Bruce Springsteen has apologised to Bono for refusing to license ‘Girls in Their Summer Clothes’ for an advert for the clothing brand GAP in partnership with Bono’s AIDS foundation (RED).
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While presenting Springsteen with the Harry Belafonte Voices for Social Justice Award at Tribeca Festival last night (June 13), the U2 frontman recalled asking him to license the 2007 track after he’d joined forces with the clothing brand for the (PRODUCT) RED campaign, which raised money to fight HIV/AIDS in Africa.
“That was a big mistake,” Springsteen said, drawing laughs. “I should have said yes.” He called the song one of his “personal favourites” and one that the “audience doesn’t really care” about.
“That was just a song that I love,” he continued. “Damn it, I still think back: ‘Bono asked you to put this thing on a commercial on television.’ I should have fucking done it! People would hear it like a hit, you know? So I have to apologise.”
At the beginning of the event, Tribeca Festival founders Robert De Niro and Jane Rosenthal introduced Bono, who then heaped praise on the ‘Radio Nowhere’ legend. “Bruce Springsteen is America,” Bono said. “Bruce made poetry from the voices of the people and set that poetry to music.
“We honour him tonight as a musician and poet and as an activist and a patriot.”
In conversation, Bono and Springsteen talked about bringing political resistance to the masses with Springsteen’s ‘Land Of Hope And Dreams’ tour, throughout which he has used his time on stage to mount criticisms of the Donald Trump regime.
It was prompted by the killing of two Minneapolis citizens by ICE agents earlier in the year, with the Boss saying that US citizens are “living through some very dark times” as the “American values that have sustained us for 250 years are being challenged as never before”.
Last year, Bono voiced his support for Springsteen amid the ongoing feud between the musician and the US President – which reached new last summer when Springsteen took to the stage in England and called Trump an “unfit president” and accused him of leading a “corrupt, incompetent, and treasonous administration”.
Trump retaliated by taking to his Truth Social platform and describing Springsteen as a “dried-out prune of a rocker” and “not a talented guy.” He then insinuated that there could be a federal investigation into the support for Kamala Harris from Springsteen, Beyoncé, Oprah, Bono and “many others”, as well as sharing a fake video that showed him knocking over Springsteen with a golf ball.
At the time, Bono backed the heartland rocker, saying: “There’s only one Boss in America.”
Elsewhere in the conversation, Bono and Springsteen also touched on the ability of rock stars to connect with the working class, with the former saying he feared that the left “lost a little bit of it”, and that “the accusations of elitism that are out there for people like me are not inaccurate”.
“Has it cost you?” he then asked Springsteen. “Do you feel torn at all thinking there’s people in this town that used to come see my shows who don’t now? Or have you made peace with that?”
“I’m not sure,” Springsteen replied. “You have to do two things. There’s the classic folk song, ‘Which Side Are You On?’: you have to make your stand and follow your beliefs, and you have to have the faith in them that they will be explicable and understandable by your fellow citizens. And you have to believe that America is a sacred argument and a compromise.”
To round off the event, Patti Smith – backed by Tony Shanahan – sang her 1988 track ‘People Have the Power’ in honour of Springsteen. Then, he and Bono joined for a reprisal, before Springsteen wrapped things up with ‘Land of Hope and Dreams’.