Bruce Springsteen “Human Touch”
Is there ever a great album cover to a bad album? Is it possible that the graphic artists conspire to keep the balance as part of a sacred order, committed to alerting music fans of what lies within? The “Human Touch” cover is mostly elongated font. There is also a hand, a guitar, and a bracelet. But why would you put that much text on cover? I remember when I first got Photoshop, stretching out some text like this too, like playing with sepia or the solarize filter, but then you come to your senses. Unless you are part of the order…
Bruce’s personal look begins to waver with this release. His hair starts to thin and recede up top and he nurses that loss with longer hair in the back. It’s the devil’s bargain. He’s one-inch short of a mullet. He also starts to wear flowy shirts and lots of jewelry: rings, bracelets, necklaces, turquoise. Some of these shirts just have the ugliest prints on them. He’s got tons of them. Was there some kind of sale? What happened to the guy in the Hanes V-neck? These fashion stumblings are a through-line for the past prime artist. They lose their way trying to find middle-aged cool. And why should we blame them? Who has the time? Bruce does better than most, but with that load of twangy bling around his neck, he’s starting to look like a southwestern Mr. T.
The title track is a good song, but it is the only good up-tempo or mid-tempo rock song on the album. The slow songs are “Human Touch’s” redemption and probably a sign he really wanted to make an acoustic album. Do we have to admit that it is hard to rock convincingly past forty? I don’t think it’s impossible, but this album is proof that it can’t be forced with strangers. Jeff Porcaro from Toto is on drums, and Randy Jackson is on bass (dawg!). These are LA’s best session guys, and it sounds tight and paid for. The album is produced by Bruce himself, longtime friend and music critic Jon Landau, and E-Streeter Roy Bittan. Working with old collaborators shouldn’t be a negative, but when a swirling synthesized Asian flute opens up “Soul Driver,” it’s clear these guys are either out of touch or that no one in this creative partnership is using their safe-word.
It’s not all about the production. Some of Bruce’s last masterpiece, “Tunnel of Love,” sounds like it came out of the regretful audio trends of its era too. The difference is that that album had great writing — those songs move mountains. “Tunnel of Love” made adulthood seem glorious and earned. That album made we want to be a man. Five years later, “Human Touch” sounds worse and contains deeply average material. I really do want to like “57 Channels and Nothing On.” The bass line is bouncy and fun and the lyrics are at least half-clever. But ultimately it’s still a boring song about being bored. This is the confounding challenge of the past prime artist. They’re trying to process the malaise of life’s second act through a medium that was designed for the sprint and party of life’s first act. Having solved his love-life, unable to keep writing about Scooter and the Rat, or street-fight-flood-fires on the turnpike, Bruce is looking around for other topics. It’s 1992 – he’s rich, and has accomplished everything he ever dreamed of. Does he sing about Windows 3.1? Pagers? The difficulty in hiring a personal stylist?
The Boss is very open about how stuck he was on how to write working-class songs from his new position as one of the richest men in rock. That struggle is all over in this album, as he tries his hand at just rocking on sunshine, like he’s Katrina and the Waves. Take “Real World,” a song about facing adulthood with a new partner, that clangs a bell over and over for all 5 minutes 24 seconds of its running time, as a musical tribute to monogamy. I really do believe in the sentiment — I love my wife, too. But maybe the reliability of marriage isn’t a Rock song? Or maybe it could be, but you don’t need to try so hard? “Real World”s’ relentless “rock bell” is symptomatic of the over-compensation that plagues this album. Two of the songs, “All or Nothing at All” and “Real Man” have forgotten they are part of Bruce’s oeuvre and seem to be selling Michelob Ultra. Where did the poet of working hard and not letting your dreams go? From the type-face on the cover, to the hair, to the shirts, to the tough but not too tough guitar sound, it’s really the ultimate mid-life crisis record. Unfortunately, the crisis is expressed in strained hooks and dull material instead of being balanced, healed, and exorcised through art.
If you want one song other than the title track to check out, try “I Wish I Was Blind.” With some simple word play and a gently sinking melody, it balances beauty and pain, yearning and despair. It’s a model Springsteen song with the resonance of some of his best work. Maybe he identified with being lost.