Bruce Springsteen performs at The Academy Museum Gala in Los Angeles.
On Oct. 18, Bruce Springsteen received an award and treated the audience to three solo acoustic songs — “Land of Hope and Dreams,” “Atlantic City” and the rarely performed “Streets of Philadelphia” — at the fifth annual Academy Museum Gala, presented by The Academy Museum of Motion Pictures at The David Geffen Theater in Los Angeles. And today, he posted videos of those songs to YouTube. They are embedded below.
“This is from Nebraska. Jeremy Allen White, I’m gonna do this one for you … ’cause he struggled so hard to learn how to play and sing,” Springsteen said before “Atlantic City.”
He gave a longer speech before “Land of Hope and Dreams.” And with “No Kings” rallies taking place around the country on that day, he worked the phrase into it.
“Of course, as we all know, outside of this lovely world of dreams and entertainment we’re all so fortunate to work in and to be a part of, all hell is breakin’ lose in our beloved United States,” he said. “For 250 years, around the world, despite our many faults, The United States has stood as a beacon of liberty and democracy, hope and freedom. Now, I’ve spent 50 years traveling as kind of a musical ambassador for America, and I have witnessed the love and admiration that folks around the world have had for the America of our highest ideals. And despite how terribly damaged America has been recently, that country, and those ideals, remain worth fighting for.
“So this is a small prayer for all those folks out in the streets today, and for our country. No kings. This is ‘Land of Hope and Dreams.’ ”
Springsteen received the Academy Museum’s Legacy Award, which goes to “an artist whose body of work has inspired generations of storytellers and deeply influenced our culture.”
Here are the videos, in the order in which the songs were performed. I have also embedded, below them, Springsteen’s acceptance speech, in which he talks about film noir, his love of the horror movie “The Tingler,” and other things.
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