When Barack Obama marked the opening of his presidential library in Chicago last month, Bruce Springsteen was high on the guest list, taking the stage as part of the celebration concert.
For a performer who has spent years lending his voice and celebrity to Democratic campaigns, the invitation looked like a former president returning a long-standing political favor. It was hardly the first time Obama had publicly embraced The Boss.
Back in December 2009, Springsteen was invited to the White House, where Obama delivered a glowing tribute. The president described the “quiet kid from Jersey” as “the rock ’n’ roll laureate of a generation,” praising songs that, he said, reached “hardworking folks” through stories of “dreams and despair, struggle and hope.”
“His tours are not so much concerts but communions,” Obama said at the time. Recalling Springsteen’s performance on the National Mall before his inauguration, he added that the moment “captured as well as anything the spirit of what America should be about.” Then came the punchline: “I remember that I’m the president, but he’s The Boss.”
But critics now argue that Springsteen has blurred the line between rock star and political commentator. Among them is Jonathan Cain, the 76-year-old Journey guitarist and keyboardist, who has joined other prominent musicians in taking aim at Springsteen’s increasingly political stage remarks and what they see as heavy-handed sermonizing.
“Bruce, I mean, what the heck? I used to like him, and now he’s just annoying. He’s an annoying, bitter old man,” Cain said.
For Cain and other detractors, The Boss has begun to sound less like a rock legend and more like, as they see it, The Bore.
Barack Obama invited Bruce Springsteen to perform at the celebratory concert for the opening of his presidential library in Chicago last month
Springsteen adamantly supported Barack Obama during his tenure as President
Jonathan Cain of Journey is one of several high-profile rockers to have called Springsteen out for his political rants and tedious preaching on stage
Back in May, the musician told podcast host Tom Barnard, in a recently revived clip that went viral: ‘I mean, stop it. Really. You were born in the USA, weren’t you, dude? So, act like it.
‘But even that song, if you look at the lyrics, I mean, it’s a kind of a diss toward our country.’
Last week, Mick Jagger also appeared to pile on when asked by The New York Times about his own relationship with his audience.
David Marchese, interviewing Jagger, noted that for someone such as Bob Dylan ‘it almost feels like the crowd is incidental,’ while Springsteen ‘clearly sees his job as engaging in a meaningful back-and-forth with his audience.’ How, Marchese asked, does Jagger see it?
‘My job in the live music world is for those people that come to have the best time they possibly can and for two hours to forget all their problems and the problems of the world and their mortgages,’ replied Jagger, in an apparent rebuke to Springsteen.
‘My job is to make them have the best time possible. They’re going completely ape-s***. Your job is to make them more ape-s***.’
So have Springsteen’s politics become too much? Is he in danger of testing the patience of even his most ardent fans? With modern America more polarized than ever, listeners often insist they want their music apolitical.
Two thirds of Americans would rather not know how their favorite celebrity voted, according to a survey of 2,000 people last year by Talker Research. Kanye West and Taylor Swift both saw how their embrace or rejection of Donald Trump sent their support plummeting.
But Springsteen won’t be muzzled. A source close to the singer told the Daily Mail he is more determined than ever to make his political feelings known.
‘He’s been political since 1978. It’s not like this is new,’ the source said. ‘It takes on a different angle with Trump in office; that is the only difference. He went from subtle messages about politics to blatantly saying things, but he’s not more political now than he once was.’
His most famous hit, 1984’s Born In The USA, is an angry lament about the trauma of being forced to fight in Vietnam: ‘Got in a little hometown jam; So they put a rifle in my hand; Send me off to a foreign land; To go and kill the yellow man.’
That same year, with the song topping the charts, Ronald Reagan, then running for re-election, attempted to co-opt the singer’s success and spirit on the campaign trail in Springsteen’s home state of New Jersey.
‘America’s future,’ Reagan told the small-town audience, ‘rests in a thousand dreams inside your hearts. It rests in the message of hope in the songs of a man so many young Americans admire – New Jersey’s own, Bruce Springsteen.’
Two days later Springsteen addressed the president’s words on stage – distancing himself with the distinctly chilly comment that he didn’t think Reagan had been listening to his music.
Springsteen’s most famous hit, 1984’s Born In The USA, is an angry lament about the trauma of being forced to fight in Vietnam
The Rolling Stones front man Mick Jagger also recently piled on artists like Springsteen who get political during shows
In 1984, when Born In The USA came out, Springsteen took issue when Ronald Reagan namedropped him in a speech
From there on in any political affiliations expressed by The Boss were firmly left of center. In 2004 he nailed his colors to the mast and endorsed Democrat John Kerry in his failed presidential run.
But two decades on perhaps Springsteen’s lyrics lamenting police brutality or homelessness and poverty are just too dark for these troubled times
After all, people come to his steeply-priced shows to be entertained, not lectured or reminded of the woes of the world.
His most recent song, Streets Of Minneapolis, rails against the killing of protesters Alex Pretti and Renee Good by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents: ‘It’s our blood and bones and these whistles and phones against Miller and Noem’s dirty lies,’ he sings.
Donald Trump responded by taking to Truth Social and describing the singer as ‘a dried up prune’ who had ‘long had a horrible and incurable case of Trump Derangement Syndrome.’ The disdain is longstanding and mutual: back in 2016, Springsteen said that the Republic was ‘under siege by a moron.’
Still, undeterred by Trump’s slight, Springsteen doubled down and in March chose the embattled Minnesota city to kick off his latest tour.
‘The tour is going to be political and very topical about what’s going on in the country,’ he told the Minnesota Star Tribute at the time. ‘My job is very simple: I do what I want to do, I say what I want to say, and then people get to say what they want to say about it. I don’t worry about if you’re going to lose this part of your audience.’
And he’s put his money where his mouth is, too. While his extensive philanthropy is largely focused on food banks, veterans and homelessness rather than political donations, he is known for taking time away from his hectic schedule to campaign for Democrats across the country.
Kerry, Joe Biden, Kamala Harris and of course the Obamas all called on Springsteen to put to music their message.
A month ahead of this year’s midterms, Springsteen will anchor a ‘Power to the People’ music festival in the outskirts of Washington DC, featuring acts such as Foo Fighters, Dave Matthews, Joan Baez.
The one-day event will include voter registration drives, and all the net proceeds from the VIP tickets will go to VoteRiders – described by organizers as ‘a non-partisan organization committed to eliminating stringent voter ID laws’.
But if some chafe at Springsteen’s activism it is, the Daily Mail has been told, fully supported by his wife Patti Scialfa, 72: the couple, parents to three adult children, celebrated their 35th wedding anniversary last month.
‘People around him encourage him to do what he’s already done,’ the source said, adding. ‘He and Patti are not going home and talking about politics at the moment.’
Springsteen’s most recent song, Streets Of Minneapolis, rails against the killing of ICE protesters
Springsteen’s wife Patti Scialfa fully supports his choice to be political
‘People around him encourage him to do what he’s already done,’ the source said
The Daily Mail has approached Springsteen’s representatives for comment.
As for the comments made by Cain – a noted Trump supporter, married to Trump’s spiritual adviser and Pentecostal televangelist Paula White-Cain – and by Jagger: they don’t concern Springsteen.
‘He’s not stressing about Mick saying what he said, because he respects where Mick was coming from and doesn’t believe that he was giving him any specific grief,’ the source said.
‘But for Jonathan to call him out, he finds it amusing because Jonathan is a Trump supporter, so Bruce only expects it from his crowd and the MAGA crowd.
‘He’s not going to make it personal with Mick and Jonathan or anyone else that comes out of the woodwork that is against his beliefs.
‘He’s going to stay in his lane and if haters, MAGA, and Trump hate him for it, then what he is doing is working in his eyes.’
