I Know the River Is Dry”: Economic Realism in the Music Of
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“…I Know the River is Dry”: Economic Realism in the Music of Bruce Springsteen, 1977 – 1984”. Thomas Willis Student ID: 4182135 Year 4 Single Honours American & Canadian Studies Dissertation supervisor: Maria Ryan Acknowledgments: Firstly, I would like to extend a thank you to my friends, family and academics who have read my finished draft and offered invaluable comments, considerations and corrections. Also, to my supervisor Maria Ryan who has remained enthusiastic and constantly helpful regarding my research for this dissertation. Secondly, a thank you to the online community of ‘Brucebook’. Springsteen’s fans have often reminded me of the accurate perceptiveness of Bruce Springsteen’s music. They are the real people of the communities of Youngstown, the people whose fathers lost their lives as a result of corporate industrial negligence and the individuals who have struggled to comprehend their identity in a society that takes from them but does not give back. This research is dedicated to the working-class as it simultaneously aims to strengthen the discourse surrounding them and to highlight their visibility. For the workers from California, to the Midwest, to New York, to the Canadian border, to the paternal side of my family who stood strong in the miners strike of 1984-1985 and opposed the industrial disinvestment and ignorance of the Premiership of Margaret Thatcher. Finally, to my parents, who taught me everything. Without you, none of the past four years would have been possible - you are both “Living Proof”. Dedicated to my granddad, Thomas Buller Willis, 1937-2007. Abstract: The following chapters are organized chronologically across periods of two years and analyse the context of Bruce Springsteen’s music. The main proposition of the dissertation is to demonstrate that this artistic period is an important cultural element in academic study that sets out to understand the decline of the American working class. Chapter one concerns the years of 1977-1978. It explores the development of the theme of labour in Darkness on the Edge of Town and Springsteen’s early engagement with the decline of the working class. Chapter two considers the development of a more direct political consciousness in Springsteen’s writing during 1979-1980. The song-writing during this period directly considered themes of economic deprivation and displacement. Chapter three analyses Nebraska during 1981-1982 and how the album portrayed the damaged humanity of former industrial workers and the beginning of Springsteen’s depiction of income equality. Chapter four from 1983-1984 involves Springsteen’s release of Born in the USA alongside the Reagan administration and how the politics of Neo- liberalism and the New Right collided with his music. Word count (including footnotes): 13,250 CONTENTS PAGE NUMBER Introduction P. 1 1. “Finding the Light in the Darkness on the Edge of Town”: The Emotional Past and the Theme of Labour – 1977 – 1978. P. 6 2. “Down to the River”: The Past of Hurt Songs Make Sense of the Present – 1979 – 1980. P. 16 3. “…Debts that No Honest Man Can Pay”: Winners and Losers – 1981 – 1982. P. 28 4. “This Hard Land”: The Reality of Vietnam, Ronald Reagan and the Tale of Two Americas – 1983 – 1984. P. 39 Conclusion P. 48 Bibliography P. 51 1 Introduction: “When you read about workers today, they are discussed mainly in terms of statistics (the unemployed), trade, (the need to eliminate and offshore their jobs in the name of increased profit), and unions (usually depicted as a purely negative drag on the economy). In reality, the lives of American workers, as well of those of the unemployed and the homeless, make up a critically important cornerstone of our country’s story, past and present…”1 - Bruce Springsteen. “We construct stories to reflect on the past, to comprehend the present, and to anticipate the future”.2 - Steve May & Laura Morrison. Definitions of what constitutes the working-class in American history are “notoriously porous,” according to Kathryn Marie Dudley.3 Dudley argues that structural considerations are crucial to understanding the place working- class people inhabit in society and how they are distinguishable from the middle-class.4 Although Dudley proposes that structure is important to consider when analysing the working class, it can be argued that the decline 1 Bruce Springsteen, quoted in Dale Maharidge, Someplace Like America: Tales from the New Depression (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2013), p. x. 2 Steve May, Lauren Morrison, “Making Sense of Restructuring: Narratives of Accommodation among Downsized Workers,” in Beyond the Ruins: The Meanings of Deindustrialization, edited by Jefferson Cowie and Joseph Heathcott (New York: Cornell University Press, 2003), p. 268. 3 Kathryn Marie Dudley, The End of the Line: Lost Jobs, New Lives in Post-industrial America (London: The University of Chicago Press, 1997), p. xxi. 4 Ibid. 2 of the working class itself has led to an era of post-structural academic literature. Rather than just a theoretical approach, this body of literature actually explores the place of the working-class as the physical structures of industry can no longer be seen. Rather than deconstructing a grand narrative of American labour, post-structural literature on the working-class explores what becomes of the people “beyond the ruins”. 5 Or in Ruth Milkman’s terms, as capitalist economies shift away from manufacturing and industry, “what is happening to industrial workers and their way of life?”6 To come to terms with this, Steve May and Laura Morrison note that it is better to understand the “lived experiences”.7 May and Morrison argue that to better understand the decline of the working class it is appropriate to engage with the story-like narratives of workers who have faced deindustrialization head- on.8 The effects of deindustrialization on the American working class was enormous during the late seventies and early eighties. Barry Bluestone writes that as a consequence of private disinvestment and the relocation of American business, the loss of jobs from the seventies onwards was “cataclysmic,” reaching an estimate as high as thirty-eight million.9 The study of how the working class is represented in culture has seen to play an 5 Jefferson Cowie, Joseph Heathcott, Beyond the Ruins, p. 1. 6 Ruth Milkman, Farewell to the Factory (London, University of California Press, 1997), p. 1. 7 Steve May, Lauren Morrison, “Making Sense of Restructuring: Narratives of accommodation among Downsized Workers,” p. 259. 8 Ibid. 9 Barry Bluestone, quoted in Beyond the Ruins: The Meanings of Deindustrialization, p. ix. 3 important part in academic disciplines that are concerned with exploring industrial decline from the seventies onwards. Rather than simply relying on figure-based research, the study of culture contextualises the decline of the working class and achieves a more comprehensive explication of what this means. According to Dudley, this means an examination of “the cultural meanings that ordinary people draw upon to understand their place in American society”.10 Cultural representations often humanise the working- class as they offer a bottom-up perspective of workers. Iton, for example, argues that the dramatization of workers in John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath and in the music of Woody Guthrie has “helped bring wider attention to labour’s issues”.11 A study of Bruce Springsteen’s music from 1977-1984 fits within the approach of humanising the decline of the working class for a number of reasons. Firstly, as Jim Cullen notes, Springsteen’s music is “…not music of musicology but of politics, history, literature, sociology”.12 A study of Springsteen’s music is much more than a study of musical form and sound, it is an exploration of culture and historical context. Secondly, Springsteen’s songs are essentially grounded in ‘economic realism’. Economic realism is an appropriate term to describe Springsteen’s concerns across this period of six years as it describes how Springsteen’s songs are contextualized by real economic circumstances and therefore a legitimate means of academic 10 Kathryn Marie Dudley, The End of the Line, p. xxi. 11 Richard Iton, Solidarity Blues (North Carolina: University of North Carolina Press, 2000), p. 201. 12 Jim Cullen, Born in the U.S.A.: Bruce Springsteen and the American Tradition, (Connecticut: Wesleyan University, 1997), p. xv. 4 investigation. The shift in song-writing after Born to Run is essentially a shift from epistemology to ontology – from tracks that yearned for a decent grasp of life’s knowledge to songs that made sense of the present, of living, of being working class. The songs in Born to Run demand the listener’s attention and ask questions. However, starting with 1978’s Darkness on the Edge of Town, this shifted towards an analysis of the answers of those questions. Or, if there are any answers at all. Thus, Born to Run’s “runaway American dream” often leads to an examination of the “soured American dream” in later albums.13 The central proposition of this thesis is to demonstrate that Bruce Springsteen’s portrait of the working class from 1977-1984 is an imperative cultural element in the structure of academic study. ‘Economic realism’ in Bruce Springsteen’s music promotes the study of a humanistic approach to the decline of working class communities and leads investigation into the cause and effect of the decline of labour. The study of ‘economic realism’ in Springsteen’s music is often only anecdotal in contemporary literature. The economic themes of his music are often overlooked and underdeveloped in favour of a much broader discussion of his body of work. For example, Jim Cullen’s Born in the USA: Bruce Springsteen and the American Tradition places Springsteen in the wider context of American political philosophy but largely overlooks the implications of economic realism in Springsteen’s music.14 Similarly, Jefferson Cowie’s Stayin’ Alive is a detailed explication of the decline of the working class from the seventies onwards and how the 13 June Skinner-Sawyers, Racing in the Street: The Bruce Springsteen Reader (New York: Penguin Books, 2004), p.