Bruce Springsteen's controversial new song, "American Skin (41 Shots)," about the shooting death of Amadou Diallo by New York City policemen, has split his fan base of blue-collar male boomers down political lines. Bob Lucente, the president of the New York State chapter of the Benevolent Order of Police, publicly denounced the song and called the rock star a "floating fag" and a "f**king dirtbag."
That comment may do more to endear Springsteen to a more radical rock constituency than anything he's ever done, including his ode to the disenfranchised, "The Ghost of Tom Joad." I doubt if Lucente has anything to say about Zak de la Rocha, the incendiary leader of Rage Against the Machine, who rags against the police as a career. Lucente and most of New York's finest would probably never be caught dead listening to Rage, and therein lies at least part of the paradox of de la Rocha's dogma. He preaches to the converted, while Springsteen risks alienating a good part of his parish in the hope that they will see the light.
For those who aren't familiar with the L.A. band, Rage plays a crunching, pounding mixture of rap, metal and funky hard core, which wouldn't seem to make them ideal interpreters of "Tom Joad," originally a dark acoustic ballad. But the song is a centerpiece of their live shows, and the version they played at Makuhari Messe June 24 was no less crunching than their original stuff.