At age 60 Bob Pressner, a young rocker who played in “all the clubs” of New York but never managed to succeed, recorded a song in a closet of his house and two years later, his premonitory “American Dream” has arrived To the top positions of three Billboard charts.
In a telephone interview with Efe, Pressner, a 62-year-old resident of Delray Beach, Fla., Says he was clear when he composed that song that “something had happened to the American dream.”
She had come to that conclusion after traveling around the country and noticing that life “was going backwards”, but she decided to do it when in a telephone conversation with her daughter she told him how difficult it was to get ahead.
As he explained, he told the friend who was with him in his house at that time that they had to write a song that titled “American Dream” and recorded in his closet for acoustic reasons.
It was ten fleeting minutes of writing and twenty of the recording that remained there, kept in the closet, until the presidential race of 2016, with the anger between both sides and the media spectacle in which his country had become, made him see that All that was in the lyrics of that improvised theme.
Coinciding with the day of President Donald Trump’s inauguration, on January 20, Pressner published the song along with a video showing the riots between supporters and detractors of the new president.
More than 12 million hits on YouTube and comments coming from around the world later, the song came two weeks ago to the Billboard Rock Songs chart at number 12 and last week climbed to number 10 ahead of bands like Gorillaz.
“A few weeks ago they called me from Billboard and they told me that everyone was talking about me, that he was one of the most talked about artists of the moment, but they could not find me and they did not know who he was,” Pressner said.
In total, there are already three Billboard charts on which it has been pasted. In addition to the success in Rock Songs, “American Dream” was a week in ninth place in Rock Streaming Songs and, although it has fallen from both, in the last update of May 20 debuted in the sixth position of Hot Singles Sales.
The singer-songwriter confessed “surprised and honored” to reach those positions while acknowledging that it is “ironic” that he now live his own American dream when precisely in his song questions that ideal.
But at the same time he insisted that his subject goes further; Its lyrics contain verses like “Every day is a new showdown / welcome to the Roman Empire”.
Pressner said that “on both sides” of the fight there is fury and he does not think that is a “problem of Democrats or Republicans,” but that politicians only “raise money to do the best for their parties.”
He, who during the conversation was described as a “messenger”, affirmed that the song speaks of “oneness”.
“What I want is for us to forget our individual interests for the people’s interests, and maybe that’s how we get somewhere,” he said.
Although on YouTube his song recorded twice as negative as positive ratings (18,000 by 9,000), the artist said that what he intended to convey is the need to “think together” before so many crises and to leave aside “so much hatred” .
At the time, he said the song is not “anti-nobody” and that Trump, the Clintons, Obama and George W. Bush have been “remarkable” in their own way.
However, he was especially critical of the economic powers he knows about his internship as a stockbroker at the World Trade Center, a job he left in 1993 after the first bombing of the Twin Towers with a truck bomb.
He moved to South Florida, where he started a quieter life with his guitar as a company.
Before all this he claimed to have personally learned from Allen Ginsberg, one of the referents of the beat generation and author of the collection of poems “Howl”, from which he collected the usual teaching can learn more.
“The first time I met him, he was watching my work and all he said was ‘nonsense, nonsense, nonsense,'” he joked as he acknowledged that it still helps him try to be “the best Bob Pressner” he may be after many Years in which it tried to be any other star.
Angus Young, Billy Idol, Eddie Van Halen and Elvis Costello are some of the musicians with the shared generation Pressner, to which fame has knocked on the door late, with eight albums released and hundreds of songs composed.
He recently recorded a TV concert at XFINITY Sessions and sold all private concert tickets in Tampa and Sarasota (Florida).
His next goal is to fulfill the dream of turning “around the United States and the world” and, after that, to compose more “meaningful” songs in a world where he believes the charts are full of “meaningless” .
