It is one of the best-known pages of Springsteen's mythology, a story told several times, he also does it in his autobiography. It is the late afternoon of September 11, 2001. From the Rumson-Sea Bright Bridge, in New Jersey, Springsteen watches the column of smoke rise from the tip of Manhattan. He and tens of millions of other Americans spent the morning transfixed in front of the TV “contemplating the unimaginable.” After looking at the horizon on the beach in an apocalyptic silence, he gets into the car to go pick up his children from school. «A car coming from the bridge darted in front of me with the window down. “Bruce, we need you!” the person driving shouted. The songs of were born from that phrase, from that invitation, from that request for help The Rising.
Perhaps this time there was no need for such an appeal. On January 24, Alex Pretti was killed by ICE agents, the second person after Renee Good to die on the streets of Minneapolis at the hands of immigration agents. That same day Springsteen wrote Streets of Minneapolisrecorded it on Tuesday 27th, published it on the 28th «in response to the state terror that is descending on the city». It's an instant song, we're no longer used to listening to them, but they were once a format widely used in folk, songs written on the wave of emotion or righteous indignation for a news story that we read about perhaps in a newspaper. Bob Dylan, for example, wrote The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll after the mild sentence of just six months to William Zantzinger, “who at the age of 24 owned a 600-acre tobacco farm”. He had killed Carroll, a black waitress who “was 51 years old and had given birth to 10 children, served the dishes and threw away the garbage, and had never sat at the head of the table.”
They are songs for those who have never been at the head of the table. They contain names and surnames, lists of facts, often the indication of precise dates and places. They don't claim to embrace the human experience, but to tell an episode and draw a line between what is acceptable and what is not. Sometimes they serve to re-establish a truth, restore humanity to men and women, photograph what exists, tell forgotten stories, unite communities broken up by violence. The very specific nature of their object, which is never generically politics or work, racism or peace, can lead to them being forgotten once the echo of the facts has died down. They remain if the author is able to charge them with a superior expressive force and they become testimony as Hurricane by Dylan, with the incredibly detailed (though not very precise) description of the Rubin Carter case. Or Ohio by Crosby Stills Nash & Young on the four students killed by the National Guard in May 1970 at Kent University. Once upon a time the lyrics were published in underground magazines before the public even heard the songs. Today there is streaming.
They are not hymns to Power to the PeopleI am singing journalism (biased journalism, of course) and have allowed generations of listeners to discover who William Worthy and Medgar Evers were or what happened in Ludlow in 1914. Likewise, Springsteen sings that “we will remember the names of those who died on the streets of Minneapolis.” If you think you've heard it before Streets of Minneapolis it's because it contains a thousand other songs, the harmonica of certain hymns to the promised land by Springsteen, the civil gospel of Chimes of Freedom with which he closed many concerts and the heartfelt but never over the top tone of Desolation Rowand also its melody of the latter. Nicollet Avenue is kind of desolation row and ultimately the evocation of Dylan is there, he is from Minnesota.
In addition to the setting and the annotation of the climate (“ice”, not surprisingly), there are images that seem to have been put there to tell in 30 years what happened to those who know nothing about it, such as “King Trump's private army” descending on the city to “enforce the law, or so they say”. There is a hint of poetry, the bloody footprints where there should have been mercy, and the lack of mercy for the two victims “left to die in the snowy streets”. There is Springsteen's reassurance which is the same as that of half of America: “Minneapolis, I hear your voice”.
During his last tour, Bruce Springsteen said, and he also did it at San Siro, that «this evening we ask all of you who support democracy and the best of the American experiment to join us, to raise your voice and oppose authoritarianism». About ten days ago he dedicated Promised Land to Good, «mother of three and American citizen», saying that it is probably one of her best songs, «an ode to the American sense of possibility, to the wonderful but imperfect country we are and to the country we can become. We live in incredibly critical times. The United States and the ideals and values it has stood for for 250 years are being tested as never before in the modern era. Those values and ideals have never been more in danger than they are now. If you believe in democracy and freedom… if you believe that the truth still matters and that it is worth taking a stand and fighting… if you believe in the law and that no one is above it… if you oppose armed, masked federal troops invading American cities using Gestapo tactics against our fellow citizens… if you believe you do not deserve to be killed for exercising your right to protest… then send a message to this president.”
It remains to be seen whether Streets of Minneapolis he will be able to make himself appreciated even outside of the day of the fans, of the newspapers and of the news, of the Springsteen fans for whom it is exciting to hear Patti Scialfa and the E Street Choir (I wouldn't swear, but it sounds like them) singing in chorus “ICE out now!”. It is certain, however, that by putting his authority, his moral weight in the history and present of American rock, with this song Springsteen told us that the deaths of Good and Pretti are no longer news. They have already become history. When Springsteen sings about the “winter of '26” as folksingers once told us about events that happened in the '60s, he is telling us that there is no need for time to decide which side is wrong and which side is right. Those in power “evoke self-defense” and say “don't believe your eyes”, recites a passage which echoes a quote from 1984 by George Orwell which was widely circulated on social media after the videos of the two murders disproved the theses, or rather “the dirty lies” of Trump, Kristi Noem and Stephen Miller: “The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command.”
Someone is saying that Springsteen should think about singing, that Obama also deported immigrants, that being a millionaire he has no right to take anyone's side. It's nothing new. When he wrote American Skin (41 Shots) after the death of Amadou Diallo, the black immigrant who was shot by four New York police officers, he received boos and insults. There was even a rift with the police force, who refused to escort him and the E Street Band to the exit at Shea Stadium. One day while walking through Red Bank, in his native Jersey, an old black woman approached him and told him something that was as valid yesterday as it is today: “They don't want to hear the truth.”
