At Bruce Springsteen’s recent show in Edinburgh, a fan managed to hand the 73-year-old rock icon a copy of his dissertation about masculinity. Pondering the masculinity of the Boss is logical: his themes include brotherhood, father-son conflict and the trials of physical labour; his songs are populated with downtrodden blue-collar workers, suicidal firefighters, forgotten soldiers returning from various wars, and economically disempowered men driven to murder. Indeed, he’s seen as one of the quintessential writers of the male experience. So why does he appeal to so many women?
A new book by Lorraine Mangione and Donna Luff, Mary Climbs In: the Journeys of Bruce Springsteen’s Women Fans, explores the reasons why. Both authors were aware of the stereotypes of female fans, be it the groupie or infatuated screaming teen, and their findings happily upended them: fans found community through concert experiences, and related to Springsteen as a result of loss, suffering, the quest for self-knowledge and for meaning in life. Luff says: “When I talked with other women fans, they were mostly not giddy about Springsteen in terms of sexual attraction. Instead, they spoke about identification with his writing and the emotions, experiences and feelings in his songs and concerts.”
That was certainly the case for me. When I first saw the music video for the song Born to Run in 1996 it demanded my full-bodied attention, and with my working-class immigrant roots, there was a lot for me to identify with in his work: the possibilities that could exist beyond my immediate circumstances; living life, rather than merely surviving it. It also felt spiritual, as if I had been living in a dark cave and someone had ripped the top of it off to let the sunlight flood in. The music kindled my own agency, and a hunger for self-definition.
I’ve since been to dozens of concerts, contributed to books about Springsteen, presented papers about him at conferences and made lifelong friendships through his work. While he appears to be a virile sort, I always saw him more as a wise, shamanic uncle. You can clearly see his tender and profound empathy for the human condition – including women. It runs both ways: two of the most popular covers of his songs have been by Patti Smith and the Pointer Sisters; more recently Springsteen has inspired the likes of Lady Gaga and Taylor Swift, the former citing Springsteen’s focus on the underdogs of the US, who would one day be the winners.
As the authors of Mary Climbs In point out, rock music, like many industries, is “a traditionally male forum – women can often be and feel marginalised, unheard, unseen, stereotyped, or idealised” within it. You could feasibly make that criticism of Springsteen’s songwriting: his earlier material is more or less devoid of anything meaningful said to women, save a handful of lovers. He got told off in the 1980s by a feminist organisation for using pre-feminism cliches like “little girls” in his work (his defence was that it was a “rock’n’roll term”). Many of his female characters are passive and acted upon rather than actors.
Yet in the 1973 song Thundercrack he calls the female subject his partner – Mangione and Luff say that for Springsteen, “relationships are partnerships” – and his songs offer complex portrayals of women. Of the 2,000 female fans interviewed in the book, many spoke of Springsteen’s evolution as a songwriter of women “that mirrored their own journeys and the social changes of the past 40 years”, write Mangione and Luff.
His portrayals are diverse and nuanced. While in playful, celebratory songs such as Ramrod and Pink Cadillac, Springsteen sexualises himself, the female character and cars, in others he sings about women who are alienated outsiders. In For You, he longs to rescue a suicidal woman from her own psychological prison only to learn that he cannot. In My Lover Man and Car Wash, Springsteen sings from the point of view of women – one singing of a painful relationship, the other a working mother stuck in a thankless job and yearning for success as a singer. In Spare Parts he encourages female independence by showing the protagonist letting go of a toxic partner by pawning her engagement ring to provide for herself and her child.
Springsteen’s male figures are trying to escape the dead-end post-industrial life, and the female characters are too – both are often partners in the escape. Luff and Mangione write that “the theme of strong female characters ran through many responses” to the survey. One fan said: “I have felt supported by Springsteen’s music in the way he depicts women in his songs. They are independent, smart, hardworking; admired and desired by men yet respected (and those who are disrespected do something about it).”
Perhaps Bruce holds women in reverence partly because he is so in touch with those in his life – he recounted in his autobiography how, when he was nine or 10, he defended his mother from his father’s violent moods by attacking him with a baseball bat. He has said his mum and aunts “put the rock’n’roll in me” – his mother bought him his first guitar – and he of course married Patti Scialfa, a creative partner in the E Street Band. He also paid tribute to his sister Virginia in the song The River about a young couple who readjust their dreams due to a teenage pregnancy. It is well known in his home state of New Jersey that he generously donates to domestic violence shelters.
One fan in the book says: “He clearly loves women – his mom, his sisters, his wife and his daughter. You have to love a man who brings his mom on to the stage to dance with her.” Another fan says: “Bruce really understands women, and loves us, and knows the words to say … I don’t get that sense from any/many other performers.” Surely it won’t be long before one of those fans is handing their own dissertation up to him.
• Mary Climbs In: the Journeys of Bruce Springsteen’s Women Fans is out now, published by Rutgers University Press. Bruce Springsteen’s UK tour continues at BST Hyde Park, London, 6 and 8 July
