ABSTRACT
In the fall of 2002, I went to a Bruce Springsteen concert in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Shortly after September 11, 2001, Springsteen began writing songs for a new album, The Rising. He said that many of the song lyrics emanated from conversations he had had with family members of people who died at the World Trade Center on 9/11. For months after the attacks, the New York Times ran short obituaries of the deceased. These “Portraits in Grief” focused on the victims’ lives: their families, hobbies, hopes, and dreams. The obituaries were quite different from the norm because the reporters interviewed family members and friends in order to craft detailed, and often quirky, profiles of the people who had died. In some of the obituaries, Springsteen was mentioned. The wife of an executive from Pennsylvania, for example, described her late husband as an ardent fan of The Boss. “Every time you rode in Jim’s car, Bruce was on, whether you liked it or not,” she told the New York Times. Another survivor mentioned that her brother had saved 35 ticket stubs from Springsteen concerts. As he read all the obituaries, Springsteen was startledand humbled-to see the recurrence of his name. Inspired, he called family members of the deceased and had long conversations with them about the lives of the people they had lost. From those conversations he wrote the songs on The Rising. Many of the songs are mournful and serious, illustrating Springsteen’s belief that the tragedies of September 11 are of historic importance. Given the origin of these songs, I was interested in whether Springsteen would say anything about the state of the nation at the concert I attended, which took place more than a year after September 11, 2001.
