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For Springsteen, this pandemic musical phenomenon has been matched by some profound personal changes. Last year Steve Van Zandt, probably Springsteen's best friend and one of his closest collaborators, left the E Street Band to follow his own highly charged musical course. As Little Steven, Van Zandt has made two exemplary albums that fuse hard rock with tough, heartfelt politics. But the departure, which was thoroughly amicable, was rough on all concerned. Springsteen set down some of his feelings in Bobby Jean: "I'm just calling one last time/ Not to change your mind, but just to say I/ miss you baby, good luck, goodbye/ Bobby Jean."
And, of course, Springsteen got married, to Julianne Phillips, 25, a model and actress from Lake Oswego, Ore. The ceremony became one of those all-media shooting matches that are the sudden, awful baptism of American superstardom and the price you pay for it. After some frayed nerves and some skulduggery of scheduling, the ceremony took place uninterrupted on May 13, at a church in the bride's hometown. Van Zandt, Manager Jon Landau and Clarence Clemons, the E Street Band's knight-errant sax player, were best men. The media got foxed on photos, and on all but the skimpiest details. (Only last week did Springsteen and his wife allow a brief photo session; it was done for TIME.) During his concerts Springsteen has started to make jokes about being married. "Gotta be cool now!" he laughs, and the audience laughs with him. But anyone who has taken a high dive into Springsteen's lyrics knows how much honor and emotional obligation mean to him, and can guess, at least, how the carny atmosphere of the wedding must have cut him.
Conjecture will have to serve for the moment, until Springsteen writes a song on the subject, or gives formal interviews again. He has not spoken officially to the press since late last year. But he is still writing, and a new tune called Seeds shows his heart has not been blunted by all the pandemonium. Seeds is a bitter and desperate blues about workers who leave the languishing auto industry in Detroit for jobs in the oil fields around Houston. Bad times hit oil town, and the workers get shorted again on their fair portion of the American dream. They have to live in their cars. "Kid's in the backseat with a graveyard cough," Springsteen sings, and closes out with a simple, strangled, "Gone, gone, it's all gone."
There is no misunderstanding what he is up to here. Seeds is a cry of outrage that vaults over both self-pity and partisan politics. It is a hard tune, without the irony of, say, Born in the U.S.A. Born is a coruscating song about hopes put on hold. Despite that, its bouncy chorus has been yanked out of context and appropriated as an anthem of renewed American pride. "Born in the U.S.A. has been fabulously misheard and misread," observes Rock Critic Greil Marcus. "Clearly the key to the enormous explosion of Bruce's popularity is the misunderstanding of that song. He is a tribute to the fact that people hear what they want."