GLASTONBURYOFTHEMIND

Interviewed on the Holler If You He You Hear Me blog Seeger Sessions consultant and Sprinsteen biographer Dave Marsh says how he was shocked both by the words which Springsteen wrote for How Can A Poor Man Stand Such Times And Live - and the lack of reaction to them. Perhaps that’s how the media deals with such transgressions, such revolutionary rhetoric, these days - wilful ignorance (coupled of course with some irrelevant - and angrily denied - story about the artist’s personal life). The lyric however remains extraordinarily powerful, one of the most cogent direct, descriptive and beautifully weighted of Springsteen’s career. Personifiying (with an impeccable sneer) Bush as the doctor and the dispensing dope metaphor is a smart allusion not only to weasel post Katrina words to the Presidents misbegotten youth when he and others like would come down to New Orleans and “have a real good time” The performance is not only a devastating piece of revolutionary rhetoric, positing, in the narrator’s desperation, an armed revolution from the ghetto, but with the rewritten verse a dynamic piece of character portraiture. The song reveals the face Bush as starkly and completely as anything in contemporary culture. Smug, lying, hypocritical. Feeling some sort of collective shame or embarassment over what I’ve heard described as the “dosey do” nature of Springsteen’s current incarnation - a definite career highlight to all with ears - some of his core audience has drifted away. But Springsteen keeps on singing his song, the route that he has taken this century - from The Rising’s collective communal outreach, to the quiet desperation of Devil’s And Dust (a feeling that must have been strengthened by the disappointment of his failed bid to unseat Bush by supporting Kerry ) to the outright revolt of Poor Man has been the most fascinating political tragectory in his career. It ain’t over and the bastards haven’t won.