Bruce Springsteen and Super Bowl Halftime

UPDATE, February 1, 2009: Bruce Springsteen Super Bowl Reviews
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UPDATE, January 28, 2009: This could be a bad sign for anyone hoping to hear a vintage Springsteen set during halftime.

Three "Max Weinberg 7" band members, Richie "LaBamba" Rosenberg, Mark Pender, and Jerry Vivino, were not in their usual spots for Wednesday's Late Night with Conan O'Brien. They're in Tampa and will be performing during the Super Bowl halftime show.

I love LaBamba, Pender, and Jerry, but why does Springsteen need a horn section?

Can we expect a "Seeger Sessions" set? That's not what I am hoping to hear.
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Bruce Springsteen has been keeping a high profile recently.

Last Sunday, he was front and center at the We Are One Concert, part of Barack Obama's historically expensive inauguration extravaganza.

This Sunday, Springsteen will be the featured performer for the Super Bowl halftime show. NBC is heavily promoting Springsteen's appearance. It's as if Obama is Messiah I and Springsteen is Messiah II, and NBC is spreading the word to the masses, drawing them to witness the transcendent, historic 12 minutes of halftime entertainment.

Did you know Springsteen has a new album? Yes, Springsteen's newest, Working on a Dream, was released today, January 27.

Could Springsteen ask for a better commercial opportunity to hawk his new album?

On Big Hollywood, a terrific site, Riley Hunter has posted an interesting article, "The Audacity of Springsteen."

He makes some points about Springsteen and the marketing angle that have crossed my mind as well.

Hunter writes:

With his trademark look of severe yet not unwelcomed constipation, his trusty acoustic guitar in hand, working class diva Bruce Springsteen kicked off Barack Obama’s We Are One Inaugural Celebration concert at the Lincoln Memorial on January 18. Indeed, Bruce had much to celebrate. Just a week prior he scored himself a Golden Globe Award for Best Original Song for the film The Wrestler, beating out the worthy likes of 16-year-old Miley Cyrus and Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue cover girl Beyonce Knowles. Within the next two weeks, he’d be releasing a new album and headlining halftime festivities at Super Bowl XLIII. Most importantly, on this grand day, he was performing in front of his latest favorite Democrat, helping to usher in a historic new era of something or other (I always forget the required tag line, I just know something is really historic).

While I have no doubt Bruce eagerly slurps up Hope, Change and every other empty, saccharine platitude Obama unloads, I can’t help but notice the marketing angle here. Springsteen debuted Working on a Dream, the first song from the new album of the same name, at a November Obama rally. With its vapid, generic message of hope and something or other, the song seems like the perfect musical score for the feel-good Obama Movement. Given the current international Obama psychosis, aligning himself with The Great Man might actually sell more albums than twelve minutes at the Super Bowl, and help keep him relevant─for the moment, anyway─in a congenitally ADD culture.

...TheSmokingGun.com took a bite out of Springsteen’s blue collar, common man’s common man branding when it published a concert rider from his 2002-2003 world tour. With its strict Beluga caviar and linen tablecloth requirements, the 22-page document made Springsteen look more like Diana Ross than Arlo Guthrie on the blue collar-to-diva continuum. The common man’s saxophone player, Clarence Clemons, required a whole roast chicken delivered to his dressing room in the middle of each show. That sax solo in Jungleland must make a man hungry.

Springsteen’s approximately 12 minutes at the Super Bowl will be very expensive ones, presumably too expensive to allow him time to curse the Vietnam War or extol the Glory of The Obama. With NBC charging $3 million for 30 seconds of advertising, Springsteen’s extended commercial is worth over $70 million. That should limit him to pimping just his art, not his politics. Though Springsteen isn’t releasing his set-list before the show, the 2000 extras making up his on-field audience who have been rehearsing their excitement and passionate fist pumps at a Tampa Bay high school may have some idea what’s in store February 1. Hopefully they’ve been pumping Born to Run, not Working on a Dream.

Springsteen is getting over $70 million worth of free televised advertising for the new album.

There's more. Check out the promo on the Super Bowl XLIII official website.

Funny. I never thought a Springsteen album would be considered a "Super Bowl XLIII collectible." Funny.

No wonder he's singing "My Lucky Day."

I hope that Springsteen takes a cue from Tom Petty, last year's Super Bowl headliner.

No new material. No politics. Nothing exclusive. Just rock the place, like Tom Petty.

The Super Bowl is a party -- a national day of simple celebration, togetherness, fun.

Tom Petty got it right. I hope Springsteen can control himself and rein in his ego and not turn off half the audience by indulging in divisive political rants.

He should stick with the old stuff, the good stuff -- just like Tom Petty. Make everyone happy. No new material, please. And no "This Land is Your Land." Please, spare us. No morphing into Woody Guthrie. Nothing acoustic.

With just 12 minutes, there isn't time to do an unplugged portion. Springsteen has to remember that this is the Super Bowl. He has to resist the urge to be self-indulgent.

I don't know what the set list is but I hope he doesn't include a "bathroom break" caliber song.

Isn't $70 million of free advertising and face time on one of the most watched television broadcasts of the year enough?

I wonder what sort of rider Springsteen and the band have for their Super Bowl appearance.

Is Springsteen demanding a clean white linen tablecloth, china plates, and silverware (each setting must have two forks, one knife, one soup spoon, one teaspoon) in his dressing room?

I, for one, will not be using a "white linen tablecloth" at my Super Bowl gathering.