Legendary US rocker Bruce Springsteen wowed a crowd of 80,000 with a rousing set at a rally for Democrat Barack Obama here Sunday on the White House campaign s final stretch.
Obama took the stage with his wife Michelle and two young daughters when Springsteen was done, and said there were a handful of people who enter into your lives through their music and tell the American people s story.
Bruce Springsteen is one of those people, he said, before a heavy rainstorm erupted on the open-air crowd said by Cleveland s director of public safety to number 80,000.
Springsteen led the sea of people in a full-throated sing-along of Woody Guthrie s folk classic This Land is Your Land.
Many in the crowd were in tears as the musician wrapped it up with his song The Rising, which refers to the September 11 attacks and is played just before Obama takes the stage at all his rallies.
So I don t know about you, but I want my country back, I want my dream back, I want my America back, Springsteen exclaimed to deafening cheers.
He said that it was time to join with Obama, roll up our sleeves and come on up for the rising.
Our social contract has been shredded. We re going to need all the angels we can get, he said, praising Senator Obama s efforts to build a house big enough for all our dreams.
Renowned for his gritty parables of American working-class life, Springsteen objected bitterly to Republican president Ronald Reagan s use of his anthem Born in the USA at 1980s campaign rallies.
The song is actually an angry denunciation of society s treatment of returning Vietnam War veterans.
Springsteen, and Obama, will be hoping that their Ohio gig portends a better outcome than befell the Democrats 2004 nominee, John Kerry.
Springsteen performed before monster crowds on the campaign trail four years ago, ending with an election-eve rally with Kerry in Cleveland. The Massachusetts senator, however, lost the election to President George W. Bush. -AFP
