Category: Guitar Gods

When Bruce Springstreen, aka The Boss, wrote “Born In The U.S.A.” as a title track for a film about the Vietnam war – the first war America ever lost – and the stark difference in how it’s veterans were treated to those coming home as winners, he did not anticipate how totally misunderstood the song would be for generations to come.

Springsteen had never shied away from expressing his strong political convictions, standing especially for working-class people but also gender equality, immigrant and LGBTQ rights and environmental issues. So it was a rather strange notion when Ronald Reagan, whose presidency started the downfall of the American middle classes and whose policies The Boss explicitly rejected, used the song to rally his followers, misunderstanding the song for a patriotic anthem instead of the bitter critique it really is. But people would still not get it 35 years later, when the song was heard outside the hospital where then president Trump was treated for Covid-19. While Springsteen considers the song one of his best, it does bother him that it’s so widely misunderstood.

True to his convictions he also turned down an offering of 12 million US$ to let Chrysler use the song in one of their campaigns. Springsteen never allowed any of his songs to be used to sell a product.

As he did not want the video to be lip-synched, he opted instead to use shots from some concerts, and for the sake of synchronity had to wear the same outfit for a number of consecutive shows. Interspersed with pictures from a Vietnamese neighbourhood in Los Angeles and factory workers, it was an effort to claim the song back from Reagan.

Incidentally, the Album was the first CD to be pressed on American soil.

Climate Change, Covid-19, the Russian invasion of the Ukraine – we live in trying times and the four horsemen of the apocalypse are easy enough to assign. But then, they have been time and again. We’ve already covered a song handling the theme on a quite fictional basis; back in 1979 the Clash, key players in the original British punk rock movement, had done it much more literally. “London Calling” is all about the many different ways the world was going down the drain, from nuclear destruction over literal drowning in floods to police brutality. It’s somewhat disconcerting how many of these themes are just as much of an issue today.

The band very much lived up to their credo of punk rock, as demonstrated by their refusal to play for a seated audience when they were finally admitted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, but also when they were tricking their own label into selling “London Calling” – the album, not the titular song – to their loyal, but often poor fans for a much lower price by proposing to the label to add a “free 12 inch single” – which they recorded at 33rpm, packed with ultimately nine songs and thus created a double-album for the price of a normal one. Considering they were quite opposed to commercial events it’s a bit dispiriting in just how many commercials, soundtracks and promotions the song has been used over the years.

The video, filmed on the Thames near Chelsea was directed by a close friend of the band, who was very much a landlubber. He could neither swim nor was he aware that the Thames has a tide – so when they started rolling the cameras were 5 meters lower than what he anticipated. And then the boat would start to float – who ever would have thought there was a current! Next thing you know it started raining… Well, the song is about the end of the world.

The album was released in December 1979 in the UK, but only in January 1980 in the US – where the Rolling Stone magazine would name it “best album of the 80ies” a decade later to the dismay of pedants.