Bruce Springsteen in the 9/30/07 NYTimes

In Love With Pop, Uneasy With the World
By A. O. SCOTT

Asbury Park, N.J.

IT was the last day of summer, but on the boardwalk here it seemed more like a perfect morning in early July: the Atlantic Ocean sparkled under a cloudless sky; the humid air was soothed by a soft, salty breeze. I looked down the empty beach, past the souvenir shops and snack bars with their fresh paint and new green awnings, toward the proud Victorian hulk of the old Casino, and felt that I had walked into a Bruce Springsteen song. (Oh, I don’t know. Maybe “Fourth of July, Asbury Park.” Or is that too obvious?)

The feeling, no less potent for being self-induced, had been with me all morning. Bright and early, me and my girl — my wife of nearly two decades, that is — had let the screen door slam, dropped off the kids at school and set out on the open road, blowing through the E-ZPass lanes on the Garden State Parkway in our Volvo station wagon. We had an advance copy of Mr. Springsteen’s new album, “Magic,” in the CD slot, and most of his back catalog in reserve on the iPod. And now we were driving down Kingsley, figuring we’d get a latte. One more chance to make it real. Tramps like us, baby!

Our purpose was not to fantasize but rather to observe the E Street Band in rehearsal, and then to hear what the man himself had to say about the new record, the coming tour and whatever else was on his mind. “Magic” is, musically, one of the most upbeat, accessible records he has made, even as its themes and stories make it one of his most political. Once again he is hitting the road as a presidential election heats up.

“I like coming out on those years,” he would tell me later, when we sat down to talk in a backstage dressing room after the rehearsal. “Whatever small little bit we can do, that’s a good time to do it.”

At an age when most rock ’n’ rollers, if they’re still alive, have become either tributes to or parodies of their earlier selves, Mr. Springsteen seems to have settled into an enviable groove, with new musical forms to explore and an existing body of work that never seems to get old, with plenty to say and an audience that hangs on his every word. In which — as if it weren’t already obvious — I include myself. I’ve been listening to Bruce Springsteen for a long time, but I can’t pretend that he provided the soundtrack for my youth. I spent my teenage years in the thrall of punk rock and its various aftermaths and came to Springsteen late, past the stage of life when his great anthems of romance, rebellion and escape might have had their most direct impact. As a result, I associate his work with the sorrows and satisfactions of adulthood; it’s music to grow up to, not out of.

It's a long article -- the rest is at:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/30/arts/music/30scot.html?_r=2&pagewanted=1&oref=login

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