Bruce Springsteen: The Masculine Voice

"Bruce Springsteen and Masculinity"
Author: Gareth Palmer


The author examines Bruce Springsteen and how he communicates masculinity through his musical career and what kind of masculinity he is portraying or performing. Springsteen's masculinity he presents is one formed by his blue collar experiences and those of his audience.  Palmer examines masculinity in Springsteen's lyrics involving fathers and sons, girls and family, and work as well as in his performance, videos, and the man he presents himself as. The author argues that Springsteen presents himself as a "man's man" struggling (but appearing to succeed) to fit into the traditional masculine role during the changing times involving the industrial revolution. 

Bruce Springsteen has a song titled "Tougher than the Rest."  I think that title embodies the type of masculinity that Springsteen presents or represents. 

Even in his more vulnerable songs, he is still a "tough guy" from his voice down to his lyrics.  His vulnerability or struggle is never the end of him, he is always surviving.  He is "tougher"than the alternative. The song is attached below. 

 

In a biography of Bruce Springsteen from biography.com, he talks about his parents and his relationship with his father.  I think you can see some of the points Palmer makes embedded in the following quote:

Rock musician. Born September 23, 1949, in Long Branch, New Jersey, Bruce Springsteen was raised in a working-class household in Freehold Borough. The future Boss's father, Doug Springsteen, had trouble holding down a steady job and worked at different times as a bus driver, millworker and prison guard. Adele Springsteen, Bruce's mother, brought in steadier income as a secretary in a local insurance office. Young Bruce and his father had a difficult relationship. "When I was growing up, there were two things that were unpopular in my house," the singer later recalled. "One was me, and the other was my guitar."

Years later, however, Springsteen suggested that his fraught relationship with his father had been important for his art. "I've gotta thank him," Springsteen said upon his induction to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, "because what would I conceivably have written about without him? I mean, you can imagine that if everything had gone great between us, we would have had disaster. I would have written just happy songs — and I tried it in the early '90s and it didn't work… Anyway, I put on his work clothes and I went to work. It was the way that I honored him. My parents' experience forged my own. They shaped my politics, and they alerted me to what is at stake when you're born in the U.S.A."

In this quote, you can see the ordinary man, the story that is common among Americans.  He has a story that his audience can relate with.  In the way he talks about his father while growing up you can see the Rebellion stage through "there were two things that were unpopular in my house--me and my guitar" and then while he talks about his father in the present tense he says that he honored his father through his songs, and through "putting on his work clothes." In this, the reapprochement phase is evident in his career.  The link to the full article is http://www.biography.com/people/bruce-springsteen-9491214.

Beneath is my favorite Bruce Springsteen song.  It can probably be picked apart to represent something I don't agree with...but I think it is a song that represents a story a lot of people from his generation relate with.  Plus you can just feel the gut wrenching emotion in his voice.  It definitely contains the work and trap of domesticity Palmer talked about in the chapter. 

Discussion Questions:

   1.   What is the pessimistic tone of Springsteen's Palmer refers to often in the chapter?

   2.    Do you think that Springsteen was seen as a hero and an ordinary man simultaneously by his fans? 

          If so, how do you think he achieved this?  Or do you think he was only seen as an ordinary man like

          Palmer argues?