It took about 10 minutes to consider, and then I told my son Nicky that the only “nostalgia” rock/pop concert I’d attend—if it were in Baltimore—was a show by Steve (but always “Stevie”) Winwood. Now 77, Winwood was an early favorite, with the Spencer Davis Group, two iterations of Traffic, the lone bright star in the short-lived Blind Faith (Winwood’s vocal on a live cover of “Under My Thumb” is a can’t miss), and then a successful solo career that I didn’t follow too closely. Winwood keeps out of the spotlight and has, by all accounts, avoided the extreme excesses of the rock star lifestyle and has houses in England and Nashville. I have a two-disc compilation CD, Winwood Greatest Hits Live, released in 2017, and his voice sounds splendid—if not the same when he was 16 and aping Buster Brown’s late-1950s hit Fannie Mae—especially on a cover of Timmy Thomas’ 1973 hit “Why Can’t We Live Together.”
I’d definitely skip any Bruce Springsteen show, even if it was free admission (not likely!) within walking distance of my house. As noted in this space before, I saw “The Boss” twice in 1975, pre-Born to Run, when you could still walk up to the venue and pay five bucks for a great seat. The four-hour concerts were—I thought, and still do to some extent, The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle (1973), was a landmark LP—filled with originals and well-chosen covers like “Quarter to Three” from Gary U.S. Bonds and a Mitch Ryder medley. (Unlike the on-the-slide Stones, who phoned in a shitty rendition of the classic Temptations hit “Ain’t Too Proud to Beg” on their shitty 1974 LP It’s Only Rock ‘n Roll.)
Recently I read, with magic-bean craziness, a nonsensical polish-the-knob tribute to Springsteen in The New York Times by Eric Alterman, a 65-year-old professor at Brooklyn College who’s had a prolific career as a journalist and author (10 books), which is admirable. Hard work usually is. I almost never see his doctrinaire liberal dogma these days—although I haven’t sought it out—but this is a True Believer who hasn’t deviated from the hymnal since 1990s. Fair enough: he hasn’t disgraced himself like Jake Tapper, and that ain’t nothing. Years ago I often read his “Altercation” blog, and although it was always maddening—journalists have no shortage of ego, but Alterman’s near the top—I chuckled every time he wrote, “Thanks, Ralph,” since he blamed, again and again, Ralph Nader for George Bush’s election in 2000 (although he’d say Bush’s SCOTUS installation).
I’m getting as long-winded as Adam Serwer, who just wrote a very stupid and long essay for The Atlantic about Trump ushering in a new “dark age,” that rivals the Fall of Rome, so I better step up. A long time ago, Alterman wrote that as a teenager in Scarsdale, Springsteen’s Born to Run “changed his life.” I think he was serious. I have a rotating list of 10 Best Records, but none “changed my life,” thank the Lord, but such is the professor’s dedication to his New Jersey muse, about whom he wrote a 1999 book It Ain’t No Sin to Be Glad You’re Alive: The Promise of Bruce Springsteen. Maybe Alterman and Springsteen are pals, maybe not, but give the “super-fan” credit for still rocking out and worshipping billionaire Bruce just as hard as Chris Christie.
Alterman’s Times essay, “Bruce Springsteen Will Never Surrender to Donald Trump,” isn’t amazingly dumb—even though the headline, and copy, does read like it was ChatGPT-enhanced—just a full-throated defense of his musical hero. He writes about Springsteen’s European tour: “In Manchester, Mr. Springsteen waxed on about ‘the America I love, the America I’ve written about, that’s been a beacon of hope and liberty for 250 years.’ It’s a country, he insisted, that ‘regardless of its faults is a great country with a great people’ but is today threatened, as ‘a majority of our elected representatives have failed to protect the American people from the abuses of an unfit president and a rogue government.’”
Okay! That’s a tape loop in Bruce’s head—not even close to John Lennon’s 1966 out-of-context remark that the Beatles were bigger than Jesus (true)—and Trump responded with one of his puerile all-caps posts of Truth Social, and then moved on to the next topic. There are millions of MAGA Springsteen fans and I doubt more than a few will burn his records, CDs or delete him from a Spotify playlist. As for Alterman, this defense of the celebrity was, I think, simply part of his ongoing work and besides, a Times byline never hurts for those in his camp. When Springsteen’s time is up and he’s giving St. Peter a fist-bump, I’m hoping, however, whatever dolt assigns obits at the Times, doesn’t immediately text the Brooklyn professor. That’d be a chocolate-covered cherry, the white creamy kind, too much, much too much.
The above is favorite photo from my youth on Long Island, with yours truly and my fourth oldest brother Gary flanking our cousins Steve and Phil Duncan on an Indian Summer afternoon. Stevie Winwood, Bruce Springsteen, David Bowie and George Harrison were whistling (or popping bennies) while they worked, but the four of us had yet to hear their music. Funk to funky, we had no idea.
Take a look at the clues to figure out the year: Henry Mancini wins five baubles at 4th annual Grammy Awards; The Music Man is released in the U.S.; Booker T. & MGs and Herman’s Hermits form; Mary Wells’ “The One Who Really Loves You” is a decent-sized hit; Philip K. Dick’s The Man In the High Castle, Doris Lessing’s The Golden Notebook and Milton Friedman’s Capitalism and Freedom are published; Artforum and Film Comment start publication; Steve Albini is born and Scrapper Blackwell dies; Beyond the Fringe makes its Broadway debut; Ralph Terry was the World Series’ MVP; and Greek Money wins the Preakness.
—Follow Russ Smith on Twitter: @MUGGER2023
