Bruce Springsteen’s upcoming tour is “going to be political”.
The Boss, 76, will kick off his US trek with The E Street Band in Minneapolis, Minnesota on March 31 just months after he debuted his protest song Streets of Minneapolis at an anti-ICE concert in the city in January with the trek due to conclude in Washington, D.C. on May 27.
Springsteen has now insisted he is definitely going to address the turbulent political climate in the United States once he gets on stage. He told the Minnesota Star Tribune newspaper: “The tour is going to be political and very topical about what’s going on in the country …
“The E Street Band is built for hard times. It always was. These are the moments when I think we can be of real value and real worth to the community …
“I don’t know of another time when the country has been as critically challenged and our basic ideas and values as critically challenged as they are right now.
“I’d have to go back to 1968 when I was 18 years old to another moment when it felt like the country was so on edge and like it felt there was simply so much at stake as far as who we are and the country we want to be and the people we want to be. It’s a critical, critical moment.”
Springsteen released Streets of Minneapolis in January in response to the deaths of Renee Good and Alex Pretti, who were killed in separate incidents at the hands of Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in the US city, and it put the musician in the firing line of US President Donald Trump.
White House spokesman Steven Cheung previously dismissed Springsteen’s tour plans in a statement which read: “When this loser Springsteen comes back home to his own City of Ruins in his head, he’ll realize his Glory Days are behind him, and his fans have left him Out in the Street, putting him in a Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out because he has a severe case of Trump Derangement Syndrome that has rotted his brain.”
However, Springsteen is adamant he won’t be put off by rhetoric from the White House, he added to the publication: “My job is very simple: I do what I want to do, I say what I want to say, and then people get to say what they want to say about it …
” I don’t worry about if you’re going to lose this part of your audience. I’ve always had a feeling about the position we play culturally, and I’m still deeply committed to that idea of the band. The blowback is just part of it. I’m ready for all that.”