Bruce Springsteen celebrated the country’s 250th birthday this 4th of July weekend with a PBS NewsHour special that examines his role in American culture.
Always an outspoken critic of President Donald Trump, Springsteen opened up to host Geoff Bennett about performing for fans regardless of their political leanings — although he still proudly referred to the second Trump administration as a “ship of fools.”
“I think we’re in a very dangerous moment. Obviously, our democracy is threatened, the Constitution is threatened. We have an administration that, in my humble opinion, is a ship of fools. It’s a very, very, very dangerous time for America,” he shared. “I was old enough to live through the 60s, and I remember the assassinations of John Kennedy and Martin Luther King and Malcolm X and Bobby Kennedy. So it’s not like these are the first difficult times America’s been through, we had the Civil War. America has 250 years of being grounded in democracy and I don’t think that’s going to change. I think we’re going through a very, very difficult period, but I tend to remain realistically optimistic that the country will pull out of it and something new will be born from it that is good.”
“If I’m playing up at the stadium here in Jersey and there’s 50,000 people, I don’t think they’re all Democrats or they’re all progressives. I like playing to a big tent,” The Boss added. “I’m in the hearts and minds business, you change people kind of one at a time. I believe that culture has impact, I believe that culture shapes the nation, culture shapes our politics. So I have to — whether they do or not — I have to act as they do, that’s my job.
Friday’s “Bruce Springsteen: Finding America in Song” also coincided with the opening of the Bruce Springsteen Center for American Music in New Jersey. He further explained why some of his older tracks are just as relevant today as they were when they were first written.
“They always resonate the same, because they’re always there. I think that’s why a lot of the songs I’ve written 40, 45 years ago, 25 years ago, still resonate today,” Springsteen said. “‘Youngstown,’ ‘American Skin’ or ‘Born in the U.S.A.’ … They retain their currency because we have not yet become the country that we would want to be.”
With that said, the legendary singer understands why not every artist uses their platform to speak truth to power, saying it’s all “personal choice.”
“There’s fabulous artists who never outwardly, necessarily sang a political song or political note. Music inspires and excites us in a wide variety of ways, enters the culture in a wide variety of ways,” he said. “So, it’s just something that I was interested in when I was very young, in my 20s, because of probably my own background: Little town, very provincial, young guy; my parents were really blue collar and working class and I watched them struggle my whole life. It was my way of sorting through the issues that I lived with as as a child and as a young man. So as time passed and I continued to write about the country and its struggles, at some point, you feel, oh gee, maybe after 50 years of doing that, you feel you have a cultural obligation to speak when you can, if you can.”
Still, Springsteen is more than happy to show his pride for the country by speaking out against what he finds wrong.
“I believe in critical patriotism,” he said. “I believe that’s the definition of a patriot, that you love your country so much that you are willing to look at it clearly, recognize its faults, encourage it to be a better place and believe that you carry in your heart the country that is waiting.”
