Springsteen might be the Boss, but he isn’t immune to fearing authority – especially when that authority is mobilising behaviour he deems as “un-American”.
Still, as a lifelong chronicler of the downtrodden, Springsteen certainly understands how Trump got into office.
In a long-ranging interview with Marc Maron on the WTF podcast, released yesterday, Springsteen tackled his father issues, his use of the live experience as catharsis and escape, the emotional walls he built in his 20s and knocked down in his 30s, and his opinion of Donald Trump.
Not surprisingly, Springsteen isn’t a fan of the President-Elect. But despite acknowledging that a lot of “good people” voted for Trump, and that he completely understands his rise to power, he admits that he is afraid of what Trump’s term could bring – and what his election to office already means for America.
“Are you scared now?”, Maron asked him.
“Yeah, of course, how could you not be?”
When asked if he has felt this fear before, he replied in the negative.
“I’ve felt disgust before, but never the kind of fear you feel now. It’s simple as the fear of, ‘Is someone simply competent enough to do this particular job?’ Forget about where they are ideologically. Do they simply have the pure competence to be put in a position of such responsibility.”
Springsteen might not agree he is the man for the job, but he understands why others do.
“I understand how he got elected. I think if you were affected deeply by the industrialisation and globalisation and the technological advances and you have been left behind, and somebody comes along and tells you, ‘I’m gonna bring all the jobs back. Don’t worry about it – they’re all coming back’, and you’re concerned about America changing – the browning of America: ‘I’m gonna build a wall.’
“You’re worried about ISIS: ‘I got a secret plan to defeat ISIS, don’t worry about that.’ You’re worried about terrorism in the United States: ‘I’m gonna register the Muslims and we’re gonna ban’… these are all very simplistic, but very powerful and simple ideas. I mean, they’re lies, they can’t occur, but if you’ve struggled for the past 30 or 40 years – and these have been the very themes of much of my creative life for all those years – and someone comes along and offers you something else, particularly if you’ve been failed by the two parties, it’s a compelling choice. It just appeals to your worst angels, and under certain circumstances, enough people went there.
When asked what he feared most, Springsteen replied:
“That the worst aspects of what he appeals to come to fruition. Once you let that genie out of the bottle: bigotry, racism, when you let those things out, they don’t go back into the bottle that easily, if they go back in at all. Whether it’s a rise in hate crimes, people feeling they have license to speak and behave in ways that previously were considered un-American, and are un-American – that’s what he’s appealing to. My fear is that those things find a place in ordinary civil society.
“Those are all things that I’m very frightened of, and waiting to see play out.”
Springsteen is often seen as a political songwriter, despite, as he explains to Maron, his songs coming “from the inside out”. He doesn’t plan to write any songs about Trump. “I don’t go, okay, I need a Trump album, that’s what’s gotta come next.”
After all, he has already soundtracked the particular fear in the air.
“I’ve got a lot of songs that are about it, right now. They’re there already.”
He is correct. As he told Rolling Stone in 1978: “All my songs are about people at that moment when they’ve got to do something, just do something, do anything.”
That pretty much sums up how a lot of people are feeling at this point in history.
Listen to the entire podcast here.
