US: Rocker Bruce Springsteen has stayed out of party politics for 25 years, but now he says the stakes are too high and he's urging fellow Americans to vote President George W Bush out of office in November.
A day after he announced he would join two dozen other stars in nine "battleground" states for a rock 'n' roll tour aimed at ousting Bush, the man known as "The Boss" explained his decision in a sharply worded editorial.
"Personally, for the last 25 years I have always stayed one step away from partisan politics," Springsteen wrote in The New York Times, noting he built a career singing about universal issues like human rights, dignity and freedom instead.
"This year, however, for many of us the stakes have risen too high to sit this election out." Republicans and Democrats both asked to use Springsteen's 1984 hit Born in the USA - a song about how unwelcoming America was to returning Vietnam veterans but often mistaken for a patriotic anthem - for use in political campaigns. Springsteen declined the requests. In June, when a promoter urged Springsteen to headline a large concert to upstage Bush's nominating convention, he insisted he would not play any events tied to the Democratic or Republican conventions. But now Springsteen is taking sides.
He says Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry and his running mate, John Edwards, "are sincerely interested in asking the right questions and working their way toward honest solutions." - (Reuters)