On January 17, 2015, Bruce Springsteen made his regular “surprise” appearance at the Light of Day Foundation charity event to raise money to fight Parkinson’s disease. The performance at the Paramount Theater in Asbury Park, New Jersey featured a number of deep cut Springsteen songs like “This Little Girl,” which was recorded by Gary U.S. Bonds.
One of the highlights of the show featured an appearance by Southside Johnny, where the two New Jersey singers traded lines on Southside’s classic “I Don’t Want To Go Home,” backed by LaBamba’s Big Band. Check it out.
Rolling Stone recently wrote about the top ten highlights from Springsteen’s performance at the charity event. Leave your two cents in the comments.
Columbia Records released Bruce Springsteen’s Tunnel of Love on October 9, 1987. While the album was a quieter follow-up to the mega-hit Born in the USA and modern fans often consider it shadowed by other albums like Born to Run and Darkness on the Edge of Town, it is a great album.
Had almost any other artist made Tunnel of Love, the album would have defined their careers. Instead it remains one of Springsteen’s somewhat overlooked albums.
Tunnel of Love also remains one of Springsteen’s most personal and least political albums. While he has many other love songs, the songs on Tunnel of Love focus largely on the heart, isolated from any one time and place.
Of course, Springsteen fans at the time sensed that the album reflected one particular troubled heart. In May 13, 1985, Springsteen had married actress Julianne Phillips after the two knew each other less than a year. Many thought Tunnel of Love reflected rocky waters for the marriage with lyrics in the title track such as “It’s easy for two people to lose each other in this tunnel of love.” The two had separated before the release of the album, and soon the couple filed for divorce on August 30, 1988.
During the tour for the album, tabloids reported on Springsteen’s new love with backup singer Patti Scialfa. Within a few years of Springsteen’s divorce, he and Scialfa would get married and the two are still together today.
In this video from the Tunnel of Love tour for “Tougher Than the Rest,” it may be acting, but one can sense some smoldering passion in the looks between the two on one of Springsteen’s greatest love songs.
Producers Logan Rogers and Evan Schlansky have gathered some artists to put an alt-country spin on Bruce Springsteen’s 1984 album, Born in the U.S.A. The result, Dead Man’s Town: A Tribute to Born in U.S.A. (2014), features artists such as North Mississippi Allstars, Holly Williams, Joe Pug, Apache Relay, Jason Isbell and Amanda Shires, Justin Townes Earle, and Blitzen Trapper.
For now, you can listen to a stream of the full album below. Each of the artists puts a new spin on the one of the twelve tracks on the album. Check it out.
Standout tracks includes Holly Williams mining the sadness underlying “No Surrender,” Justin Townes Earle reworking and slowing down “Glory Days,” and Quaker City Nighthawks finding the country heart of “Darlington County.” Dead Man’s Town will be available September 16.
What is your favorite song on the album? Leave your two cents in the comments.
Chilean singer-songwriter and activist Victor Jara left a fascinating legacy beyond his heroic death, inspiring many around the world, including Pete Seeger and Bruce Springsteen.
On September 16, 1973, Chilean singer-songwriter and political activist Victor Jara was killed. According to one source, the killing took place in a stadium before a large crowd of prisoners being held by the military after a coup.
Before his brutal death, Jara had one final act of courage and heroism.
The 1973 Coup and Taking of Prisoners
Jara had supported Salvador Allende, who had been elected president of Chile in 1970. But the Chilean right wing used the military to stage a coup d’état against the popularly elected Marxist on September 11, 1973.
Allende allegedly killed himself rather than surrender (although some argue he was murdered). But many of Allende’s supporters were taken prisoner, including Jara. You may see Jara below performing a few months earlier in a July 1973 TV show.
Jara’s Defiant Death
After the arrest, Jara and about 6,000 others were taken to the Santiago boxing stadium, according to Chilean journalist Miguel Cabezas. Jara tried to help the other prisoners who were kept in the stands. But when the prison camp commander recognized the singer, he had Jara taken to a table in the center of the arena for everyone to see.
Officials had Jara place his hands on the table. Then, with an ax they cut off the fingers of both of Jara’s hands. The officer beat Jara, screaming, “Now sing, you motherf***er, now sing.”
Jara rose up from the blows and went to the edge of the bleachers. To the horrified crowd, Jara said, ‘All right comrades, let’s do the senor comandante the favor.’ He lifted his bleeding hands, leading the crowd in singing the anthem of Unidad Popular, the party of Allende.
Officials opened fire, and Jara’s body fell dead.
Other versions of the tale recounting Jara’s death tell a slightly different story. Reportedly, he was tortured in a basement for several days. From the torture, he had a swollen face. And his fingers that used to play guitar were fractured by the butt of a rifle. A low-ranking officer then spun the chamber of a revolver, pulled the trigger, and killed Jara in a round of Russian roulette.
No matter how Jara died, his life is worth remembering. And whether or not he actually led others in a rebellious song before his death, the story symbolizes where he stood on the side of history.
World Leaders and the Coup
Scholars still debate how much of a role the U.S. played in the Chile coup. President Richard Nixon feared the success of a socialist elected official in South America who was friends with Cuba’s Fidel Castro. Thus, the U.S. imposed economic sanctions on Chile that at a minimum contributed to the circumstances of the coup.
Nixon, however, would be out of office in less than a year in August 1974, resigning in disgrace. In Chile, General Augusto Pinochet would hold power much longer, remaining as president until 1990 and in other official offices for almost a decade after that.
Pinochet’s last years, though, were spent facing charges related to human rights violations. He died in 2006 without being convicted for any of his crimes. But legal action continued against others involved in Jara’s murder.
Update: Several former Chilean military officers have been charged in the murder of Jara. In June 2016, a Florida jury found a former Chilean army officer liable for the torture and murder Jara. The jury awarded $28 million in damages to Jara’s widow Joan Jara and their daughters. And in December 2023, that former lieutenant, Pedro Barrientos, was extradited from the U.S. to Chile. Victor Jara’s widow, though, did not get to see it as she passed away two weeks earlier in November 2023.
Jara’s Legacy Continues
As tyrants fall away, history remembers the heroes and the martyrs. The military burned many of Jara’s master recordings, but Jara’s wife Joan Jara took some recordings out of the country.
American folksinger Phil Ochs, who had met Jara in Chile, was devastated by the killing. He helped organize a memorial fundraiser called “An Evening With Salvador Allende” in New York in 1974. The same year, a Soviet astronomer named an asteroid after Jara.
Others paid tribute to Victor Jara, including Pete Seeger. Toronto band Apostle of Hustle recorded a song “Fast Pony For Victor Jara” for their 2007 CD U King. (Thanks to Robert Lawson for telling me about the band.) In 2008, Calexico released the song “Victor Jara’s Hands” on the album Carried to Dust. (Thanks to Rich Wagner for pointing me to the song.)
Arlo Guthrie also wrote and recorded a tribute to the singer-activist with the song, “Victor Jara,” from the 1976 album Amigo. Guthrie wrote the music and Adrian Mitchell provided the lyrics with each verse focusing on Jara’s hands that officials would break. (Thanks to Bill Waldron for alerting me to Guthrie’s song.)
He sang about the copper miners, And those who worked the land; He sang about the factory workers, And they knew he was their man; His hands were gentle, his hands were strong.
Jara also appears in U2’s song “One Tree Hill” from the band’s 1988 album The Joshua Tree. Bono wrote the song in memory of his friend Greg Carroll but the song also refers to Victor Jara: “Jara sang, his song a weapon in the hands of love / You know his blood still cries from the ground.”
More recently, when Bruce Springsteen performed in Santiago, Chile in September 2013, he performed Jara’s song “Manifesto” in Spanish.
Springsteen introduced the song, saying “If you are a political musician, Victor Jara is still a great inspiration. It’s an honor to be here and I take it with humility. Victor Jara is alive.”
Here is a link to an interesting interactive timeline of the coup, but if you are reading this post on a mobile device, note that it uses a lot of data. Leave your two cents in the comments.
In the various E Street Band live versions of Bruce Springsteen singing “Drive All Night,” I have always felt that Springsteen cannot capture the loneliness and angst of the original recording on The River (1980). As the next-to-last song on side four of the two-album set, “Drive All Night” brings together all of the sadness of the album, reminding the listener (along with the underrated final song “Wreck on the Highway“) that the only hope of surviving the despair is with love, even if there is no guarantee that it will do anything more than make a moment better.
The best place to listen to “Drive All Night” is to put the song on the stereo in a dark room while you think about everything you have ever lost. By contrast, a live full-band version cannot capture that feeling because a Springsteen concert is a celebration of community with a large crowd and the E Street Band backing up the singer. But when Glen Hansard sings his version of “Drive All Night” live, he comes close to the feeling of the original recording.
Singer-songwriter (and sometimes movie actor) Glen Hansard has a voice made for evoking sadness and pain. There are great versions of Hansard covering “Drive All Night” by himself. As the title track for a 2013 EP, Hansard recorded his own version of “Drive All Night” with Eddie Vedder helping on vocals and E Street Band member Jake Clemons playing saxophone. Check it out.
Springsteen must have recognized Hansard’s skill with the song, as he invited him to sing the song with him in July 2013 when Springsteen played in Kilkenny, Ireland. When Hansard begins singing, Springsteen has a look on his face like, “This guy gets this song.” Check it out.
But my favorite Hansard version is where he sings alone with a guitar with a little help from Once co-star and former Swell Season bandmate, Marketa Irglova. The two have voices that blend perfectly, and the fact that the two are former lovers adds another layer of poignency to the performance. Check it out.
What is your favorite version of “Drive All Night”? Leave your two cents in the comments.
(2014), features artists such as North Mississippi Allstars, Holly Williams, Joe Pug, Apache Relay, Jason Isbell and Amanda Shires, Justin Townes Earle, and Blitzen Trapper.
. (Thanks to 
