Wolfe/Beat/Huck and Jim rafting down the Mississippi America,rnthe country of yea-singing exuberant cowboy loners like thernone Sal Paradise met in a Nebraska diner. As Bill Carter of thernEnglish band Screaming Blue Messiahs understood: “I thinkrndriving is the last form of freedom—I’m surprised the governmentrnlets you drive at all.” (With the autophobic Al Gore andrnhis censorious wife Tipper in the saddle, the SBM nightmarernhas arrived.) Anyway, Neil Young insists that it’s better tornburn out than to fade away, and fortysomethings who watchrntheir speedometers ought to consider another line of work.rnRock and roll is and has always been “conservativeanarchist,”rnas Rolling Stone perceptively terms James Hetfield,rnleader of the wildly popular Metallica. For teenagers, it isrnabout free-swinging against the Organization Men you wantrndesperately not to grow up to be; by the time you hit your mid-rn30’s, you realize that Men in Grey Flannel Suits run this world,rnthat “goin’ to Katmandu,” as Bob Seger daydreams, is not anrnoption, and that trying “to fill this house with all the love thatrnheaven will allow,” as Springsteen sings, is a noble enoughrndeed. The bridge between rebellion and contented domesticityrnis where most of the good stuff is found.rnRock is also the only medium through which young uneducatedrnMiddle American white kids can tell the world whatrnthey’re thinking. The major rock factories are run by olderrneducated non-Middle American guys, which is why most ofrnwhat we hear on the radio is confected garbage. (“Hang thernDJ,” demanded Morrissey of the Smiths, but the executives atrnColumbia and Epic are more deserving of the rope.)rnIf a kid is too honest he’ll be whipped in the public square forrnhate crimes, as was Axl Rose of the notorious (and, by workingandrnmiddle-class white kids, beloved) Guns n’ Roses. Rosernmade the mistake of eschewing Baby I Love You boilerplaternand writing the autobiographical “One in a Million,” a song recountingrnhis reaction, as a scuzzy teenager from Lafayette, Indiana,rnupon alighting in the Los Angeles bus depot:rnPolice and niggersrnThat’s right! Get out of my wayrnDon’t need to buy none of your gold chains todayrnImmigrants and faggotsrnthey make no sense to mernthey come to our countryrnand think they’ll do as thev pleasernLike start some mini Iranrnor spread some f—ing diseasernI’m just a small town white boyrnjust trying to make ends meetrnWhen I was in my early 20’s I made a similar journey, circumnavigatingrnthe country by bus. I slept in stations and aternin soup kitchens and wrote execrable poetry. I remember thernstation in Los Angeles, its rank air of menace and debauchery,rnin which I found a certain raffish charm. I thought I was anrnoutlaw, lying in the gutter and looking at the stars. I wasrnnever a metal-head or racist but I understand Axl Rose, and ifrnI hadn’t had the elemental frankness educated out of me I’drnhave said the same things as I bounded from the bus into thatrnpanhandling, purse-snatching man-swarm.rnJohn Mcllencamp, a kind of cut-rate Midwestern Springsteenrnwho hit his stride in the mid-80’s and surpassed hisrnmodel, made a series of albums about life in a hinterlands Indianarnthat was adrift somewhere between the idyllic world ofrnHoosiers and the Doritos and Old Milwaukee world of ratty sofasrnsagging under the heft of washed-up jocks and cheerleadersrnparalyzed by their postadolescent failures and blinded byrnthe blue flicker of the television. “I was born in a small town,”rnsang Mcllencamp. “My parents live in the same small town.rnMy job is so small town, provides little opportunity.” Mcllencamprnlater acted in and directed a movie. Falling from Gracern(1992), in which he plays a famous singer returning to his Indianarnhometown. His blonde dream Southern California wifern(Mariel Hemingway) mocks his “hick-town fantasies” and so,rneventually, did the city-slicker critics once the brief CommonrnMan Rock fad of the 80’s died and Mcllencamp decamped tornthe remainder bins.rnMellencamp’s kindred soul Springsteen mourned his Freehold:rn”Main Street’s whitewashed windows and vacant stores/rnSeems like there ain’t nobody wants to come down here nornmore / They’re closin’ down the textile mill across the railroadrntrack / Foreman says these jobs are goin’ boys, and they ain’trncomin’ back to your hometown.”rnYou can’t help but snicker when you read these lyrics. Johnrnand Bruce are loaded—^John has a Hilton Head mansion, Brucernbought a $14 million Beverly Hills estate. Bruce has prettyrnmuch relinquished his Working Class Hero role: he had arnquickie marriage to and divorce from an airhead modelrn(though he redeemed himself by marrying an ugly Italian-rnAmerican gid); he fired his band, several members of which gornway back to the Asbury Park days; he no longer lives in his fabledrnNew Jersey. Mcllencamp, trapped by his image as Johnrnthe good-hearted scrapegrace from Seymour, Indiana, pleadedrnpathetically to Esquire in 1992: “You could do me a favor andrntell people I’m not the keeper of small towns. I grew up to bernthe guy I hated as a kid. I’m a cliche.”rnThe thing is, he’s not. Neither is Springsteen. They tell therntruth, in their prosaic Dairy Queen American way. The onlyrnhelp-wanted listings in my local paper that pay well ($20,000rnplus per annum) are for government work: cook at AtticarnPrison, assistant to the Genesee County manager. Really goodrnjobs—say, superintendent of Batavia schools—won’t even bernadvertised locally, on the assumption that we are Ph.D.-lessrnmorons incapable of overseeing the education of our ownrnfourth-graders. A man who bakes potatoes for “Son of Sam” isrnpaid double what the woman behind the counter at the localrndiner makes. A K Street shyster takes in a quarter of a millionrnrepresenting foreign governments. And you tell me you don’trnbelieve we’re on the eve of destruction?rnThe younger political consultants pour over rock lyrics withrnthe misguided diligence of a subliterate, born-again, reformedrntart combing her daughter’s English class copy ofrnSlaughterhouse Five and counting the f-words. Reagan’srnflunkies sought to co-opt Mcllencamp and Springsteen andrnwere rebuffed. Indeed, Springsteen, the night after beingrnpraised publicly by Ronald Reagan in the fall of 1984, dedicatedrn”Johnny 99,” his narrative of a laid-off autoworker robbing arnliquor store, to the President. (Johnny Cash later recorded therntunc, and the circle was unbroken.)rnNorman Podhoretz, who could politicize a Little Leaguerngame, read the lyric sheet to Born in the U.S.A. and concludedrnthat “these lyrics could have been written in the 1930’s byrn32/CHRONlCLESrnrnrn