A Long Walk Home: Born in the U.S.A. in the U.K.
A night with The Boss in Liverpool
“That flag flying over the courthouse means certain things are set in stone,
who we are, what we’ll do, and what we won’t.
It’s gonna be a long walk home
hey, pretty darlin’, don’t wait up for me, gonna be a long walk home.”
- Long Walk Home (Bruce Springsteen’s prayer for his country)
Rain intensified enough for me to pull up my hoodie late one night walking through Everton Park back to my hotel looking out over the Liverpool skyline and Irish Sea. If one braves the elevation climb, it’s a surprising sight in a hardscrabble city not always known for its elegance. A contradiction of sorts. Just like rain. Somber and depressive. Or cleansing and intimate. Tonight, the latter helped me process contrasts on a cool summer evening like no other.
During a break from a European study abroad with a contingent of political science and public administration students, I had the good fortune to pilgrimage to Liverpool’s Anfield Stadium to see Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band on June 4. Yes, that Liverpool…hallowed grounds of The Beatles. In a land of majesty, American rock royalty had finally come to the home of England’s rock royalty.
The moment would not be lost on me.
These were peculiar times for The Boss. It’s been a hot minute since seeing my working-class hero 40 years ago on the Born in the U.S.A. tour in Oakland. Then, he was singularly rock n’ roll even as Ronald Reagan would patriotically appropriate the song for America’s “shining city on the hill” exceptionalism instead of the indictment of America’s foreign and domestic policies that it was. Back then, Bruce just let his music do the talking…
“Got in a little hometown jam
So they put a rifle in my hand
Sent me off to a foreign land
To go and kill the yellow man.”
He answered the bell differently when a mourning nation called following 9/11 with The Rising. A collection of poetic imagery to honor the “smoky graves” of first responders, co-workers, families, and our innocence while evangelizing in the power of faith to rise up as seen in my clip of “My City of Ruins”.
Tonight is even more different. Like an obstinate 75-year-old icon with two shits not given, The Boss was compelled to do more than play. He had made a wee bit of a tempest kicking off his European tour in gritty Manchester a few weeks earlier calling Trump "unfit for office". The transatlantic jousting led to him being maligned as “unpatriotic” by Mr. Trump and was told to KEEP HIS MOUTH SHUT (all-caps are not mine). Superficially, Trump slandered his prune-like skin, talent, and IQ in a separate post.
As I arrive at Anfield, Springsteen opens not from his discography but with a civics soliloquy.
“The America that I love … a beacon of hope and liberty for 250 years, is currently in the hands of a corrupt, incompetent and treasonous” administration… “Tonight, we ask all of you who believe in democracy and the best of our American experiment to rise with us, raise your voices, stand with us against authoritarianism and let freedom ring!”
With that, he launched into 27 sing-alongs that every Brit around me bellowed with heart, fists, hands, fingers, arms, and souls. We never sat. The chaps around me from Wales, Southampton, and Birmingham were frequent flyers of Bruce concerts. I connected most with the lads from Birmingham – a faded steel city home to Black Sabbath. We talked about Ozzy, America, Trump, Bruce, and garbage piling up in their bankrupt city streets. They were no different than anywhere else I went in England…it was clear that what happens in the States matters to them particularly as political winds blow from across the pond.
It was ironic watching aged Brits from Labour Party strongholds in the north pour their hearts into songs of working life inequities while Labour – UKs current ruling party and party of workers - bend to the growing populist chorus of struggling industrial towns by distancing themselves from unions, taking on immigrants, and cutting social aid. I sensed similar contradictions in one of my Birmingham buddies (or Brummers) whose city (second biggest in UK) is crawling out of bankruptcy to make good on a nearly $2.4 billion unequal backpay settlement to female workers that is ravaging public services and stiffing striking rubbish workers.
It’s a populist echo that we Americans should recognize by now. One that appeals to a growing base of angry non-degreed white males (among others) that swept a second Trump administration back into office on economic pretenses with socially conservative motives. One of my Brummers asked incredulously – “Trump is not wrong, is he?”. And then goes back to singing and dancing like it’s 1985.
To drive parallels of our countries home even further, Labour Cabinet Minister Lisa Nandy, who represents the nearby constituency of Wigan – a once mighty coal mining town that birthed my grandmother - warned that political tensions were reaching a breaking point. “People have watched their town centers falling apart, their life has got harder over the last decade and a half … I don’t remember a time when people worked this hard and had so little to show for it.”
Sound familiar?
So, on a rainy Liverpool evening, here comes a desperately needed Boss (curiously, the common handle Europeans use when I mention him) in open dissent of an authoritarian-style regime elevated to power by those sweating it out “on the streets of a runaway American dream” for whom he so eloquently fought for throughout a career of musical social commentary. The defiant rock contours he curated and romanticized had come home to roost. The price is democracy. He pointedly warned the Brits when conditions in a country are ripe for a demagogue, you can bet one will show up.
“The door’s open but the ride ain’t free”
– Thunder Road
The whole night was surreal. An out-of-body spectacle. The patron-sainted troubadour of the disenfranchised holding a mirror up to our collective selves. Still anti-establishment. But more importantly, still perpetually faithful.
As the lights came up for their encore, a sneaky emotional overload hit.
“Born down in a dead man’s town, the first kick I took was when I hit the ground. You end up like a dog that’s been beat too much till you spend have your life just covering up.”
– Born in the U.S.A.
Woah.
Much like his Vietnam veteran protagonist in Born in the U.S.A., I was also born in a dead man’s town. A hollowed-out rusted steel town of Johnstown, Pennsylvania that’s lost an incredible three-quarters of its population since a peak of 67,000 in 1930. So symbolic, it found its way into the lyrics of early 1980s Springsteen songs – The River and Highway Patrolman. These songs portray young lives staring down the barrel of a disillusioned post-industrial life with very few answers waiting on the other end. Some get a lifeline. Some don’t. I was lucky. So many selfless people to thank for a life I did not have to have. How can it still be that your zip code is a social determinant of your life’s outcome? Born in the U.S.A., a geographical rhyme of immense love wrapped in the prose of immense protest, is the sort of cognitive dissonance that overwhelmed my weak little binary emotions after a long-charged night.
The music ended. With tears still in my eyes, I traded hugs with my Brummer brothers. We thanked each other for sharing a night together we won’t share again.
As I continued home, now what? Demonizing people was never the schtick that built a mountainous fan base for The Boss. Nor for democracy. How about truth? Our world is infinitely more connected to information than ever yet infinitely more dis-informed.
“It’s a death trap, it’s a suicide rap, we gotta get out while we’re young.”
– Born to Run
It’s a thread I’m replaying in the misty walk home. Truth. Without it, we have drifted far off course. Springsteen’s reverence comes from his truth binding us together with honest storybook tales. Those bonds we all felt that night stem from his 1,000% conviction to include us in hard metaphorical truths that propel us like cannonballs shot from the center of our souls.
Whether we’re saints or sinners boarding a train to the land of hope and dreams…or being called to bring on our wrecking balls, to take our best shot, and see what we got…these are human truths that my Brummer friend and I found in common that night however uncommon. Just like the harmonica-playing little girl Bruce gave his harmonica to during Promise Land.
As I exited the stadium, a fitting reminder stared down at me…
A reminder that music critic James Fenney summed up best with his review of Springsteen’s Manchester concert:
“…every last person singing along to songs about longing to escape, about barely hanging on to the hope of brighter days, which felt just as potent and relatable as the day they were written. It was anthemic in the truest sense of the word, bringing people together, lifting them up, giving them something to stand for. I wasn’t expecting the show to feel so important, so relevant. I wasn’t expecting to walk away feeling so emotional and inspired. I left that arena a different person to the one that went in.”
Ultimately, the night was soon juxtaposed with nationalized troops and Waymo’s burning in Los Angeles as protest symbols of AI taking hacks at the working and middle class. It continued last week with the biggest constitutional expansion of executive powers ever by the Supreme Court. Presidential powers to bully non-conformists into submission - students, law firms, federal judges, scientists, media, and bureaucrats. Who's next?
This week likely ends with 12 million mostly working Americans losing their healthcare coverage, 3 million losing food assistance, 18 million kids losing school meals, and $3-4 trillion added to the national debt.
To quote my Wales chap, “You don’t have a king. You have a dictator.”
As rain clouds hang o’er me, will love and duty call us someplace higher?
It’s gonna be a long walk home.
