BORN TO RUN
The Boss opens up about his anxious past and fear of crowds in his autobiography,
Here’s the Bruce Springsteen we know: American rock superstar “The Boss,” a blue-collar balladeer and highway poet whose engine rolls ever on, still performing ecstatic marathon concerts late into his 60s.
Here’s the Bruce Springsteen he knows: an anxious kid called “Blinky,” bullied by kids at school and a scornful dad at home, who grew up doubting his talent and fearing large crowds, and who has relied on antidepressants since his early 50s.
The latter figure emerges bit by bit from Born to Run, the warmly confessional autobiography Springsteen has been writing longhand for the past seven years. He was moved to do so by one of those giant stadium gigs — the 2009 Super Bowl halftime show — that he claims to do to please fans, not himself.
This vulnerable version of Springsteen isn’t a complete unknown to fans. Excavations of fist-raising anthems like “Thunder Road,” “Hungry Heart,” “Jungleland” and — of course — “Born to Run” have long revealed an artist sensitive enough to admit to loneliness and heartbreak even while racing his souped-up Chevy “out on the streets of a runaway American dream.”
More than 20 years ago, in the pages of Rolling Stone, Springsteen acknowledged seeing a psychiatrist to deal with the mega-fame that began to tweak at his ingrained Irish Catholic sense of guilt sometime after the colossal success of 1984’s Born in the U.S.A. album and world tour. Those fan cheers of “Bruuuuce!” can sound like boos if heard the wrong way.
But page after page of this generous memoir really brings home the psychic burdens young Bruce endured growing up in his hard-scrabble hometown of Freehold, New Jersey. It was a place of contrasts where he feared the anger of his beer-guzzling dad even as Bruce and his two younger sisters danced to the pop music played on their loving mom’s transistor radio.
He was an acne-scarred introvert hectored for his long hair, who discovered that he could attract girls if he danced with them. Like many musicians of his generation, he got a guitar and got serious about music after seeing first Elvis and then the Beatles on The Ed Sullivan Show.
A movie or TV miniseries awaits Springsteen’s fond memories of his early rock ’n’ roll days, playing with guys called Tinker, Mad Dog and Gopher in bands with names like Steel Mill and the Castiles (named after a shampoo). Although he had his folkie side (he worshipped Dylan), then as now, he was at heart a dedicated pub rocker — and a straight-edged one, at that. He avoided alcohol and swore off all hard drugs. He ignored hippies and their Woodstock happening, an event he considered “a weekend like any other.”
He doesn’t officially convene his legendary E Street Band until about halfway through this 508-page tome, around the time he gets to discussing Born to Run, the1975 album that took him to rock’s big leagues, although admitted “control freak” Bruce was so scornful of it he threw his test copy into a hotel swimming pool and considered not releasing it.
The book is light on dirt and dish that could anchor a headline, but it’s loaded with revealing anecdotes. Such as how Bruce naively thought that Courteney Cox, the girl he plucks from the audience to dance onstage with him in his 1984 video for “Dancing in the Dark,” was just a regular Springsteen fan. He learned much later than she was an actress hired for the gig by director Brian De Palma.
Lest you get from Springsteen’s fevered pen the feeling that he doesn’t fully appreciate his talent and abundant blessings — including a long marriage and family life with backup singer Patti Scialfa — Bruce takes care to remove all doubt that he loves the life he chose, even if it came with a few demons.
“Friend, there’s a reason they don’t call it ‘working,’ it’s called PLAYING! . . . It’s a life-giving, joyful, sweatdrenched, muscle-aching, voiceblowing, mind-clearing, exhausting, soul-invigorating, cathartic pleasure and privilege every night. You can sing about your misery, the world’s misery, your most devastating experiences, but there is something in the gathering of souls that blows the blues away.”
Any true rock fan would answer back: Amen to that, Bruce!