the film, I felt ashamed. I felt ashamed because this was a Cri de Coeur and I had dismissed it simply because I didn’t much appreciate the change of musical direction.
How often do we treat things and people in a shallow way and fail to see what’s going on beneath the surface? How often do people in the celebrity spotlight disappoint us, sometimes for the most trivial of reasons, and we dismiss them, totally blind to how much they themselves may be hurting inside?
The Old Testament story of King David has this line:
The Lord does not look at the things people look at. People look at the outward appearance, but the Lord looks at the heart.
Thank goodness for that. God sees things as they really are and I pray that God may help us to do the same.
Prayer: Lord God, When I need it, give me the eyes to see what’s really going on beneath the surface; the wisdom to know what to do with that vision; and the compassion with which to act upon that wisdom. Amen.