Bruce Springsteen
Bruce Springsteen may seem to have it all, but his autobiography reveals his struggle with depression.
The posturing and perception of rock stardom are built around a devilmay-care outsider image cultivated by more than half a century of music as an industry.
And few have bought into the idolatry quite as successfully as the Boss, the blue-collared, muscle-pumped New Jersey greaser who tamed the multi-headed beast of the E Street Band and carried it to arena-packing, world-touring super-fame.
But behind the Boss is Bruce Springsteen, and just as Born in the USA was so misunderstood by the mainstream as to be branded a “message of hope” by an electioneering Ronald Reagan, so Springsteen has been often misinterpreted as a painted-by-numbers working-class hero.
In his autobiography, Born to Run, Springsteen mixes the honesty that comes from a career-long perspective with sprinklings of the showbiz performer whom millions of fans still recognise from his live shows to close the gap between the Boss’ cartoon superhero character and a 67-year-old who’s been on antidepressants for more than a decade.
The tension between these extremes is artfully relaxed by candid descriptions of a hard-scrabble upbringing and his father’s mental health problems; sincere portraits of band and family members, friends and industry insiders; and a narrative that rocks and rolls through teen drug-and-drink misadventures, epic road trips and A-list parties with the likes of Bob Dylan and Frank Sinatra.
Holding the work together is the understanding that this memoir has been seven years in the making, written at a time when “mentally, just when I thought I was in the part of my life where I’m supposed to be cruising, my sixties were a rough, rough ride”, and reliant on 25 years’ therapy with New York shrink Wayne Myers. He describes his “ego, hunger, desire and a righteous sense of musical power to let a life’s work slip in the respectful annals of rock history” as the reasons for his Rock and Roll Hall of Fame reunion with the E Street Band, and why he’s able to see his life in terms of Greek myth: “As Sisyphus can count on the rock, I can always count on the road, the music and the miles for whatever ails.”
It may also be behind his peculiar writing style, which ricochets between manic caps-lock immediacy and drawn-out elegiac reflection, and repeatedly breaks the fourth wall to talk directly to the reader.
It’s clear what’s behind the Boss’ persona. He talks of having “crafted a benevolent dictatorship” in putting together his band and of “needing disciples”, rather than businessmen, when it came to choosing management. But such control was necessary, he writes, to make him “feel secure, safe and prepared to do my job in the pop wilderness”.
Born to Run stands out in the packed shelves of rock/pop memoirs as being able to successfully reveal the individual’s frailties while giving an inside glimpse of showbiz-land.
“Just when I thought I was in the part of my life where I’m supposed to be cruising, my sixties were a rough, rough ride.”