The May 22, 19741 issue of Boston's The Real Paper carried an article by Jon Landau (soon to be Springsteen's manager) who famously wrote: "I saw rock and roll future, and its name is Bruce Springsteen. And on a night when I needed to feel young, he made me feel like I was hearing music for the very first time."
Now don't get me wrong, Bruce Springsteen is cool. He seems like a great guy and his songs are neat. But I don't understand what it is about the E-Street band's sound that ever could have made anyone write those sentences. Perhaps in 1974 as mainstream rock ballooned into an arena-sized monstrosity, Springsteen's intimate and simple classicism and his romantic throwback style really meant something (And to be fair, I've seen footage of the guy from his Born to Run days. The Boss has nearly unrivaled stage presence and the dude could, can, rock). He was a breath of fresh, North Jersey air. But Landau's words are those of a man in love.
Outside of the The Stone Pony in Asbury Park, Springsteen's music does not sound like the future, and it's hard to believe it ever did. Springsteen's thing has always been amped-up traditional roots rock teamed with sprawling, blue collar poetry, the delivery of which always seemed to me to be cribbed from Bob Dylan (who cribbed it from Woody Guthrie). He told neat stories, but he wasn't writing literature. The man didn't do anything to (to borrow a basketball cliche) change the game of rock. Instead he was a perfect blend of all that had come before him. He was the end result of conventional American rock (soon to be made obsolete by the birth of the New York punk rock scene in 1976).
Since that time Springsteen's music career was kick started by a rock critic, other bands have come along that have dabbled in Boss-isms -- Big guitar rock with wordy, rambling lyrical paeans to blue collar life -- often to wide critical acclaim. The Replacements brought the style to punk rock in the '80s (though Paul Westerberg never seemed as literal or cliched as Springsteen). In the last few years bands like Brooklyn's The Hold Steady and The Gaslight Anthem of New Jersey.
Like Landau's original words of hosanna for Springsteen, the heaps of critical praise for The Gaslight Anthem puzzles me. There's nothing terrible about the young, tattooed band, led by singer/songwriter Brian Fallon. But there's nothing memorable. Like Springsteen, the band is a pastiche of conventional rock tropes. Fallon's blue collar lyrics owe much to Springsteen, but his performance and sound are a lot more like the Replacements. The Gaslight Anthem don't have a particularly "big" sound. The Hold Steady's guitars punch you in the ear. TGA sound fine, but they have the kind of sound you might find on a Cars album. All in all, TGA is a decent band, but unremarkable in almost every way.
So why the universal love? The thing TGA and the Boss have in common is something I think they share with a lot of average rock critics: a belief that the road to salvation for a young man is often a good rock record, or maybe a Fender Telecaster. Both the Boss and TGA enjoy drama. There's a lot at stake for the protagonists of these songs. It's not enough for Springsteen or Fallon to be in love, bored, angry or just emotionally conflicted -- these guys sing cinematic scenes. Their songs have plots, character development, etc. While cool as lyrics, they don't hold their own. Like I said, they don't compare to literature. Rock really shouldn't be about lyrics. It's an emotional art to begin with. Good rock is all about the whole performance.
But these are the kind of stories that rock critics fall in love with and for which they often overlook the actual music. So enraptured are critics with the prose, and the supposed smarts of the guy delivering it, they don't realize that the words are papering over pretty standard, throw-back guitar rock. These guys aren't artists, they're romantics. And most critics are romantics as well. They love their own kind. When they, the critics that is, imagine themselves in another life, they see leather jackets and guitars. They want to be Springsteen, Hold Steady's Craig Finn or Fallon.
The result is a perpetual over inflation by rock critics of "artists" who are literally a couple years of guitar lessons ahead of them -- they're guitar-worshiping geeks promoting themselves. They're not great musicians and they're not great poets.The Boss and TGA are not bad at all. In fact they are just fine. But they are not geniuses or voices of our, or any other, generation. They're above average bands who deserved to get out of the bar to a bigger audience, but they are not the Beatles, or R.E.M., Radiohead or even Modest Mouse, though critics will continue to swoon over their wordy words and blue-collar rock guy posturing. They're just romantic rock acts that have managed to make rock critics fall in love like teenage girls.
Not, I guess, that there's anything wrong with that...
Footnote
1. By coincidence, this is the exact date of my birth, meaning I am exactly the same age as the rise of The Boss.
