USATODAY.com - Springsteen, R.E.M., other big acts embark on tour

USATODAY.com - Springsteen, R.E.M., other big acts embark on tour: "When Bruce Springsteen decided to join the Dixie Chicks, the Dave Matthews Band, R.E.M., Pearl Jam and other pop superstars for MoveOn PAC's Vote For Change Tour, announced Wednesday, he realized it would be 'the closest I've gotten to partisan politics.'

In a private interview Wednesday, Springsteen said, ' I've always tried to keep an independent voice. That's been important, I think, to my audience. I've got 25 years of credibility built up, and this isn't something I've moved into lightly. I fought long and hard about it. But this is the one where you break the rules, where you spend some of that credibility. It's an emergency intervention. We need to get an administration that is more attentive to the needs of all its citizens, that has a saner foreign policy, that is more attentive to environmental concerns, in the White House.'

Springsteen's sentiments are echoed by many of the artists who will take part in the historic concert series, which MoveOn PAC - a sister organization of MoveOn.org, which has seldom been known to pull punches where the Bush administration is concerned - has organized to benefit another partisan political action commission, America Coming Together. (Related story: Read more details about the tour)

The organizations and the musicians they have rallied are not being coy about their agenda. Between Oct. 1 and Oct. 8, Vote For Change will bring various groupings of name acts - also including John Mellencamp, James Taylor, Jackson Browne, Bonnie Raitt, Kenneth 'Babyface' Edmonds - to swing states where they hope to influence undecided voters."


By Elysa Gardner
USA TODAY


I felt like I couldn't have written the music I've written, and been on stage singing about the things that I've sung about for the last twenty five years and not take part in this particular election.