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Fiona Sturges: Does gender explain my immunity to Bruce Springsteen's songs of cars, bars and women called Mary?

Wheel man: There might be women in Bruce Springsteen's songs, but there's only one driver

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Wheel man: There might be women in Bruce Springsteen's songs, but there's only one driver

He is the working-class hero, the champion of the underdog, the everyman in search of the American Dream. His place in the pop canon is irrefutable, his name mentioned in the same breath as Tom Waits, Neil Young, Johnny Cash and Bob Dylan. He's a born showman, a consummate storyteller, a principled poet. So why is it that Bruce Springsteen leaves me cold?

I'm pretty sure that the Boss will sleep soundly at night with the knowledge that I remain unconverted. I, on the other hand, find my resistance puzzling. Good friends with whom I share musical tastes view him with an almost religious devotion. On paper, he seems to embody everything the discerning rock fan (ie, me) would want from a musician. There are times when I like nothing more than stadium-busting, fist-punching, fuel-injected rock'n'roll, from the Stones to AC/DC. Bruce and I should be made for each other.

And yet... Try as I might to engage with him, I cannot. His raspy vocals do nothing for me. His way with a rhyming couplet is evident but his words leave me unmoved. As for that sax, don't get me started. When I hear it, it's like someone is drilling a hole into my brain.

There can, I think, be only one explanation for this Bruce intolerance. It is because I have a fundamental flaw, a defect that cannot be rectified and that sets me at a hopeless disadvantage: I'm not a man.

When he emerged in the Seventies, Springsteen offered a vivid picture of manhood. His songs depicted a testosterone-filled world of car-racing, brawling and partying. He spoke exclusively of brotherhood and the male experience. You can smell the sweat and hear the revving engines on tracks such as "Racing in the Street" or "It's Hard to be a Saint in the City" or "Thunder Road". Sure, there were women. There was Mary, Wendy, Kitty, Janey, Sandy and Rosalita. But while they were appreciated, they were largely viewed from a distance. Both literally and metaphorically, Bruce was always in the driving seat.

Springsteen is, to my mind, the musical equivalent to John Wayne. When I was growing up, Wayne's films were viewed in a spirit of slack-jawed wonder by the men in our house. To my father he was magnificent, dependable and heroic. To me, he was a mumbling, pot-bellied bore who walked like he'd just peed his pants. Now, Springsteen is no mumbler, and I am certainly not casting aspersions on his girth. But, like Wayne, he is a man's man. He's an aspirational figure, a macho symbol of what men think they should be.

Of course, two distinct Springsteens have emerged over the years. The first is rock's alpha male, known affectionately as the Boss, who dresses in denim and leather, whose blood runs red, white and blue, and who sells out stadiums in the clink of a cash register. Then there's the troubled soul behind 1982's Nebraska album or The Ghost of Tom Joad, a troubadour with a direct line to the disenfranchised. I am immune to both. It's not just being a woman that's the problem. I'm a middle-class English woman who, give or take the odd summer job, has always been happy in her work. I don't even drive.

Naturally I'm not saying that you have to be a white, working-class, car-crazy American male to appreciate Springsteen, no more than you have to be a black kid from the LA ghetto to listen to NWA or a nutty Icelander to admire Björk. Social and cultural distance from one's musical heroes frequently leads to greater potency.

To the outsider, the notion of a blue-collar worker struggling to make ends meet in the American hinterlands might seem like the most romantic of situations, conjuring the same atmospheric scenes as Steinbeck and Twain. But for me, Springsteen's visions of burned-out Chevrolets, stagnating small towns and dusty highways don't strike a chord. They don't make me feel wistful or uplifted, or make me want to book a holiday to the mid-west. They seem bombastic, sentimental and clichéd, symbolic of the eternal adolescent who dreams of cars and guitars.

It's notable that among Springsteen's better-known fans, who include Tony Blair, Barack Obama, Nick Hornby, Jeremy Vine, Badly Drawn Boy and Greil Marcus, all of them are men. My friends who adore him are all men. I'm not suggesting that female Springsteen fans don't exist but I've yet to meet one.

There are, one imagines, as many women who love Bruce as there are men that don't. A music-writer friend confessed recently that he has never liked Springsteen, a fact that makes him, to use his phrase, "a big Jessie". Received wisdom has it that, like football and beer, men should love Springsteen. If they don't, it seems their very manhood is called into question.

To me and, I suspect, to many of his detractors, Bruce will forever be the smirking pillock from the video of 1984's "Dancing in the Dark," complete with tight jeans and rolled-up sleeves (check those biceps, girls!), extending his hand to a fan and dancing with her on stage. As gender-bending upstarts invaded the charts and Madonna cavorted in her underwear, Springsteen remained, in his jeans and bandana, an unambiguous, humourless island of masculinity. He may not have worn the headband in 25 years but he remains as synonymous with it as Morrissey is with gladioli, Angus Young with short trousers, or John Wayne with a cowboy hat.

I'm reliably informed that Bruce is now making the best albums of his career. This year, he played the Super Bowl, a gig that was surely destined to be his (watching it, my preconceptions were confirmed. There he was, legs astride, sleeves rolled up, playing his guitar like he was setting to work on a pile of logs). Tomorrow, he plays Glastonbury. Given what I hear about Bruce concerts, it will go on for hours, an extended meditation on the male psyche that will send several-thousand males rushing into a mid-life crisis.

But perhaps I'm being unfair. While gender may exert a degree of influence on our musical tastes, it doesn't dictate it. Any reasonably intelligent woman exposed to the cod-feminist babble of Alanis Morissette knows that. As with physical attraction, great music requires that unique connection with its listener, an indefinable chemistry that can lead to a life-long love affair.

Over the last week I have been listening to the new Eels LP, Hombre Lobo. It is composed and sung by Mark E Everett, a white, American, gravel-voiced soul-rocker who dresses like a Sixties factory worker and who specialises in curiously uplifting songs of love and death. There are songs on all his albums that bring a tear to my eye in a way that Bruce's never have.

Why is that? Perhaps it's just a chemical thing, and that Everett is my musical soul mate. Maybe me and Bruce are just not meant to be.

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Comments

Does gender explain my immunity to Bruce Springsteen's songs of cars, bars and women called Mary?
[info]magicgirl57 wrote:
Friday, 26 June 2009 at 04:23 pm (UTC)
Nothing to do with gender I think - I love Springsteen and his music and I am very definitely a woman, and many of my female friends also feel the same. I have been a huge fan for 30 years. It's just different strokes I guess. Have you seen him live? That is often a defining moment for many nay-sayers.
[info]aporianonymous wrote:
Friday, 26 June 2009 at 04:40 pm (UTC)
bear in mind that this "unambiguous, humourless island of masculinity" frequently exchanged a passionate kiss with sax-player and sideman clarence clemons during his huge stadium shows following 'born in the usa'. now perhaps you might consider that evidence of an inescapable homosociality in springsteen's music, but it certainly would dispute any unambiguous reading of what precisely masculinity is for springsteen; bear in mind that most of his lyrical examinations of masculinity emphasise a desperation and desire to escape from the given milieu.
Murray Wentworh
[info]murraywentworh wrote:
Friday, 26 June 2009 at 04:42 pm (UTC)
Come to Canada. And you'll find tons women who like him.

You say you're female, british white and working class, I can tell why you don't get Bruce. It's because he's the boy next door whose made it , and more annoyingly has stayed true to his roots. You Brits like your pop stars to turn posh, so you can tear then down or tragically stuck off the charts, like the Eels.

I have always wondered why Ray Davies was never bigger than he was in the UK. Had he been American, he would have been the precursor to Bruce. But Ray didn't suffer fools gladly, and in England, that means you'll never be accepted by the Big Brother/Jade Goody worshiping working classes.

Get past your roots and Bruce may open up to you...



Bruce
[info]rockertom wrote:
Friday, 26 June 2009 at 04:43 pm (UTC)
I know it isn't gender, because when I brought home the first 2 Bruce albums in 1974, my 4 sisters all became fans. It is just personal taste, and maybe a generational thing. Seeing a Bruce concert has turned a few people to the "church of Bruce", my younger brother was forced to go to a show in 67, you know how it is when your significant other want sto see a show..." he was 18 at the time and he called in sick to work the next day, spending it looking for tickets to the 2nd nights show.
By the way, the whole bleeding red, white and blue, you missed the whole Born in the USA point, like Reagan did, and many others. It wasn't a song about how great America is, it was about the years of mistreatment of tens of thousands of Viet Nam veterans, listen to the words, all of them, not just the chorus.
Re: Bruce
[info]chelsey1988 wrote:
Friday, 26 June 2009 at 06:11 pm (UTC)
I think you're missing the point entirely. By no means do you have to be a man to understand and relate to the underlying principle of Bruce's music. For me, anyway, the joy of Bruce's songs are the messages of hope (in the case of Thunder Road, The Promised Land etc) and the description of the harsh reality when the American dream goes wrong (basically everything from the albums Nebraska, Tom Joad and the song Born In The USA.

Most people's problem with Bruce lies in the fact that they misunderstand. You mention the song Dancing In The Dark... yes the video is a bit over the top and tacky as many 1980's music videos are, but have you actually listened to the words of the song? "I ain't nothing but tired, man I'm just tired and bored with myself" and "wanna change my clothes my hair my face". Many people believe that this is indeed what it seems to be on the face value - a pop song. These same people would be of the opinion that Born In The USA is a first-pumping pro-USA anthem written by Bruce to describe his love of America when it is in fact the exact opposite.

People write what they know, so there are continual references to fights, cars and so on.

I think your immunity to Bruce comes not from being female, but from not being able to see through the metaphors. I'd reccommend the Tunnel of Love album. And it's not about a fairground ride.
U.S. ticketing silliness
[info]brucalita wrote:
Friday, 26 June 2009 at 06:51 pm (UTC)
How cute (and mostly off-base)!
Now, can someone write some detailed articles about how ticketing has gone stupid in the U.S? Has scalping become legal in other countries or only the America?
bruce
[info]badlands23187 wrote:
Friday, 26 June 2009 at 07:39 pm (UTC)
you don't 'get' him you don't 'get' him--no big deal--happens all the time.....i probably don't get a lot of artists you do .....but i am a woman, a feminist and i adore the boss!! he sang of freedom and things that were happening to me at that same time they were to him and i am mentally flexible enough to feel the words and the songs even if a man wrote them....and just because he is older do remember PLENTY of women got him in the 80's.....i always have and am so glad i still do--he is a hero.
[info]brucetramp wrote:
Friday, 26 June 2009 at 10:00 pm (UTC)
You'll be happy to know you're getting thoroughly trashed on various Springsteen websites across the Net. You try to cover it up with fancy words and complicated sentences, yet your ignorance and stupidity shines through.

Shine on, you idiot.
[info]nycserenade wrote:
Saturday, 27 June 2009 at 01:28 pm (UTC)
Being a woman (certainly not English, but middle-class American), I can with great certainty tell you that your problem with Bruce has absolutely nothing to do with being a woman and everything to do with writing an article about Bruce when you clearly have what amounts to a barely passing knowledge of his body of work.

I would give this article a lot more credence if you had even bothered to mention Tunnel of Love, which is not only one of Bruce's best albums, but certainly his most personal. But if you had, it would negate the whole point of your article that Bruce is nothing but a lunk headed macho fist pumping moron who occasionally does a solo album about the disenfranchised.

Over the years, Bruce has written some of the most beautiful and complex songs about relationships that exist in rock and roll. It's a pity that you are so narrow minded that you will never know the beauty of Back in Your Arms Again or One Step Up or If I Should Fall Behind.

I can vouch that there are MANY women who not only "get" Bruce Springsteen, but wonder how not all women "get" him. He is the complete man. Manly, yet sensitive and I don't even think I have to mention that at 59 he looks better than most 40 year olds. I feel a bit sorry for you that your musical vision is so myopic that you cannot appreciate one of the truly great writers and performers ever to exist. Your loss.
Bruce
[info]emmy1978 wrote:
Sunday, 28 June 2009 at 12:08 am (UTC)
What a load of utter contradictory crap! I hope she didnt get paid for that article! Im a 30 year old british girl and having just watched his amazing performance at Glastonbury I can only assume she is talking about somebody else. The audience was full of females most of which knew all the words to his songs!
Springsteen
[info]jt8656a wrote:
Friday, 3 July 2009 at 06:04 pm (UTC)
I worked in a record store for many years, and I can tell you there are plenty of serious music lovers who still don't understand the appeal of Bruce Springsteen, Bob Dylan, Neil Young, and Tom Waits. Many fans like these artists because their songs can transport you imaginatively to another time and place. Bruce in particular, is a living throwback to an era when rock & roll was about cars, teenage love, Saturday night, and dreaming about music as a means of escaping or transcending the mundanity of small town working-class existence.

The fact that Springsteen's songs may not speak to you, is actually OK. Music should invoke a personal response, and we all can't experience the same connection to any given song or artist. However, Bruce is one of only a handful of modern performers who can play rock & roll with the vibrancy it had 40 or 50 years ago. If you could transport some of today's music back to 1955, I bet Chuck Berry, Buddy Holly, and Elvis would probably not get Beyonce' or Coldplay, However, I think they'd understand Springsteen songs like, "Pink Cadillac" or "Glory Days" or "Thunder Road" or "No Surrender." And as for Ms Sturges' aversion to the wailing sax sound in Springsteen's songs, she needs to gain some exposure to roots-rock and classic R & B music. Start with "Rocket 88" (1951) and work your way forward. Even many of the Stones' hits had prominent sax playing.
hurrah! I agree
[info]hazelcullen wrote:
Friday, 10 July 2009 at 10:02 am (UTC)
Viewing (very briefly) some of the comments below, from the Bruce defenders, I just thought I had to give you some approval. I feel exactly the same about Bruce, however you have very eloquently and wittily put it to words. I enjoyed your article immensely and said to myself phew! I can still be a rock fan and not enjoy Bruce or his music, of course it's all about personal taste. Incidentally, I came acoss your article whilst looking at the eels site as I'm a fan and love your comments on E's music. I'm also really enjoying Hombre Lobo at the moment as I have done all his previous albums. It is said to be an album that is about desire; while it has a gritty male perspective on same, it also has some other tender insights, not macho in the extreme like our friend Bruce. As for being your musical soulmate, I think you have a fight on your hands!!!
Cheers!
Well done, madam!
[info]cubert99 wrote:
Tuesday, 1 September 2009 at 05:48 pm (UTC)
You should be knighted for saying the mighty E is better than Brunce Springsteen. Thank you... thank you.
Finally...I am not alone.
[info]wagtail65 wrote:
Thursday, 22 October 2009 at 06:28 pm (UTC)
Okay, first off, I'm a dude from NYC who as been living in BS's (those initials make sense) home state of New Jersey for the past 14 years. I am supposed to love BS. It's The Law.

But I never did. Growing up in the 70's, the hokey piano and saxophone turned me off when compared to Zeppelin, Tull, Yes, ELP, and all those other great Brit bands who were evolving rock. The lyrics about whiny American suburban lazy slacker 20-somethings who feel alienated and betrayed by a society that basically hands them the greatest standard of living in the world annoyed the crap out me! His concerts, which everyone seems to wet their pants about, seemed self-indulgent and overly dramatic to basically cover up sloppy musicianship, bad singing, and amatuerish lead guitar work. I was from a family of musicians (I wonder if musicans like BS as much as non-musicians?)

Now that I am older I am trying to go through the BS music catalogue to find some songs I can relate to, from the multi-millionaire who sings about the working class and how much he hated Reagan and the 1980's prosperity. We shall see. I am looking forward to "Joad" and "Nebraska."

TDC

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