A little over 40 Years ago, Ronald Reagan became the first U.S. president to mention Bruce Springsteen. “The future of America lies in a thousand dreams in your hearts,” he told a crowd at a campaign stop in New Jersey in September 1984. “It lies in the message of hope in the songs of a man so many young Americans admire — Bruce Springsteen of New Jersey.”
Springsteen, of course, was at the height of his cultural popularity at that moment, fresh off the release of the blockbuster movie that had taken the world by storm. Born in the United States of Americawith a flag on the cover and a title song that’s easy to misinterpret. In the decades since, he’s made his left-leaning political views abundantly clear, campaigning for Democratic candidates and even collaborating with Barack Obama on a podcast series and a book. And even in the distant political age of 2024, when Beyoncé’s “Freedom” is an anthem for Kamala Harris’s campaign, Springsteen’s name and music keep popping up—Donald Trump thinks of him, Tim Walls is a fan, and “Born in the USA” was played at the Democratic National Convention.
Stephen Hayden's excellent new book, There Was Nothing You Could Do: Bruce Springsteen's “Born in the U.S.A.” and the End of “Heart”He traces the cultural and political impact of this album. He recently sat down with Rolling Stone For a discussion of Springsteen's continuing political significance and more. (To hear more from Hayden about his book, see Rolling Stone Music Now Podcast — His clip starts at minute 42 of the Katy Perry episode above. Go here for your podcast provider of choice, listen on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, or hit the play button above.
The first big moment of Springsteen's campaign was when Donald Trump began to mused on stage, almost out of nowhere, about the fact that Bruce didn't like him. What do you think of that, especially in the context of your book?
Trump’s relationship with classic rock is interesting. He is clearly a huge fan of ’60s and ’70s rock, as are many people his age, and it’s an awkward situation because none of these people — Springsteen included — share the same feelings. These are his heroes, in some ways, at least musically, and yet they unanimously view him as a bad guy for the country.
There are a lot of musicians who don't like Trump, but he keeps focusing on Springsteen. The truth is, Bruce doesn't like him – he called him an idiot, specifically, when I talked to him for 10 years. Rolling Stone In 2016, it really bothers him. And I think it has to do with the way Bruce carries a kind of American heft that other rock stars don't.
Yeah, I think there’s something with Bruce where that was true 40 years ago, and maybe it’s even truer now. He’s not seen as a political figure exactly, but he feels like he’s more of a political figure than any other rock star. But he also has that populist thing. Maybe there’s a part of Trump that feels like these are the people I’m talking to — Bruce should be responding to me too because he’s an average American guy, speaking for average Americans. Of course, Trump doesn’t actually do that, but I think there’s something delusional in his mind, that he thinks he and Bruce Springsteen are on the same side. So maybe there’s a little bit of an extra pain there, not getting that acceptance from Bruce.
As you mentioned in your book, in 2016 The New York Times I tracked down one of the mill workers Bruce wrote about in “Youngstown,” and he said he was going to vote for Trump. There’s a sense that Springsteen and Trump were trying to speak to some of the same people, and in some ways for them.
That says something about how rural middle-class politics in America have shifted over time. In the ’80s, it was much easier to find a blue-collar worker who worked in a factory and was also a Democrat. There were the kind of hard-hatted Democrats who were around 40 years ago that you don’t see very much now, and a lot of that seems to have to do with culture war-type things, things like how people on the left and the right present themselves to people in the middle of the country. So yeah, if you’re looking for a metaphor for how America has changed, the idea of characters in Bruce Springsteen songs becoming Trump voters, that’s obviously something that appealed to me. It’s a very apt metaphor for how the country has changed in the last 40 years.
Then came Tim Walls. He's a big music guy in general, but he's definitely a huge Springsteen fan – there's a video of him discussing his musical tastes with Harris and the first thing he mentions is The river.
Yeah, I think Walz’s musical taste was one of the ways he presented himself as a regular guy, which became a big part of this campaign of branding Republicans as weirdos. But I think when he talks about Bruce Springsteen, people take it as, “Oh, he reminds me of my dad, or he reminds me of my uncle,” and that humanizes him in a very quick way. I think it also speaks to Springsteen’s place in the culture. When Obama was elected, Bruce was in his late 50s, so there was still something about Bruce that seemed younger, maybe. But we’re at a point now where you think of Springsteen, it’s something that your dad would love or maybe even your grandfather would love. But it’s a positive thing. It’s part of that overall American package, but it’s also progressive at the same time. It’s like what we were saying before, it’s like going back to that idea that you can be blue collar, but you can also believe in transgender rights and abortion rights, and those things don’t have to be incompatible.
I think it's fair to say that while Bruce is associated with an older fan base, there are also a good number of younger serious music fans and certainly younger artists who love him. He's been a big hit on the indie scene for nearly 20 years, ever since Arcade Fire and the Killers first embraced him.
I feel like he took on the responsibility that Johnny Cash had before. He was like the older guy that younger generations always see as a beacon of integrity.
Or like Neil Young in the 90s.
But with Johnny Cash and Springsteen, there’s something very American about both of them. They’re strong, masculine men, but there’s also a sensitivity to them. They’re politically progressive. And that balances a lot of the things that people value about America—that individualism, that toughness, but also the thoughtfulness. It’s like the positive side of people chanting “U.S.A.” in a crowd. Not the bigoted, the stupid, the reactionary side, but the good side. For people of my generation, Johnny Cash was that guy. And then Johnny Cash died.
And I think that was around the time that Springsteen took on the role, in the mid-2000s, and he's had that role ever since. It's interesting to see Bruce pop up in other people's songs, where I feel like he's kind of an icon. Zach Bryan was the most recent example of that. I love that the song is called “Sandpaper,” by the way, because Bruce is so husky, and he's a little bit rougher than usual. In that song, I feel like he's very totemic, like putting a bald eagle in your song, or something. The Killers re-recorded “A Dustland Fairytale” and Bruce sings on it. It reminds me of when Johnny Cash pops up in a U2 song. There's a power to him as an icon – it could be a bald eagle or an American flag or an apple pie or whatever other American icon you can think of.
And that’s why Trump is so annoying because he doesn’t like him. And as we’ve discussed, if it weren’t for the period from 1984 to 1985, where he used the “Born in the USA” title, and the flag album cover, and the flag on stage, we might look at all of this a little differently.
Yeah, exactly. That definitely put a good point on it. Obviously, he was already writing about working-class Americans before that, but the symbolism of “Born in the USA” and its success, and the fact that it was so ubiquitous, is still etched into people’s consciousness. In my first book, I wrote about Chris Christie and Bruce Springsteen and how it must be strange for Chris Christie to be a huge Bruce Springsteen fan and to know that Bruce, at least politically, doesn’t like him at all. And I think that speaks to how, and this might apply to Trump as well, even though we know where Bruce stands politically, we can still take different things from his songs, depending on where you stand. There are a lot of things in his music that if you’re a conservative, you can relate to. And it just takes mental jujitsu to block out the other stuff, which is what people do with songs all the time. We always ignore things that don’t resonate with our own experiences. We’ll focus on one lyric or something and make the whole song about that. Obviously, there are a lot of Republicans who love Bruce Springsteen. And I think that's been true since time immemorial. If you're a conservative, there are things you can take from it that fit your view of America. But it forces you to ignore a lot of other things that don't fit.
I also think it would have been easier to say that outright before I made Make America Great Again. I feel like it's hard to say I'm a MAGA Republican and these are the five things I hear in Bruce's music that would support my MAGA endorsement.
I think there are a lot of people who are voting for Trump who aren’t like the people we see talking about online. I know people like that in my life who are voting for Trump. Because they always vote Republican. I mean, when Springsteen plays in Jersey, I don’t think everyone in that stadium is a Democrat. I think it’s probably more balanced than it seems, but we don’t know for sure. We’ll have to do a poll.
That’s fair. Finally, we heard “Born in the USA” at least twice during the Democratic National Convention. This was a case of Democrats using, or misusing, the song in the way Republicans traditionally do—as a patriotic, fervent anthem. But is the hurt, deluded, angry patriotism of “Born in the USA” actually acceptable in the context of this Democratic National Convention, given that we know that’s the party its composer supports, or is it still just weird??
It’s a little weird! But that song in an arena setting always takes on a completely different character that goes beyond the lyrics. The music is so uplifting; the chorus compels you to sing along. And if you get into a group mindset, it’s very easy to ignore the nuances of the lyrics. If you’re in a crowd of 20,000 people and you try to say, “This is actually a critique of America, not a celebration,” you’re drowned out by people chanting “Born in the USA.” That’s how it works. That’s part of the power of that song and its problematic nature.
It's funny that the New Jersey delegation used this song as their theme song. The song is obviously set in New Jersey, based on the gas fires, the refinery, etc. So the “Dead Man's Town” in the first line is a town in New Jersey.
It would be funnier if the song was “Born to Run” because that song paints a darker picture of New Jersey. He's not really writing about this state as a paradise where everything is fine. This is not the Jersey that Bruce Springsteen sings his songs about.
