Because I write this blog on a long lead, this entry was written before the global COVID-19 pandemic of 2020. As I prep it for publication now, it’s impossible for me to listen to “Long Walk Home” and not hear it in a completely different context than Bruce could ever have imagined.<\/p>\n
I gave thought to a last-minute re-write to make it more timely and relevant, but I ultimately decided against it. Like all great art, Bruce’s best songs transcend their original context and take on new meaning when their listeners need them to. But really, at its core, “Long Walk Home” has never been a song about politics but rather about civics–about measuring the distance between our values and our behavior and doing our best to close the gap.<\/p>\n
Tragically, “Long Walk Home” is more relevant right now than it’s ever been before.<\/p>\n
Here everybody has a neighbor, everybody has a friend<\/em> We’re going to need to keep Bruce’s words in our hearts in the days ahead.<\/p>\n Here’s my original essay.<\/p>\n —<\/p>\n The date was Saturday, November 11, 2006, just four days after Election Day in the United States, and the Democrats had just taken complete control of Congress for the first time in a dozen years.<\/p>\n In intervening years, the country had drifted so far from its moral center that restoration seemed an overwhelming, almost impossible task–and the necessity and difficulty of that effort moved Bruce Springsteen to write a new song.<\/p>\n Bruce was on the road in Europe with the Sessions Band at the time, and he worked on the song from his hotel rooms in the evenings. On Friday night in London–an off night–Bruce took in Lucinda Williams’ show and joined her on stage. (That’s Bruce’s idea of an “off night,” I guess.) He was impressed by Lucinda’s willingness to perform so much new material in her set, so much so that he decided to debut his own work-in-progress composition the following night.<\/p>\n By way of introduction, he said simply: “It’s some return to some semblance of sanity in the States, but there was so much destruction done just to basic principles of democracy that not only is it broken, it needs to be fixed now.”<\/p>\n And then he played his new song, entitled at the time “Gonna Be a Long Walk Home.” To this day, there’s never been a better performance.<\/p>\n
\nEverybody has a reason to begin again<\/em><\/p>\n