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Beyond blood brothers: queer Bruce Springsteen
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 13 September 2013
Abstract
Bruce Springsteen's body of work contains a striking number of songs with homoerotic or queerly suggestive content. Moreover, his live performances often push the limits of the homosocial, ‘queering’ onstage relationships through everything from lingering kisses with the late saxophonist Clarence Clemons to intimate microphone sharing with guitarist and real-life best friend Stevie Van Zandt. In this paper I trace Bruce Springsteen's consistent performative engagement with queer desire over the course of his 40-year career through a close reading of both lyrics and performance (including onstage, and in video and still photography). I examine how Springsteen's queer lyrical content and performative acts contrast critically with dominant readings of his hypermasculine, ‘all-American’ image, and suggest that Springsteen's regular deployment of homosocial and homoerotic imagery in both lyrics and performance – far from being an exception to his more mainstream persona – actually constitute a kind of queer aesthetic vital to, and consistent with, his artistic vision of love and community.
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References
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Discography
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Videography
Andrew Solt Productions, History of Rock ‘N’ Roll. Time-Life Video & Television and Warner Brothers, 34991. 1995Google Scholar
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Springsteen, Bruce, Wings for Wheels: The Making of Born to Run. Released 2005 as part of Born to Run: 30th Anniversary Addition. Columbia Music Video, CSD 55625. 2005Google Scholar