Bruce Springsteen Pioneers Grandpa Rock With New ‘Western Stars’ Film 

Dad rock is dead. Grandpa rock is the new new. Gen Xers with horn rim glasses revisiting their older brother’s classic rock records? Yesterday’s news. Banjo-fondling douchebags playing “old timey” music? Well, that’s actually Great Grandfather rock and it’s sooooo 2012. What are the big singles of spring 2020? Bob Dylan and The Rolling Stones. Who’s running for President of the United States? Two dudes in their 70s in possible cognitive decline. Now the freakin’ Boss is here to codify the movement, spinning yarns and life lessons while performing his new album in the film Western Stars, which is currently streaming on HBO.

Released last summer, Springsteen has said his Western Stars album was influenced by the “Southern California pop music of the ’70s,” and such artists as Glen Campbell, Jimmy Webb, and Burt Bacharach. Just like grandpa, he gets the dates wrong, as their artistic heyday was the late ’60s, but close enough. “Western Stars is a 13-song meditation on the struggle between individual freedom and communal life,” he tells us at the film’s outset. To Springsteen, these are the “two sides of the American character,” which, “rub up against one another always and forever everyday in American life.”

Directed by Springsteen and longtime film collaborator Thom Zimny, Western Stars mixes live performances of the album’s songs with footage of the singer wandering around the American West and explaining what it all means. The title track is about a “fading Western film star,” who doesn’t understand the world around him, “doing Viagra commercials and weekend rodeoing in the desert east of Los Angeles.” Another song is about an old stuntman whose self-destructiveness ruins relationships. I guess no one told him about Once Upon a Time in Hollywood.

The performances feature Springsteen, wife Patti Scialfa and a backing band which includes a 30-piece orchestra. They were filmed in a 100-year-old barn on the Springsteens’ property in New Jersey in front of what I assume is an audience of friends. Springsteen tells us, “the hayloft is simply a spiritual place,” one filled with “the best kinds of ghosts and spirits.” A home bar to die for sits against the stage right wall and Springsteen knocks back a shot before he starts playing though the performances are anything but freewheeling. Like the aforementioned influences, these are big songs, straightforward melodically and lyrically and Springsteen and company execute them flawlessly. Maybe, too much so.

Personally, I prefer my Springsteen a little more rocked out with the sweat soaking through his work shirt, a Telecaster slung over his shoulder, and the E Street Band trying to keep up with him. At times the performances seem canned and overly polite. Interestingly, some of the songs remind me not of 1960s Southern California but 1980s Minneapolis, with “The Wayfarer” sounding like Paul Westerberg wrote it and “Tucson Train” echoing Soul Asylum’s 1993 hit, “Runaway Train.” Elsewhere, “Hello Sunshine” quite explicitly pays sonic homage to Glen Campbell‘s “Gentle On My Mind” and Harry Nilsson‘s “Everybody’s Talkin'”, which are in keeping with the theme of the album.

While donning a cowboy hat and driving a classic car, Springsteen talks about the flawed men behind each song, many of them, manifestations of himself. Men who hurt the ones they love, drive cars they don’t need, go places to get away from heartache and unhappiness and end up nowhere. This America’s restless word made flesh and the drone footage appropriatly shows us gulches, brambles, rodeos and saloons.

According to Bruce, who tells us he spent “35 years trying to learn how to let go of the destructive parts of my character,” the answer is love. Love is proof of “God’s divinity within us,” even if we sometimes throw it away. As the picture comes more into focus, it becomes obvious he is talking quite specifically about his marriage to Scialfa. She stands beside him onstage and offers backup vocals when needed. Home movie footage shows them cavorting outside a log cabin and while the credits roll they sit at the now empty home bar while some schlepp sweeps up the floor. To paraphrase him, she is the home where his heart resides.

As a performance film, Western Stars is capably done, featuring beautifully filmed footage of one of rock’s great talents and a crackerjack backing band fulfilling his orchestral ambitions. The extra-musical segments, however, do little to enhance the experience and it’s not like the material needs any explaining. We’ve heard Springsteen’s tales of failure of redemption, love, and loss before. They’re basically the same story he’s been telling since his first album. But that’s OK. Grandpa’s allowed to repeat himself now and again, and besides, it’s a good story and he tells it well.

Benjamin H. Smith is a New York based writer, producer and musician. Follow him on Twitter:@BHSmithNYC

Watch Western Stars on HBO Go

Watch Western Stars on HBO Now