Rock, With Respect

For more than a quarter century, Bruce Springsteen has taken us on personal and inspiring journeys through back streets, along Thunder Road and down to the river.

On Saturday at the Forum in Inglewood, the New Jersey native took us on a different trip--a more public pilgrimage to the World Trade Center and the emotional aftermath of its destruction.

“Can’t see nothin’ in front of me, can’t see nothin’ coming up behind,” Springsteen sang in the evening’s opening number, leading us right to ground zero and the heroism of the firefighters and other emergency workers who walked up those darkened staircases.

The song, “The Rising,” is the title tune of Springsteen’s new album, a series of post-Sept. 11 reflections, and the memory of that day is a thread that ran through every minute of the 2 1/2-hour concert.

Springsteen and the E Street Band, which played with dazzling cohesion and command, did 11 of the 15 songs from the album, plus earlier material that often took on extra resonance in view of the events of the last year, including “Atlantic City” and “Land of Hope and Dreams.”

Just before the evening’s end, Springsteen paused between songs for a couple of public service announcements.

First, he plugged the Los Angeles Regional Food Bank, a nonprofit agency he has supported on past tours. Then, he warned everyone not to drop their guard when it comes to civil-rights and civil-liberties issues during this period of post-Sept. 11 alarm.

Springsteen could have made a third public service announcement--about the concert itself.

Yes, there was a price tag attached to the evening’s fare, but there also was an understated sense of public duty about Springsteen’s manner. Rather than his old practice of telling stories between songs and interacting vigorously with the band, he kept the focus on the evening’s message.

Like most of us, he was profoundly shaken by the destruction of Sept. 11--especially because he lives in a New Jersey county where more than 150 of the Trade Center victims lived. In an interview in July he said, “You would drive by the church every day and there was another funeral.”

He felt challenged to address the issues with songs that saluted the emergency workers and offered comfort and hope to rest of us.

It was a difficult assignment, and it has led to an almost comical media debate over everything from his motives to his art. A column in the Nation magazine scolded a Village Voice reviewer who attacked the album. Then a Wall Street Journal column ridiculed the Nation writer.

Despite a few generic, feel-good exercises, “The Rising” is a bold, courageous album, and the best of Saturday’s concert also radiated that spirit.

Even though the tour is now a month old, however, the show doesn’t have the easy, convincing pace of most Springsteen concerts.

Springsteen worked hard at the Forum, for instance, at making the upbeat new “Mary’s Place” fill the cleansing, emotional role that “Rosalita (Come Out Tonight)” once did, but it just didn’t quite clear the bar Saturday. His feel-good “Countin’ on a Miracle” also felt too generic, especially when he could have used the time for some of the more penetrating tunes from the album, including the intimate, soul-searching “Paradise” or the tortured “Nothing Man.”

When Springsteen was on, however, he matched the most chilling and inspiring moments that have characterized his performances since the “Born to Run” and “Darkness on the Edge of Town” days of the ‘70s. His singing remains as gritty, convincing and forceful as ever, the veins in his neck bulging from the opening notes to the end.

“The Rising,” with its anthem-like urging to “come on up for the rising!” and the explosive power of the band, got things off to a joyous start.

Yet the most emotional early spot in the show came when Springsteen turned to two of the album’s most intimate tracks. “Empty Sky” and “You’re Missing” are marvelously touching expressions of the numbness and disorientation that anyone can feel after a loved one has been torn from your life.

To ease the somberness, Springsteen followed the tunes with the sweet optimism of “Waitin’ on a Sunny Day,” another song from the new album. Although the album has only been in stores for a few weeks, the audience knew the song well enough to sing along with every word.

After some welcome side trips for such signature tunes as “The Promised Land” and “Thunder Road,” Springsteen delivered one of the evening’s knockout punches by performing his controversial “American Skin (41 Shots).”

The song has been branded anti-police by some observers because it was inspired by a 1999 slaying of an unarmed West African immigrant by New York City police. In fact, it is a balanced look at social tensions and the dangers of mistrust.

Because the song isn’t on “The Rising,” Springsteen could easily have left it out of the set, but he sees it, quite rightly, as an important reminder, amid the flag-waving spirit of the times, of the need to address serious social issues.

The song was an ideal lead-in to “Into the Fire,” a song from “The Rising” that closed the set’s formal portion. Where the song’s images about reaching for faith, strength, hope and love seem a bit too obvious on the album, the live version was a far more soulful and convincing treatment. It was kicked off by the haunting, chant-like vocal that Springsteen developed on 1996’s “The Ghost of Tom Joad” solo tour.

After the seriousness of those tunes, he and the E Street Band--which has been expanded to nine members with violinist Soozie Tyrell--took time for recess in the first encore, with hard-rocking versions of “Dancing in the Dark,” “Ramrod” and “Born to Run.”

For the second, however, it was back to business, focusing on the stark “My City of Ruins” and the spirit-lifting “Land of Hope and Dreams.”

In the end, it was a sometimes rocky but triumphant stand in which Springsteen not only held the audience’s attention with a show built around 11 new songs, but also fulfilled his career-long pledge to make every night on stage count.

And if you’re wondering why he played the Forum rather than return to the more glamorous, upscale Staples Center, where he performed with the E Street Band during their 1999 reunion tour, Springsteen gave the answer. Gazing between songs at the old arena, which is more suited to Springsteen’s blue-collar tradition, he said with smile, “No sky boxes.”