The Boss rattles every skeleton in his closet
MAYBE the E Street Band loves Bruce Springsteen’s unpredictability on stage, maybe not.
One thing is guaranteed. When The Boss performs, the written plan distributed to band members before they take the stage goes out the window and there is nothing left in the tank when the concert finally ends.
He’s given his all. Fans who packed the Brisbane Entertainment Centre for his 2014 rock’n’roll performance will remember moments when guitarist Steven Van Zandt appeared to be urging him to slow down, take it easy.
That full-throttle headlong rush to entertain, to explain, to reveal and to drag everyone to the mirror to contemplate where we’ve come from and where we’re headed is the case with this memoir, already hailed as the 508-page equivalent of one of those four-hour concerts.
Springsteen’s Born To Run autobiography, the title taken from his most famous song (written four decades ago) and breakthrough album, gives more than just a revealing glimpse of the skeletons in the Springsteen closet. It drags the reader right in there with them.
Much of it revolves around Springsteen’s relationship with his troubled father, Doug, a brooding man who loved his son but also couldn’t stand him, and a loving mother from a well-to-do background who gave it all up to be with her unhappy man.
If you’re keen, there is an accompanying 18-song CD put out separately by Columbia that tracks his life and career. Titled Chapter And Verse, it begins with the raw rock sound of Springsteen’s early days with The Castiles.
It then progresses, as you race through the book’s chapters, to the songs that have set this rock musician apart: 4th of July leads into Born To Run, then Badlands, The River and Father’s House – a bleak piece (“I walked up the steps and stood on the porch, A woman I didn’t recognise came and spoke to me through a chained door, I told her my story and who I’d come for, She said ‘I’m sorry son but no one by that name lives here anymore’), before the album explodes into the anthem Born In The USA.
The book and CD then roll toward the deep and meaningful Wrecking Ball, which he describes as “a shot of anger at the injustice’’ – post-GFC and the damage caused by Wall Street – that has just kept on rolling at the expense of hardworking ordinary people.
Around the time of Wrecking Ball and its tour, Springsteen was dealing with another wrecking ball in his life: his own depression.
Springsteen talks throughout the memoir of his family’s history of mental illness – a cousin here, an aunt there, his dad, and his struggles that he fought through with work, touring, an obsession with physical fitness or riding flat out on a motorbike.
In a chapter titled Zero to Sixty in Nothing Flat, Springsteen tells how depression came knocking hard at his door and almost destroyed him after he turned 60.
Springsteen spent seven years writing the book. The genesis was the band’s performance at the 2009 Super Bowl, which he wanted to write about. The story just grew from there.