Renegades: Born in the USA

INTRODUCTION

Good conversations don’t follow a script. Like a good song, they’re full of surprises, improvisations, detours. They may be grounded in a specific time and place, reflecting your current state of mind and the current state of the world. But the best conversations also have a timeless quality, taking you back into the realm of memory, propelling you forward toward your hopes and dreams. Sharing stories reminds you that you’re not alone—and maybe helps you understand yourself a little bit better.

When Bruce and I first sat down in the summer of 2020 to record Renegades: Born in the USA, we didn’t know how our conversations would turn out. What I did know was that Bruce was a great storyteller, a bard of the American experience—and that we both had a lot on our minds, including some fundamental questions about the troubling turn our country had taken. A historic pandemic showed no signs of abating. Americans everywhere were out of work. Millions had just taken to the streets to protest the murder of George Floyd, and the then occupant of the White House seemed intent not on bringing people together but on tearing down some of the basic values and institutional foundations of our democracy.

Almost a year later, the world looks a shade brighter. Thanks to amazing scientific advances and the tireless efforts of countless health workers on the front lines, the pandemic has receded (though not ended) and the economy is experiencing a steady if uneven recovery. George Floyd’s killer has been convicted and sentenced, and my friend and former vice president, Joe Biden, is president of the United States.

But for all the change we’ve experienced as a nation and in our own lives since Bruce and I first sat down together for our recording sessions, the underlying conditions that animated our conversation haven’t gone away. America remains more polarized than at any time we can remember—not just around issues like policing, climate change, taxes, and immigration, but over the very definitions of faith and family, on what constitutes justice, and whose voices deserve to be heard. We still grapple, in ways large and small, with the legacy of slavery and Jim Crow and the scourge of racism. The chasm between rich and poor continues to grow, with too many families struggling to get by. Even a violent attack on the US Capitol—a blow to our democratic order that was broadcast in real time for all the world to see—is subject to dispute, with a big chunk of the country either pretending it didn’t happen or suggesting that the anger of the mob was somehow justified.

That’s why the conversations Bruce and I had in 2020 feel as urgent today as they did back then. They represent our ongoing effort to figure out how it is that we got here, and how we can tell a more unifying story that starts to close the gap between America’s ideals and its reality.

We didn’t come up with any simple formulas for resolving America’s ongoing conflicts. As different as our backgrounds are, as much as we’ve tried in our work to give voice to the thousands of people whom we’ve met along the way, neither Bruce nor I can claim to capture all the divergent perspectives and attitudes that make up this big, raucous country of ours.

If nothing else, we tried to show that it’s possible to approach tough issues with compassion, humor, and conviction, but also a big dose of humility. And in fact, since the podcast was released, both of us have heard from folks from every state and every walk of life who’ve reached out to say that something in what they heard resonated with them, whether it was the imprint our fathers left on us; the awkwardness, sadness, anger, and occasional moments of grace that have arisen as we navigate America’s racial divide; or the joy and redemption that our respective families have given us. People told us that listening to us talk made them think about their own childhoods. Their own dads. Their own hometowns.

They also asked Bruce and me questions, wanting to know a little more about the stories we told—which is what led to this book. In the pages that follow, you can read our conversations in full. But you’ll also find the text of speeches, personal photos, and handwritten song lyrics that track some of the moments described in the podcast and that serve as markers along the crisscrossing highways and byways that each of us has traveled.

Our greatest wish is that our conversations inspire you to go out and start one of your own—with a friend, family member, coworker, or someone you know only in passing. Someone whose life intersects with yours but whose story you’ve never really heard. We’re betting that if you listen hard enough, with an open heart, you’ll feel encouraged. Because at a time when it’s easy to talk past each other, or just restrict our conversations to those who look or think or pray like we do, the future depends on our ability to recognize how we’re all a part of the American story—and that we can write a new and better chapter together.

—PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA

When President Obama suggested we do a podcast together, my first thought was, Okay, I’m a high school graduate from Freehold, New Jersey, who plays the guitar…. What’s wrong with this picture? Patti said, Are you insane?! Do it! People would love to hear your conversations! The president and I had spent some time together since we met on the campaign trail in ’08. That time included some long, telling conversations. These were the kind of talks where you speak from the heart and walk away with a real understanding of the way your friend thinks and feels. You have a picture of the way he sees himself and his world. So I took Patti’s advice and followed the president’s generous lead, and before we knew it we were sitting in my New Jersey studio (which the E Street Band had recently vacated), riffing off each other like good musicians.

We started at the start: growing up, our similarities, our differences. Hawaii, New Jersey…pretty different; absentee fathers…pretty similar. We then let the conversation expand as life itself does. We explored the way you start to put together an identity, from a pose, a photo, a piece of music, a movie, a cultural hero. We examined the way you struggle to find your strengths, your potency, your manhood. We delved into how that shapes your art, your politics, and the way you are going to live your life. It was all about life and how it is lived, the world as it stands and the efforts we have made to shape that world, me through my music and Barack through his politics, into the kind of place we feel it could be.

There were serious conversations about the fate of the country, the fortunes of its citizens, and the destructive, ugly, corrupt forces at play that would like to take it all down. This is a time of vigilance when who we are is being seriously tested. Hard conversations about who we are and who we want to become can perhaps serve as a small guiding map for some of our fellow citizens. We found a lot in common. The president is funny and an easy guy to be around. He’ll go out of his way to make you feel comfortable, as he did for me so that I might have the confidence to sit across the table from him. At the end of the day we recognized our similarities in the moral shape of our lives. It was the presence of a promise, a code we strive to live by. Honesty, fidelity, a forthrightness about who we are and what our goals and ideas are, a dedication to the American idea and an abiding love for the country that made us. We are both creatures stamped

BORN IN THE USA

. There is no other country that could have concocted the mix that makes a Barack Obama or a Bruce Springsteen, so our allegiance to its institutions, its dreams, and its ambitions remains unyielding. It’s why we’re here. Guided by our families, our deep friendships, and the moral compass inherent in our nation’s history, we press forward, guarding the best of us while retaining a compassionate eye for the struggles of our still young nation.

As I’ve said, these are treacherous times with much at stake—with everything at stake. This is a time for serious consideration of who we want to be and what kind of country we will leave our children. Will we let slip through our hands the best of us or will we turn united to face the fire? Within this book you won’t find the answers to those questions, but you will find a couple of seekers doing their best to get us to ask better questions. Safe journey, Mr. President, and thanks for picking up a fellow traveler and having me along for the ride.

—BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN

1

OUR UNLIKELY FRIENDSHIP

As it did for many people, the year 2020 stirred up a whole lot of emotions in me. For three years, I’d witnessed a country that seemed to be getting angrier and more divided with each passing day. Then came a historic pandemic, along with a slipshod government response that rained hardship and loss on millions and forced all of us to consider what’s really important in life. How did we get here? How could we find our way back to a more unifying American story?

That topic came to dominate so many of my conversations last year—with Michelle, with my daughters, and with friends. And one of the friends was Mr. Bruce Springsteen.

On the surface, Bruce and I don’t have a lot in common. He’s a white guy from a small town in Jersey. I’m a Black guy of mixed race born in Hawaii with a childhood that took me around the world. He’s a rock ’n’ roll icon. I’m…not as cool. And, as I like to remind Bruce every chance I get, he’s more than a decade older than me. Though he looks damn good.

But over the years, what we’ve found is that we’ve got a shared sensibility. About work, about family, and about America. In our own ways, Bruce and I have been on parallel journeys trying to understand this country that’s given us both so much. Trying to chronicle the stories of its people. Looking for a way to connect our own individual searches for meaning and truth and community with the larger story of America.

And what we discovered during these conversations was that we still share a fundamental belief in the American ideal. Not as an airbrushed, cheap fiction or as an act of nostalgia that ignores all the ways that we’ve fallen short of that ideal, but as a compass for the hard work that lies before each of us as citizens to make this place and the world more equal, more just, and more free.

Plus, Bruce just had some great stories.

So we added a participant to our conversations: a microphone. And over the course of a few days at the converted farmhouse and property that Bruce shares with his amazing wife, Patti, along with a few horses, a whole bunch of dogs, and a thousand guitars—all just a few miles from where he grew up—we talked.

CHAPTER

— 1 —

BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN: A question: How do you like to be addressed?

PRESIDENT OBAMA: Barack, man. Come on, dude.

BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN: Just checking! I want to get it right.

PRESIDENT OBAMA: So we’re sitting here in the great state of New Jersey with one of New Jersey’s prodigal sons….

BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN: That’s about right.

PRESIDENT OBAMA: The Boss, my friend: Bruce Springsteen. And we’re in a studio—just to paint a picture here, we’ve got…How many guitars you got up in here?

BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN: We’re looking at the house of a thousand guitars right now….

PRESIDENT OBAMA: I haven’t counted them all. But there are guitars everywhere. There is a ukulele, a banjo….

BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN: So if we get moved to make music, we—

PRESIDENT OBAMA: I’ve been known to sing.

BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN: —we got the instruments at hand.

PRESIDENT OBAMA: It’s good to see you, my friend. What brings us here today are conversations we’ve had over the years. Both of us had to be storytellers. We had to tell our own stories, and they became a part of a larger American narrative. The story we told resonated.

I was trying to remember the first time we actually met, and it probably was in 2008. During the campaign.

BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN: That’s right.

PRESIDENT OBAMA: You came to do a concert with us in Ohio. Your family was with you and I remember thinking, He’s very low-key, even maybe a little bit shy. And I liked that in you. So I thought, I hope I get a chance to talk to him at some point. But because it was in the middle of the campaign, we were rushing around. So, you know, we had a nice chat, but it wasn’t like we had a deep conversation.

BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN: No.

TOP: Along with Jay-Z and Bruce Springsteen, dozens of musicians performed and recorded in support of Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign, including Arcade Fire, P Diddy, Stevie Wonder, Jeff Tweedy, John Legend, Moby, Common, The Decemberists, Roger Waters, Patti Smith, Pearl Jam, Joan Baez, Michael Stipe, and Usher. In October 2008, the official 2008 campaign soundtrack, titled Yes We Can, was released. BOTTOM: Ticket for the Change Rocks campaign rally in Philadelphia, 2008.

Finishing the night on the Darkness tour, 1978.

PRESIDENT OBAMA: There was also the time in New York when you and Billy Joel got up onstage and you guys did a whole concert. That was the first time I saw how much you were working out in the middle of your shows. You were jumping up and down on a piano. You were drenched, man. You were soaked. And I thought, That man, he might hurt himself out there. But I had been a fan from afar for a long time. And we had started playing some of your music at our rallies. And then we just reached out and said, Hey, would you be willing to do something?

BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN: I had wonderful experiences playing those rallies and those appearances with you. Because you gave me something that I’ve never been able to give myself. And that was the diversity that was in the audience. I was playing to white faces and Black faces, old people and young people. And that’s the audience that I always dreamed of for my band. One of the nicest events I had ever performed at was when Jay-Z and I played in Columbus. I think I played Promised Land.

It was a fabulous audience. All kinds of people—working-class people, old folks, and young folks. A lot of folks who didn’t know me from the man in the moon, probably hearing me maybe for the first time.

PRESIDENT OBAMA: But the same was true for Jay-Z. I guarantee there were a bunch of elderly white folks in that crowd who had not heard a Jay-Z song in their lives. And I had to tell him, Change a few lyrics here, brother. We need the family version of some of his stuff.

BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN: It was the first time I met him…great guy. I only played three or four songs, but it was a deeply thrilling performance. This is the audience of my dreams, the audience I imagined playing for.

Plus, there is so much of the language of my writing that comes out of Christian faith, out of gospel, out of the Bible. There was a commonality of language that filtered across cultural lines.

PRESIDENT OBAMA: Right, folks feel it. Which is why when you do something like The Rising—with a choir in the back—or Promised Land…you might have been a preacher, Bruce. You might have missed your calling.

BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN: It was a gift to be able to be there. I have a lot of great memories of playing those rallies. I had watched you ever since you were a senator. You came up on my screen and I thought, "Yeah, that’s the language I want to speak, that I am trying to speak." I felt an enormous internal commonality with your vision of the country.

THE PROMISED LAND

On a rattlesnake speedway in the Utah desert / I pick up my money and head back into town / Driving ’cross the Waynesboro county line / I got the radio on and I’m just killing time / Working all day in my daddy’s garage / Driving all night chasing some mirage / Pretty soon, little girl, I’m gonna take charge / The dogs on Main Street howl / ’Cause they understand / If I could take one moment into my hands / Mister, I ain’t a boy, no I’m a man / And I believe in a promised land / I’ve done my best to live the right way / I get up every morning and go to work each day / But your eyes go blind and your blood runs cold / Sometimes I feel so weak I just want to explode / Explode and tear this whole town apart / Take a knife and cut this pain from my heart / Find somebody itching for something to start / There’s a dark cloud rising from the desert floor / I packed my bags and I’m heading straight into the storm / Gonna be a twister to blow everything down / That ain’t got the faith to stand its ground / Blow away the dreams that tear you apart /Blow away the dreams that break your heart / Blow away the lies that leave you nothing but lost and brokenhearted

—FROM DARKNESS ON THE EDGE OF TOWN (1978)

PRESIDENT OBAMA: It felt like we were striving for the same thing. In our own mediums in our own different ways. So when you talk about that straddling between these two places—Here’s where I want the country to be and here’s where it is. I’ve got to be rooted in where it is. But I want to push and nudge folks to where it could be.

BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN: Yeah. In our little corner of what we do, we are working on the same building.

PRESIDENT OBAMA: That’s exactly right. And we had a number of those interactions over the years: you performed at the inaugural concert, came by the White House; I run for reelection, you do some more stuff.

BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN: We had a nice dinner or two.

PRESIDENT OBAMA: We had a great dinner at the White House where we sang—

BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN: I played the piano, and you sang.

PRESIDENT OBAMA: Well, I don’t know about that. But we all sang some Broadway tunes. And some Motown. And some classics.

BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN: That’s right.

A night at Camp David, 2015.

PRESIDENT OBAMA: And there were libations involved. And then I said, Well, he’s not as shy as I thought, he just has to loosen up a little bit.

BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN: I don’t know if I would say it’s true for most people in my business, but the shyness is not unusual. If you weren’t quiet, you wouldn’t have so desperately searched for a way to speak. The reason you have so desperately pursued your work and your language and your voice is because you haven’t had one. And once you realize that, you feel the pain of being somewhat voiceless.

THE REASON YOU HAVE SO DESPERATELY PURSUED YOUR WORK AND YOUR LANGUAGE AND YOUR VOICE IS BECAUSE YOU HAVEN’T HAD ONE…. YOU FEEL THE PAIN OF BEING SOMEWHAT VOICELESS.

—BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN

PRESIDENT OBAMA: And so the performance then becomes the tool, the mechanism—

BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN: It becomes the mechanism from which you express the entirety of your life—your entire philosophy and code for living—and that was how it came to me. And I felt, previous to that, I was pretty invisible, and there was a lot of pain in that invisibility.

PRESIDENT OBAMA: And see, the kind of thing that you just said here is how we became friends. Because after a few drinks, and maybe in between songs, you’d say something like that, and I’d say, Aw, that makes sense to me. Those are some deep waters. And I think that we just grew to trust each other and have those kinds of conversations on an ongoing basis, and once I left the White House we were able to spend more time together. And, turns out, we’re just a little simpatico.

BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN: I felt really at home around you.

PRESIDENT OBAMA: And the other part of it was Michelle and Patti hit it off. And Michelle was very pleased about the insights you had about your failings as a man. After we would leave a dinner, or a party, or a conversation, she’d say, You see how Bruce understands his shortcomings and has come to terms with them—

BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN: Ha! Sorry about that.

PRESIDENT OBAMA: —in a way that you have not? You should spend some more time with Bruce. Because he’s put in the work. And so there was also a little of the sense that