JAMES MCHUGH
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The Boss, it must be said, was starting to look pretty shameless during that first week's promotional blitz. Even if he was simply going along with his record company's contemporary marketing notions, it was hard not to mutter "media whore" under your breath—a term generally reserved for the latest teen pop sensation, an aging superstar diva, or Michael Jackson—every time he furrowed his brow and earnestly pondered yet another question about The Rising and how his new album was influenced by the events and aftermath of Sept. 11.
Look, there he is! Bruce up at the crack of dawn on July 30, appearing on NBC's Today, which broadcasts Springsteen & the E Street Band live from the Asbury Park Convention Center. During the day both MSNBC and CNN air their own Springsteen reports, and—whoops—there's the guy again, chatting up Ted Koppel for ABC's Nightline. The Koppel interview continues the following night, and by Thursday and Friday, Bruce and company are over at CBS to do a couple of tunes on The Late Show With David Letterman. See Bruce. See Dave. See Bruce pal around with Dave! What, no time that afternoon to drop in and say howdy to Oprah, too, Bruce? You can still do Regis and whatshername tomorrow morning. . . .
Meanwhile, newsstands everywhere begin sagging under the weight of Springsteen's stubble-flecked mug. First comes the Time cover story ("Reborn in the USA: How Bruce Springsteen reached out to 9/11 survivors and turned America's anguish into art"), followed by Rolling Stone ("The Gospel According to Bruce")—both publications cannily selected not for their critical acumen but for their ability to reach a mass market in as short a time as possible.
It makes you wonder: Is there really that much riding on The Rising? It couldn't have been inordinately expensive to make: a mere seven weeks spent in an Atlanta studio, with Brendan O'Brien (Pearl Jam, Neil Young) producing. Nor is it a product that you'd think wouldn't sell itself, being the first full-length studio album for Springsteen and the E Streeters since 1984 —and particularly with memories of the triumphant 1999-2000 reunion tour still fresh in the minds of staunch Boss fans.
Springsteen's label, Sony/Columbia, however, mindful of how fickle the millennial marketplace has become (witness recent chart flops by Mick Jagger, Paul McCartney, and David Bowie), was hedging its bets early on. Starting June 24, it began "releasing" weekly previews of The Rising, streaming key songs from the album at Springsteen's official Web site and at AOL and Netscape kiosks; the title cut was such an Internet splash that it actually entered Billboard's Adult Top-40 chart at No. 22 and the Mainstream Rock Tracks chart at No. 28. The label also held high-profile listening parties for the album in numerous cities, although its refusal to provide advance review copies of the CD to but a few select publications (such as Rolling Stone, natch, whose five-star review ran in the same issue as the Springsteen cover feature) seemed mildly hypocritical despite official statements indicating that it was an anti-piracy security measure. No matter; according to SoundScan, the album wound up debuting on the Billboard Top 200 at No. 1, selling about 526,000 copies during its first week. Not exactly Eminem-hot figures, but not too shabby, either.
A lot of longtime Springsteen fans were clearly turned off by all this, judging by heated debates that played out across Boss-related Internet newsgroups. Even national pop critic Tom Moon and former Backstreets magazine publisher Charles Cross were quoted in USA Today as being a bit uncomfortable with what Moon termed "a scorched earth" publicity campaign linking Sept. 11 with The Rising.
As it turns out, there is a lot riding on The Rising for Springsteen. Only it's just that the stakes for him aren't so much commercial as they are artistic. Springsteen, who's always steadfastly maintained that one of a writer's chief goals is communication with his audience, is no dummy. He's got kids. He instinctively grasps how a "topical/relevant" message from a 52-year-old rock 'n' roller can be swept over in the blink of an American Idol broadcast. At the same time, he's also got the kind of self-aware confidence in his artistry that arrives with having spent well over half of those 52 years refining it.
As Springsteen himself, responding to a Time interviewer's question about whether he's comfortable with this type of media courtship for a record that deals with such intensely intimate and emotional—and for some, uncomfortable—subject matter, allowed, "You have to be very . . . just very thoughtful, is the way I'd put it. You call on your craft, and you go searching for it, and hopefully what makes people listen is that over the years you've been serious and honest. That's where your creative authority comes from. That's how people know you're not just taking a ride."
The Time article rightly pointed out that Springsteen's great gift is empathy. Perhaps the corresponding trait among his audience, then, is trust—or faith. Faith in the songwriter's ability to create lyrics and music that dig well below the surface in quest of the common ground and shared themes that reside at the core of our humanness. The ties that bind, in other words.
