July 2, 2024 • 36 mins
Off the back of their conversations last episode, Jesse and Holly are really starting to doubt their mission. Sure, a lot of Bruce Springsteen's lyrics make them feel seen, but can they relate to actual Bruce Springsteen? He’s a multi-millionaire! And his fanbase is not representative of their identities and beliefs. Does that even matter?
Show notes:
Read a transcript of today’s episode
If this is your first time thinking about The Boss as a queer icon, and you want to explore these new feelings you’re having, me and Holly have made a playlist: Queer Springsteen. Think of it as a Queer Bruce 101 - it’s a combination of Bruce songs that we think are queer anthems, and then covers of Bruce songs by legendary queer artists. Some of them are their friends, who made the covers to celebrate the release of the show!
Buy Jesse’s Gay Bruce Merch and support trans affirming surgeries and families evacuating Gaza xoxo
Credits:
Because the Boss Belongs to Us is a production of Molten Heart and iHeartPodcasts
Creator: Jesse Lawson
Hosts and Executive Producers: Jesse Lawson and Holly Casio
This episode features: Jazmine (JT) Green, Lex , Tom Rasmussen and CJ Raey
Producer + Sound Designer: Jesse Lawson
Production Assistant: Tess Hazel
Mix Engineer: Michelle Macklem
Original music and theme: Talk Bazaar
Show Art: Holly Casio
Fact Checking: Serena Solin
Legal: Rowan Maron and Feil
Molten Heart Executive Producer: Jazmine (JT) Green
iHeartPodcasts Executive Producer: Lindsey Hoffman
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, it's Jesse. Just a quick night before we start.
This episode contains discussions of racist verbal abuse and police brutality.
Take care listening. I wouldn't call Bruce a queer hero.
For me, it's important to be a fan, but not
(00:21):
to mythologize him and not to cast him in that
queer hero light. We're currently sitting at the end of
a long concrete jetty in Dover on a kind of
(00:42):
four way.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
Bench under a shelter. And why are we here, honey, Well,
this is what I love.
Speaker 3 (00:49):
I'm going to refer to as my depression bench.
Speaker 2 (00:52):
Welcome.
Speaker 3 (00:53):
I have cried here, I've quit my job here, I've
grieved here.
Speaker 2 (00:58):
I come here.
Speaker 3 (00:59):
Whenever I'm free a certain way about something, because, honestly,
what is better than speaking your feelings into the sea. Yes,
this is episode four of Because the Boss Belongs to Us,
a podcast where two queer nerds sit looking at the
sea endeavored talking about their feelings.
Speaker 2 (01:21):
I'm Holly, Yeah, I'm Jesse, and we feel like failures.
Speaker 3 (01:31):
Off the back of our conversations last episode, we're really
starting to doubt our mission. Sure, a lot of Bruce
Brinky's lyrics make us feel seen, but can we actually
relate to him? He's a multi millionaire and a lot
of his fans can sometimes make us feel unsafe, and.
Speaker 1 (01:47):
When it comes to Bruce himself, there is actually just
no way we can know how he really feels about things.
Like any celebrity, he has a whole team of people
creating his public image.
Speaker 2 (01:58):
We have no idea what he's actually thinking.
Speaker 3 (02:00):
So now we're like, do we even want to make
a whole podcast series idolizing a rich, white, straight cisman
whose politics we aren't actually sure of?
Speaker 1 (02:09):
So that's why I got the train from London this
morning to come and see you.
Speaker 3 (02:13):
Since last episode. I went to see Bruce Springsteen playing
Cardiff Wales and it was amazing. I did my usual
thing of queuing up for hours to try and get
as close to the front as possible, which meant I
was surrounded by Springsteen fans for ages and yet as always,
some of those chats were really nice and the group
of people What's passed with a sign saying Bruce Springsteen
(02:35):
Fans for a Free Palestine, which I was just so
happy to see. But it sparked a whole different conversation
where I was and it was just very clear to
me that the people around me and the queue.
Speaker 2 (02:46):
Didn't share my politics.
Speaker 1 (02:49):
To my knowledge, Bruce Springsteen has never played in Israel.
But we're recording this on the nineteenth of June twenty
twenty four. And while we've seen some celebrities using their
platforms to take a stand on Palestinian liberation since the
most recent militarized escalation last October, Bruce is not one of.
Speaker 2 (03:07):
That small number.
Speaker 1 (03:09):
He's often spoken about as this really political musician. He's
written songs critiquing the military industrial complex, the.
Speaker 3 (03:16):
Two thousand and eight financial crash, border violence, police violence,
exploitive labor practices, gentrification, all things we also care about.
Speaker 1 (03:25):
But I just don't feel aligned with him right now.
Me and you already spent a good deal of our
personal lives engaging in activism, and this has only ramped
up since last October. We're going to protests, We're working
with local campaign groups fighting for Palestinian liberation and for
an end to British complicity in this ongoing genocide.
Speaker 3 (03:45):
We've also been mobilizing against some really scary political developments
that are curtailing trans access to healthcare in the UK,
especially for trans youth and that's just a name two
of the terrible things happening in the world right now.
Speaker 1 (03:58):
Every time we've met up to do an interview, we've
had a check in before it started, talking about how
we're feeling about the world falling apart. Then we've had
to kind of like turn on our fun queer podcast
brains and think about Bruce Springsteen in this really separate way.
It's a pretty hard cognitive dissonance, which is.
Speaker 3 (04:17):
So hard as well, because Bruce's music genuinely helps me
with this stuff. When I was at that Bruce Kage
in Cardiff, he played bad Lands and you.
Speaker 1 (04:25):
Know the mid late bit, Yeah, for the ones who
had a notion, a notion deep inside that it ain't
no sin to be glad you're alive.
Speaker 2 (04:31):
I love that line. It feels like he's singing my
shame away. Oh yes.
Speaker 3 (04:35):
And then it just builds and builds into this beautiful crescendo,
and it just feels to me like a call to action.
I want to find one face that ain't looking through me.
I want to find one place I want to spit
in the face of these bad lands. I found myself
crying and screaming along to these lyrics. This song, to
me is about queer anger. It's about queer rage, and
(04:57):
it allowed me to feel some of the emotions I've
been feeling about the state of the world.
Speaker 1 (05:01):
Oh yeah, literally, I have chills hearing you say that,
because I felt the exact same way. Weirdly, often my
anger comes out and out in the streets. Literally, just
the chorus. When I'm out in the street, I walk
the way I want to walk. My brain stops caring
about the context of the rest of the song, and
that bit for me is like the musical embodiment of
the chant whose streets are streets. It converts my anger
(05:24):
into energy to keep fighting. I feel conflicted because I
don't think that every piece of entertainment we consume necessarily
has to be aligned with our politics. And I think
it's beautiful that we can take the meaning that we
want from Bruce's lyrics. But then thinking about the mission
we set ourselves in episode one, it feels like one
thing for us to personally love Bruce in our own way,
(05:46):
but a whole other thing to try and shoehorn this
big celebrity person's from a totally different world to us
into queer icon status.
Speaker 3 (05:54):
Yeah, and that's why we've come to my depression bench.
We're pressing pause on the mission to take stock of
how we feel about all this.
Speaker 1 (06:06):
Last episode, lets introduced us to the legend of Bruce
Springsteen's relationship with Clarence Clements.
Speaker 3 (06:12):
Their relationship is such a big part of Springsteen fan culture.
They had this beautiful platonic intimacy. They often used to
kiss on the lips on stage, and after Clarence died
in twenty eleven, Bruce Springsteen said he was elemental in
my life and losing him was like losing the rain,
which is just so fucking beautiful. And this is exactly
(06:33):
the kind of thing that my tarror reading queer friends
say all the time.
Speaker 1 (06:37):
Yes, but it's also something that gives us pause. As
we said before, Bruce springsteen concerts are overwhelmingly white. Often
the majority of black people at his shows are people
who are working musicians on stage or staff working at
the venue. Bruce is celebrated for this seemingly perfect interracial relationship,
(06:59):
But to Bruce's mythology, is that a simplification of the story.
This came up when Arakzech Jasmine went to visit Lex
in New Jersey.
Speaker 4 (07:16):
I'm thinking a lot about Clarence Clemmens, and I'm thinking
a lot about how his relationship with Bruce does a
lot of the humanizing of him. It brings him back
down to reality.
Speaker 3 (07:26):
For me, there's this episode of Bruce's podcast Renegade.
Speaker 4 (07:30):
Where he talks about how Clarence is called the N
word and Bruce, instead of like kicking off like you'd
want too, like a superhero would, he becomes this just
this guy right who doesn't know how. He feels awkward,
he feels uncomfortable, he doesn't know how to navigate that,
but he just stands there to be with his friend.
I think it's those moments which humanize him. He isn't
(07:51):
this superhuman, He is just a person.
Speaker 1 (08:00):
This is a very generous reading from lex I think
being able to see this moment as a testament to
no one being perfect, to the idea that everyone makes mistakes,
but we managed to show love and show up for
friends in the ways that we can. But for me,
I look at this moment and I worry, like, is
this a representation of what it.
Speaker 2 (08:20):
Was like for Clarence to tour with the East Street Band?
Speaker 1 (08:23):
I don't know, but could this be indicative that, as
the only black band member, he was not only the
only one experiencing racism, but also the one who might
have had to do some emotional labor holding the awkwardness
and discomfort of his white bandmates.
Speaker 3 (08:37):
Jasmine had some reservations about this too.
Speaker 5 (08:43):
I'll be honestly, there is some part that makes me
feel a little weird about Like, you know, Clarence and
Bruce have this deep, deep friendship, but then at the
same time, it's like, here is this black man that
is being not the intention, I'm sure, but like is
part of this device to make a white man more relatable.
Speaker 4 (09:04):
That interaction for me actually is more that he messed
up for someone that he really cared about.
Speaker 5 (09:11):
Yeah, I think the thing where I'm kind of going
with here is that like the larger idea of a
queer icon, right, queer folks that then create queer icons.
It's funny that a lot of queer icons are not queer.
One of my queer icons is Lord Dern, not only
(09:35):
queer icon style icon. For me, I look at Lord.
Speaker 6 (09:40):
Dern as a way of how I move through the
world as a transferm person.
Speaker 5 (09:51):
But here I am a black woman who has no
relatability to this very wealthy white woman. I feel kind
of strange about that for me personally, you know the
fact that like femininity is only granted towards white womanhood,
(10:11):
and what does it mean for like a black person
to base parts of their femininity on like a white woman.
Like for me, there's that levels of distortion that I feel,
and then also that feeling of like there are fucking
black trans women that I can just like immediately, like
look up to immediately and like have that level. Is
there any sort of mental gymnastics that you personally feel
(10:34):
in regards to Bruce, but then also in the wider
scope of like am not a queer people like attaching
themselves to like sist straight people.
Speaker 4 (10:44):
I think I think for me it's probably because he
was just something that unfortunately it was there, right. Bruce
was something that we'd listened to in the car, we
listened to him in the house. He was just part
of popular culture. So I think just in my mind
(11:04):
I had to make him what I needed him to
be to get through. I couldn't tell you why why
do we do this, but maybe it's because if we
have them, if we make them moll mold them into
these things. Then they can't let us down as opposed
to real people in our lives that have the capacity to.
(11:28):
And it's like a comfort, like a fictional soft comfort
that I think we as queer people need, especially at
points when reality.
Speaker 7 (11:38):
Is it's hard.
Speaker 4 (11:42):
I can patchwork together on identity and then you know,
wear it like a little blanket when I don't feel
quite as tough as I should. I think that's how
I move with it.
Speaker 3 (11:56):
I love this image of lex patchworking and identity for
themselves things that are available to them. But there's another
bit of me that's like, that's really tiring to have
to constantly be contorting the scraps that we have and
molding them into a ship where we can make sense
out of them. It is an amazing queer skill, but
also it comes from a place of scarcity.
Speaker 1 (12:18):
Yeah, I think about there's a lot about the history
of queer people needing to find role models.
Speaker 2 (12:25):
It's easy to forget that within living memory.
Speaker 1 (12:27):
For some of our elders, homosexuality was illegal in the UK.
It only started being decriminalized in England and Wales in
nineteen sixty seven, and then we lost an unimaginable amount.
Speaker 2 (12:39):
Of queer people to the AIDS crisis.
Speaker 1 (12:42):
One of the many awful impacts of those things is
that now we have so few queer elders due to
decisions to not be out publicly or to fear shame
or death. Things are starting to change now there are
many more out public celebrities. Whether one of the impacts
of this was that queer people got used to having
(13:03):
to find queerness in role models that don't share our
marginalized identities. I use my own interpretations of Bruce's lyrics
to find words to understand my gender before I had
proper queer community. Over time, I met and formed relationships
with lots of trans people, some of whom became role
models for me, And now years later, I am sometimes
(13:26):
the one giving advice to some of my more newly.
Speaker 2 (13:28):
Out trans friends.
Speaker 1 (13:31):
It's kind of like Bruce was a placeholder for me
until I found actual queer community.
Speaker 3 (13:36):
And honestly, that's really similar for me. Bruce is still
so important to me now, but I do think it's
significant that the time I discovered him was when I
was still closeted, needing to find meaning and what I
had available to me. If we're thinking about queer icons,
should we in fact be moving away from this practice,
like Jasmine said, finding role models within our own communities,
(13:58):
rather than finding yet another a rich, sis straight right
celeb to imprint on.
Speaker 2 (14:04):
That's next. We're back.
Speaker 3 (14:18):
We're still sitting on my depression bench speaking of our
feelings to the same the people were thinking about as
queer icons are often not very queer at all. A
lot of them are straight, A lot of them are
these rich celebrities that just don't represent our politics, that
just doesn't sit right.
Speaker 1 (14:35):
This is something I discussed with Tom Rasmussen, who we
heard from way back in episode one. We were talking
about whether one of the unifying factors of queer icons
is you dress up as them at a party, which
it's got us talking about the singer, songwriter, visual artist
and legend and one.
Speaker 8 (14:55):
But then what's interesting is there's queer icons that you
wouldn't dress up as like you would never but I
consider her as a queer icon, but she's queer, So.
Speaker 9 (15:04):
Then it's like, is that a different Hello Fish?
Speaker 8 (15:08):
I don't know, that's really interesting. Can a queer person
be a queer icon? Does a queer icon in the
way we're talking about it do they have to be
like parodiable because.
Speaker 9 (15:20):
You would never parody only.
Speaker 8 (15:21):
You couldn't, yeah, because she's she's mother. But like you
could parody Mariah, or you could parody or not parody,
but you could you want to sort of dress up
as them. This is very hard, I'm sorry, not really being.
Speaker 9 (15:34):
No, no, no, no, That's why we're that's why we're making
the series.
Speaker 8 (15:37):
But then I think also that there's an interesting question
about gay icon queer icon, gay icon is particular.
Speaker 3 (15:49):
Hmmm, yeah, interesting, have we actually been bad scientists? We're
trying to test and Bruce's icon potential against a methodological
framework that we based on a bunch of gay icons,
But was that the wrong control group to be easy?
Speaker 2 (16:04):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (16:04):
Also, a lot of these more obvious gay icons Brittany, Madonna, Whitney,
et cetera, are often anointed by cis white gay.
Speaker 3 (16:12):
Men, a part of the community that has historically had
the loudest voice, the most sway in shaping queer culture.
We're coming at this question of Bruce's icon credentials from
a lens of like dyke and trans mass culture.
Speaker 1 (16:25):
In our lives, we use gay to refer to people's sexualities,
where thereas in queer is a term that speaks to
a political identity too, as the old phrase goes, not
gays and happy queer as in fuck you. So this
gay icon versus queer icon distinction feels important.
Speaker 8 (16:44):
Gay icon is like rhinestones on the bell. Gay icon
does reinvent every single album that story of like of
like real unbelievable wealth and success through adversity and getting
there yourself and it's you, you, thank you and God,
and that's it when you receive your like thirty second Grammy.
(17:05):
What's really complicated then about that as idolizing these people
who for whom that is the narrative is that's like
a deeply deeply thatcher right, really right wing narrative as well.
Speaker 1 (17:15):
In an American context, like totally typical American dream.
Speaker 8 (17:19):
Pulled up by the bootstraps, Yeah, regionistic, which completely which
is sort of really empathetical to like queer practices of
community or whatever. And so I think that's why maybe
it's hard to have an icon come out of the
queer scene. Yeah, the older I've got, the more I've
been turned off by that narrative, and the more I
find it to be sort of quite like bleak.
Speaker 3 (17:44):
Can queer icon means something different to gay icon, like
in the way we're.
Speaker 2 (17:47):
Using it, And who are we to decide who a
queer icon is?
Speaker 3 (17:52):
Are we falling into accidentally homogenizing the queer experience by
speaking for all queer people?
Speaker 2 (17:57):
Should we be moving away from these kinds of definitions entirely?
Speaker 3 (18:00):
Wait, a queer icons just unsatisfactory substitutes for queer role
models and community.
Speaker 2 (18:05):
We need to get on this bench.
Speaker 3 (18:07):
Too many questions, not enough answers. We're getting a little
bit navel gaizy. We need tooth away from the sea.
Speaker 2 (18:14):
I have an idea.
Speaker 3 (18:19):
We get to have some we kind of walked down
this round here.
Speaker 9 (18:23):
We're gonna get.
Speaker 2 (18:23):
Ahead of like bad things to see walking away from.
Speaker 9 (18:36):
You come in, come in all right?
Speaker 2 (18:48):
You get oh such one.
Speaker 1 (18:55):
Okay, So for the benefit to take we are now
back in Holly's house Stanley in their living.
Speaker 9 (19:00):
Room with tea left wind.
Speaker 1 (19:04):
And we have crafted an email to Jack how was
the writer, academic, and author of.
Speaker 2 (19:13):
The Queer Art of Failure, which we.
Speaker 3 (19:15):
Feel is apt for what is happening right now.
Speaker 2 (19:19):
So this is what we said in the email.
Speaker 1 (19:24):
In episode four of our series, we've hit a rite
block on our mission, and we're looking for a kind
of queer agony uncle to talk our feelings of failure
through with we would it, of course absolutely to be
If this sounds intriguing, would you be up for a chat?
Speaker 9 (19:41):
So I guess we'll see if he's up for.
Speaker 1 (19:43):
A jat that's next, Jesse Holly, because the bus belongs
to us, or does he?
Speaker 3 (19:57):
We're not really sure anymore.
Speaker 1 (20:01):
So, sir, it's a few days after that day we
spent on a depression bench and we've.
Speaker 2 (20:07):
Heard back from Jack, haven't we we have? Would you
like to read his reply?
Speaker 3 (20:11):
Yes, let me read the reply from esteemed at Jack
Harveston beloved queer theories too all. He said, Hi, there,
love the premise getting an unlikely figure recognized as a
queer icon, but don't love the boss. So that's a
past from.
Speaker 2 (20:29):
Me, Thanks Jack. I mean, at least he said he
loves the premise, and you know that means a lot.
Speaker 3 (20:36):
So we've had to pivot, as queers often do, and
I've come up with another solution. I feel pretty good about.
Speaker 7 (20:46):
My Mum and dad went to a few of his concerts,
like they went to quite a famous one that he
did in mid eighties and he played in Newcastle and
he gave quite a big amount of money to the
local miners lodge who were on strike at the time.
But my mom and dad was that tour.
Speaker 3 (21:01):
This is a dear friend of mine and our substitute
agony A. CJ. Ray's parents brought back a big Born
in the USA poster from that concept, the one that's
Bruce's butt, which they put up in the basement.
Speaker 7 (21:13):
I remember going down the stairs and seeing it every
time and just thinking like, hmm, that's pretty nice. I
think I knew from an early age that I was
attracted to both men and women, and I think for me,
like the ultimate like early attraction was definitely Bruce.
Speaker 3 (21:34):
I know from the queer punk scene. They are a
true Bruce Springsteen mega fan who also shares our politics,
so I thought they'd be good for some emotional processing.
Speaker 7 (21:50):
I used to play in a queer punk band called Kinky,
and we were playing a gig in London. Going upstairs
was like a zine festival. Holly was there, and Holly
had all these Bruce Springsteen zines and I saw them
and it kind of blew my mind a bit, and
I was like, oh my God, Like, I love scenes
and I love Bruce Springsteen and I think he's a
sexy man. I'm gonna make a zene about this, and
(22:12):
they did.
Speaker 2 (22:13):
I have it up in my bedroom wom It's called
Butt Springsteen.
Speaker 7 (22:18):
I draw pictures of an accentuated Bruce Springsteen butt at
different parts of his career, talk about the different eras
and the born to run, but the tunnel of love,
but all the different butts, and then I give each
one like a rating out of ten, but just as
(22:40):
a spoiler, they're They're all ten.
Speaker 3 (22:42):
So CJ now runs an art platform called Black Lodge Press.
They design these beautiful posters with political statements fuck Matcher, bullshit,
forever vote with a fucking brick. The past, we inherit,
the future we build. They do a bun of research
into each one, and they've made loads of zines as well,
(23:03):
exploring queer radical histories of resistance.
Speaker 1 (23:07):
When I go to the big Palestine demos that have
been happening since October in London, you see black eards
with Blacklodge Press art everywhere. We wanted to talk to
CJ about what role art can play in the politics
of resistance. CJ started thinking about this stuff as a
kid when their big sister introduced them to bands like
The Prodigy and Rage Against the Machine.
Speaker 7 (23:27):
And we've Raged against the machine like the Zapatista kind
of you know, liberation politics, movement and stuff discovering like
punk through that as well, like hardcore punk, and really
at the kind of heart of that is like the
Diya ethos that's kind of embedded within like the anarchist
politics of it all as well. So it maybe want
to make zines, and it maye me want to make
music and then make art and participate in direct action
(23:50):
and stuff. For me, it's there is no radical culture
if you only have the politics of it. Like I'm
an absolute fucker for like not finishing a book, all
these like books on like anarchysteria and stuff, and like
I just struggle with it sometimes. Like as much as
I love the ideas of it, you know, you couldn't
just have the kind of bare theory. You need all
(24:11):
the other stuff that surrounds it. So you need like
a kind of movement of radical culture. And like I
think that's part of the stuff that I do is
like in terms of the art I make, it's about
agitation almost like bring like the joy out of like
the politics or that that we've created, because like, sometimes
you know, when you look at the world, it's like
(24:31):
a very horrendous place. In many aspects. It can sometimes
feel a bit hopeless, and it can sometimes feel like
nothing's really going to change. But I think, you know,
radical art, radical music, et cetera, it can instill a
sense of hope. Whether it's realistic or not, I don't
really mind. But for me, that's what music is about,
(24:51):
and it's what art is about as well.
Speaker 1 (24:54):
I love what you said about I hope. There's a
in one of Mariam Karber's books. He's like a big abolistionist.
She says like, hope is a discipline, which is something
that me and my friends talk about quite a lot,
as like it just being a really really important thing
that you that you need in order to fight for
the world that you believe in and that you need
to make happen.
Speaker 7 (25:13):
Yeah. I mean sometimes people say like, oh, it's the
hope that kills you. I think it's a cynicism that
kills you, like that just like eats away.
Speaker 1 (25:22):
This is something that me and Olly have been really
struggling with. We both come from quite similar backgrounds to
you in terms of how we found our politics. And
Bruce Springsteen, I think we can all agree it's not
a DIY artist.
Speaker 7 (25:35):
Yeah, definitely. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (25:36):
And one of the things that we're kind of struggling
with is that you know, you'll be a Bruce Springsteen
live gig and there are people around you who definitely
don't share your politics at all.
Speaker 3 (25:46):
There's a song called forty one Shots, which he debuted
in two thousand and the song forty one Shots is
about the killing of an unarmed black man called Armadudialla.
He was shot forty one times and by the MIYPD.
And when that song was debuted in New York his
live show, people were booing, People were leaving some of
(26:07):
their backs on the stage as he played it as
a form of protest, and the NYPD tried to organize
a boycott of that gig, and then some of the
NYPD even organized a protest the week after. And then
it was so strange, like I heard that song performed
live in Ireland years later on, not expecting to have
that same reaction, and people around me were booing or
(26:29):
shouting out remarks and it wasn't expecting to hear that then.
And then most recently, I saw him play in Cardiff
a few weeks ago, and I saw a group of
Bruce fans that had signed saying Springsteen Fans for a
Free Palestine, which felt really amazing to see other people
there that were maybe there for the same reasons that
I were and got something out of it. And then
(26:50):
to find out after that show allegedly online someone had
mentioned that they were allegedly kicked out of that show
for wearing a Palestine scarf.
Speaker 1 (26:59):
Right.
Speaker 3 (27:00):
Sometimes as a Bruce fan, it can be really jarring
to just feel that disconnect of thinking, oh, we're on
the same page, me and Bruce, but then to realize, oh,
am I just fitting in the blanks myself here.
Speaker 9 (27:10):
Yeah.
Speaker 7 (27:11):
I mean I get that kind of disconnect sometimes when
I go to a punk show though, as well, and
you're standing in the audience and there's like an abusive
ex partner or somebody that you're friends with, or there's
like somebody that's like cracking like homophobic jokes and all
this kind of stuff. Oh went to private school, Yeah exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
I guess like because we we kind of connected with
(27:32):
him for the politics or for like our interpretation of
the politics, or for the meaning. But then you've got
like your average pop fan I guess as well. It
was just like, oh, yeah, danced in the dark.
Speaker 2 (27:42):
Aren't we welcome that too?
Speaker 1 (27:44):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (27:44):
Exactly, Yeah, yeah, Yeah, there's a Bruce's butt for everyone everywhere.
Speaker 7 (27:50):
Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (27:52):
We're potentially getting to a point where we're like, there's
a Bruce Springsteen who we have, as you said, Holleyfield
in the blanks for and so we're like, there's like
a Bruce that.
Speaker 2 (28:01):
Exists in our brains.
Speaker 1 (28:03):
Yeah, and then I guess what we're trying to work
out at the moment is like, if you have got
all that meaning and through that kind of created the
Bruce Bristeen of your dreams, how much expectations should you
have of the actual Bruce Bringsteen who's walking around in
New Jersey like breathing air and talking to people.
Speaker 7 (28:21):
Yeah, it's like the idea of Bruce and then the
actual reality of him being a human being is like
it's really like if I if somebody says to me
Bruce Springsteen, I instantly in my head think of like
nineteen seventy six Bruce, like hot hot. I often just
(28:41):
forget that he's actually a real person. It's quite a
jarring thing to kind of come to terms with. Sometimes
it's like, oh, I don't want to think of like
Bruce as been like a millionaire in a mansion, and
so I'm just going to like, I'm just going to
think about him like he's living in like a kind
of grotty apartment in New Jersey. It's nineteen seventy a
and he's right all all these like romantic, beautiful pop
(29:03):
rock songs, and that's that's Bruce Sprigsteed for me in
my head. And that's probably the wrong thing to do.
Speaker 3 (29:09):
That's part of it, though, isn't it. I think that's
how we compartmentalize and what we make meaning for because
I don't like to think that the album Working on
a Dream exists. I want to block that from my memory.
Queen the Supermarket, What don't know?
Speaker 7 (29:22):
I mean, there's there's stuff that he's done, you know,
Like when I think was it North Carolina past the
kind of bathroom law that transphobic? Was it North Carolina?
I think it's somewhere where yeah, yeah, yeah, And he
had a solidarity for like the kind of trans and
LGBT community. He canceled that show because he wasn't going
to play in a state which had that law. For me,
(29:43):
that isn't like a kind of performative action at all.
Like I think that's really coming from him and from
his politics, and I think that's brilliant. Having said that,
I think sometimes like the silence can be deafening as well,
Like you know you mentioned about Palestine and stuff, and
the silence around it from some people is deafening for Bruce,
That's that's true as well. Again, am I just ignoring
that because just like.
Speaker 2 (30:05):
I'm so sorry, we're being real down, But.
Speaker 7 (30:10):
I know, I think I think he does, like he
does show solidarity to the different communities, you know, giving
money or like or writing songs about like different experiences
for different communities and different people. I think he does
show that.
Speaker 1 (30:23):
I feel I'm I know that we literally just had
a conversation about how cynicism isn't always useful. But I
do feel slightly more cynical about the canceled gig than
you CJ. Like when I'm feeling down on Breece. Yeah,
I have this feeling where I'm like, he wasn't the
only artist who did that. It was there was like
a cool to boycott or to cancel gigs in North
(30:44):
Carolina because of this baffing bill that was anti trans
So like a bunch.
Speaker 2 (30:47):
Of artists did or were at least asked to.
Speaker 1 (30:50):
And the cynical bit of my brain is like, well,
you know, Bruce is fucking loaded, Like it was very
easy for him to cancel one gig and it did
make him look really good.
Speaker 2 (30:59):
I believe it can be both things.
Speaker 1 (31:00):
I believe that he can have those politics and that
it can be good for his career, so that I'm like, yes,
that is nice. Yes, it also makes you look good.
Is this the bind of being a celebrity?
Speaker 2 (31:11):
Do you know what I mean?
Speaker 7 (31:12):
Yeah, it's tricky in it.
Speaker 4 (31:13):
Yeah.
Speaker 7 (31:14):
I think like I wouldn't be shocked if like a
proportion of Bruce Bingsteen fans have transphobic views. Like that
wouldn't surprise me. I guess it did like provide like
a positive piece of publicity for him by by counseling
that gig, But I would be surprised as well if
it maybe even turned a few fans off him as all.
At the same time, poor guy, he's fucked either way.
Speaker 1 (31:41):
It's tough, isn't It's a tough bind because I really
relate to UCJ of being like sometimes I just ignore
a day.
Speaker 2 (31:50):
Because that is also part of life, isn't it.
Speaker 1 (31:52):
The other relatable experience in my life is that I
simply love to watch a shitty, shitty rum com, like
a rum com that has the worst sexual politics in it,
do you know what I mean? That's the most heteronormative
that like portrays a version of life and love that
I completely disagree with. But I find it very comforting,
very very fun, very entertaining and like really silly. And
I guess have we got into deep And is it
(32:14):
possible to like have our politics and hold our criticism
so that we can access the joy that we need
to carry on living our lives.
Speaker 3 (32:24):
Yeah?
Speaker 7 (32:24):
I think so. Yeah. No, I guess it's like going
to the football, Like I like despise like the kind
of the entire like structure of modern football, like the wages,
the sponsorship, you know, everything about it. I despise it,
But I love football, and so like I'm still going
to go and watch football. I'm still going to support
(32:44):
my team. If we kind of break down, people like Bruce,
not even people like Bruce, but like notions of Bruce
to like an nth degree. Then we're always going to
find like contradictions where I was going to find difficulties.
I don't know. Life can be pretty shit sometimes, so
sometimes it's about taking like the decent stuff when you
can get it. And some of the stuff for me
(33:06):
is Bruce and his music.
Speaker 3 (33:08):
It's an often like misused quote, but that whole like
there's no such thing as ethical consumption and the capitalism
it's been stretched to all different versions but could also
be applied here. I do wonder as well, like, as
queer fans, is this a sign that we like really
truly love something because we're tearing him to shreds right now.
But I feel like you can only really do that
with the things that you really love as well, what
you can terrogate.
Speaker 7 (33:29):
In that way, Yeah, definitely. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (33:31):
I wonder just to kind of sum up all this up,
is there any advice you can give to us about
how we can be good fans? How how does fan
how does that work for you? And like, can you
give us any any tips?
Speaker 7 (33:42):
I would say, like maybe approach it from a hopeful
point of view rather than a cynical point of view,
a hopeful view in which you can make a connection
with people or gain pleasure or joy from something. I
lost my dad like two years ago, and we we
(34:02):
played a Bruce song at his funeral. If I should
fall behind, I think it is always called oh yeah,
we played that at his funeral, and I've seen him
a few times, but I've never seen him play that before.
But last year in London he played that as like
the last song, and like, oh my god, I went
with my mom and so like we were both just howling.
(34:23):
It was like horrendous because we were howling our heads off,
but it was also like such a beautiful moment. And Yeah,
it's so easy to get bogged down in like the
kind of the shite day to day or the shite
you know, horrendous events of life that kind of take place,
But sometimes you have those moments where it's like such
a kind of it's like a moment of such like
intensity and joy, even if it's like kind of rooting
(34:45):
in sadness. And I think like having those moments can
be like really really special. Yeah, go with open hearts.
Speaker 3 (34:55):
I've literally got a tear in my eye that is.
Speaker 2 (35:04):
Go with open Hearts.
Speaker 3 (35:06):
That's next episode.
Speaker 1 (35:15):
Because the Buss Belongs to Us is a production of
malten Hart and iHeart Podcasts were hosted by Jesse Lawson
and Holly Gassio.
Speaker 3 (35:22):
The series is executive produced by Jesse and Holly and
created by Jesse Lawson.
Speaker 1 (35:27):
This episode was produced and sound designed by Jesse Lawson,
with production assistants from Thomas Griffin and Tess Hazel. Michelle
Macklam is our mix engineer.
Speaker 3 (35:36):
Our original music and theme is by Talk Bizarre at
Talk b a zed Aar Underscore.
Speaker 1 (35:42):
Our show art was designed and illustrated by Holly Cassio
at Holly c Asio Clact.
Speaker 3 (35:47):
Checking by Selina Solin. Legal services provided by Rowan, Moran
and File.
Speaker 1 (35:52):
Our executive producer from Moulton Hert is Jasmine dat Green.
Our executive producer from iHeart Podcasts is Lindsay Hoffman, Hi
good Lie.
Speaker 8 (36:16):
Because the pus of
Hey, it's Jesse. Just a quick night before we start.
This episode contains discussions of racist verbal abuse and police brutality.
Take care listening. I wouldn't call Bruce a queer hero.
For me, it's important to be a fan, but not
(00:21):
to mythologize him and not to cast him in that
queer hero light. We're currently sitting at the end of
a long concrete jetty in Dover on a kind of
(00:42):
four way.
Speaker 2 (00:42):
Bench under a shelter. And why are we here, honey, Well,
this is what I love.
Speaker 3 (00:49):
I'm going to refer to as my depression bench.
Speaker 2 (00:52):
Welcome.
Speaker 3 (00:53):
I have cried here, I've quit my job here, I've
grieved here.
Speaker 2 (00:58):
I come here.
Speaker 3 (00:59):
Whenever I'm free a certain way about something, because, honestly,
what is better than speaking your feelings into the sea. Yes,
this is episode four of Because the Boss Belongs to Us,
a podcast where two queer nerds sit looking at the
sea endeavored talking about their feelings.
Speaker 2 (01:21):
I'm Holly, Yeah, I'm Jesse, and we feel like failures.
Speaker 3 (01:31):
Off the back of our conversations last episode, we're really
starting to doubt our mission. Sure, a lot of Bruce
Brinky's lyrics make us feel seen, but can we actually
relate to him? He's a multi millionaire and a lot
of his fans can sometimes make us feel unsafe, and.
Speaker 1 (01:47):
When it comes to Bruce himself, there is actually just
no way we can know how he really feels about things.
Like any celebrity, he has a whole team of people
creating his public image.
Speaker 2 (01:58):
We have no idea what he's actually thinking.
Speaker 3 (02:00):
So now we're like, do we even want to make
a whole podcast series idolizing a rich, white, straight cisman
whose politics we aren't actually sure of?
Speaker 1 (02:09):
So that's why I got the train from London this
morning to come and see you.
Speaker 3 (02:13):
Since last episode. I went to see Bruce Springsteen playing
Cardiff Wales and it was amazing. I did my usual
thing of queuing up for hours to try and get
as close to the front as possible, which meant I
was surrounded by Springsteen fans for ages and yet as always,
some of those chats were really nice and the group
of people What's passed with a sign saying Bruce Springsteen
(02:35):
Fans for a Free Palestine, which I was just so
happy to see. But it sparked a whole different conversation
where I was and it was just very clear to
me that the people around me and the queue.
Speaker 2 (02:46):
Didn't share my politics.
Speaker 1 (02:49):
To my knowledge, Bruce Springsteen has never played in Israel.
But we're recording this on the nineteenth of June twenty
twenty four. And while we've seen some celebrities using their
platforms to take a stand on Palestinian liberation since the
most recent militarized escalation last October, Bruce is not one of.
Speaker 2 (03:07):
That small number.
Speaker 1 (03:09):
He's often spoken about as this really political musician. He's
written songs critiquing the military industrial complex, the.
Speaker 3 (03:16):
Two thousand and eight financial crash, border violence, police violence,
exploitive labor practices, gentrification, all things we also care about.
Speaker 1 (03:25):
But I just don't feel aligned with him right now.
Me and you already spent a good deal of our
personal lives engaging in activism, and this has only ramped
up since last October. We're going to protests, We're working
with local campaign groups fighting for Palestinian liberation and for
an end to British complicity in this ongoing genocide.
Speaker 3 (03:45):
We've also been mobilizing against some really scary political developments
that are curtailing trans access to healthcare in the UK,
especially for trans youth and that's just a name two
of the terrible things happening in the world right now.
Speaker 1 (03:58):
Every time we've met up to do an interview, we've
had a check in before it started, talking about how
we're feeling about the world falling apart. Then we've had
to kind of like turn on our fun queer podcast
brains and think about Bruce Springsteen in this really separate way.
It's a pretty hard cognitive dissonance, which is.
Speaker 3 (04:17):
So hard as well, because Bruce's music genuinely helps me
with this stuff. When I was at that Bruce Kage
in Cardiff, he played bad Lands and you.
Speaker 1 (04:25):
Know the mid late bit, Yeah, for the ones who
had a notion, a notion deep inside that it ain't
no sin to be glad you're alive.
Speaker 2 (04:31):
I love that line. It feels like he's singing my
shame away. Oh yes.
Speaker 3 (04:35):
And then it just builds and builds into this beautiful crescendo,
and it just feels to me like a call to action.
I want to find one face that ain't looking through me.
I want to find one place I want to spit
in the face of these bad lands. I found myself
crying and screaming along to these lyrics. This song, to
me is about queer anger. It's about queer rage, and
(04:57):
it allowed me to feel some of the emotions I've
been feeling about the state of the world.
Speaker 1 (05:01):
Oh yeah, literally, I have chills hearing you say that,
because I felt the exact same way. Weirdly, often my
anger comes out and out in the streets. Literally, just
the chorus. When I'm out in the street, I walk
the way I want to walk. My brain stops caring
about the context of the rest of the song, and
that bit for me is like the musical embodiment of
the chant whose streets are streets. It converts my anger
(05:24):
into energy to keep fighting. I feel conflicted because I
don't think that every piece of entertainment we consume necessarily
has to be aligned with our politics. And I think
it's beautiful that we can take the meaning that we
want from Bruce's lyrics. But then thinking about the mission
we set ourselves in episode one, it feels like one
thing for us to personally love Bruce in our own way,
(05:46):
but a whole other thing to try and shoehorn this
big celebrity person's from a totally different world to us
into queer icon status.
Speaker 3 (05:54):
Yeah, and that's why we've come to my depression bench.
We're pressing pause on the mission to take stock of
how we feel about all this.
Speaker 1 (06:06):
Last episode, lets introduced us to the legend of Bruce
Springsteen's relationship with Clarence Clements.
Speaker 3 (06:12):
Their relationship is such a big part of Springsteen fan culture.
They had this beautiful platonic intimacy. They often used to
kiss on the lips on stage, and after Clarence died
in twenty eleven, Bruce Springsteen said he was elemental in
my life and losing him was like losing the rain,
which is just so fucking beautiful. And this is exactly
(06:33):
the kind of thing that my tarror reading queer friends
say all the time.
Speaker 1 (06:37):
Yes, but it's also something that gives us pause. As
we said before, Bruce springsteen concerts are overwhelmingly white. Often
the majority of black people at his shows are people
who are working musicians on stage or staff working at
the venue. Bruce is celebrated for this seemingly perfect interracial relationship,
(06:59):
But to Bruce's mythology, is that a simplification of the story.
This came up when Arakzech Jasmine went to visit Lex
in New Jersey.
Speaker 4 (07:16):
I'm thinking a lot about Clarence Clemmens, and I'm thinking
a lot about how his relationship with Bruce does a
lot of the humanizing of him. It brings him back
down to reality.
Speaker 3 (07:26):
For me, there's this episode of Bruce's podcast Renegade.
Speaker 4 (07:30):
Where he talks about how Clarence is called the N
word and Bruce, instead of like kicking off like you'd
want too, like a superhero would, he becomes this just
this guy right who doesn't know how. He feels awkward,
he feels uncomfortable, he doesn't know how to navigate that,
but he just stands there to be with his friend.
I think it's those moments which humanize him. He isn't
(07:51):
this superhuman, He is just a person.
Speaker 1 (08:00):
This is a very generous reading from lex I think
being able to see this moment as a testament to
no one being perfect, to the idea that everyone makes mistakes,
but we managed to show love and show up for
friends in the ways that we can. But for me,
I look at this moment and I worry, like, is
this a representation of what it.
Speaker 2 (08:20):
Was like for Clarence to tour with the East Street Band?
Speaker 1 (08:23):
I don't know, but could this be indicative that, as
the only black band member, he was not only the
only one experiencing racism, but also the one who might
have had to do some emotional labor holding the awkwardness
and discomfort of his white bandmates.
Speaker 3 (08:37):
Jasmine had some reservations about this too.
Speaker 5 (08:43):
I'll be honestly, there is some part that makes me
feel a little weird about Like, you know, Clarence and
Bruce have this deep, deep friendship, but then at the
same time, it's like, here is this black man that
is being not the intention, I'm sure, but like is
part of this device to make a white man more relatable.
Speaker 4 (09:04):
That interaction for me actually is more that he messed
up for someone that he really cared about.
Speaker 5 (09:11):
Yeah, I think the thing where I'm kind of going
with here is that like the larger idea of a
queer icon, right, queer folks that then create queer icons.
It's funny that a lot of queer icons are not queer.
One of my queer icons is Lord Dern, not only
(09:35):
queer icon style icon. For me, I look at Lord.
Speaker 6 (09:40):
Dern as a way of how I move through the
world as a transferm person.
Speaker 5 (09:51):
But here I am a black woman who has no
relatability to this very wealthy white woman. I feel kind
of strange about that for me personally, you know the
fact that like femininity is only granted towards white womanhood,
(10:11):
and what does it mean for like a black person
to base parts of their femininity on like a white woman.
Like for me, there's that levels of distortion that I feel,
and then also that feeling of like there are fucking
black trans women that I can just like immediately, like
look up to immediately and like have that level. Is
there any sort of mental gymnastics that you personally feel
(10:34):
in regards to Bruce, but then also in the wider
scope of like am not a queer people like attaching
themselves to like sist straight people.
Speaker 4 (10:44):
I think I think for me it's probably because he
was just something that unfortunately it was there, right. Bruce
was something that we'd listened to in the car, we
listened to him in the house. He was just part
of popular culture. So I think just in my mind
(11:04):
I had to make him what I needed him to
be to get through. I couldn't tell you why why
do we do this, but maybe it's because if we
have them, if we make them moll mold them into
these things. Then they can't let us down as opposed
to real people in our lives that have the capacity to.
(11:28):
And it's like a comfort, like a fictional soft comfort
that I think we as queer people need, especially at
points when reality.
Speaker 7 (11:38):
Is it's hard.
Speaker 4 (11:42):
I can patchwork together on identity and then you know,
wear it like a little blanket when I don't feel
quite as tough as I should. I think that's how
I move with it.
Speaker 3 (11:56):
I love this image of lex patchworking and identity for
themselves things that are available to them. But there's another
bit of me that's like, that's really tiring to have
to constantly be contorting the scraps that we have and
molding them into a ship where we can make sense
out of them. It is an amazing queer skill, but
also it comes from a place of scarcity.
Speaker 1 (12:18):
Yeah, I think about there's a lot about the history
of queer people needing to find role models.
Speaker 2 (12:25):
It's easy to forget that within living memory.
Speaker 1 (12:27):
For some of our elders, homosexuality was illegal in the UK.
It only started being decriminalized in England and Wales in
nineteen sixty seven, and then we lost an unimaginable amount.
Speaker 2 (12:39):
Of queer people to the AIDS crisis.
Speaker 1 (12:42):
One of the many awful impacts of those things is
that now we have so few queer elders due to
decisions to not be out publicly or to fear shame
or death. Things are starting to change now there are
many more out public celebrities. Whether one of the impacts
of this was that queer people got used to having
(13:03):
to find queerness in role models that don't share our
marginalized identities. I use my own interpretations of Bruce's lyrics
to find words to understand my gender before I had
proper queer community. Over time, I met and formed relationships
with lots of trans people, some of whom became role
models for me, And now years later, I am sometimes
(13:26):
the one giving advice to some of my more newly.
Speaker 2 (13:28):
Out trans friends.
Speaker 1 (13:31):
It's kind of like Bruce was a placeholder for me
until I found actual queer community.
Speaker 3 (13:36):
And honestly, that's really similar for me. Bruce is still
so important to me now, but I do think it's
significant that the time I discovered him was when I
was still closeted, needing to find meaning and what I
had available to me. If we're thinking about queer icons,
should we in fact be moving away from this practice,
like Jasmine said, finding role models within our own communities,
(13:58):
rather than finding yet another a rich, sis straight right
celeb to imprint on.
Speaker 2 (14:04):
That's next. We're back.
Speaker 3 (14:18):
We're still sitting on my depression bench speaking of our
feelings to the same the people were thinking about as
queer icons are often not very queer at all. A
lot of them are straight, A lot of them are
these rich celebrities that just don't represent our politics, that
just doesn't sit right.
Speaker 1 (14:35):
This is something I discussed with Tom Rasmussen, who we
heard from way back in episode one. We were talking
about whether one of the unifying factors of queer icons
is you dress up as them at a party, which
it's got us talking about the singer, songwriter, visual artist
and legend and one.
Speaker 8 (14:55):
But then what's interesting is there's queer icons that you
wouldn't dress up as like you would never but I
consider her as a queer icon, but she's queer, So.
Speaker 9 (15:04):
Then it's like, is that a different Hello Fish?
Speaker 8 (15:08):
I don't know, that's really interesting. Can a queer person
be a queer icon? Does a queer icon in the
way we're talking about it do they have to be
like parodiable because.
Speaker 9 (15:20):
You would never parody only.
Speaker 8 (15:21):
You couldn't, yeah, because she's she's mother. But like you
could parody Mariah, or you could parody or not parody,
but you could you want to sort of dress up
as them. This is very hard, I'm sorry, not really being.
Speaker 9 (15:34):
No, no, no, no, That's why we're that's why we're making
the series.
Speaker 8 (15:37):
But then I think also that there's an interesting question
about gay icon queer icon, gay icon is particular.
Speaker 3 (15:49):
Hmmm, yeah, interesting, have we actually been bad scientists? We're
trying to test and Bruce's icon potential against a methodological
framework that we based on a bunch of gay icons,
But was that the wrong control group to be easy?
Speaker 2 (16:04):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (16:04):
Also, a lot of these more obvious gay icons Brittany, Madonna, Whitney,
et cetera, are often anointed by cis white gay.
Speaker 3 (16:12):
Men, a part of the community that has historically had
the loudest voice, the most sway in shaping queer culture.
We're coming at this question of Bruce's icon credentials from
a lens of like dyke and trans mass culture.
Speaker 1 (16:25):
In our lives, we use gay to refer to people's sexualities,
where thereas in queer is a term that speaks to
a political identity too, as the old phrase goes, not
gays and happy queer as in fuck you. So this
gay icon versus queer icon distinction feels important.
Speaker 8 (16:44):
Gay icon is like rhinestones on the bell. Gay icon
does reinvent every single album that story of like of
like real unbelievable wealth and success through adversity and getting
there yourself and it's you, you, thank you and God,
and that's it when you receive your like thirty second Grammy.
(17:05):
What's really complicated then about that as idolizing these people
who for whom that is the narrative is that's like
a deeply deeply thatcher right, really right wing narrative as well.
Speaker 1 (17:15):
In an American context, like totally typical American dream.
Speaker 8 (17:19):
Pulled up by the bootstraps, Yeah, regionistic, which completely which
is sort of really empathetical to like queer practices of
community or whatever. And so I think that's why maybe
it's hard to have an icon come out of the
queer scene. Yeah, the older I've got, the more I've
been turned off by that narrative, and the more I
find it to be sort of quite like bleak.
Speaker 3 (17:44):
Can queer icon means something different to gay icon, like
in the way we're.
Speaker 2 (17:47):
Using it, And who are we to decide who a
queer icon is?
Speaker 3 (17:52):
Are we falling into accidentally homogenizing the queer experience by
speaking for all queer people?
Speaker 2 (17:57):
Should we be moving away from these kinds of definitions entirely?
Speaker 3 (18:00):
Wait, a queer icons just unsatisfactory substitutes for queer role
models and community.
Speaker 2 (18:05):
We need to get on this bench.
Speaker 3 (18:07):
Too many questions, not enough answers. We're getting a little
bit navel gaizy. We need tooth away from the sea.
Speaker 2 (18:14):
I have an idea.
Speaker 3 (18:19):
We get to have some we kind of walked down
this round here.
Speaker 9 (18:23):
We're gonna get.
Speaker 2 (18:23):
Ahead of like bad things to see walking away from.
Speaker 9 (18:36):
You come in, come in all right?
Speaker 2 (18:48):
You get oh such one.
Speaker 1 (18:55):
Okay, So for the benefit to take we are now
back in Holly's house Stanley in their living.
Speaker 9 (19:00):
Room with tea left wind.
Speaker 1 (19:04):
And we have crafted an email to Jack how was
the writer, academic, and author of.
Speaker 2 (19:13):
The Queer Art of Failure, which we.
Speaker 3 (19:15):
Feel is apt for what is happening right now.
Speaker 2 (19:19):
So this is what we said in the email.
Speaker 1 (19:24):
In episode four of our series, we've hit a rite
block on our mission, and we're looking for a kind
of queer agony uncle to talk our feelings of failure
through with we would it, of course absolutely to be
If this sounds intriguing, would you be up for a chat?
Speaker 9 (19:41):
So I guess we'll see if he's up for.
Speaker 1 (19:43):
A jat that's next, Jesse Holly, because the bus belongs
to us, or does he?
Speaker 3 (19:57):
We're not really sure anymore.
Speaker 1 (20:01):
So, sir, it's a few days after that day we
spent on a depression bench and we've.
Speaker 2 (20:07):
Heard back from Jack, haven't we we have? Would you
like to read his reply?
Speaker 3 (20:11):
Yes, let me read the reply from esteemed at Jack
Harveston beloved queer theories too all. He said, Hi, there,
love the premise getting an unlikely figure recognized as a
queer icon, but don't love the boss. So that's a
past from.
Speaker 2 (20:29):
Me, Thanks Jack. I mean, at least he said he
loves the premise, and you know that means a lot.
Speaker 3 (20:36):
So we've had to pivot, as queers often do, and
I've come up with another solution. I feel pretty good about.
Speaker 7 (20:46):
My Mum and dad went to a few of his concerts,
like they went to quite a famous one that he
did in mid eighties and he played in Newcastle and
he gave quite a big amount of money to the
local miners lodge who were on strike at the time.
But my mom and dad was that tour.
Speaker 3 (21:01):
This is a dear friend of mine and our substitute
agony A. CJ. Ray's parents brought back a big Born
in the USA poster from that concept, the one that's
Bruce's butt, which they put up in the basement.
Speaker 7 (21:13):
I remember going down the stairs and seeing it every
time and just thinking like, hmm, that's pretty nice. I
think I knew from an early age that I was
attracted to both men and women, and I think for me,
like the ultimate like early attraction was definitely Bruce.
Speaker 3 (21:34):
I know from the queer punk scene. They are a
true Bruce Springsteen mega fan who also shares our politics,
so I thought they'd be good for some emotional processing.
Speaker 7 (21:50):
I used to play in a queer punk band called Kinky,
and we were playing a gig in London. Going upstairs
was like a zine festival. Holly was there, and Holly
had all these Bruce Springsteen zines and I saw them
and it kind of blew my mind a bit, and
I was like, oh my God, Like, I love scenes
and I love Bruce Springsteen and I think he's a
sexy man. I'm gonna make a zene about this, and
(22:12):
they did.
Speaker 2 (22:13):
I have it up in my bedroom wom It's called
Butt Springsteen.
Speaker 7 (22:18):
I draw pictures of an accentuated Bruce Springsteen butt at
different parts of his career, talk about the different eras
and the born to run, but the tunnel of love,
but all the different butts, and then I give each
one like a rating out of ten, but just as
(22:40):
a spoiler, they're They're all ten.
Speaker 3 (22:42):
So CJ now runs an art platform called Black Lodge Press.
They design these beautiful posters with political statements fuck Matcher, bullshit,
forever vote with a fucking brick. The past, we inherit,
the future we build. They do a bun of research
into each one, and they've made loads of zines as well,
(23:03):
exploring queer radical histories of resistance.
Speaker 1 (23:07):
When I go to the big Palestine demos that have
been happening since October in London, you see black eards
with Blacklodge Press art everywhere. We wanted to talk to
CJ about what role art can play in the politics
of resistance. CJ started thinking about this stuff as a
kid when their big sister introduced them to bands like
The Prodigy and Rage Against the Machine.
Speaker 7 (23:27):
And we've Raged against the machine like the Zapatista kind
of you know, liberation politics, movement and stuff discovering like
punk through that as well, like hardcore punk, and really
at the kind of heart of that is like the
Diya ethos that's kind of embedded within like the anarchist
politics of it all as well. So it maybe want
to make zines, and it maye me want to make
music and then make art and participate in direct action
(23:50):
and stuff. For me, it's there is no radical culture
if you only have the politics of it. Like I'm
an absolute fucker for like not finishing a book, all
these like books on like anarchysteria and stuff, and like
I just struggle with it sometimes. Like as much as
I love the ideas of it, you know, you couldn't
just have the kind of bare theory. You need all
(24:11):
the other stuff that surrounds it. So you need like
a kind of movement of radical culture. And like I
think that's part of the stuff that I do is
like in terms of the art I make, it's about
agitation almost like bring like the joy out of like
the politics or that that we've created, because like, sometimes
you know, when you look at the world, it's like
(24:31):
a very horrendous place. In many aspects. It can sometimes
feel a bit hopeless, and it can sometimes feel like
nothing's really going to change. But I think, you know,
radical art, radical music, et cetera, it can instill a
sense of hope. Whether it's realistic or not, I don't
really mind. But for me, that's what music is about,
(24:51):
and it's what art is about as well.
Speaker 1 (24:54):
I love what you said about I hope. There's a
in one of Mariam Karber's books. He's like a big abolistionist.
She says like, hope is a discipline, which is something
that me and my friends talk about quite a lot,
as like it just being a really really important thing
that you that you need in order to fight for
the world that you believe in and that you need
to make happen.
Speaker 7 (25:13):
Yeah. I mean sometimes people say like, oh, it's the
hope that kills you. I think it's a cynicism that
kills you, like that just like eats away.
Speaker 1 (25:22):
This is something that me and Olly have been really
struggling with. We both come from quite similar backgrounds to
you in terms of how we found our politics. And
Bruce Springsteen, I think we can all agree it's not
a DIY artist.
Speaker 7 (25:35):
Yeah, definitely. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (25:36):
And one of the things that we're kind of struggling
with is that you know, you'll be a Bruce Springsteen
live gig and there are people around you who definitely
don't share your politics at all.
Speaker 3 (25:46):
There's a song called forty one Shots, which he debuted
in two thousand and the song forty one Shots is
about the killing of an unarmed black man called Armadudialla.
He was shot forty one times and by the MIYPD.
And when that song was debuted in New York his
live show, people were booing, People were leaving some of
(26:07):
their backs on the stage as he played it as
a form of protest, and the NYPD tried to organize
a boycott of that gig, and then some of the
NYPD even organized a protest the week after. And then
it was so strange, like I heard that song performed
live in Ireland years later on, not expecting to have
that same reaction, and people around me were booing or
(26:29):
shouting out remarks and it wasn't expecting to hear that then.
And then most recently, I saw him play in Cardiff
a few weeks ago, and I saw a group of
Bruce fans that had signed saying Springsteen Fans for a
Free Palestine, which felt really amazing to see other people
there that were maybe there for the same reasons that
I were and got something out of it. And then
(26:50):
to find out after that show allegedly online someone had
mentioned that they were allegedly kicked out of that show
for wearing a Palestine scarf.
Speaker 1 (26:59):
Right.
Speaker 3 (27:00):
Sometimes as a Bruce fan, it can be really jarring
to just feel that disconnect of thinking, oh, we're on
the same page, me and Bruce, but then to realize, oh,
am I just fitting in the blanks myself here.
Speaker 9 (27:10):
Yeah.
Speaker 7 (27:11):
I mean I get that kind of disconnect sometimes when
I go to a punk show though, as well, and
you're standing in the audience and there's like an abusive
ex partner or somebody that you're friends with, or there's
like somebody that's like cracking like homophobic jokes and all
this kind of stuff. Oh went to private school, Yeah exactly. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
I guess like because we we kind of connected with
(27:32):
him for the politics or for like our interpretation of
the politics, or for the meaning. But then you've got
like your average pop fan I guess as well. It
was just like, oh, yeah, danced in the dark.
Speaker 2 (27:42):
Aren't we welcome that too?
Speaker 1 (27:44):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (27:44):
Exactly, Yeah, yeah, Yeah, there's a Bruce's butt for everyone everywhere.
Speaker 7 (27:50):
Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (27:52):
We're potentially getting to a point where we're like, there's
a Bruce Springsteen who we have, as you said, Holleyfield
in the blanks for and so we're like, there's like
a Bruce that.
Speaker 2 (28:01):
Exists in our brains.
Speaker 1 (28:03):
Yeah, and then I guess what we're trying to work
out at the moment is like, if you have got
all that meaning and through that kind of created the
Bruce Bristeen of your dreams, how much expectations should you
have of the actual Bruce Bringsteen who's walking around in
New Jersey like breathing air and talking to people.
Speaker 7 (28:21):
Yeah, it's like the idea of Bruce and then the
actual reality of him being a human being is like
it's really like if I if somebody says to me
Bruce Springsteen, I instantly in my head think of like
nineteen seventy six Bruce, like hot hot. I often just
(28:41):
forget that he's actually a real person. It's quite a
jarring thing to kind of come to terms with. Sometimes
it's like, oh, I don't want to think of like
Bruce as been like a millionaire in a mansion, and
so I'm just going to like, I'm just going to
think about him like he's living in like a kind
of grotty apartment in New Jersey. It's nineteen seventy a
and he's right all all these like romantic, beautiful pop
(29:03):
rock songs, and that's that's Bruce Sprigsteed for me in
my head. And that's probably the wrong thing to do.
Speaker 3 (29:09):
That's part of it, though, isn't it. I think that's
how we compartmentalize and what we make meaning for because
I don't like to think that the album Working on
a Dream exists. I want to block that from my memory.
Queen the Supermarket, What don't know?
Speaker 7 (29:22):
I mean, there's there's stuff that he's done, you know,
Like when I think was it North Carolina past the
kind of bathroom law that transphobic? Was it North Carolina?
I think it's somewhere where yeah, yeah, yeah, And he
had a solidarity for like the kind of trans and
LGBT community. He canceled that show because he wasn't going
to play in a state which had that law. For me,
(29:43):
that isn't like a kind of performative action at all.
Like I think that's really coming from him and from
his politics, and I think that's brilliant. Having said that,
I think sometimes like the silence can be deafening as well,
Like you know you mentioned about Palestine and stuff, and
the silence around it from some people is deafening for Bruce,
That's that's true as well. Again, am I just ignoring
that because just like.
Speaker 2 (30:05):
I'm so sorry, we're being real down, But.
Speaker 7 (30:10):
I know, I think I think he does, like he
does show solidarity to the different communities, you know, giving
money or like or writing songs about like different experiences
for different communities and different people. I think he does
show that.
Speaker 1 (30:23):
I feel I'm I know that we literally just had
a conversation about how cynicism isn't always useful. But I
do feel slightly more cynical about the canceled gig than
you CJ. Like when I'm feeling down on Breece. Yeah,
I have this feeling where I'm like, he wasn't the
only artist who did that. It was there was like
a cool to boycott or to cancel gigs in North
(30:44):
Carolina because of this baffing bill that was anti trans
So like a bunch.
Speaker 2 (30:47):
Of artists did or were at least asked to.
Speaker 1 (30:50):
And the cynical bit of my brain is like, well,
you know, Bruce is fucking loaded, Like it was very
easy for him to cancel one gig and it did
make him look really good.
Speaker 2 (30:59):
I believe it can be both things.
Speaker 1 (31:00):
I believe that he can have those politics and that
it can be good for his career, so that I'm like, yes,
that is nice. Yes, it also makes you look good.
Is this the bind of being a celebrity?
Speaker 2 (31:11):
Do you know what I mean?
Speaker 7 (31:12):
Yeah, it's tricky in it.
Speaker 4 (31:13):
Yeah.
Speaker 7 (31:14):
I think like I wouldn't be shocked if like a
proportion of Bruce Bingsteen fans have transphobic views. Like that
wouldn't surprise me. I guess it did like provide like
a positive piece of publicity for him by by counseling
that gig, But I would be surprised as well if
it maybe even turned a few fans off him as all.
At the same time, poor guy, he's fucked either way.
Speaker 1 (31:41):
It's tough, isn't It's a tough bind because I really
relate to UCJ of being like sometimes I just ignore
a day.
Speaker 2 (31:50):
Because that is also part of life, isn't it.
Speaker 1 (31:52):
The other relatable experience in my life is that I
simply love to watch a shitty, shitty rum com, like
a rum com that has the worst sexual politics in it,
do you know what I mean? That's the most heteronormative
that like portrays a version of life and love that
I completely disagree with. But I find it very comforting,
very very fun, very entertaining and like really silly. And
I guess have we got into deep And is it
(32:14):
possible to like have our politics and hold our criticism
so that we can access the joy that we need
to carry on living our lives.
Speaker 3 (32:24):
Yeah?
Speaker 7 (32:24):
I think so. Yeah. No, I guess it's like going
to the football, Like I like despise like the kind
of the entire like structure of modern football, like the wages,
the sponsorship, you know, everything about it. I despise it,
But I love football, and so like I'm still going
to go and watch football. I'm still going to support
(32:44):
my team. If we kind of break down, people like Bruce,
not even people like Bruce, but like notions of Bruce
to like an nth degree. Then we're always going to
find like contradictions where I was going to find difficulties.
I don't know. Life can be pretty shit sometimes, so
sometimes it's about taking like the decent stuff when you
can get it. And some of the stuff for me
(33:06):
is Bruce and his music.
Speaker 3 (33:08):
It's an often like misused quote, but that whole like
there's no such thing as ethical consumption and the capitalism
it's been stretched to all different versions but could also
be applied here. I do wonder as well, like, as
queer fans, is this a sign that we like really
truly love something because we're tearing him to shreds right now.
But I feel like you can only really do that
with the things that you really love as well, what
you can terrogate.
Speaker 7 (33:29):
In that way, Yeah, definitely. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (33:31):
I wonder just to kind of sum up all this up,
is there any advice you can give to us about
how we can be good fans? How how does fan
how does that work for you? And like, can you
give us any any tips?
Speaker 7 (33:42):
I would say, like maybe approach it from a hopeful
point of view rather than a cynical point of view,
a hopeful view in which you can make a connection
with people or gain pleasure or joy from something. I
lost my dad like two years ago, and we we
(34:02):
played a Bruce song at his funeral. If I should
fall behind, I think it is always called oh yeah,
we played that at his funeral, and I've seen him
a few times, but I've never seen him play that before.
But last year in London he played that as like
the last song, and like, oh my god, I went
with my mom and so like we were both just howling.
(34:23):
It was like horrendous because we were howling our heads off,
but it was also like such a beautiful moment. And Yeah,
it's so easy to get bogged down in like the
kind of the shite day to day or the shite
you know, horrendous events of life that kind of take place,
But sometimes you have those moments where it's like such
a kind of it's like a moment of such like
intensity and joy, even if it's like kind of rooting
(34:45):
in sadness. And I think like having those moments can
be like really really special. Yeah, go with open hearts.
Speaker 3 (34:55):
I've literally got a tear in my eye that is.
Speaker 2 (35:04):
Go with open Hearts.
Speaker 3 (35:06):
That's next episode.
Speaker 1 (35:15):
Because the Buss Belongs to Us is a production of
malten Hart and iHeart Podcasts were hosted by Jesse Lawson
and Holly Gassio.
Speaker 3 (35:22):
The series is executive produced by Jesse and Holly and
created by Jesse Lawson.
Speaker 1 (35:27):
This episode was produced and sound designed by Jesse Lawson,
with production assistants from Thomas Griffin and Tess Hazel. Michelle
Macklam is our mix engineer.
Speaker 3 (35:36):
Our original music and theme is by Talk Bizarre at
Talk b a zed Aar Underscore.
Speaker 1 (35:42):
Our show art was designed and illustrated by Holly Cassio
at Holly c Asio Clact.
Speaker 3 (35:47):
Checking by Selina Solin. Legal services provided by Rowan, Moran
and File.
Speaker 1 (35:52):
Our executive producer from Moulton Hert is Jasmine dat Green.
Our executive producer from iHeart Podcasts is Lindsay Hoffman, Hi
good Lie.
Speaker 8 (36:16):
Because the pus of
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!