Hostname: page-component-745bb68f8f-5r2nc Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-01-12T23:41:04.417Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Beyond blood brothers: queer Bruce Springsteen

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 September 2013

Rosalie Zdzienicka Fanshel
Rosalie Zdzienicka Fanshel*
Affiliation:
P.O. Box 1967, Sebastopol, CA 95473, USA E-mail: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Bruce Springsteen's body of work contains a striking number of songs with homoerotic or queerly suggestive content. Moreover, his live performances often push the limits of the homosocial, ‘queering’ onstage relationships through everything from lingering kisses with the late saxophonist Clarence Clemons to intimate microphone sharing with guitarist and real-life best friend Stevie Van Zandt. In this paper I trace Bruce Springsteen's consistent performative engagement with queer desire over the course of his 40-year career through a close reading of both lyrics and performance (including onstage, and in video and still photography). I examine how Springsteen's queer lyrical content and performative acts contrast critically with dominant readings of his hypermasculine, ‘all-American’ image, and suggest that Springsteen's regular deployment of homosocial and homoerotic imagery in both lyrics and performance – far from being an exception to his more mainstream persona – actually constitute a kind of queer aesthetic vital to, and consistent with, his artistic vision of love and community.

Type
Articles
Information
Popular Music , Volume 32 , Issue 3 , October 2013 , pp. 359 - 383
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2013 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Bibliography

Biddle, I. 2007. ‘“The singsong of undead labor”: gender nostalgia and the vocal fantasy of intimacy in the “new” male’, in Oh Boy! Masculinities and Popular Music, ed. Jarman-Ivens, F. (London and New York, Routledge), pp. 125–44Google Scholar
Butler, J. 1999. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (London and New York, Routledge)Google Scholar
Carlevale, E. 1987. ‘Springsteen's ass – and why you can't tell the straights from the gays’, The Advocate, 17 February, p. 9Google Scholar
Clemons, C., and Reo, D. 2009. Big Man: Real Life and Tall Tales (New York, Grand Central Publishing)Google Scholar
Cohen, S. 1997. ‘Men making a scene: rock music and the production of gender’, in Sexing the Groove: Popular Music and Gender, ed. Whiteley, S. (London and New York, Routledge), pp. 17–36Google Scholar
Cullen, J. 2005. Born in the U.S.A.: Bruce Springsteen and the American Tradition (Middletown, Wesleyan University Press)Google Scholar
Flannigan, E., and Phillips, C. 1998. ‘The Backstreets liner notes’, in Backstreets Magazine, 61 (Winter), supplementGoogle Scholar
Frith, S. 1988. ‘The real thing – Bruce Springsteen’, in Music for Pleasure: Essays in the Sociology of Pop (London, Routledge)Google Scholar
Frith, S. 1990. ‘Afterthoughts’, in On Record: Rock, Pop, and the Written Word, ed. Frith, S. and Goodwin, A. (New York, Pantheon Books), pp. 419–24. Originally published in New Statesman (23 August 1985)Google Scholar
Frith, S., and McRobbie, A. 1990. ‘Rock and sexuality’, in On Record: Rock, Pop, and the Written Word, ed. Frith, S. and Goodwin, A. (New York, Pantheon Books), pp. 371–89. Originally published in Screen Education, 29 (1978)Google Scholar
Garman, B.K. 2000. A Race of Singers: Whitman's Working-Class Hero from Guthrie to Springsteen (Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina Press)Google Scholar
Gill, J. 1995. Queer Noises: Male and Female Homosexuality in Twentieth Century Music (Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press)Google Scholar
Halberstam, J. 2007. Quoted in Oh Boy! Masculinities and Popular Music, ed. Jarman-Ivens, F. (London and New York, Routledge), p. 5. Originally published in Halberstam, J. 1998. Female Masculinity (London and Durham, Duke University Press), p. 236Google Scholar
Hubbs, N. 1996. ‘Music of the “fourth gender”: Morrissey and the sexual politics of melodic contour’, Genders, 23, pp. 266–96Google Scholar
Humphries, P. and Hunt, C. 1985. Springsteen: Blinded by the Light (New York, Henry Holt)Google Scholar
Marsh, D. 2004. Bruce Springsteen: Two Hearts (London and New York, Routledge)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Official Bruce Springsteen website. http://www.brucespringsteen.net (accessed 8 December 2009)Google Scholar
Palmer, G. 1997. ‘Bruce Springsteen and masculinity’, in Sexing the Groove: Popular Music and Gender, ed. Whiteley, S. (London and New York, Routledge), pp. 100–17Google Scholar
Pfeil, F. 1995. White Guys: Studies in Postmodern Domination and Difference (London and New York, Verso)Google Scholar
Pike, H.C. 2005. Asbury Park's Glory Days: The Story of an American Resort (New Brunswick, Rutger's University Press)Google Scholar
Rock ‘n’ Roll Hall of Fame. 1999. The Fourteenth Annual Induction Dinner. http://frankenschulz.de/bruce/hall-of-fame.html (accessed 23 September 2009)Google Scholar
Rycenga, J. 2006. ‘Endless caresses: Queer exuberance in large-scale form in rock,’ in Queering the Popular Pitch, ed. Whiteley, S. and Rycenga, J. (New York, Routledge), pp. 235–47Google Scholar
Sedgwick, E.K. 1985. Between Men: English Literature and Male Homosocial Desire (New York, Columbia University Press)CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Smith, M.N. 1991. ‘Sexual mobilities in Bruce Springsteen: performance as commentary’, in South Atlantic Quarterly, 90, 4 (Fall), pp. 833–54CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Springsteen, B. 1984. Performance of ‘Fire’ in Toronto. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q7p1p66v8k8 (accessed 23 September 2009)Google Scholar
Springsteen, B. 1998. Songs (New York, Avon Books)Google Scholar
Springsteen, B. 2009. Performance of ‘Fire’ in Philadelphia. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0kTnyP33fbM (accessed 23 September 2009)Google Scholar
Wehbe, E. ‘Lebanese tribute to Bruce Springsteen’. http://www.springsteenlyrics.com (accessed 23 September 2009)Google Scholar
Whitman, W. 1993. Leaves of Grass: The ‘Death-Bed’ Edition (New York, Modern Library)Google Scholar
Wieder, J. 2004. ‘Bruce Springsteen: The Advocate interview’, in Racing in the Street: The Bruce Springsteen Reader, ed. Sawyers, J.S. (New York, Penguin Books), pp. 211–220. Originally published in The Advocate (2 April 1996), pp. 46–52Google Scholar
Wolff, D. 2005. 4th of July, Asbury Park: A History of the Promised Land (New York, Bloomsbury Publishing)Google Scholar

Discography

Springsteen, Bruce, ‘Marie’. Unreleased song. 1972Google Scholar
Springsteen, Bruce, ‘Mary Queen of Arkansas’ / ‘Lost in the Flood’ / ‘The Angel’ / ‘Spirit in the Night’. Greetings From Asbury Park, NJ. Columbia Records, CK 31903. 1973Google Scholar
Springsteen, Bruce, ‘The E Street Shuffle’ / ‘Fourth of July (Sandy)’ / ‘Wild Billy's Circus Story’ / ‘Incident of 57th Street’ / ‘Rosalita’. The Wild, the Innocent, and the E Street Shuffle. Columbia Records, CK 32432. 1973Google Scholar
Springsteen, Bruce, ‘Dance on Little Angel’ (aka ‘Angel Baby’ and ‘A Night Like This’). Unreleased song. 1974Google Scholar
Springsteen, Bruce, ‘And the Band Played’ (aka ‘Tokyo’, ‘Shanghai’ or ‘Born to Win’). Unreleased song. 1974Google Scholar
Springsteen, Bruce, ‘Thunder Road’ / ‘Backstreets’ / ‘Born to Run’ / ‘Meeting Across the River’. Born to Run. Columbia Records, CK 33795. 1975Google Scholar
Springsteen, Bruce, ‘The Ties That Bind’ / ‘Two Hearts’ / ‘Out in the Street’. The River. Columbia Records, C2K 36854. 1980Google Scholar
Springsteen, Bruce, ‘Highway Patrolman’. Nebraska. Columbia Records, CK 38358. 1982Google Scholar
Springsteen, Bruce, ‘No Surrender’ / ‘Bobby Jean’. Born in the U.S.A. Columbia Records, CK 38653. 1984Google Scholar
Springsteen, Bruce, ‘Fire’ / ‘No Surrender’. Live 1975–85. Columbia Records, C3K 40558. 1986Google Scholar
Springsteen, Bruce, ‘Tougher than the Rest’ / ‘Walk Like a Man’. Tunnel of Love. Columbia Records, CK 40999. 1988Google Scholar
Springsteen, Bruce, ‘This Hard Land’ / ‘Streets of Philadelphia’ / ‘Blood Brothers’. Greatest Hits. Columbia Records, CK 67060. 1995Google Scholar
Springsteen, Bruce, ‘Sinaloa Cowboys’. The Ghost of Tom Joad. Columbia Records, CK 67484. 1995Google Scholar
Springsteen, Bruce, ‘Zero and Blind Terry’ / ‘Rickey Wants a Man of Her Own’ / ‘My Love Will Not Let You Down’ / ‘Brothers under the Bridges’ / ‘My Lover Man’ / ‘Back in Your Arms’. Tracks. Columbia Records, CK 69482–CK 69485. 1998Google Scholar
Springsteen, Bruce, ‘The Promise’. 18 Tracks. Columbia Records, CK 69476. 1999Google Scholar
Springsteen, Bruce, ‘Devils and Dust’. Devils and Dust. Columbia Records, CN 93900. 2005Google Scholar
Springsteen, Bruce, ‘Gypsy Biker’ / ‘Devil's Arcade’. Magic. Columbia Records, 88697170602. 2007Google Scholar
Springsteen, Bruce, ‘The Last Carnival’. Working on a Dream. Columbia Records, 88697413552. 2009Google Scholar

Videography

Andrew Solt Productions, History of Rock ‘N’ Roll. Time-Life Video & Television and Warner Brothers, 34991. 1995Google Scholar
Springsteen, Bruce, Blood Brothers. Columbia Music Video, 19V 50139. 1996Google Scholar
Springsteen, Bruce, Video Anthology, 1978–2000. Columbia Music Video. 2000Google Scholar
Springsteen, Bruce, Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band: Live in New York City. Columbia Music Video. 2001Google Scholar
Springsteen, Bruce, Wings for Wheels: The Making of Born to Run. Released 2005 as part of Born to Run: 30th Anniversary Addition. Columbia Music Video, CSD 55625. 2005Google Scholar