SPRINGSTEEN: A HALF-TIME CONSCIENCE

FLORIDA (AP) — When the Boss stepped up to the mic at just past 8:00 PM on Sunday night, 3 days shy of the 10^th anniversary of the murder of Amadou Daillo, and opened with American Skin (41 Shots), everyone in attendance knew this was going to be a show like no other.

It came as no surprise that Super Bowl XLIII’s half-time performance by Bruce Springsteen would be a highly charged political event. Those lucky enough to be on hand put down their beers, raised their awareness, and collectively hailed the man who has done so much to lift America’s political consciousness over the last 35 years.

As the final notes of American Skin breathlessly came to an end, Bruce quickly segged into a beautiful acoustic-only version of The Ghost of Tom Joad with words that spoke to the disillusionment of those in the crowd and those across the country. The perfect song to put voice to the sad reality that America had woefully lost it’s way over the past 8 years. The enraptured audience sat quietly and enjoyed every word as if it had been chiseled in stone like the preamble to the constitution.

This was Bruce’s night and the audience knew it!

Plugging in his electric guitar, he showed them yet again that he knew exactly what was most on their minds as he offered a rousing version of Pete Seeger’s Bring Them Home:

They wanna test their grand theories

Bring 'em home, bring 'em home

With the blood of you and me

Bring 'em home, bring 'em home

Now we'll give no more brave young lives

Bring 'em home, bring 'em home
For the gleam in someone's eyes
Bring 'em home, bring 'em home

At this point the surviving members of the 1960’s political powerhouse, The Last Poets, joined the Boss on stage for a stripped down version of Billie Holiday’s Strange Fruit. With only drums as musical accompaniment, the haunting verses lifted the audience metaphorically if not literally.

Here is fruit for the crows to pluck,

For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck,

For the sun to rot, for the trees to drop,

Here is a strange and bitter crop.

With the crowd near the breaking point and about to boil over into a full-scale riot, Bruce closed out the show with a song off his new CD ‘Working on a Dream’ entitled Life Itself. A song about the disenchantment that comes from a life of lost dreams, lost love, and a lost country. While most were clearly unfamiliar with the song, they were eager to give this legend the time he had earned to inspire us all with his latest words of wisdom:

Why do the things that we treasure most slip away in time?

Till to the music we grow deaf and to God's beauty blind

Why do the things that connect us slowly pull us apart?

Till we fall away in our own darkness, stranger to our own hearts

What else can be said? You’ll always be the Boss, Bruce! No other performer would ever call himself that.

Super Bowl XLIII Half-Time Set List:

American Skin (41 Shots)

The Ghost of Tom Joad

Bring Them Home

Strange Fruit

Life Itself