Bruce Springsteen apologized to Bono for not allowing the use of Girls in Their Summer Clothes for a Gap advertising campaign in partnership with (Product) Red, the non-profit brand co-founded by the U2 singer and licensed to partner companies, whose proceeds are donated to the Global Fund to Fight Aids, Tuberculosis and Malaria.
On Saturday 13 June the two were in Tribeca, where the American was awarded the Harry Belafonte Voices for Social Justice Award and where they performed with Patti Smith and Tony Shanahan singing People Have the Power. Springsteen did too Land of Hope and Dreams.
During a twenty-minute chat between the two, Bono recalled when he told Springsteen that Girls in Their Summer Clothesfrom the 2007 album Magicis «one of the great pop songs». “It's not bad, right?” «Would you grant it for a Red and Gap commercial?». “No”.
“It was a big mistake,” Springsteen said to laughter from the audience, “I should have said yes. You know, it's one of those songs that becomes your favorite, but the audience doesn't really care if they hear it or not. I still think about it: “Bono asked you to put it in a TV commercial”. I should have fucking done it! People would hear it and turn it into a hit, you know? So I have to apologize.”
Speaking of the American, a few days ago the Bruce Springsteen Center for American Music, already active for some time in New Jersey, was opened to public visits. The center's purpose is to “preserve the legacy of Bruce Springsteen and celebrate the history of American music and its diversity of artists and genres.” It is not a museum, but the home of the rocker's archives, the place where all the materials relating to him and the E Street Band end up and will end up, from memorabilia to oral testimonies.
The Center, we read in the presentation, “explores American music more broadly, organizing exhibitions, concerts and educational programs that interpret and honor the cultural impact of American music past, present and future.”
Directed by Eileen Chapman, the Bruce Springsteen Center for American Music is located on the campus of Monmouth University in West Long Branch, New Jersey. The audience is shown among other things a 25-minute video narrated by Springsteen. Tickets cost $22.
A rendering of the Bruce Springsteen Center for American Music. Photo: C&G Partners LLC
