Springsteen Denies He's A Phony Patriot
The Boss reacts to his critics' assertions that he's pretentious
In an interview with Daily Show host Jon Stewart for Rolling Stone Magazine Bruce responded to criticisms that he was a "phony".
"Lately, it seems as if the polarization of the country has gotten so extreme that people want to force you into being either a phony "patriot" or an "apologist," he said. "Nuanced political dialogue or creative expression seems like it's been hamstrung by the decay of political speech and it's infantilized our national discourse. I can't go for that and I won't write that way."
Also in the interview Bruce spoke about how, despite the fact that people have been commenting on his latest album being overtly political, the subject matter of his albums has been the same for 30 years.
"Do we take care of our own? What happened to that social contract? Where did that go over the past 30 years? How has it been eroded so terribly? And how is it that the outrage about that erosion is just beginning to be voiced right now? I've written about this stuff for those 30 years, from Darkness on the Edge of Town to The Ghost of Tom Joad through to today. It all came out of the Carter recession of the late Seventies, and when I was writing about that, my brother-in-law lost his construction job and went to work as a janitor in the local high school. It changed his life."