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Bien que plus fréquentes que par le passé, les occasions d'entendre Bruce Springsteen s'exprimer officiellement sur son travail sont rares. Dans l'émission Storytellers de la chaine du cable américaine VH1, le chanteur explique longuement, ligne à ligne, plusieurs chansons pendant qu'il les chante. Malheureusement pour le public international, l'émission n'a pas proposé de sous-titres (au moins en anglais) afin que chacun puisse comprendre ce que dit Bruce Springsteen. Voici donc ces sous-titres (dont la retranscription est encore incomplète par endroits... mais nous y travaillons), ainsi qu'une traduction en français. Si vous y trouvez des erreurs, n'hésitez pas à m'en faire part en m'écrivant à hugues@tenth-avenue.com.
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Tonight I'm gonna sing a few songs and try to give you an idea of where they come from. It's kind of an iffy proposition because talking about music is like talking about sex. Can you describe it ? Are you supposed to ? So we'll see, I guess Welcome to storytellers. Devils and Dust kinda suggests confusion. I think I wrote it towards the end of the last tour, shortly after we entered Irak, a story about being placed into a situation where your choices are untenable and the price of that conflict is in blood and in spirit. Alright. So. Let's go. I'll give it to you line by line. "I got my finger on the trigger". I got the power of life and death here [shows his index]. "But I don't know who to trust". I got the power of life and death here [shows his index] but I don't know who to trust. In those first two lines, that's where the personal aspect of the song and the political aspect kinda collive, I'm talking about him, I'm talking about us, a lot of what you need to know about the rest of the song is kinda contained in those first two lines, and has been played out over the past few years, "I got my finger on the trigger but I don't know who to trust. When I look into your eyes, all I see is devils and dust." So I'm looking at you, I don't know if I'm seing you, I don't know if I'm seing myself, I don't know if I'm seing my fears, I don't know if I'm seing my highest ideals, that I've promised to sacrifice my life for, and I don't know if I'm seing my death coming at me. And the problem is I have to know right now. "We're a long long way from home, Bobby. Home's a long long way from us." I've been separated from all the things that have given my life shape and meaning till now : my family, my home, my work. Things that ground me and that I recognize as myself. "I feel a dirty wind blowing, devils and dust". "Got God on my side" : who does not ? "I'm just trying to survive. What if what you do to survive kills the things you love ?" That's a personal and a political question together again. What if what you do to stay alive destroys some part of you ? What if what we do destroys our ideals ? As we sit here tonight, we're experiencing kind of an erosion of our civil liberties, which is what I was thinking about when I was writing this chorus. Now your skin, you know, may be the right colour so it's unlikely to affect you. I suppose the Red Bank allocate themselves in a deep sleep. But what's been going on is very dangerous and unamerican. "Fear is a powerful thing". Yes it is. "It will take your God filled soul". Yes it will. "And fill it with devils and dust". So, how much of this was I thinking about when I wrote this song ? None of it. I wrote all that yesterday afternoon on my kitchen table. How much of that was I feeling when I wrote the song ? All of it. [laughs]. Let me set the scene. I'm sitting on my bed with a rhyming dictionnary... in one hand and notebook in the other one. I'm in my appartment which is above an old abandoned beauty salon in Asbury Park and, this is what happened... "Madman bummer drummer, indians in the summer" : Mad Dog Vincent Lopez, drummer in the E Street Band, who was always getting his... "Indians in the summer", well Indians were my little league team when I was a kid. "The teenage diplomat", well that's me. "In the dumps with the monks" : I was deseased. "Pumps his way into his hat" : self-explanatory. By now the rhyming dictionnary is in flames. It's getting as hot in my hands. It's burning up. This song is my only number one song. I never had any other number one song and it wasn't done by me, it was done by Manfred Mann, which I appreciate, but they changed this line. My line is "cut loose like a deuce" and theirs said "cut loose like a douche". I have a feeling that that is why the song skyrocketted at number one. But, that's why, you know, that word !!! Deuce was like little deuce coupe, as in to see in hot rod, douche is a feminine hygenic procedure. So they're different, but what can I say ? You know, the public spoken, and they were right, you know ? Please, remain seated, I know my A-A minor masterpiece... I didn't write really well about men and women till 87, so I was 37 at the time, I was doing very well either. Maybe that had something to do with it, but... As Tunnel of Love came on, I finally wrote a real record about ... kind of men and women and what that's about and kind of the cornerstones of the record were issues of identity and love. Who am I and where am I gonna be, where do I belong, where am I gonna end up... So, we all have multiple selves, that's just the way we're built. Let me give it to you for instance. I always liked to go to the strip clubs, back before they were fancy... the fancy ones. Back in the prehistoric days before the lap dancing, but there was two people who would rather me not go. One whose wishes I most respect but the other one was that other than that bastard Bruce Springsteen. No why would he want to deny a simple man his simple pleasures, I will not bore you with that, we had many arguments about it and it kinda combinated that one day I'm sitting on this favorite spot of mine along the highway side. I'm enjoying the show where I've had a few drinks and my mind is momentarily at peace. With that happy thought in my mind, I got up to leave. As I reached the parking lot, a woman and a man spied me and said : "Bruce, you aren't supposed to be here". So, I could see where they were going with the whole thing, so I said "Well, I'm not. I am only simply an errant figment of one of Bruce's many selves. I drift in the ether, over the highways and the byways of the Garden State, often touching down in imaging congruous but fun places. Bruce doesn't even know I'm missing. He is at home right now, making good deeds." So, that usually stupefies and satisfies them. I gotta get through the world some now. I go on a merry way. So, the self is a mysterious thing. So, let me bring out the missing essential ingredient of that equation. C'mon Pat. Let's give it a shot. I guess it sounds like a song of betrayal, you know, who's that person sitting nex to me ? Who am I ? Do I enough about myself to be honest with that person ? But a funny thing happens. Songs shift their meanings when you sing them, they shift their meanings in time, they shift their meanings with who you sing them with, when you sing the song with somebody you love, it turns into something else. I start the song in an ether world. That's some place you've never
been. But it's your world, but it's been transformed into this unknown
and unknowable place. And all I have in this nether world is you who
are in front of me and you who are behind me. That's all I have in our
connection. On my back, I have what I must do. A sixty pound stone.
I have my job. I have what I must do. And I have the tools that I need
to do it. Now the songs moves to gospel and transformation there. Something
is about to happen. And so, what bells ? Are those sirens ? Church bells
? Tolling bells ? There's bells of chaos, bells of transformation. That
is my uniform and my uniform fills me with the power and strength of
my responsibility. It's a part of who I am and what I must do. Spirits above and behind me : you're praying to be guided by those who've gone before you, you're praying for them to guide you and to give you courage, when you're going to need it. It's a prayer and last verse... Mary who ? A wife ? A lover ? Jesus's Mary ? Everybody's been there. I'm surrounded by sacred things. This is what I need. I need your arms, I need your blood. This is what I an going to miss. Your physicality? Your flesh and blood. My own physicalness. That's just life, life, life... up there on the edge of something else. That's transformation. These are the songs that you wait for. Did I think of any of this prior to writing the song. But I felt all of it when I was writing the song. Over thirty years, you internalize your craft and you... the mechanics of storytelling, it becomes like a second language, that you speak without thinking, like a second skin that you feel with. So you pray to the Gods of creativity and aliveness that you remain awake and alert and in command of your senses, so that when the moments arrive, you're ready. That's the rising.
On Devils and dust, I wrote several songs about mothers and sons, this is really one of them, I had second thoughts about the day when I was behind a car that the bumper sticker said "drive carefully, my mummy is in this car" and I was moved to hit the gas and rear end her. as hard as I could. But it's something I haven't written a whole lot before and I was kind of interested in the relationship between parent and child, that's why Mary figures so prominently in the song, I felt if I approached the song from the secular side, the rest of it would come through. Just started with the title. Now of course, Jesus had ... that's why I made it metaphoric, Jesus had elderly brothers and sisters, but not on this very particular day, this day, he was singular. Well that's his proving ground. That's darkness on the edge of town. That's his darkness on the edge of town. Once you're a catholic, there's no getting out. That's about all there is to it. Keeps coming up. As she would be. That is the path of consequence. We all have one of those. Well I wanted an image of parental love and nurturing, and of life, and of promise and of peace before what was to come. Every parents want to keep their children from all harm. It's such a primal thing. I was shocked when I first felt it so deep inside myself. Then I had a conversation with a friend while I was so afraid that my kids were gonna grow up... I said "gee they might not have to struggle like I struggled, maybe that's not such a good thing", and he said "no, no, no, you're a parent, man, you're giving the best, because the world is gonna take care of the rest", and that's true, the world awaits us all. And there's not much the parents can do about it. Well you have to be thinking, Jesus have this little bar in Galilee, pretty nice little place, where there's God down here too. "I could manage this place, Mary Magdalena could attend bar, we couldhave some kids; and the preaching, I could do it on the week ends, you know, we don't have to give it up". You have to be thinking that, that's all there is to it. That verse is the finality of death. Reghardless of what Jesus was going to mean, fr Mary, she just loses her boy, and we lose one another, and people don't get replaced. I had a friend... My wife and I had a friend, a young lady who was living next door who passed away at a very young age, and she used to come to our house every night, and there's a moment when she'd be framed in the front window, just before she was gonna knock on the door, and I would look up and she was this very tall and elegant lady, and I still wait to see her in the window. That's transformation. Children have thier own destiny. Theu have thier own destiny apart from us. And I think my idea was to try and reach into the idea of Jesus as a son, somebody's boy, 'cause I think whatever divinity we can claim to is hidden in the core of our humanity, ad when we let go, when we let our compassion go, we let go of what little claim we have to the divine. So it's spooky out there sometimes. End of sermon. Allright ? What is it about ? It's really an invitation, it's... the opening to Born to run was my big invitation. My big album when they used to fold out. Me and Clarence smiling on it, that was the invitation card, you know, we'd invite you to something. I ain't sure what, yet. So, you know, the music was important. The beginning sounds like an invitation. Something is opening up to you. Something is opening up. And what I hoped it would be when I wrote the song was what I got out of rock'n'roll music, which was a sense of a larger life, a greater experience, hopefully more and better sex, sense of fun, more fun, a sense of your personal exploration and the possibilities that was in it, ideas that were all lining somewhere inside of you, just there on the edge of town. So that was an invitation, the song, it's basically an invitation. Nothing left but the ride. So this was my... it was my big invitation to my audience, to myself, to anybody that was interested, my invitation to a long and eartly, very earthly journey, hopefully in the company of someone you love, people you love, and in the serach of a home you can feel part of. Good luck and good evening. I wanna do this song 'cause it's a good example of just pop songwriting, which I like to do a lot. I do a lot of other things, but I've always enjoyed doing this and even though I tend to throw these songs all out directly in the trash can, Mr. Landau usually steps in here and says : "No ! Not that one !" So I'm only just singing this one and tell you a little how these come about. That's pretty simple. That's what I write these for, you know. I write'em to hear'em come back at me like that. It's fun. Just pure pop songwriting is a lot of fun. It's fun to play with the words in it, in a simple fashion, like... "it's raining, but there ain't no cloud up above, must have been a tear from your eye..." That's right. Now the master of this of course was Smokey Robinson. And when I write these, I tend to kinda... sometimes I think about singing'em in. And it gives me an idea of the phrase like if Smokey was gonna sing it; Wait a minute, I gotta concentrate... "it's raining..." So that's like pure Smokey, you know, my apologies to Smokey Robinson;
But there's not much else t say about these, they speak for themselves,
they're fun to write, Hungry Heart,
Dancing in the dark... And you know,
it's those kind of things you get out on the stage and it happens, and
also they're songs that free my mind from the interminable bulsshit
I put my mind through [................?] It allows me to "it's
raining" - hey, I'm Smokey Robinson... In my dreams, but anyway...
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"Good Luck and... good evening"
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