Tyler Cowen: belief

Transcript context

…No, I was willing to trample over the New and Old Testaments, but now we’re getting onto holy ground here. [laughter] If I think of his sources, like Roy Orbison, Gary and the US Bonds, Eddie Cochran, they’re almost completely American. And you’ve stressed virtues of integration; they’re strongly white. There’s a kind of, I hesitate to say monotony, but there’s a sameness of rhythm in a lot of Bruce Springsteen. If I say instead, well for me, kind of foundational American musicians, singers, songwriters, I would look to Paul Simon who’s more global, Bob Dylan who’s more religiously bisexual as a stronger link to black culture. And I would put Springsteen as less important than them. What would you say to talk me out of that? [laughter] He’s a kind of nationalist, isn’t he? And you’re a cosmopolitan. [laughs] Bruce Springsteen is Donald Trump and Steve Bannon rolled into one. [laughter] He’s not a cosmopolitan, actually; I think you’re right about that. I would point to some influences that . . . you know, Sam Cooke and some others. B. B. King probably, some of the blues guitarists. A lot of the 1950s R&B singers were big influences. He really grew up by the ’55–’65 era, and I would say he drew from white and black in that era. But I don’t know how to compare him to Dylan. Dylan is not my cup of tea a lot of time, especially later Dylan. But I would say that, as an artist who’s exploring his own issues and is relentlessly not performing, but is being relentlessly honest with the issues that really trouble him and sent him to analysis for 45 years. He’s a pretty honest guy, and he’s got a lot of good passages in his memoir, which is a really good memoir. It’s a memoir of somebody who has been in analysis all his life because he’s talked it all through. One of them is his evaluation of his own voice, which is a medium-quality voice. But he says, “I do sing truly to what I’m feeling,” and he’s very transparent. I had a chance to meet him a couple times, once for an extended period. He’s amazingly shy, and when you see him on stage, you can’t believe you’re seeing the same human being. A lot of writers are like this. They’re only fully themselves when they’re in the process of writing. So he’s someone who’s honest about what he’s processing and then throws it out. And the key to good performance when I go to a concert or the key to public speaking is, are they willing to throw themselves out into the audience and hope the audience will pick them up? And if you want to see a good speaker or a good musician, they always have that quality, that “I’m helpless here, you got to help me here.” And he does that every time.…

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