Bruce Springsteen Takes Care of His Own

He is lit from behind so he casts a shadow enveloping the stage. Out comes Bruce Springsteen, dressed in all black, sporting a smile that serves as a personal invitation to the 40,000 fans losing their minds.

We take care of our own
Wherever this flag’s flown
We take care of own
— Bruce Springsteen, “We Take Care of our Own”

Now, that’ll be $155 please, plus a $30.10 convenience fee, and then, conveniently enough, another $4.70 processing fee. The whole thing comes to $189.80. Please enjoy your Bruce Springsteen concert experience. For almost 200 bucks a person, you’d better.

Quick background, I love Bruce Springsteen. He is my favorite musician and if you asked me my five favorite musicians, it would probably look a lot like a Springsteen-centric version of a Chappelle’s Show bit.

I have been lucky enough to see the Boss perform live in five states and D.C. His concerts are legendary feats, measured in quantity AND quality. (Recently at Giant Stadium, Springsteen and the E Street Band played their longest show ever in the U.S., clocking in at 3 hours and 59 minutes, beating the record they had set a few days earlier, when their show ran 3 hours 52 minutes.)

To know of Bruce Springsteen is to know about his ideals and upbringing. The blue collar. The factory life. The just getting by. The meritocracy. The remembering where you came from. The guy who takes care of his own.

My theory is that there are two Bruce Springsteens. One, the mythological Bruce, who is the manifestation of his lyrics and teachings. He’s the kid from the gut wrenching story of being rejected by the Vietnam War draft and being assured by his father that it was a good thing. He’s the rockstar who was willing to concede a show in North Carolina to send a message that discriminatory laws are unacceptable. He’s the artist who could show up any night to a Bruce Springsteen cover band and jump on stage with them. He’s the goofball who slid crotch first into a camera during Super Bowl Halftime show, and then giggled. This Bruce cares about the music, the causes, and us above himself.

Then there’s the other Bruce Springsteen, the corporate Bruce. He’s the mogul who sells his tickets on Ticketmaster, even after the company screwed his fans. He’s the megastar who flies home to New Jersey on his private plane between tour stops. He’s the salesman who repackages songs cut out of early albums, packaged into compilations and remasterings decades later, just in time for the holidays. He cares about the bottom line, the good life, and himself above us.

Mythological Bruce always brags about leading the heart-stopping, pants-dropping, hard-rocking, booty-shaking, love-making, earth-quaking, Viagra-taking, justifying, death-defying, legendary E Street Band. Corporate Bruce is the CEO of the heart-stopping, pricetag-whopping, sticker-shocking, moral-hocking, one-percenting, ideals-circumventing, wallet-clearing, racketeering, justifying, fee-applying, legendary E Street Band.

Both Bruces exist in the real world, and as a fan, that may be the most frustrating part. At the show, mythological Bruce runs around the stage, chugs beers, and blue collars it up with his fans. We can’t help but love that guy. But before stepping inside that venue, the process of obtaining tickets and getting to the show are, at best, frustrating and, at worst, impossible. Those activities fall under The Corporate Boss’s jurisdiction.

The everyman takes sign requests from fans during the concert, but the executive ensures no one without gobs of expendable income can sit in seats with access.

Just look at the rules for people who wanted to stand in the General Admission “pit” for a recent show from Giants Stadium. The gist of it is arriving five hours early, foregoing any real tailgating experience in lieu of waiting for a lottery number to be called two hours later. Finally being ready and lined up numerically, like some kind of elementary school experiment, to enter the pit two and a half hours before Bruce’s call time.

First of all, the mythological Bruce would be the first to say fuck any and all rules when it comes to listening to music. But when dealing with corporate Bruce, check out how early you have to arrive to get a wristband and wait for a lottery number to be called. Getting to East Rutherford by 2 P.M. on a Thursday is convenient for such a small, entitled subset of people, especially once you remember each and every one of them is shelling out almost two bills.

It is unrealistic and unfathomable that the well-intentioned Bruce would be able to exist without the capitalist, but it’s not unfair to wish that The People’s Bruce held a little more power. Louis CK and other popular performers have established a much fan-friendlier ticket buying experience, where fees are minimized or removed altogether.

And even performers who can’t negotiate their own systems at least have the courtesy to release all the tickets at the same time, instead of blocking out 30 percent of the seats and releasing them in bits and pieces, only to be gobbled up by ticket brokers and secondary markets. Maybe it’s the economic state of music today, compared to the late 1970s, or perhaps Bruce has evolved.

And so the protective, communal words of “We Take Care of Our Own” feel disingenuous. Instead of a rallying cry, it just rings hollow, as a relatively mediocre Springsteen song from 2012’s Wrecking Ball album. The song’s lyrics are a bit of a Rorschach Test in determining which Bruce you see at first glimpse (also, do you see the Duck or the Rabbit?). Maybe each Bruce has a base that he looks out for, or perhaps it was written vaguely enough for both sides to think they have a dog in the fight.

Bruce used to be the long-haired kid who made music first and business last, but that isn’t sustainable for even the most anti-establishment rockstars. Bob Dylan is doing commercials with IBM’s Watson computer, for fuck’s sake. Bruce never asked for his aura to become legendary, just his band. At this point, his mythology feels little more than Bruce fan-fic.