Everybody reaches a place in life where all your old answers and your old ways of doing things sort of run out on you,” Bruce Springsteen told the sold-out crowd early in his two-and-a-half hour solo concert at the Ryman Auditorium on Dec. 12. He was introducing a song, “Straight Time,” but he could just as well have been addressing the artistic dilemma he’s faced since Born in the USA pushed him from a respected rock star to an omnipresent media icon.

Few stars recover their balance after hitting such dizzying heights. From Elvis to Dylan to the Beatles to Michael Jackson to Nirvana, we intoxicate our heroes with adoration, only to withdraw from them when they spin out of control, high on the impossible magnitude of their fame. It’s hard to say what tips the balance most: our inability to accept their flaws, or their inability to recognize them.

When Springsteen described “Straight Time” as being “about a guy trying to learn how to be new,” he could have been talking about his own career over the last decade. To his credit, he has resisted the temptation to reform the outstanding E Street Band, record an album, and cash in on a Stones-style stadium tour. Instead, he’s opted to let his glory days remain glorious memories; he’s continued to write about what’s on his mind and to present it in a way that fits the mood of the material.

Early in Springsteen’s career, these concerns included escaping the limits imposed by a working-class upbringing in the industrial Northeast. As he explained in his introduction to “Across the Border,” he didn’t have a lot of culture growing up; his family was “too busy staying above water.” But when his father turned on the kitchen radio in the morning, and the great three-minute rock and soul tunes of the ’60s blared out, he was transported somewhere else. “After a while, I started thinking I was hearing a secret message,” Springsteen explained. “It was telling me, ‘There’s a party goin’ on, and you’re missing it.’ ”

So he bought a guitar, learned how to make it talk, and pulled out of Jersey to become a rock ’n’ roller. He did, too, with blustery soul-rock tunes that were as big and as dynamic as his ambitions, and with a knack for street-corner poetry that illuminated the dreams of poor kids and self-styled tramps everywhere. After 1984’s Born in the USA, though, he had nowhere else to run. He had fame, fortune, even respect. But he also recognized that the last of these would be the most difficult to hold onto.

Springsteen built his reputation on songs of celebration and release, on lyrics of longing and romance, on the roar of an engine and the excitable pulse of a dreamer’s heart. But those were the songs of a young man. As Springsteen aged, and as he realized his dream, he began to reflect on those he left behind, the people who weren’t able to escape. These reflections have most recently culminated in The Ghost of Tom Joad album and tour. Except for a couple of hilariously profane songs thrown in for relief, the Ryman concert concentrated on Springsteen’s two current obsessions: terse story-songs illustrating the dilemmas binding America’s modern underclass, and catchier songs about the restorative strength that comes from being in a good relationship.

As an album, Tom Joad is relentlessly dour. Springsteen’s previous acoustic album, 1982’s Nebraska, alleviated its sparse setting with driving acoustic rhythms, but on Tom Joad, it’s as if he doesn’t want listeners to be distracted by the tapping of their own feet. The arrangements move slowly; the faint acoustic picking is nearly tuneless. Springsteen’s hoarse voice has a natural drama to it, but he whispers most of his stories with a quietness that sounds humbled rather than intimate; it’s as if he’s trying to erase as much of his personality as possible. The songs are sharply drawn and emotionally affecting, but the even tone of the album de-emphasizes the inherent drama of the lyrics.

In performance, however, these songs crystallized, uplifted by Springsteen’s charisma and gift for drama. At one point in the show, he played four songs from The Ghost of Tom Joad that explore life on the U.S.-Mexican border and the undocumented population living in America. As the album indicates, Springsteen updates John Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath for the ’90s; the difference is that he’s singing about Mexicans and Asians instead of Okies and Arkies. On “Sinaloa Cowboys,” “The Line,” “Balboa Park,” and “Across the Border,” he employs a journalistic approach to provide a sympathetic, multidimensional portrayal of a complex issue—one that’s much more complex than the political rhetoric currently ripping apart California’s social seams.

Older songs, though often just as dark in tone, offered fiery musical relief. Springsteen gave “Darkness at the Edge of Town” a gypsy flare, and he played “Johnny 99” straight and fierce. His wife, vocalist Patti Scialfa, and fiddler Soosie Tyrell joined him for stately versions of “Mansion on the Hill” and a particularly beautiful “Two Hearts (Are Better Than One).” “Born in the USA” opened with a violent workout on slide guitar that lasted for more than two minutes; Springsteen all but skipped the choruses, avoiding the sing-along portion to concentrate on the bitter message of the verses.

For all his gravity, though, Springsteen appeared unusually buoyant throughout the night. He cackled with maniacal laughter during many of his stories, and the songs that those in attendance likely went home discussing weren’t about politics or immigration—they were about oral sex.

After comically suggesting that it might be time to send the kids to “the pee-pee room,” Springsteen introduced “Pilgrim in the Temple of Love,” which resembled a John Prine song both in its structure and in its tongue-in-cheek humor. The song begins with the singer arriving in the parking lot of a strip club, where he finds Santa Claus getting pleasantly devoured in the backseat of an old Mazda. Later, Springsteen steps inside the bar, where Santa soon joins him, singing from a barstool, “On Donner, on Prancer, on Comet, on Blitzen, I’m lost in the valley of the supervixen.”

Springsteen then turned the tables (or the genders, as the case may be) in his introduction to “Red Headed Woman.” “I want to move along to another great song about a great subject, cunnilingus,” he announced. He let the crowd’s shock of uproarious laughter die down before adding, in a voice that resembled W.C. Fields, “I’m kind of out on this tour promoting cunnilingus—yeah, it’s one of the jobs I’ve taken on for myself.” He offered his theory that if Bob Dole had added it to his agenda alongside the 15 percent tax cut, he could have closed the gender gap and won the election. Alas, he added, Clinton is probably the only president in the last 20 years anyone could even imagine practicing the act. He then explained that it’s “not as easy as it looks: It takes dedication, attention to craft, good cheer, and you have to go in there with a good attitude.” Then, before starting the song, he added, “Please try this at home.”

The bit, which came less than an hour into the show, was as hilarious as it was unexpected, and the Ryman exploded with laughter in ways the building probably hadn’t seen since the heyday of Minnie Pearl and Rod Brasfield. Apparently, the ribald songs weren’t part of Springsteen’s tour when he first hit the road 12 months ago, and they seem to indicate that the singer is ready to move in a lighter-hearted direction. It’s hard to imagine the old Boss, as rambunctious and energized as he was, talking so openly and graphically about sex. As he approaches 50, it seems like the new Boss has found some answers that have nothing to do with his old, familiar ways.