Rocker’s story sprints in Born to Run
Bruce Springsteen’s life is now officially an open book. The autobiography
Born to Run takes readers on a riveting ride through the everyman rock star’s deeply lived existence.
Springsteen, who scrawled his story in longhand over seven years, begins with an exquisitely detailed child’s-eye view of his 1950s working-class neighborhood. He weaves an American Land tapestry populated with his colorful Irish-Italian family. Then come the musical musings:
— Young Bruce, “on fire” after seeing Elvis on TV, quickly chafed at “stupendously boring” music lessons. “I still can’t read music to this day.”
— Once, in his early band, the Castiles, “we were beings pit on, literally,way before it was a punk badge of honor”.
— Mature Bruce worked to capitalize on his strengths while compensatingfor imperfect vocal tone.
— Among the bucket moments: realizing a “teenage daydream” while playing with Mick Jagger and Keith Richards.
Springsteen’s California phase yielded picture-perfect landscape descriptions, though readers will spend more time hanging out in — no surprise — a different state.
Gauzy, dream like photos inside the covers depict a vanished era in Asbury Park, New Jersey, the hugely symbolic seaside city of Springsteen’s formative musical years.
Readers may need to buckle up for parts of this 508-page spin. He contemplates some deeply personal topics as a way of providing context for his art.
Springsteen, 67, reveals what he wishes he’d said after the beloved Big Man was subjected to a sickening racial slur. He also shares the heart-wrenching hospital scene when Clarence Clemons drew his last breath.
Then he candidly discusses his own harrowing health battles.