Then, one day, he read a melodramatic, maudlin John Steinbeck book and listened to some wailing Woody Guthrie albums, and all of a sudden, he's a sensitive Okie (from Jersey?) downtrodden leftist, just crawled out of the dustbowl to bash capitalism.
Suddenly, he's the toast of the New York Times! He's NPR's favorite poet. He's the "everyman intellectual!"
Which is really a hoot - since the "intellectual" half is a high school dropout, and the "everyman" half has lived the pampered life of a millionaire rock star since Richard Nixon was president.
Although Bruce has always written protest music, I think he maybe seeking attention.
He has written some beautiful sound scores.
But he has made it difficult to forgive him.
But he's just embarassing when he turns on the Everyman crap. When rock singers discover one book, they think it's the only book, and they are so in love with the revelation they get from it, they seem to not want to read much that doesn't agree with that "road to Damascus" moment.
True thinkers read widely, and deeply, and aren't afraid of having their initial impressions ruined, which is ignorant, but common.