July 27, 2008
Springsteen: Silence Is Unpatriotic
Rock Star Answers Critics Who Say His Anti-War Album Is Unpatriotic
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Play CBS Video Video Springsteen's War Songs Bruce Springsteen tells Scott Pelley why the anti-war message on his new album is patriotic.
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Video Why Springsteen Still Sings Bruce Springsteen tells Scott Pelley why he is still touring after all these years.
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Bruce Springsteen, left, talking to correspondent Scott Pelley. (CBS)
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Bruce Springsteen (CBS)
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"How was the news broken? Did Bruce tell the band himself? Tell me about it," Pelley says.
"I think Bruce picked up the phone and called everybody. And I think everybody was shocked and, I'm hurt. And just felt really abandoned," Bittan recalls.
"Was that hard? Was it heartbreaking? You say, 'Look, I'm going on. I'm leaving you behind,'" Pelley asks Springsteen.
"Well, I didn't exactly put it like that," Springsteen says, laughing.
Asked how he put it, Springsteen says, laughing, "I soft-soaped it somehow. Or I tried, you know? And, you know, everybody had different feelings. I mean people were mad or angry and suddenly they're okay. I wasn't going to be any good to them at that moment. You know? And I think what happens is sometimes you got to break your own narrative."
"We all have stories we're living and telling ourselves," he says, laughing. "And there's a time when that narrative has to be broken because you've run out of freedom in it. You've run out of places to go."
The split forced the band to find other places to go. Van Zandt joined the mob on "The Sopranos" on HBO, and drummer Max Weinberg joined Conan O’Brien on NBC. But they always drop what they’re doing to return to Springsteen.
60 Minutes watched the band do a small rehearsal out of the new material before an audience of 2,000 or so in Asbury Park. There’s something special about a Springsteen audience: they know the words, and the stories they feel in themselves. This was the day after Bruce’s 58th birthday, and Pelley found him immediately after the show, wringing wet.
"What did you learn about the band tonight?" Pelley asks.
"We made fewer screw ups than I thought we might. The main thing you learn is not so much the band, because the band will just play better from tonight on out. You know? But you learn a lot about the set, you know, you're trying to work your new things in. You're trying to get in what you're trying to say. You're trying to get people just to rock. You know, to go crazy and have fun. It's ultimately sort of supposed to be a bit of an ecstatic experience," Springsteen says.
Was it?
"And we got there a few times. It's pretty good," Springsteen says, laughing. "And so, you're trying to figure out, 'Okay, now how do you take it up to a certain height? And how do you get there?'"
"Pretty good for 58," Pelley remarks.
"Oh. That's nothing. I'm still a chiseled hunk of muscle so…I guess I'll keep going for a while," Springsteen says, laughing.
Springsteen's music career began over four decades earlier as a teenager in Freehold, N.J.
"I was probably one of the smartest kids in my class at the time. Except you would've never known it," Springsteen says, laughing. "You would've never known it. Because where my intelligence lay was not, wasn't able to be tapped within that particular system. And I didn't know how to do it myself until music came along and opened me up not just to the world of music but to the world period, you know, to the events of the day. To the connection between culture and society and those were things that riveted me, engaged me in life," Springsteen says. "Gave me a sense of purpose. What I wanted to do. Who I wanted to be. The way that I wanted to do it. What I thought I could accomplish through singing songs."
"It's not just the singing. It's the writing, isn't it, for you?" Pelley asks.
"Of course. Every good writer or filmmaker has something eating at them, right? That they can't quite get off their back . And so your job is to make your audience care about your obsessions," Springsteen says.
His recurring obsession is the life that he knew as a boy, the harsh relationship with his working class dad who didn't think much of a rock and roll son.
"It was a tough, struggling household. People struggled emotionally. People struggled financially to get through the day," Springsteen remembers. "Small town. Small town world which I continue to return to. It's like when I went to write, though, I put my father's clothes on. You know the immersement in that world through my parents and my own experience as a child and the need to tell a story that maybe was partially his. Or maybe a lot his. I just felt drawn to do it."
"Your dad wasn't all that proud of you as a young man?" Pelley asks.
"Oh, he was later. When I came home with the Oscar and I put it on the kitchen table, and he just looked at it and said, 'Bruce, I'll never tell anybody what to do ever again,'" Springsteen remembers, laughing. "It was like, that was his comment. So I said, 'Oh. That's okay.'"
Produced By John Hamlin
© MMVIII, CBS Interactive Inc. All Rights Reserved.
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See all 584 CommentsAnyone who would give in to this kind of authoritarian overreach in the name of safety deserves neither safety nor freedom to walk out the front door. We the people are the ones who should rise up and confront the DHS and TSA because our congressional leadership has abjegated their responsibility to defend the constitution thanks to security and defense industry grafting through political contributions
Take a close look at the creeps that call him unpatriotic, 99% of them have not sacrificed a thing for this country, all they do is swindle and cheat and send working-class kids to kill and be killed on foreign soil.
I must ask about Talk Radio and the national forum those people are given to do exactly that, pop off on subjects they have no real expertice in.
What inside-the-beltway experience does Limbaugh, Hannity, or Savage have? What political education do they have, or political experience, yet they have the national ear for their personal points of view.
Is it because Springsteen''s point of view is a more liberal one that people here are complaining?
Political statements and art have never been strangers. Art, such as music, sculpture, or the written word, is exactly the right forum for the expression of all human feelings and points of view. Art imitates life, after all.
Bruce Springsteen is an artist. He must be allowed to project life through his art, his music. He must be allowed to speak on the same exact premise as Talk Radio hosts are allowed and for the same reasons.
Where do you feel censorship starts?
Censorship is dangerous. It is a knife that cuts both ways. It silences the speaker and it denys the listener new information. Censorship silences diversity, it silences communication and it silences freedom of expression. Without those things, how much less humane would we all be?
His son is right - Springsteen is a self-centered egomaniac, and his music reflects that.
Posted by brianbwb at 12:55 AM : Jul 28, 2008
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Well that would explain why gas prices are so cheap here in the U.S. right now.
There are plenty of lunatics on this board. Just read their yawn-inducing comments about kool aid and seig heil and other assorted nonsense. They don''t make any points other than cementing their lunacy but they will never understand how speaking like that makes them look. Bruce Springsteen can speak out because he''s famous. I for one don''t give a da.m.n about what he has to say. Just because he''s rich doesn''t make him right and nothing he sings will bring those men and women home.
BS, pure and simple.
The troops are helping corporations execute a land and oil grab, nothing more, the invasion and occupation of Iraq has nothing whatsoever to do with protecting the US, in fact, they are creating more resentment, which makes it even more difficult for non-oil American businesses to do international business.
Not a fan of his music, I lean more towards instrumental mastery. But I do enjoy how the neocons squirmed, because they could not disparage such a popular artist, but also would not admit their mistake, so without announcement, they dropped the song, tails tucked firmly between their legs.
So I take it that you think it is OK for the US to kill, torture and rape Iraqis, and allow the Turks to bomb the Kurds, as is happening now?
Scott pelley , in his reporting, was disapointing too, as he was star struck and unable or unwilling to ask hard questions of Mr. Springsteen.
This was a sad piece of journalism!
Alain Piallat
Bruce Springsteen should not be silent about the disasterous decision by the Bush Administration to go to war against a country that had nothing to do with 911 and presented no immediate threat to us.
The devastation and bloodshed visited on the Iraqi people by an impetuous and wreckless President needs to be spoken to directly. If it isn''t, the blood is on YOUR hands.
Posted by otrem72 at 04:37 PM : Oct 10, 2007
You sure aren''t the solution to getting this board back on track.
Hooray for The Great Dumbing Down!!!!
Last letter from doomed Al Qaida chief: "We are so desperate for your help"
http://www.worldtribune.com/worldtribune/WTARC/2007/ss_iraq_09_30.asp
Iraq insurgency: People rise against al-Qa''eda
Damien McElroy spent a week in the heart of the insurgency in Anbar province in Iraq. In the second of seven exclusive reports he describes how peace and prosperity have returned to a town formerly riven by sectarian killings.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/10/08/wanbar308.xml
It''s called a civil war why can''t you get just one story correct?
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