An Unlikely Phoenix

by Frank Zafiro

  The Governor took his arm and guided him to an hor d'oeuvres table. A small bar next to it was manned by an Asian woman who smiled at him. “Drink, sir?”

  “What’s the wine tonight?” he asked, and the Governor squeezed his arm and laughed.

  “I have a Malbec from Argentina, and a Sauvignon Blanc from the Napa Valley,” the sommelier replied.

  “I’ll go with the Malbec.”

  “Good choice.”

  While she poured, Alex glanced at the Governor. “I’m sure it won’t be as good as your private reserve, Madame Governor.”

  The Governor opened her mouth to reply, but the sommelier interjected.

  “Maybe not,” she said, “but I think you’ll be surprised at the complexity.”

  The Governor spread her hands. “Well, there you go.”

  Alex sipped the wine and nodded his approval. “Complex,” he said agreeably, and the two of them rejoined the group.

  All told, it appeared to him that the Governor had invited about a dozen people. He recognized most, and introductions were made for those he did not. There was the requisite amount of amiable conversation before the house lights on the screen went down.

  “Showtime!” the Governor announced, and as if on cue, the lights in the room dimmed as well. The guests found their seats. Alex’s seat was between the Governor and Ebby, and he could feel their anticipation as the concert began. In the semi-darkness, with surround speakers filling the room, he immediately felt as if he were in the arena itself.

  A spotlight appeared on the stage, and a slightly familiar, middle-aged man in jeans and a casual, collared shirt walked to the microphone. “Hello, St. Louis!” he crooned.

  Alex squinted, trying to place who the man was.

  “Are you ready to celebrate freedom?” the man asked.

  The crowd cheered back.

  “Are you ready to show the world who we really are?”

  More cheers.

  He raised his voice to a near shriek. “Are you ready to rock?”

  The crowd noise rose significantly at that. The cheering lasted several long moments. The man stood at the spotlight, nodding with approval.

  “Who is that?” Alex asked.

  “Jon Hamm,” Ebby answered. “The guy from Mad Men.”

  “That’s right.” Alex recognized him now. “He’s mostly been in movies since then, though.”

  “There were plans to revisit the TV show,” Ebby said. “Don Draper through the Seventies and Eighties. They even shot part of the new season.”

  “I’d watch that. What happened?”

  Ebby gave him a knowing look. “Hamm and some of the other cast members made some comments that were deemed unpatriotic. And the writing was critical of the country back then.”

  “So the Party squashed the show?”

  “Officially, not enough advertisers wanted to support it. And the network claimed the show creators were taking the series in a different direction than what they’d agreed to when they initially approved the project.”

  “In other words, the Party got to them.”

  “Exactly. They went where the money is, the same blueprint they used to bust the NFL kneeling protest in the mid-teens.”

  On the screen, Hamm was grinning at the crowd. “Tonight, I am very proud to be from St. Louis. And I’m proud of the lineup here tonight. We’ve got a great show in store for you. We’ve got St. Louis’s own, Taylor Vera!”

  Cheers.

  “And another, hometown boy, Blues man, Nathan Crider!”

  More cheers.

  “And, of course, we’ve got a visitor from New Jersey... the Boss, Bruce Springsteen.”

  The cheers got louder, punctuated by booming boos.

  “Why are they booing?” Alex asked.

  The Governor chuckled. “They’re not booing. They’re Bruceing.”

  “Huh?”

  “Broooooooooooce!” she demonstrated.

  “Ah. Got it.”

  “Yes, yes,” Hamm said, “Bruce is in the house!” He smiled, and waited for the cheers to subside. Then he said, “Tonight is about music, it’s about our desire as a people to say that freedom matters, that every individual matters, and that borders do more to push people apart than to bring them together.”

  A deafening cheer rose from the crowd. To his right, Alex heard the Governor clapping lightly, and letting out a gleeful, “Yes!”

  “So I know you’re not here to listen to me,” Hamm said. “Let me bring out the first guest, one of the biggest stars to ever come out of St. Louis in the past decade, Taylor Vera!”

  The crowd showed its enthusiasm, and a slender woman in a black dress came on stage. Behind her, musicians found their instruments and their marks. Then they burst into an exultant pop song that Alex recognized from its airplay on the radio. The catchy riff and the hook in the chorus had him tapping his foot.

  Vera raced through a trio of songs, almost without pause. Alex vaguely recognized them, but pop music really wasn’t his thing. He found himself already looking forward to the blues of Nate Crider.

  In between songs, Vera punctuated her performance by asking the audience, “How ya doin’, Charles?” to significant approval. Alex didn’t get the reference. He heard both Ebby and the Governor chuckling each time, but he didn’t bother asking why.

  As her set came to an end, the singer paced the stage as her band played lightly behind her. “My great-grandfather came to this country from Peru,” she said. “He wanted a better life for himself and his family, and he found it here in America.”

  The crowd cheered in response.

  “Thank you,” she said. “But you know, I wonder how he would feel about this country today. I wonder if he were a young man in Peru today, would he leave to come to this country? Somehow, I don’t think he would, and that makes me sad.”

  The crowd applauded approvingly.

  Vera lowered her eyes. On cue, the band swung into a pop ballad that Alex remembered as her breakout single almost a decade earlier, appropriately titled, “Sad.” Piano-driven and guitar punctuated, the ballad seemed as powerful as depression. Vera’s crystal clear high vocals served as counterpoint to the music.

  And some days it hurts so much I can’t even get mad

  Only sad

  Just sad

  And some days it feels like life ain’t so bad

  Just sad

  Only sad

  Alex found himself swaying slightly to the music as Vera flowed through verse and chorus, building to a crescendo with a final, long, aching, “Sad...”

  The crowd had been on its feet during the song, and now cheered thunderously.

  Vera bowed deeply, holding the pose. Then she stood and presented her band, before taking a final bow and leaving the stage.

  “Wow,” Alex murmured.

  “She’s pretty good, huh?” Ebby said.

  “Better than I thought,” Alex admitted. He’d always had her pegged as a bubble gum pop artist, but she turned in a moving performance.

  Jon Hamm returned to the stage. “Taylor Vera!” he yelled, and didn’t have say any more. The cheering went on for a long stretch. When it was finished, Hamm talked about growing up in St. Louis, and about what it meant to be the gateway to the west. Alex saw where he was going with the comments, but felt like the metaphor was a little forced. He was glad when Hamm finished and introduced Nate Crider as “the blues standard for the better part of a generation.”

  “Now, this is my sort of music,” he told the Governor. She gave him a warm smile in reply.

  Crider had a spare backing band, and his music centered heavily around whichever guitar he was playing at the time. He rotated through a half dozen different models, some electric, some acoustic. Alex listened with something akin to joy as Crider performed an acoustic version of his favorite song, “Mama’s Sugah.” He loved the way Crider used the term in all of the different ways it could be. He first refers to “mama’s sugah” being Mama’s little baby boy. Then
when the singer recognizes his mother has an adult life, too, he sees that the man in her life also has that role. Later, he marries, and refers to his wife as “mama,” and he as her “mama’s sugah.” Things seem to come full circle when he has a son of his own, and realizes his own wife sees their little boy as her “sugah.” But Alex’s favorite verse came at the end, when his own mother holds his son, and calls him “mama’s little sugah.”

  The entire song played out against a steady blues rhythm that swelled up and fell again in subtle ways, a different instrument driving the ending phrases of each verse. When the song ended, Alex realized he’d been holding his breath.

  The Governor leaned over to him. “I see why you like the blues so much.”

  He couldn’t answer, only nod.

  Crider went on to play a masterful set, and Alex enjoyed every moment. The singer made no overt statements in between songs, letting such lyrics as “everyone gots to earn respect, but everyone got give some,” and “when her beacon fades, so do our hearts” do his talking for him. After the final song of his set, he gave a muted, “Thank you, St. Louis.” Then he seemed to hesitate, before adding, “And God bless America, as long she deserves it.”

  There was a brief intermission. Alex asked for a refill from the sommelier and snacked on a few hors d'oeuvres, chatting with some of the other guests. Everyone seemed to agree that Taylor Vera brought great energy, and that Nate Crider’s deeper, understated approach was a perfect counterpoint.

  When the lights went down on screen, the sound of the crowd rose noticeably. The room lights dimmed a few moments later, as the guests made their way back to their seats. At the arena, the “Broooocing” began in earnest.

  There was no introduction from Hamm this time. Instead a single spotlight opened up on a mike stand at center stage. Bruce Springsteen stepped into the circle of light, carrying an acoustic twelve string guitar and a stool. Without a word, he positioned the stool under the spotlight and settled onto it. The camera switched to a head and shoulder shot, and Alex got his first good look at the Boss in a while. He looked hale, in some ways much younger than his eighty years. But there was a sad wisdom that played in his eyes, one that reminded Alex of how Nate Crider also carried himself.

  Springsteen strummed the guitar softly, then more powerfully. After a couple of bars, he began adding in some picking. The resulting music was almost dissonant, just this side of jarring. But each time the dissonance seemed about to overwhelm, he shifted into a brief strum in minor chords, fending off complete musical discord. The effect was transfixing, and commanded attention.

  Alex had no idea what the song was, even after Springsteen started growling out the first verse. It was only when he murmured the single line of chorus that he recognized it as one of his biggest hits from the 1980s, “Born in the U.S.A.” But the way Springsteen performed it, there was no mistaking it for a celebration, or anything other than what he suspected it was always intended to be: an indictment, one that still stood today, even though the narrator of the song was “ten years...twenty years...thirty years...forty-five years burning down the road.”

  When the final line of the final chorus fell from his lips, he struck a final dissonant, twanging chord to emphasize the entire song, and the spotlight went black. There was a half-second of near silence before the crowd erupted.

  When the lights came back up slowly, Springsteen remained seated on the stool, though he had a different acoustic guitar. He shifted the strap, patiently adjusted the tuning on one of the strings, and then leaned forward to the microphone.

  “I wrote that song in the early 1980s,” he said, his speaking voice raspier than Alex remembered from the few times he’d heard the man speak. He strummed lightly on the guitar, and his words seemed very deliberate. “Ronald Reagan had just become President, and our country was divided. Back then, it was Republicans and Democrats, haves and have nots, black and white...it seemed like, as a nation, we were really good at finding differences in each other in some fashion. Story of the human race, I guess.” He paused, strumming, then began again. “But it slowly got better, through the nineties and into the two thousands. There were a lot of low points along the way, but it seemed to me that things were trending upward. Which was a good thing.”

  He smiled wearily. “And then...” he trailed off, for a moment, seemingly speechless.

  A slow cheer started in the crowd, swelling until it was loud and raucous.

  “So you know,” Springsteen said, acknowledging the cheering. “Good.”

  They cheered louder.

  “Anyway, I watched as all of the positive changes in our society seemed to come undone, and be washed away. All of our empathy, our tolerance. And for a long while, I didn’t say much about it. I regret that now. I should have said something more, something sooner. We all should have.”

  More cheers.

  “But there’s always a second chance to do what’s right, I suppose. In some fashion, anyway. And so I wrote this song.”

  He started playing the guitar in earnest, picking out a melody while strumming a bass note. Alex didn’t recognize the song, but that didn’t surprise him. His awareness of popular music was limited. Just one of the sacrifices he made to focus on other things.

  Springsteen sang about a young woman in an undisclosed foreign country who gets pregnant and leaves home, coming to America. As he listened, Alex imagined she could just as easily have been Taylor Vera’s grandfather, as the reasons she cited were very much the same.

  I’m looking for a better life

  A life without scorn

  A better life for my son

  He will be American born

  The next verse highlighted a young businessman whose dreams of riches came to pass, though not without cost. He only peripherally sees that his fortune is built on the backs of others, many of them immigrants. When a worker dies at one of his factories, he laments the dollars lost, and proclaims that:

  For that one poor soul,

  don’t expect me to mourn

  It isn’t my fault

  She wasn’t American born.

  During the musical bridge, Alex caught himself wondering if the woman who died in the factory was the same woman in the opening verse. Before he could decide, the next verse began.

  This one was from a soldier’s perspective, who could very easily be the offspring from the man who narrated “Born in the U.S.A.” The soldier spoke of escaping the streets by joining the Army, and finding something important there: duty. That duty led to war, and Springsteen’s raspy vocals told a bitter truth about that war, and every war.

  We fought for freedom, or so we were told

  We were the oasis, we were the storm

  And now I can’t say if I’m proud or not

  To be American born

  The final verse was more difficult to follow, but Alex picked up that Springsteen had gone from the individual to the collective. He sang of a nation’s identity, of a fall from grace, and finally, of that constant chance at redemption he had alluded to in his introduction.

  “Sooner or later,” he sang, strumming his guitar fiercely, “we all gotta decide...”

  His strumming came to an abrupt stop, and he held the silence for a long moment. Then he whispered, eyes closed, his scratchy voice filling the near-silent arena, “What it means to be American born.”

  The applause didn’t happen all at once, but once it started, the sound of it was overwhelming. To his right, Alex heard the Governor clapping as well, and he joined her. When he glanced at her, he saw her smiling and clapping softly. She caught Alex’s eye, and her smile broadened. “If I could say it that well,” she told him, “half our problems would be over.”

  The crowd finally settled, and Springsteen switched guitars again, giving Nate Crider a run for his money in that department. He strummed the black acoustic guitar, then said, “But it can’t all be dark, now can it?” Then he broke into a rollicking, upbeat song that Alex didn’t know but which had h
im tapping his foot. The audience got into it as well, clapping along. By the time the song ended, the mood was lightened considerably, and Springsteen didn’t stop there. He played another catchy tune, keeping the fun rolling. The guests joined in the clapping and the room truly took on a concert atmosphere. Springsteen even stood up from his stool and swung his hips in time to the song, getting a loud reaction from the crowd.

  In the aftermath of the song, Springsteen sat back down, chuckling. “I haven’t done that in a while,” he admitted.

  His guitar technician brought him a different guitar, the same twelve string he’d opened with. Then he handed Springsteen a bottle of water. “Thanks, Kevin,” Springsteen said, and chuckled again. “I don’t know which is more important at this point, the water or the guitar.” Then he quizzed the audience, holding one up for applause, then the other. The guitar won handily.

  “The people have spoken,” Springsteen said in mock solemnity. He twisted the cap off the bottle and grinned. “But I’m still drinking the fucking water.”

  After a long draught of water, Springsteen cleared his throat and strummed the guitar. “All right. Back to business.” He strummed a few dark chords while gathering his thoughts. “Back during the River tour, we played in West Berlin. This was way back, when Germany was still a divided nation, east and west. A couple of us went across the border into East Berlin, and I was struck by how gray it was, and by how different it was from the west. These were the same people, living just miles apart, divided by a wall of concrete and barbed wire, part of an arbitrary line that some politicians drew on a map...and their lives were so very different, east and west. And I remember thinking, it shouldn’t be this way.”

  He strummed some more, working through a few chord changes, then continued. “A few years later on the Tunnel of Love tour, we played in East Berlin. The crowd was massive, more than they expected, and throughout the entire concert, the energy was...it was indescribable. You could just feel all of these people out there...yearning. Yearning for freedom.”

  A small, concerted cheer rose and fell in response to that.

  “Freedom eventually came to them, too, only a few years later. The Berlin Wall came down peacefully, families were reunited...it was...it was a great time, a great thing to see.” He plucked a bass note, strummed a bright chord, then a darker one. “I remember how, at the time, East German state television actually broadcasted our show.” He let out a small chuckle. “Well, most of it. They edited out a song or two, and the small speech that I made, but there were three hundred thousand people who heard it live, so I guess it didn’t really matter. The men in power had misjudged, you see. They misjudged how much people prize freedom. How much they will always yearn for it, and never give up on it. And they misjudged how long you can keep people from freedom through sheer force. Because, in the end, though sheer, brutal force exacts a terrible price along the way, it will always fail.”