Torn in the USA

But a funny thing has been happening over the past few years. Call it irony. Call it decadence. Call it boredom with indie-rock dogma. Stephen Malkmus started citing Thin Lizzy as an influence. Low covered Journey. And they didn't appear to be joking. The bad classic rock and crass, plastic pop of my youth was somehow becoming cool again. The more I was exposed to Springsteen's older albums like Born to Run, Darkness on the Edge of Town and The River, the better they sounded. There was still a certain guilty-pleasure factor at play, but those records suddenly sounded so tough and raw and real -- even with Clarence Clemons's overblown sax and Little Steven's limp Clapton-isms. Now, Elizabeth Wurtzel's reconciliation of punk rock and the Boss in Prozac Nation made a whole lot more sense. "For me there was just Bruce," she wrote, "and the Clash, the Who, the Jam, the Sex Pistols, all of those punk bands talking about toppling the system in the UK, which had nothing to do with being so lonesome you could die in the USA."

This past Saint Patrick's Day, I watched Bruce Springsteen step up to a podium, slouch over, unfold a scrap of paper and make a speech inducting U2 into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. I was channel-surfing at my mom's house. I don't have cable, nor would I ever have consciously chosen to watch the program. But as soon as I realized what was going on, I was glued to the screen. One icon of my childhood, Springsteen, was roasting another, Bono, for being a sellout, the "operator of the Bono burger franchise," possessor of "one of the greatest and most endearingly naked messianic complexes in rock and roll." After the burst of laughter from the audience died down, the Boss cracked a crooked grin and backpedaled: "God bless you, man! It takes one to know one."

Now, listening to Devils and Dust through for the tenth time, its self-deprecating weariness and acidic glory eat into me. With only the barest backing -- strings, piano, violin, the occasional forlorn moan of a trumpet -- Springsteen spins near-biblical tales of saviors, survivors, prostitutes, murderers and demons with a voice that wanders from gulping yodel to menacing growl. This isn't duplicity. It's multiplicity. Yes, Springsteen had whored his art out to the masses in the past. Yes, he's less cloying than Bono -- only in the sense that he at least laughs at his own messiah complex. But that same complex drove him to take the most overt political stance of his career last year, campaigning (albeit in vain) to defeat George W. Bush. Maybe the Boss felt guilty that he never made a very big deal about Reagan's appropriation of "Born in the U.S.A." Ever image-conscious, perhaps he's trying to secure his legend as a paragon of rock-and-roll sincerity, the myth that he's built his entire career on.

But does that make him a phony? After all, as social pundit Simon Frith so pithily pointed out, "Bruce Springsteen is a millionaire who dresses as a worker." Looking at myself and my friends, though, we're a bunch of dorks who dress like Bruce Springsteen: ragged jeans, Western shirts, beat-up Telecasters. I even listen to "Born in the U.S.A." nowadays, by choice -- and not just the grainy, Nebraska-era demo, either. I mean the same version that's been sunk into my cerebrum like a hypnotic suggestion since childhood. And maybe brainwashing is all it is. I was, after all, born in the USA. But when that song comes on the radio, I don't think of Reaganomics anymore or pop exploitation or even the inherent evils of nationalism. I just crank it up and yell along.

With every goddamn word.