One of the indelible memories of my youth is watching the ball drop in Times Square to usher in the new year, with my dear, departed Uncle Willie softly commenting, "Another year passed ..." To my youthful ears, such wistfulness was borderline humorous. New Years wasn't for nostalgia, so I thought, at least for me. It was for celebration, watching Chicago on Dick Clark's New Years Rockin' Eve, and--especially--for watching multiple college football bowl games on New Years Day.
That was then. It is amazing how the growing realization that one has many more days in the rear view mirror than on the road ahead can change one's perspective, however. Over the years, I have increasingly found myself uttering, if only to myself, Uncle Willie's words when the clock strikes 12 on the 1st of January.
But not this year. 2020, as we all know, has not been a normal year. Three million Americans have died, including more than 380,000 (so far) in a pandemic exacerbated by a criminally negligent governmental response. Untold numbers of luminaries have passed--from New Testament scholars on my personal Mt. Rushmore (The University of Durham's Jimmy Dunn) to politicians and public servants (Ruth Bader Ginsburg, John Lewis), to authors (John le Carre), to actors (Jerry Stiller, Carl Reiner, Regis Philbin, Olivia de Havilland, Wilford Brimley, Chadwick Boseman, Sean Connery, Diana Rigg, Dawn Wells), to musicians (Ennio Morricone, Peter Serkin, Lynn Harrell, Ellis Marsalis, McCoy Tyner, Little Richard, Charlie Daniels, Peter Green, Justin Townes Earle, Spencer Davis, Neil Peart, Bill Withers, Eddie Van Halen, Billy Joe Shaver, Charlie Pride), to athletes (baseball players: Dick Allen, Al Kaline, Bob Gibson, Whitey Ford, Tom Seaver, Lou Brock, Joe Morgan, Phil Niekro, Johnny Antonelli, Tony Fernandez, Jay Johnstone, Mike McCormick, Tony Taylor, Bob Watson, Jimmy Wynn; football players: Timmy Brown, Pete Retzlaff, Don Shula, Gale Sayers, Herb Adderley, Willie Davis, Paul Hornung, Willie Wood, Bobby Mitchell, Jimmy Orr, Larry Wilson, Mike Curtis, Fred Dean, Chris Doleman, Kevin Greene, Jim Kiick, Del Shofner, Rosey Taylor, Jake Scott; basketball players: Kobe Bryant, Tommy Heinsohn, K. C. Jones, Wes Unseld, Jerry Sloan, Clifford Robinson, Curly Neal, John Thompson; soccer star Diego Maradona).
Death is in the air, as it were. So, it seems to me, ought serious reflection on the brevity and fragility of life on what Shakespeare's Hamlet, himself contemplating death by suicide, called "this mortal coil" in his famous "to be or not to be" soliloquy (Hamlet 3.1.56-69).
Enter Bruce Springsteen, the most important American rock and roll musician not named Bob Dylan. Over the years, the Boss, as happens to all of us once we hit our late 50's and 60's, had lost friends (Terry McGovern in 2007) and "blood brothers" (E Streeters Danny Federici in 2008 and, most significantly, "The Big Man" Clarence Clemons in 2011). But it was the death, in 2018, of George Theiss, the frontman in Springsteen's first teenage band, The Castilles--making him the last remaining member of that group--that finally dislodged the writing block that for years had prevented him from creating new material designed for his nonpareil band. A torrent of songs flowed, the result of which is his new album, Letter to You, recorded live with the E Street Band in his Colt Neck, NJ studio in a mere four days in November of 2019.
It hardly needs to be said that Springsteen, at 71, is far past the peak of his commercial success. Nor is it news that his creative peak is likewise but a faint light in the rear view mirror. That peak was a long one, encapsulating the 6 diverse albums he released from 1973's The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle through 1984's Born in the USA, all of which are now part of the classic rock canon. I would personally rate each of them with 5 stars [indeed, the best of the lot, 1975's Born to Run, is one of three albums that, in my opinion, break the scale and deserve six stars, the others being The Who's Who's Next and the Stones' Exile on Main Street]. In the intervening years Bruce has released a number of fine albums and even more great songs. But it is my considered opinion, after listening over and over to the record for the past two months, that Letter to You has supplanted 2007's Magic and should be recognized as Springsteen's finest album since the aforementioned Born in the USA.
The album begins with a bit of musical misdirection, with Bruce's finger-picked acoustic guitar and hushed vocals performing a melancholic song that wouldn't have sounded out of place on his 2005 album, Devils & Dust. Yet the lyrics set the tone for the album to come:
"One Minute You're Here," and the album to come, are about the transitoriness of life and how one should respond to death and the nasty fact of its inevitability. Once he has made this clear, the collection's musical focus takes shape with the second song, the album's title track. "Letter to You" is classic Bruce, with the E Street Band, recorded live, sounding more powerful and vital than ever. Though the song may owe more to Springsteen's finely-honed craft than to inspired creativity, it is a definite, and welcome, return to form. Then comes the best newly-written song--more on that presently--on the album, "Burnin' Train," a barnburner that recalls Bruce's "glory days," with a marvelous Phil Spector-styled Wall of Sound production, including the use of a glockenspiel that recalls the aforementioned Phantom Danny Federici's work on Born to Run:
Immediately following this formidable one-two punch, the Boss takes a detour of sorts, one in which the Springsteen traditionalist in me takes unmitigated delight. "Janey Needs a Shooter" is one of three songs--the others being "If I Was the Priest" and "Song for Orphans," both of which, in acoustic form, were presented to the legendary John Hammond, Jr. in his Columbia audition in 1972, and both of which provide ample evidence of why he was so often deemed "a New Dylan" in his early years--written almost 50 years ago that, to me, are the three best songs on the album. "Janey," its tune reminiscent of the classic outtake "The Promise," would not have sounded out of place on 1978's great Darkness on the Edge of Town:
As I said, however, the emotional weight of the album is found in four songs inspired by the death of his friends and bandmates that deal with death and the proper response to that inestimable loss. Besides the opener, there is the bookend closer, "I'll See You in My Dreams," as well as the tribute to Theiss, "Last Man Standing," and another rip-roaring classic, the hard-rocking "Ghosts," its melodic line reminiscent of the foundational riff of Springsteen's late friend Tom Petty's "Free Fallin':"
How, then, does Springsteen respond? Bruce is not a practicing Christian. Indeed, he frankly acknowledged, in his 2016 memoir, Born to Run, that he is a lapsed Catholic, though he maintains that he is "still on the team." As such, thankfully he doesn't pretend, as is fashionable in some circles today, not to be afraid of death because it is simply "part of life." The deaths of his friends and bandmates have clearly affected him, and his sense of loss is palpable, even in the ostensibly optimistic, harder-rocking songs.
Melancholy he might be, but brow-beaten by death he emphatically is not. "I'm alive!" he shouts in "Ghosts," experiencing their ghosts moving in the night as he plays the music they used to perform together, and affirms he will "meet" them "on the other side." In the closer, he confesses "death is not the end," as he "will see [them] in [his] dreams."
The constitutionally melancholic theologian in me can gladly share the sentiment while realizing that it isn't sufficiently robust intellectually to salve the psychic wounds of human mortality. Death, as the Apostle Paul acknowledges in 1 Corinthians 15, has been universally victorious since the dawn of time. Even so, it must not be supinely accepted, but raged against. Years ago I wrote a piece reflecting on Jesus' response to the death of a friend in the famous story of Lazarus's resuscitation in John 11. Famously, Jesus is said to have "wept" (John 11:35). More significantly, using language elsewhere used of horses snorting when enraged, the Fourth Evangelist writes that he became indignant, internally raging at the depredations and oppression caused by death as a (personified) usurper in God's good creation (11:33).
The solution, of course, is found in the already/not yet structure of New Testament eschatology. In the Gospel story, Lazarus's resuscitation is illustrative of Jesus' role as "the resurrection and the life" (John 11:25-26), such that those who believe in him will "live," even if they die, precisely because of his resurrection later narrated in chapter 20. Paul is even more explicit. Because of Christ's resurrection as the "firstfruits" of the eschatological harvest (1 Cor 15:23), death's victory has been overturned (1 Cor 15:55) for all who are "in Christ" will, at the last trump, be "made alive" (1 Cor 15:22, 51-54).
Death hurts. Lets not forget that, let alone pretend it isn't true. And well it should. But the more important truth is the sequel: those who are in Christ have, as the Anglican Book of Common Prayer puts it, the sure and certain hope of the resurrection to eternal life, through Jesus Christ our Lord. Death, as the Boss realizes, is not the end. But the Christian hope is not merely an ephemeral sight or experience of our deceased love ones in our dreams, but rather in an embodied existence with them on the new earth in the presence of the One who loved us and gave himself for us (Galatians 2:20). Soli Deo Gloria!
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