The chairman and the boss

The first great American superstar singers, and the latest Voices for whole generations. Musicians who can sculpt in song an entire interior landscape of American dreams played out in latenight bars or on empty midnight highways. Jukebox visionaries. World-class artists.

Frank Sinatra and Bruce Springsteen have a lot more in common than their native state of New Jersey. They dwell in the same kind of spiritual territory: a world of loneliness, romantic retribution, hard pride and tenuous triumph where a song can be a testament or a talisman. Even their most sweeping upbeat numbers have an undertow from the outer darkness. Their music moves to different beats. This is obvious. But whether Sinatra swings or Springsteen rocks, they both sound like they are singing about lives in the balance.

Their audiences do not overlap. Not many kids Born in the USA want to have it My Way, and those who have hoisted One for My Baby may not feel they are Born to Run. Could Sinatra cover Cover Me? Could Springsteen get behind Spring Is Here? No matter. They share the same solitary spirit. Sinatra’s greatest record – and his self-acknowledged favourite – is the 1958 album Only the Lonely, in which the haunted force of his singing transforms romantic abandonment into an elegant paradigm of spiritual despair straight up, no chaser. Springsteen has never been better than on 1980’s The River, a two-records set full of blind alleys, dashed dreams and rave-ups that sound like last stands. The protagonists of Springsteen’s song all stand and fall by themselves. In Sinatra’s most indelible performances, the singer makes a compact between the will and the heart, and desolation is what is left after the thrill is gone.

They share some of the same background too. Despite Sprinsteen’s Dutch surname, his lineage is half-Italian. The Sinatra bloodlines have been evoked to place him squarely within such varying Mediterranean traditions as bel canto and the Mafia. It may be, however, that the Mob mythology surrounding Sinatra is simply part of the public projection of his nightshade personality, based on the same kind of willed misperception that twisted Springsteen into a Fender-bender Rambo. The same perceived darkness is present in Presley and Dylan, Dean and Brando. Americans like their superstars with an edge of danger and a whiff of sulfur.

Sinatra has been happy to oblige. Springsteen plays his private life close, but Sinatra’s has been up for grabs since he wowed the bobby-soxers at the Paramount Theatre in 1944, Springsteen’s effect on an audience can be just as devasting, but a great part of his appeal is the impression of a private man going public. Each concert becomes a ritual celebration, just as a Sinatra performance, even today, is a renewal of old ties and a reconfirmation of old values. The Chairman of the Board, with his unforced, slightly ironic ease, and the Boss, who has the stage force of some as yet unclassified natural phenomenon, are both peerless showmen, and they both got their moves down in the same neighborhood. The rock clubs all around the Jersey shore are not so very different now from jazz joints like the Rustic Cabin (Rounte 9W, Alpine, N.J.), where Sinatra spent 18 months in the late ‘30s, learning his craft and occasionally waiting tables.

Springsteen’s sense of himself and of the redemptive power of the songs he sings has translated into political statement (as in his participation in Steve Van Zandt’s antiapartheid Sun City project) and political action (as with his quit contributions, in each of his U.S. concert venues, to local charities like food banks). Sinatra, whose music usually avoided political matters, was also, in his time, an outspoken populist. The singer who now entertains at the White House – and at Sun City – also staged John Kennedy’s inaugural, appeared at plenty of civil rights benefits and was one of the first movie figures to try formally to break the Hollywood blacklist with his hiring clout.

That has changed now. Springsteen’s own changes may be different, but what will likely remain constant with him, as it has with Sinatra, is the primacy of the music. They are both like separate swift currents in the American musical mainstream that has flowed around the world. There would be a pleasing symbolism in the fulfillment of one Springsteen friend’s long-cherished dream of having Sinatra record the Boss’s grand melodrama Meeting Across the River. However it turned out such a recording would be an irresistible confluence of myths. And something more. It would do both Springsteen and Sinatra proud. Just in fact as they have done us.

- By Jay Cocks

 

the Chairman, the boss: nicknames of Frank Sinatra and Bruce Springsteen.

Dean, James (1931-55): American actor.

Brando, Marlon: born 1924, American actor.

Paramount Theatre, Hollywood movie studio.

Steve van Zandt, former guitarist in Springsteen’s band.

 

RHCP

TASK: 1/. Make alternative questions, using the underlined words; 2/. Make your own presentation of a group, making use of the underlined expressions:

Few rock groups of the '80s broke down as many musical barriers and were as original as the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Creating an intoxicating new musical style by combining funk and punk rock together (with an explosive stage show, to boot), the Chili Peppers spawned a slew of imitators in their wake, but still managed to be the leaders of the pack by the dawn of the 21st century. The roots of the band lay in a friendship forged by three school chums, Anthony Kiedis, Michael Balzary, and Hillel Slovak, while they attended Fairfax High School in California back in the late '70s/early '80s. Influenced heavily by the burgeoning L.A. punk scene (the Germs, Black Flag, Fear, Minutemen, X, etc.) as well as funk (Parliament-Funkadelic, Sly & the Family Stone, etc.), the trio began to rehearse with another friend, drummer Jack Irons, leading to the formation of Tony Flow and the Miraculously Majestic Masters of Mayhem, a group that played strip bars along the sunset strip during the early '80s. It was during this time that the quartet honed their sound and live act (as they stumbled across a stage gimmick that would soon become their trademark — performing on stage completely naked, except for a tube sock covering a certain part of their anatomy). By 1983, Balzary had begun to go by the name "Flea," and the group changed their name to the Red Hot Chili Peppers.

Word spread quickly about the up-and-coming band, resulting in a recording contract with EMI. But before the Chili Peppers could begin work on their debut, Flea and Kiedis were dealt a disappointing blow when both Slovak and Irons announced that they were leaving to focus more on another band they were in, What Is This. While their album didn't set the world on fire sales-wise, the group began to build a dedicated underground following with college radio buffs.

But not all was well in the Chili Peppers camp. Like his predecessor, Frusciante had become addicted to hard drugs, and abruptly left the band mid-tour in early 1992. Undeterred, the band enlisted new member Arik Marshall, and headlined Lollapalooza II in the summer. When the band returned to the studio to work on their sixth release overall, it quickly became apparent that Marshall didn't fit in, and was replaced by Jesse Tobias. But before Tobias could record a note with the group, he was handed his walking papers as well, and former Jane's Addiction guitarist Dave Navarro signed on. After a lay-off of four years, the Peppers' much-delayed follow-up to BSSM was released in 1995, One Hot Minute. While the album was a sizeable hit, it failed to match the success and musical focus of its predecessor, as it became apparent during the album's ensuing tour that Navarro wasn't fitting in as well as originally hoped, and left the band in early 1998.

The group's reunion album, 1999's Californication, proved to be another monster success, reconfirming the Chili Peppers as one of alternative rock's top bands. The band put in a quick guest appearance on Fishbone's Psychotic Friends Nuttwerx before hitting the road to support the album. The following months found the band getting involved in bizarre situations and controversies.

These engaging Hollywood ruffians' mixture of funk, punk and rock encouraged a legion of other bands to regurgitate the formula.

The band set about building their considerable reputation as a live outfit, much of which was fuelled by their penchant for appearing semi-naked or worse. Slovak returned to guitar for the second album, this time produced by George Clinton. Also featured was a horn section comprising Maceo Parker and Fred Wesley, veterans of James Brown, among others. Martinez returned shortly afterwards to reinstate the original Anthem line-up, and their third album saw a shift back to rock from the soul infatuation of its predecessors. In 1988, they released the Abbey Road EP, featuring a pastiche of the famous Beatles album pose on the cover.

Such sensitivity did little to deter the vanguard of critics who raged at what they saw as the band's innate sexism.. Though some critics felt that the band had gone soft, those looking below the surface noticed a balanced maturity and quality songwriting

“HIM”