THE RISING (Columbia) – Bruce Springsteen and the E-Street Band.

There was a time, in the not so distant past, when musicians refused to attach their songs to commercials. It would spoil the artistry, the message connected to melody, if they were used to pitch products.

In no way were they going to sell out, the songwriters would say. They couldn’t be paid enough.

These days, it’s commonplace to find popular music, even the oldies but goodies, selling everything and anything, from cars to salad dressing to patriotism. Madison Avenue has successfully enticed artists with the almighty dollar – make as many bucks as you can while you can. After all, everything should have a theme song, why shouldn’t it be yours?

This is the same advertising machine that unscrupulously is promoting Bruce Springsteen’s latest, “The Rising,” his first album with a reunited E-Street Band since 1986. The marketing of this 15-song compilation has been relentless. The Boss, the all-American artist who for three decades has captured the all-American experience, is back to ease the pain we all felt, on whatever level of severity, from the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

But Sept. 11 shouldn’t have a theme song or even an album full of them. It doesn’t need another hero, this time in the form of a simple musician promoted as the redeemer, the savior.

Springteen’s been put up as the healer, the counselor whose soothing words will erase some but not all of the hurt. And who can blame him? After all, he was the one most of us wanted to see during the Super Bowl’s patriotic halftime show, not Bono. The arrogance, we said, of an Irishman to flash the American flag sewn into his leather jacket during America’s ultimate football game.

What we seek from Springsteen is to be thrown back to a day, any day, between 1972, when his first album was released, and Sept. 10. We want a time when staying closer to home was not as important as hitting the roads because, by gosh, “Baby, we were born to run.”

For years, Springsteen’s been telling us that in the last couple of decades we’ve become insensitive to the human condition. Materialism lately has meant more than memories, he’d say, and what truly matters are the simple, physical gestures that define humanity. Fingers to fingers, lips to lips – the instruments of a human touch.

The promotion of “The Rising” contradicts the litany Springsteen faithful have come to appreciate. To fully respect the musician’s intentions of artistically capturing a snapshot of this tragic period in America’s history, you need to forget that Springsteen too has fallen victim to commercialism. Unknowingly? Probably not. But give him some leeway, this time anyway. After all, it’s The Boss.

“The Rising” is filled, perhaps a song or two too much, with the gut-wrenching aches that envelop a heart when the home is emptied by the loss of a loved one. It’s not the appearance of material things, such as a television or automobile, that evoke such excruciating pain in the one left behind. But it’s the empty half of the bed, the absence of a kiss – the treasured exchange only a lover can give in just the right way.

At times, “The Rising” brings us back to pre-Sept. 11 and the refreshing sounds of Bruce and the E-Street Band. “Mary’s Place” is similar in composition to “Hungry Heart,” so upbeat that it’s okay to dance while remembering what it was like to have a partner to dance with.

And “Let’s Be Friends (Skin to Skin)” has a beat reminiscent of John Mellencamp’s “Cherry Bomb,” offering a slinky sort of shuffle into the whimsical. Be carefree and explore the core of human existence with skin to skin, Springsteen urges. After all, “Don’t know when this chance might come again/Good times have a way of coming to an end.”

Sept. 11 took away those good times for thousands of people, those who lost their loves in such an unconscionable way that even Springsteen cannot truly reflect their agony no matter how many songs with variations of the same pain are written. He can bring them and the rest of the nation only a friendly face and a familiar band with a soothing sound that touches their spirit like a comforting hand on a shoulder.

Madison Avenue should have recognized prior to “The Rising’s” release that Bruce Springsteen and the E-Street Band are friends. What the promoters were making them out to be were unwelcome, overbearing neighbors.