Bruce Springsteen saved my life.
OK, I'm exaggerating.
A little.
It was the mid-70s. My mother had died a few years earlier and I lived with my Dad. I was just out of high school and aimless, drifting and unsure of what to do next. I buried myself in pop culture – music, television and "One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest."
Music was mostly a morass. The Beatles broke up the same week my mother died, the significance of which is not lost on me. Both left a void of differing degrees.
While listening to Santana, Chicago and Jethro Tull out of necessity instead of choice, I noticed an ad in Crawdaddy Magazine that contained the quote, "I have seen the future of rock and roll and its name is Bruce Springsteen.”
This had me heading out to Joe Nardone’s Gallery of Sound in my ’74 Torino very quickly on a last-chance power drive. Even though there were two Springsteen albums available, I only bought the one mentioned in the ad: “The Wild, the Innocent, and the E Street Shuffle.” $4.99 was a lot of money in those days. But the return on that small investment was, in the end, incalculable.
I still remember putting the album on for the first time in my darkened bedroom. The first side was good, if certainly different from “Thick as a Brick.”
But the second side was positively epochal: Fusing the visionary romance of the New York City streets with the sounds of girl groups, Jay and the Americans and frat rock, and ending with an ode to a singing junkman, this was the music I was searching for. To this day, I still get goosebumps listening to it (apologies to critic Steve Simels).
And I listened even more closely to his subsequent work. In his vast catalog, I heard freedom, the importance of having dreams and working hard to achieve them, the significance of finding joy in the smallest and seemingly trivial things and places, and the promise of redemption.
OK, I'm exaggerating.
A little.
It was the mid-70s. My mother had died a few years earlier and I lived with my Dad. I was just out of high school and aimless, drifting and unsure of what to do next. I buried myself in pop culture – music, television and "One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest."
Music was mostly a morass. The Beatles broke up the same week my mother died, the significance of which is not lost on me. Both left a void of differing degrees.
While listening to Santana, Chicago and Jethro Tull out of necessity instead of choice, I noticed an ad in Crawdaddy Magazine that contained the quote, "I have seen the future of rock and roll and its name is Bruce Springsteen.”
This had me heading out to Joe Nardone’s Gallery of Sound in my ’74 Torino very quickly on a last-chance power drive. Even though there were two Springsteen albums available, I only bought the one mentioned in the ad: “The Wild, the Innocent, and the E Street Shuffle.” $4.99 was a lot of money in those days. But the return on that small investment was, in the end, incalculable.
I still remember putting the album on for the first time in my darkened bedroom. The first side was good, if certainly different from “Thick as a Brick.”
But the second side was positively epochal: Fusing the visionary romance of the New York City streets with the sounds of girl groups, Jay and the Americans and frat rock, and ending with an ode to a singing junkman, this was the music I was searching for. To this day, I still get goosebumps listening to it (apologies to critic Steve Simels).
And I listened even more closely to his subsequent work. In his vast catalog, I heard freedom, the importance of having dreams and working hard to achieve them, the significance of finding joy in the smallest and seemingly trivial things and places, and the promise of redemption.
But Springsteen opened other doors too. When I was growing up, I mostly dismissed the founding fathers of rock and roll with the derisive (to me) term “oldies.” Guys like Little Richard, Chuck Berry and Buddy Holly were his heroes, and when Springsteen closed with Elvis’s “Wear My Ring Around Your Neck” the first time I saw him at Penn State, all the walls came crashing down. Hey, not only were these songs and artists important to Bruce, but they were great too. His influences became my education.
And as I’ve gotten older, Bruce’s music has followed me. I can't really say that about anyone else. “Tunnel of Love,” “The Rising” and “Magic” remain as prime and essential examples of adult rock and roll. And I mean that in the most positive way possible.
Springsteen and me: Thirty-five years and still burnin’ down the road and still teaching (and learning) life lessons along the way.
The Boss turned 60 years old this week.
So, happy birthday to Bruce Springsteen, always the coolest guy in the room.
* image of Bruce Springsteen by C. F. Payne
* image of Bruce Springsteen by C. F. Payne
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