By Debora Flora
YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio – Thirty winters ago, Bruce Springsteen stood before a capacity crowd in Stambaugh Auditorium and confronted his fear.
The E Street Band was not with him. He had disbanded the group years earlier in pursuit of new creative outlets. He was still The Boss, a singer-songwriter telling stories of working-class dreams and sorrows. It was a solo acoustic show. The time had come to share his song about the human toll of deindustrialization in many towns before a capacity crowd in Youngstown.
From the Monongahela Valley
To the Mesabi iron range
To the coal mines of Appalachia
The story’s always the same
Seven hundred tons of metal a day,
Now sir you tell me the world’s changed
Once I made you rich enough,
Rich enough to forget my name
In Youngstown
In Youngstown
My sweet Jenny, I’m sinkin’ down
Here darlin’ in Youngstown.
I was a member of the press corps on that Friday night in January 1996. During a lengthy post-concert interview, Springsteen admitted feeling nervous about singing “Youngstown” for the locals. “You fear not living up to their experience,” he said of the song’s content. “You want to try to get it as right as you can.”
He also had preshow concerns about how his quiet, moody, small-hall show would be received, in contrast to his famously energetic four-hour concerts with the E Street Band. Indeed, the show was announced only two weeks ahead of time. Some audience members expected to see Steven Van Zandt, Clarence Clemons and the gang reunited on stage.
Robert Hilburn, the Los Angeles Times music critic, was following Springsteen during that tour. Hilburn later described for his readers how the enthusiastic crowd cheered Springsteen through the first 12 songs, fell silent as he sang “Youngstown,” then gave him a standing ovation.
“It’s a scene reminiscent of Springsteen’s glory days, when he wrote about blue-collar idealism with a passion that placed him at the creative and commercial center of rock – not unlike Youngstown’s own status for decades in the steel world,” Hilburn
wrote.
“These are the people I grew up with in my hometown,” Springsteen told me afterward. “It was very, very moving. I felt literally after one song that the crowd was fabulous.”
Sometimes, risk returns rewards.
Hilburn observed another parallel between Springsteen and our Steeltown. Unlike “Born in the U.S.A.,” his blockbuster album of 1984, “The Ghost of Tom Joad” wasn’t a national best-seller. Radio didn’t play its songs, except for “Youngstown” in some markets. The music industry couldn’t help but prognosticate.
“Although the disc’s bleak melodies and biting commentaries about hard times and injustice are defiantly uncommercial by today’s pop standards, many observers see only the bottom line – and they see a career suddenly as cold as the ground outside this hall,” Hilburn said. “From a distance, the facts could point to a sobering conclusion: Time has passed the rock star by, the same way it has passed by Youngstown and blue-collar America.”
The bottom-line folks had it wrong. “The Ghost of Tom Joad” was Springsteen’s 11th studio album. He has since released 10 more studio albums, with and without the rejuvenated E Street Band. His total album sales exceeds 140 million. He has been inducted into the Rock and Songwriters halls of fame and been awarded Grammys, an Oscar, a Tony, Golden Globes, National Medal of Arts, Presidential Medal of Freedom and Kennedy Center Honors. His autobiography was an acclaimed best seller, and from it came his “Springsteen on Broadway” concert residency in New York.
Has time passed Youngstown by? From a distance, yes. After Black Monday – that September day in 1977 when our steelmaking dominance officially collapsed – the decades have been dotted with ill-fated attempts and broken promises to restore local employment, income and dignity. The last two generations never experienced the glory days of our communities. They only know the stories told by elders at family gatherings and on social media.
Up close, a new regional economic reality is emerging, one that emphasizes manufacturing and diversification. Kimberly Clark, a Fortune 500 company making personal care products, will build an advanced manufacturing facility on former steel mill property in Warren. Foxconn is retooling the former and sprawling General Motors plant in Lordstown to make components for data centers. An Ohio Innovation Hub for Defense and Aerospace is being established in Youngstown, where YBI and America Makes help companies incorporate technology that will make them competitive in the defense and aerospace sectors.
The final word about this place has not been written. The calculated risks being taken now may return the rewards of community stability, vitality and another great Youngstown song.
