Barack and Bruce speak

A couple of days ago, Spotify dropped the first two episodes of its podcast series featuring Barack Obama and Bruce Springsteen called "Renegades: Born in the USA." Recorded starting in late July, 2020, at Springsteen's home in New Jersey, the first episode largely covers their origin stories and how they met, while the 2nd focuses on race.

The podcast is, in a word, terrific.

It starts with Springsteen offering Obama whiskey. "You need it, you go get it," Bruce says. When they talk about their early meetings, Obama mentions White House dinners, singing Broadway tunes, "and there were libations involved, there was drinking." "That was good," Springsteen chimes in. This seems a bit disquieting, perhaps, considering Bruce's now-dismissed DWI charges from a few months later.

The conversation quickly turns serious, warm-hearted, realistic, and to the "deep waters below the stillness" that they found as a common thread between them. Listening to it, the feelings I get are:

1. I'd have loved to be in that room
2. This is much easier to get through than Obama's latest book (and it's a good book, too)
3. These two guys genuinely like each other
4. I'd love to try the whiskey in that room (and I don't drink whiskey)

Barack Obama with Bruce Springsteen and Jay-Z, Columbus Ohio, November 5, 2012

Anyone who has read Bruce's autobiography or who saw his Broadway play, probably recognizes Bruce's basic childhood stories; anyone who has read any of Obama's autobiographical books probably recognizes his, too. Still, there are common threads that connect their superficially different stories to each others, and to listeners like me.

The seconds episode focuses on race, and as a focal point for that we have Bruce's relationship with Clarence Clemons. Bruce tells an anecdote early in the episode from the E Street Band's 1988 concert in Ivory Coast in front of an all-black audience, and Clarence approaching Bruce before the concert to say, "Now you know how it feels." 

I'm almost (not quite) Obama's age, and I still remember the one time that happened to me, a quarter century ago: We were out with a friend who was showing Detroit to her out-of-town friend, and decided to check out what was playing at Detroit's Fox Theater. It was a comedy show with a well-known comic in the lead. We purchased a couple pairs of tickets on the street, and within moments I realized my pair was in the middle of the 2nd row, and... it was black comics night. It was a raucously fun evening, for sure. Still, every Billy-Bob joke all night was aimed right between my eyes; one of the comics even reached down to shake our hands after some particularly, uh... off-color remarks at our nominal expense. But that was one night, and it was a night of comedy, at that.

Bruce Springsteen and Clarence Clemons, Cleveland, 1978
(photo: Lois Bernstein)

Obama explains the race claims succinctly in terms of status: "The claim is made that, 'no matter what I am. I may be poor, I may be ignorant, I may be mean. I may be ugly, I may not like myself, I may be unhappy, but you know what I'm not? I'm not you.'" Later on, Bruce says, "Skin is destiny. It's like, what a privilege it is, to forget you live in a particular body. White people can do that. Black people can't do that."

The podcasts are punctuated with archival audio material, including snippets of events such as from the Edmund Pettis Bridge "Bloody Sunday" March, various Obama speeches, a Clarence Clemons interview, and Springsteen performances. Bruce also adds a couple of acoustic performances, of "My Hometown" in Episode 1, and "American Skin (41 Shots)" in Episode 2. During the performance of "American Skin," Bruce remarks, "This song is 20 years old!," to emphasize the point that, twenty years after he felt compelled to write that song, not very much has changed.