PARIS: Bankers, developers and deregulators come in for one of the fiercest lashings in the history of mainstream rock next month when Bruce Springsteen issues an album that he admits seethes with anger.
"Wrecking Ball", presented to journalists in Paris on Thursday ahead of release on March 6 and a US and European tour, is a tableau of the American Dream that has gone horribly wrong.
Anger at unfettered greed, sympathy for the poor and the unemployed, and gospel-style appeals for hope are the emotional threads that run through the 17th studio album in Springsteen's 38-year career.
Springsteen said America had become a society where "people were locked into the strata under which they were born".
"We've destroyed the idea of an equal playing field," he said.
"(...) That's a big promise that's been broken. There's a critical mass point where a society collapses, and you can't have a civilisation with a society that's as factionalised as that."
The 11-track album kicks off with the already-released "We Take Care of Our Own", which contrasts glib patriotic slogans with the dour reality for Americans fighting to keep a job or save their homes from foreclosure.
Other tracks pour bile over the "robber barons" of the financial system and wave an angry fist at anonymous corporations, able to destroy a town without a shot being fired.
"The banker man grows fat / The working man grows thin / It's all happened before and it will happen again," says "Jack of All Trades", which adds, "If I had me a gun / I'd find the bastards and shoot 'em on sight."
Springsteen said the album was triggered by the 2008 financial crisis, which he said was a culmination of three decades of deregulation and unbridled profiteering.
Until the Occupy Wall Street movement began last year, no-one was even deemed accountable for the disaster, he said.
"A basic theft had occurred that struck the heart of just what the entire American idea was about, really. It was a complete disregard of history, of context, of community, and all about, 'what can I get today?'.
"So it was an enormous faultline that cracked the American system wide open, and its repercussions were really just beginning to really be felt," he said.
Springsteen said he had always had a close interest in inequality and unfairness in America and hit at those who chose to misinterpret his lyrics as unpatriotic, as happened in the 1984 classic "Born in the USA".
"There is a feeling of patriotism underneath (...) in my best music, but at the same time, it's a very critical, questioning, often angry sort of patriotism," he said.
"That's not something that I'm prepared to give up for fear that someone might simplify what I'm saying."
He added: "My work has always been about judging the distance between American reality and the American dream. How far is that at any given moment?" he said.
The first part of the album -- "very angry, particularly", said Springsteen -- cedes to songs that have an almost biblical feel in their longing for hope, solidarity and salvation.
Asked about this, Springsteen referred to a working-class Catholic childhood in New Jersey, where he lived next door to a church.
"I got completely brainwashed as a child with Catholicism," he said. "(...) It's given me a very active sense of spiritual life -- and made it very difficult sexually," he quipped.
In musical terms, the album borrows on folk, gospel and 1930s recession songs for what Springsteen described as "historical resonances" to convey social themes.
One of the strongest tracks is "Land of Hope and Dreams", an anthem that feels rooted in the "Born to Run" album that propelled Springsteen to stardom in 1975.
It notably features the blasting saxophone of Clarence Clemons, aka "The Big Man", a close friend of Springsteen who died last year from complications of a stroke. Clemons' nephew, Jake Clemons, has been rostered to play sax on the upcoming tour, opening in Atlanta on Saturday.
"Losing Clarence is like losing something elemental. It's like losing the rain, you know, or air," Springsteen said.
"That's a part of life. The currents of life affect even the dream world of popular music. There's no escape."
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