Bruce Springsteen On Broadway Calls Trump's Child Snatching: "Shockingly and disgracefully inhumane."

by Gregg Chadwick

This week in New York, Bruce Springsteen added a powerful call to action to his Broadway show:

We are seeing things right now on our American borders that are so shockingly and disgracefully inhumane and un-American that it is simply enraging. And we have heard people in high position in the American government blaspheme in the name of God and country that it is a moral thing to assault the children amongst us. May God save our souls.  

Bruce Springsteen On Broadway Calls the Nation to Attention Over Trump's Inhumane Border Snatching (full audio below)

I never believed that people come to my shows, or rock shows to be told anything.
But I do believe that they come to be reminded of things. To be reminded of who they are, at their most joyous, at their deepest, when life feels full. It's a good place to get in touch with your heart and your spirit, to be amongst the crowd. And to be reminded of who we are and who we can be collectively. Music does those things pretty well sometimes, particularly these days when some reminding of who we are and who we can be isn't such a bad thing. 

That weekend of the March for our Lives, we saw those young people in Washington, and citizens all around the world, remind us of what faith in America and real faith in American democracy looks and feels like. It was just encouraging to see all those people out on the street and all that righteous passion in the service of something good. And to see that passion was alive and well and still there at the center of the beating heart of our country. 

It was a good day, and a necessary day because we are seeing things right now on our American borders that are so shockingly and disgracefully inhumane and un-American that it is simply enraging. And we have heard people in high position in the American government blaspheme in the name of God and country that it is a moral thing to assault the children amongst us. May God save our souls. 

There's the beautiful quote by Dr. King that says, "the arc of the moral universe is long but it bends toward justice." Now, there have been many, many days of recent when you could certainly have an argument over that. But I've lived long enough to see that in action and to put some faith in it. But I've also lived long enough to know that arc doesn't bend on its own. It needs all of us leaning on it, nudging it in the right direction day after day. You gotta keep, keep leaning.
I think it's important to believe in those words, and to carry yourself, and to act accordingly. It's the only way that we keep faith and keep our sanity.
I've played this show 146 nights with basically the same setlist, but tonight calls for something different...

Men walking 'long the railroad tracks
Going someplace and there's no going back
Highway patrol choppers coming up over the ridge
Hot soup on a campfire under the bridge
Shelter line stretching 'round the corner
Welcome to the new world order
Families sleeping in their cars in the southwest
No home, no job, no peace, no rest

Well the highway is alive tonight
But nobody's kidding nobody about where it goes
I'm sitting down here in the campfire light
Searching for the ghost of Tom Joad

He pulls a prayer book out of his sleeping bag
Preacher lights up a butt and he takes a drag
Waiting for when the last shall be first and the first shall be last
In a cardboard box 'neath the underpass
You got a one-way ticket to the promised land
You got a hole in your belly and a gun in your hand
Sleeping on a pillow of solid rock
Bathing in the city aqueduct

And the highway is alive tonight
Where it's headed everybody knows
I'm sitting down here in the campfire light
Waiting on the ghost of Tom Joad

Tom said, "Mom, wherever there's a cop beating a guy
Wherever a hungry newborn baby cries
Where there's a fight against the blood and hatred in the air
Look for me, Mom, I'll be there
Where there's somebody fighting for a place to stand
Or a decent job or a helping hand
Wherever somebody's struggling to be free
Look in their eyes, Mom, you'll see me"

The highway is alive tonight
But nobody's kidding nobody about where it goes
I'm sitting down here in the campfire light
With the ghost of old Tom Joad

Springsteen on Broadway - June 19, 2018 - The Ghost Of Tom Joad from docinwestchester on Vimeo.

Sneak Peek: Springsteen on Broadway "Brilliant Disguise" - New York City, Walter Kerr Theater 1/11/18

Bruce Springsteen sings "Robert Mueller's Comin' to Town"

Bruce Springsteen sings "Robert Mueller's Comin' to Town" #YouBetterWatchOut #YouBetterNotCry #YouBetterNotLieToTheFBI pic.twitter.com/HvebMmVQCR

— Fallon Tonight (@FallonTonight) December 5, 2017

"Elvis Has Left the Building" at L Ross Gallery in Memphis, Tennessee

by Gregg Chadwick

My paintings Pink Cadillac (Elvis at Graceland) and Memphis Train (Arcade Restaurant) have just arrived at the L Ross Gallery in Memphis, Tennessee for my latest exhibition. They will join my painting Suspicion (Elvis Presley) in the exhibition Elvis Has Left the Building which runs from August 2 - 31. This group show, which has become a notable annual event for the L Ross Gallery, will kick off with an opening reception on Friday, August 4 from 6 – 9 pm.

In my recent Clark Hulings Fund podcast with Daniel DiGriz, DiGriz caught me implying that Elvis is alive. On the walls of the L Ross Gallery this August, Elvis does live on, but as Fredric Koeppel writes,"his memory is slowly fading and becoming the stuff of rumor and legend tending toward oblivion." The show title makes this poignantly clear. I have been reading Ray Connolly's new book Being Elvis: A Lonely Life which deftly examines Elvis' life through the lens of Memphis in the 1940's and 1950's. Childhood poverty and class aspirations spurred Elvis on in a way that left no room for error in his art but left his life dangerously open to misfortune and eventual tragedy. 

At the Mississippi-Alabama Fair and Dairy Show in Tupelo, Mississippi on September 26, 1956, Elvis played a powerful, homecoming show in the town where he was born in a two-room shack 21 years before. Elvis had left Tupelo when he was thirteen. In the interim, Elvis had become Tupelo's most famous person. As Ray Connolly recounts in Being Elvis: A Lonely Life : "Elvis put on a special show that day...It was staged outside the fairgrounds in front of a large tent, and, as he sang in the afternoon show, he could see over in the background, a long freight train rolling past." Starting on that day, as the concert closed, Elvis and the band slipped off stage through a trap door. No encores that day nor in the future. Instead an announcer would express over the PA system that "Elvis has left the building." 

Gregg Chadwick

Suspicion (Elvis Presley)

36”x36” oil on linen 2016

“Gregg Chadwick takes the opposite stance in the oil-on-linen Elvis Presley (Suspicion). Here, a familiar depiction of the singer is rendered in blurry, shadowy lines, as if his memory is slowly fading and becoming the stuff of rumor and legend tending toward oblivion.”
                          - Fredric Koeppel, The Commercial Appeal

Gregg Chadwick

Memphis Train (Arcade Restaurant)

Boxed and Ready for Unveiling

20”x24” oil on linen 2017

My painting Memphis Train (Arcade Restaurant), is steeped in the musical history of the city and pays homage to Jim Jarmusch's 1989 film Mystery Train. The Arcade Restaurant which graces the painting is a major player in Jarmusch's cinematic ode to Memphis and Elvis. Across the street from the Arcade is Memphis Central Station which opened for railroad service in 1914. My painting reflects the rich, diverse past, present, and future of Memphis. I listened to the Junior Parker song Mystery Train, which supplied Jarmusch his film title, as I painted. I also listened to Elvis' cover version of the song. Two brilliant renditions. 

The city of Memphis itself tells many deeply American stories. Memphis can claim an important role in the development of the Blues and Rock n' Roll.  The legend goes that W.C. Handy, who lived in Memphis from 1909-1917, wrote one of the earliest blues songs, St. Louis Blues, in a bar on Beale Street in 1912.  During the 1940s and 1950s, Memphis was  home to B.B. King, Junior Parker, Johnny Ace, and Joe Hill Louis.  R&B and gospel music label Duke Records began in Memphis in 1952. Also in 1952, Sam Phillips started Sun Records, the seminal early rock and blues home.  Elvis Presley, Johnny Cash, Carl Perkins,  Jerry Lee Lewis, Muddy Waters, Howlin' Wolf, Ike Turner,, and Roy Orbison created powerful early recordings at Sun Studio.

Layers of paint today on "Memphis Train" #art #MysteryTrain #Memphis #culture @arcaderestaurant

A post shared by Gregg Chadwick (@greggchadwick) on Apr 25, 2017 at 3:02pm PDT

Gregg Chadwick

Pink Cadillac (Elvis at Graceland) 

Boxed and Ready for Unveiling

24”x30” oil on linen 2017

My painting Pink Cadillac (Elvis at Graceland), like many of my artworks, went through a process of change and revision. Like a time traveler drifting into the past, Pink Cadillac, began in our present era and shifted as the painting developed back into the 1950's. As if in a dream, I found myself in front of Graceland watching Elvis slowly walk away. Knowing that Bruce Springsteen had written his song Fire especially for Elvis, I listened to a mix of Bruce and Elvis as I painted. As Ray Connolly writes in Being Elvis: A Lonely Life: "at the time of Elvis' death" Springsteen was trying to get the song to Elvis in Graceland. Springsteen never learned if it reached the King.

Springsteen when remembering his childhood expressed that "I couldn't imagine anyone not wanting to be Elvis Presley." Springsteen's fandom reached a pinnacle when after a concert in Memphis on the Born to Run tour in 1976, Bruce jumped the wall outside Graceland that night and made it to the front door hoping to meet Elvis in person. Security guards told him that Elvis was in Lake Tahoe and not available and then escorted him back to the street.

 Springsteen described the night, "'And it took us out there in the middle of the night, and I remember we got outta the cab, and we stood there in front of those gates with the big guitar players on 'em. And when we looked up the driveway, in the second story of the house, you could see a light on, and I figured that Elvis has gotta be up readin' or somethin'. And I told Steve, I said, 'Steve, man, I gotta go check it out.' And I jumped up over the wall and I started runnin' up the driveway, which when I look back on it now was kind of a stupid thing to do because I hate it when people do it at my house.

'Anyway, at the time, I was filled with the enthusiasm of youth and ran up the driveway and I got to the front door and I was just about to knock, and guards came out of the woods and they asked me what I wanted. And I said, 'Is Elvis home?' Then they said, 'No, no, Elvis isn't home, he's in Lake Tahoe'. So, I started to tell 'em that I was a guitar player and that I had my own band, and that we played in town that night, and that I made some records. And I even told 'em I had my picture on the cover of Time and Newsweek. I had to pull out all the stops to try to make an impression, you know. I don't think he believed me, though, 'cause he just kinda stood there noddin' and then he took me by the arm and put me back out on the street with Steve. 

'Later on, I used to wonder what I would have said if I'd knocked on the door and if Elvis had come to the door because it wasn't really Elvis I was goin' to see. But, it was like he came along and whispered some dream in everybody's ear, and somehow we all dreamed it. And maybe that's why we're here tonight, I don't know. 

I remember later, when a friend of mine called to tell me that he'd died, it was so hard to understand how somebody whose music came in and took away so many people's loneliness and gave so many people a reason and a sense of the possibilities of living could have, in the end, died so tragically. And I guess when you're alone, you ain't nothin' but alone."

Elvis has indeed left the building, but the echo of his presence remains.

Gregg Chadwick
The Alchemist (Elvis in Headphones)
monotype, oil, and pastel on paper 14"x11" 2017 

Behind the microphone at Sun Studio in Memphis #lrossgallery #ElvisWeek #memphis

A post shared by Gregg Chadwick (@greggchadwick) on Aug 12, 2016 at 9:18am PDT

The gallery is located at  5040 Sanderlin Ave., Suite 104, Memphis, TN 38117

More on Gregg Chadwick’s blog: https://greggchadwick.blogspot.com/2017/07/elvis-has-left-building-at-l-ross.html

And the L Ross Gallery Website: http://lrossgallery.com/

Gregg Chadwick 

Pink Cadillac (Elvis at Graceland) 

24"x30" oil on linen 2017

Gregg Chadwick 

Memphis Train (Arcade Restaurant) 

20"x24" oil on linen 2017

Listen for the First Time: I'll Stand By You Always (2001 Demo for Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone) - Bruce Springsteen

Bruce Springsteen wrote a song for the first Harry Potter film, Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone, and offered it to the director Chris Columbus. However, the film studio Warner Brothers turned the song down and it has languished in the vaults ever since. Backstreets Magazine recently ran a letter from Columbus agonizing over the song and his love of Bruce. Read the letter and listen to the song. What might have been...

Fifteen years ago, on November 16, 2001, Harry Potter and The Sorcerer's Stone was released. Being in a bit of a nostalgic mood, I checked into Backstreets (which I do every day, sometimes two or three times a day). I saw the interview with David Heyman and wanted to respond to it. David got most of the facts right, but there is a little more detail that I wanted to share with you guys.

As a kid who grew up in an Ohio factory town, my future looked pretty bleak. Both of my parents were factory workers, and it certainly looked like that might be my future as well. I developed a love of film in high school and was fortunate enough to get a scholarship to NYU film school. At first, I was out of my element at NYU. I didn't have a tremendous amount of confidence and felt intimidated by many of the other, more sophisticated students. There were several times I thought about leaving school and moving back to Ohio. Just didn't think I could cut it.

Then the summer of '78 happened. I picked up a copy of Darkness on the Edge of Town. I listened to it all night long. It spoke to me. The same way it spoke to millions of other listeners. But I took this music personally. It felt like a challenge.

That summer, during the night shift at Alcan Aluminum where I worked, I'd hide from my snoozing boss between gigantic racks of aluminum. And there, I wrote my first screenplay. I got back to NYU in the fall, showed the script to my professor who passed it on to his agent. The agent took me on as a client and, within three weeks, managed to sell the script to MGM. I suddenly had a career. I suddenly had a future. All because of one Bruce Springsteen record. All because of Darkness.

I never forgot that. As I spent the next decades working in the film industry, and seeing a hundred-plus Bruce shows, I wrote, directed, and produced countless films where I wanted to use Bruce's music. But we usually didn't have the budget, or we were turned down by the record company. Thankfully, I struck up a close friendship with Steve Van Zandt, who wrote many great songs for my films. And I was lucky enough to feature Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes in my first film, Adventures in Babysitting.

But I always dreamed that at some point, somewhere along the way, there would be a Bruce song in one of my films.

We were in post-production on Harry Potter and The Sorcerer's Stone when I got a call from an executive at Warner Bros. He said, "You're not going to believe this. But someone... someone really huge... I mean, a big, big superstar, has written a song for your film." I asked, "Who?" thinking that because of the extremely British nature of the film, it was probably someone like Sting or Paul McCartney. The executive said, "Bruce Springsteen."

My fucking heart leaped into my throat. Here was my chance, my opportunity to finally have a Bruce song in one of my films. The next day, the Bruce CD arrived at Leavesdon studios. I tore open the Fed Ex envelope, ran into my office, and closed the door. I needed to hear this first, I needed to hear this alone. I looked at the title on the CD: "I'll Stand By You." Already, a classic title. I placed the CD into my boombox and hit play. 

My first reaction was sheer joy. "I'll Stand By You" was one of the most beautiful songs I had ever heard, one the most elegant and emotional songs that Bruce had ever written. I played it over and over. I drove home and played it for my wife and kids. They all loved the song. I went to sleep that night thinking, "My dream has finally come true."

- image via springsteenlyrics.com, which explains that in addition to being sent to the Sorcerer's Stone producers, the track was "exclusively given out on an in-house promo CD-R to some very few top executives at Columbia Records" in 2001.

The next day, on the mixing stage, I asked the editors to put up the final reel of Sorcerer's Stone. This song deserved a great place in the film, and I was determined to play it over the end credits, as the Hogwarts Express takes Harry, Hermione, and Ron back to their families. Within a few minutes, the song was synched up with the final credits.

We played the reel. We played it again and again. I probably viewed that reel for the next four hours, creating a sense of anxiety and over-budgetary fears into the hearts of my producers. I wanted that song to work. I wanted to fucking will that song into the final credits. But there was one issue. 

The first 130 minutes of the first Harry Potter film were intensely, deeply British. Every single actor who appeared in the film was British, their dialogue culled more from the British versions of the book than from the edited American versions (things like "jumper" were replaced by "sweater" in the American versions). The sets were historically British. And John Williams' roaring score was also, in its heart, extraordinarily British. 

Bruce's amazing, heartbreakingly beautiful song slightly shifted the mood of the film from England to back across the pond. Back to America. It would be the first time in our film where we would not hear a British voice. Also, complicating matters... John Williams had already written a full eight minutes of an orchestral piece to end the film. I would have to face the Maestro and tell him that I was planning to cut his eight-minute symphony. This certainly would have sent John running for the hills, ending our working relationship forever. Had I done that, John would definitely not have scored the subsequent two Potter films.

I was fucking devastated. I'd waited over 25 years for a Bruce song. And finally, I received one of the best songs he'd ever written. And I couldn't use it. 

I was lost, depressed, and truly, truly upset. I did the only thing I felt I could do. I decided to write to Bruce, to explain what had happened. So I started writing... and writing... and twelve pages later, I finished what was part apology, part explanation, part historical journey of my own personal relationship with Bruce and his music. 

Bruce wrote back to me a few weeks later, saying he understood and may even take up my offer for him and the family to come visit the Harry Potter 2 set. That unfortunately never materialized. But as you would expect with Bruce, he was incredibly gracious and understanding and made me feel a whole lot better with one line: "You gotta do what's right for your movie." Of course Bruce would care about what's in the heart of the artist. 

Over the years, I've had the great opportunity to meet Bruce several times. We never discuss the song. It never comes up. But deep in my heart, I feel I still owe him one. I still feel I owe him something, for setting me on a path that led to my beautiful career, and for giving me a future.

I hope that someday, someday soon, Bruce will release "I'll Stand By You." It deserves to be heard. It truly is a classic, timeless piece of music.

A Candid Bruce Springsteen on CBS Sunday Morning

by Gregg Chadwick

Today on CBS Sunday morning, Bruce Springsteen spoke candidly about his upcoming autobiography, Born to Run, in a conversation with reporter Anthony Mason. Below is the full video and a few highlights from the interview. Full story can be found at: Bruce Springsteen,"I'm still in love with playing." Thanks to CBS Sunday Morning for this insightful glimpse into the man and his art.

Bruce Springsteen has been singing about his own life and times for more than 40 years. Now’s he’s written about them as well. Here is our own music man, Anthony Mason:

In the final dates of his international tour that ended this past week, Bruce Springsteen played one four-hour gig after another. How can he keep doing that? “I’m conditioned to do it from many, many years of experience. Don’t try it at home, kids!” he warned.

It’s the one arena where the singer, who turns 67 next week, can control the clock: “You’re looking for a particular moment, and then when you catch that, it feels so good sometimes. 

“Then time disappears, you know?”

“Where do you think your drive came from?” Mason asked.

“I believe every artist had someone who told them that they weren’t worth dirt and someone who told them that they were the second coming of the baby Jesus, and they believed ‘em both,” Springsteen replied.

“And that’s the fuel that starts the fire.”

For Springsteen, the fire started in Freehold, New Jersey, on the block around the St. Rose of Lima Catholic Church.

“Home was right up here,” the singer pointed out to Mason. “My house was here, church was there, nun’s convent, priest’s rectory. My aunt’s house was there. My other aunt’s house was right next to her.”

“The grinding power of this ruined place would never leave me,” he writes in “Born to Run,” his new autobiography, published by Simon & Schuster (a division of CBS). 

Doug and Adele Springsteen’s son found both comfort and fear there. His mother, a legal secretary, rented him his first guitar. His father, who worked at Ford, was an angry man.

“He loved me,” Springsteen writes, “but he couldn’t stand me.”

Mason joined Springsteen on a surprise visit to the school at St. Rose of Lima. He is beloved here now. It was different when he was in class.

“I’m gettin’ the willies,” he said, walking into a classroom.

“Did I read they called you ‘Springy’?” Mason asked.

“Yes. That is correct, my friend. Amongst many other things.”

“How did you do when you were here?”

“Not particularly well, you know. I didn’t fit in the box so well.”

Long after he moved away, Springsteen would drive back at times to Freehold: “I may still cruise through every once in a while.”

“What are you looking for when you do?”

“Well, they say you’re looking to make things all right again, you know? And of course, there’s no going back, you know?”

The long-haired guitar slinger who earned his stripes in the bars of Asbury Park, was signed to Columbia Records at just 22.

His first two albums did not sell well, so he poured his soul into a new song called “Born to Run”:

Bruce Springsteen - Born to Run by BruceSpringsteenVEVO on YouTube

“Well, I was trying to make the greatest record you’d ever heard. The record that after you heard it, you didn’t have to hear another record, you know?”

“Born to Run” launched Bruce Springsteen. The album’s now-iconic cover also featured sax player Clarence Clemons, Bruce’s mythic sidekick. The big man’s imposing presence came to symbolize the brotherhood of the E Street Band.

Mason asked, “How would you describe your relationship with Clarence?”

45 PHOTOS

Images of Bruce Springsteen

“It was very primal,” he replied. “It was just, ‘Oh, you’re, you’re some missing part of me. You’re some dream I’m having. He was this huge force, you know? While at the same time being very fragile and very dependent himself, which is maybe what the two of us had in common. We were both kind of insecure down inside. And we both felt kind of fragile and unsure of ourselves. But when we were together we felt really powerful.

“We were very different people, you know? Clarence lived fast and loose and wild and wide-open, you know? And I tended to be a little more conservative.”

“You said offstage, you couldn’t be friends.”

“I couldn’t because it would ruin my life!” Springsteen laughed. “But Clarence could be Clarence excellently. He was very good at it.”

Until Clemons’ health went into a long decline. In 2011 he suffered a stroke and died days later. “Losing Clarence,” Springsteen writes, “was like losing the rain.”

“And it happened very quick and suddenly. And it was quite devastating,” he said.

“When something like that, that as you say kind of came magically to begin with, goes away, you’ve got to be sitting there going, ‘How do I replace this?’” Mason asked.

Full story can be found at: Bruce Springsteen,"I'm still in love with playing."
Buy the book here: Born to Run

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Springsteen at The Concert for Valor

by Gregg Chadwick

Bruce Springsteen's performance last night at The Concert for Valor was passionate, a bit gritty, and dialed in to the characters in his songs. The words of Promised Land, Born In the USA, and surprisingly for me Dancing In the Dark cut like a knife through the hushed crowd. Springsteen seemed to embody the underlying pain of the returning warrior and the scourge of PTSD.  Springsteen stood bare on the stage with just a guitar for a compelling reason. Like a soldier returning from war and moving on without a platoon and moving on without a weapon always at hand, Springsteen courageously stood alone. Through his lyrics, Springsteen gave truth to the fears that many carry home from war. Yes, you are alone now. Yes, your uniform is packed away and your weapons stowed. But, there is hope. I watched friends and family come home from Vietnam as changed men. I watched many stay in the military for years and then watched them put on their uniforms for the last time. And I watched them struggle to find meaning in life. Springsteen's songs on the Mall in DC last night, echoed that existential dread. And somehow as always, Springsteen helps us find hope in the darkness.

High Hopes

 Bruce Springsteen On His New Album High Hopes:

I was working on a record of some of our best unreleased material from the past decade when Tom Morello (sitting in for Steve during the Australian leg of our tour) suggested we ought to add “High Hopes” to our live set.  I had cut “High Hopes,” a song by Tim Scott McConnell of the LA based Havalinas, in the 90′s.  We worked it up in our Aussie rehearsals and Tom then proceeded to burn the house down with it.  We re-cut it mid tour at Studios 301 in Sydney along with “Just Like Fire Would,” a song from one of my favorite early Australian punk bands, The Saints (check out “I’m Stranded”).  Tom and his guitar became my muse, pushing the rest of this project to another level.  Thanks for the inspiration Tom.

Some of these songs, “American Skin” and “Ghost of Tom Joad,” you’ll be familiar with from our live versions.  I felt they were among the best of my writing and deserved a proper studio recording. 

 ”The Wall” is something I’d played on stage a few times and remains very close to my heart.  The title and idea were Joe Grushecky’s, then the song appeared after Patti and I made a visit to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington.  It was inspired by my memories of Walter Cichon.  Walter was one of the great early Jersey Shore rockers, who along with his brother Ray (one of my early guitar mentors) led the ”Motifs”.  The Motifs were a local rock band who were always a head above everybody else.  Raw, sexy and rebellious, they were the heroes you aspired to be.  But these were heroes you could touch, speak to, and go to with your musical inquiries.  Cool, but always accessible, they were an inspiration to me, and many young working musicians in 1960′s central New Jersey.   Though my character in “The Wall” is a Marine, Walter was actually in the Army, A Company, 3rd Battalion, 8th Infantry.  He was the first person I ever stood in the presence of who was filled with the mystique of the true rock star.  Walter went missing in action in Vietnam in March 1968.  He still performs somewhat regularly in my mind, the way he stood, dressed, held the tambourine, the casual cool, the freeness. The man who by his attitude, his walk said “you can defy all this, all of what’s here, all of what you’ve been taught, taught to fear, to love and you’ll still be alright.”  His was a terrible loss to us, his loved ones and the local music scene.  I still miss him.

This is music I always felt needed to be released.  From the gangsters of “Harry’s Place,” the ill-prepared roomies on “Frankie Fell In Love” (shades of Steve and I bumming together in our Asbury Park apartment) the travelers in the wasteland of “Hunter Of Invisible Game,” to the soldier and his visiting friend in “The Wall”, I felt they all deserved a home and a hearing.

Hope you enjoy it,
Bruce Springsteen

Pre-order High Hopes here

For My Brazilian Friends

A Brazilian wedding proposal during She's the One




Sociedade Alternativa by the Father of Brazilian Rock the late Raul Seixas

Gregg Chadwick
beijo da metade-luz (kiss of the half-light)
48"x72" oil on linen 2005
private collection 

Homage to Victor Jara

by Gregg Chadwick


"As every cell in Chile will tell, the cries of the tortured men. Remember Allende in the days before, before the army came. Please remember Víctor Jara, in the Santiago Stadium. Es Verdad, those Washington Bullets again."
-from Washington Bullets, The Clash - 1980

"And in the world a heart of darkness, a fire zone. Where poets speak their heart, then bleed for it. Jara sang, his song a weapon, in the hands of love. Though his blood still cries from the ground."
- from One Tree Hill, U2 - 1987

Víctor Jara
September 28, 1932 – September 16, 1973
Chilean Poet, Teacher, Theatre Director, Folk Singer, Songwriter, Political Activist
photo courtesy Victor Jara Foundation

 

In Santiago, on the 40th anniversary of the CIA backed coup in Chile, Bruce Springsteen gave homage to Chilean poet and activist Víctor Jara  by performing Jara's poignant song Manifiesto. The 1973 Chilean coup ushered the brutal dictator Augusto Pinochet into power and marked the beginning of a bloody era in Chile. Thousands of people were arrested, tortured and killed by the military.

In Philip Sherwell's must read interview in The Telegraph - Joan Jara, Víctor's widow, recounts their last phone conversation on the afternoon of Sept 11, 1973:

"Victor called me to say that he couldn't get home because of the curfew, that he loved me and urged me to stay home and take care of the girls," she said. "What he didn't tell me was that he couldn't leave because the university was surrounded by tanks and under siege."

From a smuggled message, Joan Jara was informed that Víctor was among 800 students and faculty members taken from Santiago's Technical University on September 12, 1973 to Estadio Chile (Chile Stadium) where thousands were being held by the Pinochet government. 

Koen Wessing
Estadio Chile During the Coup
September 1973
Stedelijk Museum, Amsterdam

Many of those detained were tortured and killed by Pinochet's shock troops. Víctor's captors brutally beat him, smashing his hands with rifle butts and then, according to fellow prisoners, the guards mockingly suggested that Víctor play guitar for them with his battered hands. Defiantly, Víctor sang part of Venceremos (We Will Win), a song supporting deposed President Allende's Popular Unity coalition.

September 1973 - Estadio Chile (Chile Stadium)

Jose Paredes, one of Víctor's captors recently recounted in court how he and other soldiers from his regiment witnessed their superior officer Lieutenant Barrientos torture Víctor Jara and other prisoners held in the arena. Paredes then describes Víctor's death:

"After that, Lieutenant Barrientos decided to play Russian roulette, so he took out his gun, approached Víctor Jara, who was standing with his hands handcuffed behind his back, spun the cylinder, put it against the back of his neck and fired." Then Lieutenant Barrientos ordered his troops to follow up with a machine gun coup-de-grace. Víctor's bullet riddled body was dumped on a street outside Santiago. 

 A few months later in New York, Bob Dylan, Pete Seeger and Phil Ochs headlined a benefit in honor of Jara's life and work.


Joan Jara managed to escape from Chile to London with their two daughters and a number of Víctor's literary and musical works, including a poem Víctor wrote while imprisoned in Estadio Chile. Víctor's last untitled, unfinished work is a cry for hope amid brutality and injustice. 

Joan spent the next 10 years travelling the world bearing witness to the brutal coup in Chile, eventually moving back to Santiago in 1983. Joan established the Víctor  Jara Foundation to keep her husband's memory and artistic legacy alive and she continues to fight relentlessly to gain justice for him in death. 

September 12, 2013
Bruce Springsteen Sings Jara's Manifiesto in Santiago

 On September 12, 2013 in Santiago, Chile, Springsteen introduced his version of Jara's Manifiesto with heartfelt words in Spanish:

"En 1988 tocamos para Amnistía Internacional en Mendoza, Argentina, pero Chile estaba en nuestros corazones. Conocimos a muchas familias de desaparecidos, con fotografías de sus seres queridos. Fue un momento que se queda conmigo para siempre. Si ya es un músico político, Victor Jara continúa siendo una gran inspiración. Es un regalo estar aquí y lo tomo con humildad."

Translation via Backstreets: 

"In 1988 we played for Amnesty International in Mendoza, Argentina, but Chile was in our hearts. We met many families of desaparecidos, which had pictures of their loved ones. It was a moment that stays with me forever. A political musician, Victor Jara, remains a great inspiration. It's a gift to be here and I take it with humbleness." 


Springsteen and the E Street Band followed up Manifiesto with We Are Alive, off of his latest album Wrecking Ball. The final track on Wrecking Ball, We Are Alive, is a folk hymn that weaves together death, sacrifice, memory, and transcendence. The song opens with the sound of a record needle scratching across vinyl - a nostalgic warmth that conjures up the history of recorded music. The sounds of We Are Alive bring us from Edison's wax cylinders, to vinyl LP's, to digital tracks. The words of We Are Alive lead us through the history of the struggle for human rights in the United States. Like a folk spirit cut loose from Dicken's A Christmas Carol,  the singer of We Are Alive touches down in three stages of our country's life: the historical past of the 19th century, the recent past of 1960's Civil Rights era, and the contemporary reality of new immigrants trying to reach this land of promise.  On September 12, 2013 in Santiago, Chile - We Are Alive also connected to global injustice and Nixon era America's brutal sins abroad. Víctor Jara's life and music continue to inspire resistance and revolution. Jara's Nueva Canción (New Song) continues to be sung in Latinoamérica and across the globe.

Bruce Springteen with Nils Lofgren on Guitar Sings Víctor Jara's Manifiesto 
(September 12, 2013 - Santiago, Chile)

Víctor Jara - Manifiesto (1973)

MANIFIESTO
Víctor Jara

Yo no canto por cantar
ni por tener buena voz,
canto porque la guitarra
tiene sentido y razón.

Tiene corazón de tierra
y alas de palomita,
es como el agua bendita
santigua glorias y penas.

Aquí se encajó mi canto
como dijera Violeta
guitarra trabajadora
con olor a primavera.

Que no es guitarra de ricos
ni cosa que se parezca
mi canto es de los andamios
para alcanzar las estrellas,
que el canto tiene sentido
cuando palpita en las venas
del que morirá cantando
las verdades verdaderas,
no las lisonjas fugaces
ni las famas extranjeras
sino el canto de una lonja
hasta el fondo de la tierra.

Ahí donde llega todo
y donde todo comienza
canto que ha sido valiente
siempre será canción nueva.

I don't sing for love of singing, 
or because I have a good voice. 
I sing because my guitar 
has both feeling and reason. 
It has a heart of earth 
and the wings of a dove, 
it is like holy water, 
blessing joy and grief.
My song has found a purpose
as Violeta would say. 
Hardworking guitar, 
with a smell of spring.

My guitar is not for the rich no, 
nothing like that. 
My song is of the ladder 
we are building to reach the stars. 
For a song has meaning 
when it beats in the veins 
of a man who will die singing, 
truthfully singing his song.

My song is not for fleeting praise 
nor to gain foreign fame, 
it is for this narrow country 
to the very depths of the earth. 

There, where everything comes to rest 
and where everything begins, 
the song which has been brave 
will be forever new.

(Many thanks to Salvdor Trepat at Point Blank for lyrics and translation.)

Víctor Jara - Chile Stadium (his last song) English translation

Translated by Joan Jara. Read by Adrian Mitchell. From the album Manifiesto.

Lyrics Below:

Untitled - (Estadio Chile)
Víctor Jara

Somos cinco mil

en esta pequena parte de la ciudad.

Somos cinco mil

¿Cuantos seremos en total

en las ciudades de todo el pais?

Solo aqui, diez mil manos que sembran

y hacen andar las fabricas.

¡Cuanta humanidad

con hambre, frio, panico, dolor

presion moral, terror y locura!

…¡Y Mexico, Cuba y el mundo?

¡Que gritan esta ignomonia!

Somos diez mil manos menos

que no producen.

¿Cuanto somos en toda la Patria?

La sangre del companero Presidente

golpea mas fuerte que bombas y metrallas.

Asi golpeara nuestro puno nuevamente.

¡Canto que mal me sales

cuando tengo que cantar espanto!

Espanto como el que vivo

como el que muero, espanto.

De verme entre tanto y tantos

momentos de infinito

en que el silencio y el grito

son las metas de este canto.

Lo que veo nunca vi,

lo que he sentido y lo que siento

hara brotar el momento…

There are five thousand of us here

in this small part of the city.

We are five thousand.

I wonder how many we are in all

in the cities and in the whole country?

Here alone

are ten thousand hands which plant seeds

and make the factories run.

How much humanity

exposed to hunger, cold, panic, pain,

moral pressure, terror and insanity?

Six of us were lost

as if into starry space.

One dead, another beaten as I could never have believed

a human being could be beaten.

The other four wanted to end their terror

one jumping into nothingness,

another beating his head against a wall,

but all with the fixed stare of death.

What horror the face of fascism creates!

They carry out their plans with knife-like precision.

Nothing matters to them.

To them, blood equals medals,

slaughter is an act of heroism.

Oh God, is this the world that you created,

for this your seven days of wonder and work?

Within these four walls only a number exists

which does not progress,

which slowly will wish more and more for death.

But suddenly my conscience awakes

and I see that this tide has no heartbeat,

only the pulse of machines

and the military showing their midwives’ faces

full of sweetness.

Let Mexico, Cuba and the world

cry out against this atrocity!

We are ten thousand hands

which can produce nothing.

How many of us in the whole country?

The blood of our President, our compañero,

will strike with more strength than bombs and machine guns!

So will our fist strike again!

How hard it is to sing

when I must sing of horror.

Horror which I am living,

horror which I am dying.

To see myself among so much

and so many moments of infinity

in which silence and screams

are the end of my song.

What I see, I have never seen

What I have felt and what I feel

Will give birth to the moment…

Koen Wessing / The indelible Image / GAM / Santiago de Chile from Jeroen de Vries on Vimeo.

  



 More at:

Eight Charged With Víctor Jara's Murder in Chile

More on Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band's Wrecking Ball Tour