Born to Run by Bruce Springsteen
(Simon & Shuster, 2016)
A review by Bill Kelly
billkelly3@gmail.com
Bruce Springsteen’s autobiography Born
to Run is on the streets.
I didn't stand in line with the
other 4,000 fans to get an autographed copy, a selfie and thirty seconds to
shake hands and exchange words with the Boss, but if I did I would have told
Bruce to get an index, as every serious work of non-fiction should have one.
I wanted to read Springsteen's book for
a number of reasons - to see who his ghost writer is, to hear what he has to
say about a few particular people, to see if there were any key South Jersey
connections and to find any personal associations between my life and his, as we both
grew up Jersey Shore Guys at the same time.
But without an index as a search
guide I couldn't "research," cut to the chase, cheat or read the
Cliff Notes, and would just have to buckle down in the front seat, riding
shotgun on the passenger side, and read it, all 510 pages with color photo
supplement.
I also wanted to know if this was to
be like a Billie Holiday or Howard Hughes imaginative autobio or more like
Dylan's (Volume 1), that actually answers some questions and at least tries to
get to the heart of things, which in this case cuts close to home.
I didn't have to look far for a
South Jersey connection - there on the front cover is Frank Stefano's 1978 black
and white photo of Bruce in front of Stefano's Haddonfield home, leaning
against his $6,000 1964 Corvette convertible, as if waiting for you to take
that long walk from the front porch to his front seat - let the screen door
slam, and the trip begin.
As Bruce explains it he met Frank
Stefano through Patti Smith, another South Jersey connection, and they're both
in the book.
But like Dylan's auto bio it isn't
always who you mention but who you leave out, and a few prominent names go
unmentioned – like for instance President Obama and Governor Chris Christie,
both big fans on opposite ends of the political spectrum. Bruce backed Obama
for President, campaigned for him and sang at his inaugural, but like Sinatra
and JFK, they apparently had a falling out. It was the other way around with
Christie, who gets first row seats to Bruce concerts, but was snubbed by the boss
until after hurricane Sandy, when Christie moved beyond party politics and
gained Bruce's admiration, however temporary. Both understandable snuffs.
If Dylan is the conscience of our
generation, then Bruce is the spirit, and both are the only living contenders
to Walt Whitman's title of America's unofficial Poet Laureate. And there's an
affinity between them that's quite evident, and there paths would cross down the
road a number of times, most notably when Bruce introduced Bob to the Rock and
Roll Hall of Fame. But they also were at Sinatra’s funeral together and met a
number of times privately and Bob probably edges out Bruce on influence and
seniority.
The answer to the first question is
the Ghost Writer is Bruce himself, and it isn't hard to imagine the person who
penned "Blinded by the Light," “Thunder Road,” "Born to
Run" and "Spirits in the Night" could write a complete sentence and
put the story into words and paragraphs instead of rhymes and rhythms.
“Madman, drummers, bummers, Indians
in the summer, with a teenage diplomat…- The screen door slams. Mary’s dress
waves like a vision she dances across the porch…- In the day we sweat it out on
the streets of a runaway American dream. At night we ride through the mansions
of glory in suicide machines. Sprung from cages on highway nine, chrome
wheeled, fuel injected, and steppin’ out over the line…- Crazy Janey and her
mission man were back in the alley traden’ hands, ‘long came Wild Billy with
his friend G-Man all duded up for Saturday night. Well, Billy slammed on his
coaster breaks and said, ‘Anybody wanna go up to Greasy Lake? It’s about a mile
on the dark side of Route 88 I got a bottle of rose so let’s try it….”
They’re well baited hooks that grab
you and the take you for a ride that feels like magic.
But it isn't reassuring to read his
opening line of his book - "I come from a boardwalk town where almost
everything is tinged with a bit of fraud. So am I a member in good standing
amongst those who 'lie' in the service of truth...But I had four aces in youth,
a decade of bar band experience, a good group of homegrown musicians attuned to
my performance style, and a story to tell."
And a story to tell it is indeed,
but only one we've heard through his songs and music, and by others, not from
the man himself, and he warns us from the get go that he’s a bit of a fraud and
will ‘lie’ in the service of truth, so hold on to your hats and keep your elbows
in the window.
As one fan told him, after hours in
line, he got his 30 seconds with the Boss and said, - "You know Bruce, if
this book thing doesn't work out you can always write songs."
And for the millions of Bruce fans
who grew up with him, it's time to jump into his skin and rewind the ride from
the front porch, - beginning with the typical family problems everyone
experiences, skipping high school graduation to go to the Village, getting
evicted from Freehold, Greetings from Asbury Park when it was still the pits, back
and forth up and down E-Street a few times, on to world tours and the Rock
& Roll Hall of Fame up to now. And the rides not over yet.
You don't have to read it from
beginning to end but can pick it up anywhere you are interested and it will
still make sense - it is in chronological order, until the end, when he regurgitates
some of the early feelings that were hard to express early on, such as how he
found his voice, realized it wasn’t so hot, and knew he had to overcome that
with other finer attributes, like spirit, style and a little magic.
The book is written in a bare bones
Hemingwayesque prose much like the parting note - in case you didn't know -
"About the Author: Bruce Springsteen has been inducted into the Rock &
Roll Hall of Fame, and the New Jersey Hall of Fame. He is the recipient of
twenty Grammy Awards, an Academy Award, and the Kennedy Center Honors. He lives
in New Jersey with his family. For more information go to www.brucespringsteen.net."
Just as a local newspaper columnist
complained about Springsteen fever, - he just didn't get it, you have to
understand the music to appreciate it, or appreciate it to understand it – as they
go hand in hand.
Bruce is well known as a Jersey Guy,
but like Frank (Sinatra) and Jack (Nicholson) and Joe (Piscopo), they are NORTH
Jersey Guys - with closer affinities to New York and are Giants, Devils and Mets
fans, rather than the South Jersey connection to Philly and Philadelphia
Eagles, Flyers and Phillies fans. There is a difference, and I know of only a
few occasions when Bruce ventured down and performed south of Toms River. He
did it early in his career at the Earlton Lounge bowling alley in Cherry Hill
and the Satellite Lounge in Wrightstown, both of which get a mentioned in the
book.
The Satellite gets a whole chapter because the gig was the first for a
new drummer, and the owner threatened to kill Bruce if he reneged on his contract
and didn't play, but would love him if he did. Greg Gregory of Somers Point was
a Temple student and bartender at the Satellite and recalls charging Bruce a
dollar for a beer.
Early in his career Bruce also
played Ocean and Burlington Community College gigs, that put him just over the
Jersey Mason-Dixon Line.
Then there was the time in 1988 Bruce
sat in and jammed on a few songs with Jackson Browne on the makeshift stage in
the parking lot of Bally's casino in Atlantic City, the first and only time
Bruce has ever played a casino.
Then there was the 2002 Rising Tour
show at Atlantic City Boardwalk Hall, but that’s pretty much it.
Bruce is a North Jersey Guy, who
made it in New York mainly through the efforts of his agent and promoter Mike
Apple and John Hammond, Sr., who signed him to CBS Records, both of whom are
seriously dealt with in the book.
But he also acknowledges the
Delaware Valley fans were the first to really embrace him, with a tip of the
hat to David Dye (now at World Cafe WXPN) and Ed Sciaky both acknowledged.
Another local South Jersey Shore
music writer Kurt Loder of Ocean City gave a five star Rolling Stone magazine review
of Springsteen's The Rising album, and David Kamp writes a flattering cover story
profile of Bruce in Vanity Fair that refers to Bruce's suffering year-long
bouts of depression, that some attribute to his alcoholic father, who was hot
and cold with his kids and packed up and moved to California in 1969, leaving
behind 19 year old Bruce and 17 year old daughter with child.
While his Italian mother was full of
love and family, maybe it was his salt and fire Irish father who inspired Bruce
to pick up the guitar and believe he could, like the Beatles and the Stones,
make a living playing rock and roll.
As Bruce said in his R&R Hall of
Fame speech, “I’ve gotta thank him because – what would I have conceivably
written about without him? I mean, you can imagine that if everything had gone
great between us, we would have had disaster. I would have written just happy
songs – and I tried it in the early ‘90s and it didn’t work; the public didn’t
like it.”
More so were the influences of
Sinatra, the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, all of whom he would cross paths
with down the road, after his mother bought him a $60 guitar and he began to
play with local garage and bar bands.
Bouncing around for years, playing
with a series of bar bands – The Castiles, Steel Mill, Earth, Dr. Zoom & the
Sonic Boom, Sundance Blues Band, until he gets the Bruce Springsteen Band
together in 1971 and as with the evolving E-Street Band, there's no disputing
who is the boss, though they did get a big boost from Mike Apple, who signed
Bruce to contracts as an individual - not as a band, and in 1972 he got Bruce
the audition with John Hammond, Jr., the legendary CBS Records A&R man who
signed Billie Holiday, Bob Dylan and Bruce.
While Dave Marsh wrote the 1998 Born
to Run biography - you can't copyright a title - it was another music
journalist Jon Landau who wrote “I saw rock and roll future and its name is
Bruce Springsteen.” Landau then stepped in as a producer who gave Bruce the
advice and direction he needed to go even further, and his role is well
amplified in the book.
Some of the stories Bruce tells make
the book – like the time they travel onto the Indian reservation in the
Southwest, where they found Thunder Road, the time they got thrown out of
Disney Land because Steve Van Zant wouldn’t take off his bandana, how he met Patti
his second wife at the Stone Pony, how he met Sinatra through Patti’s
pedicurist, and Dylan and Jack Nicholson at Frank’s funeral.
The business end of things wasn't
his major interest and making a lot of money not a motive, but making the magic
in the performance was - and he honed his band to do it right, night after
night, and they pretty much did.
Bruce says that outside the bouts of
depression, he only felt he lost the magic a few times – first when he played
his first large scale stadium show in Ireland, then at a Madison Square Garden
show when he performed "American Skin," about the police killing of a
young black boy, to which the police benevolent association took exception, and
then while practicing for the E-Street
Band revival after 10 years hiatus.
The last time, after weeks of
practice behind closed doors in the Asbury Park Convention Hall, Bruce felt the
music was dull, uninspiring and the spirit lacking, until he opened the doors
and let the fans waiting outside in.
Suddenly he came to life, looked
into the faces of the fans who expected magic, and he reached back and found it
- just as he found it in Ireland and at the Garden, the fans provided the
missing ingredient that mad the magic - just add love.
They get it.
And for the fans, old or new, who
read this book, who get in the car with Bruce, they too will get it, and go
back, back to Greasy Lake, drink the rose wine, dance under the stars and among
the lightning bugs, fairies and the fell the magic in the spirits in the night,
the magic that Bruce has brought us over these many years, a trip that's still
unfolding, as the magic is still there, if you want it. Just get in and go for
a ride with Bruce behind the wheel.
