Born to Run
by Bruce Springsteen Simon & Schuster 528pp £20 The Week Bookshop £16
To his fans, Bruce Springsteen “has always been The Boss – rough, tough, democratic, straight-talking and full of confidence and joy”, said Craig Brown in The Mail on Sunday. Yet while his onstage persona is “no affectation” – during his four-hour concerts, he turns into a “master of the universe” – his life away from the spotlight could hardly have been more different. In this “unforgiving” autobiography, Springsteen depicts himself as “manically insecure”, an egoist, full of “distrust and misogyny”. A nervous child whose eyelids fluttered uncontrollably, earning him the nickname “Blinky”, Springsteen became cripplingly depressed in his 30s, just as his 1984 album, Born in the USA, was catapulting him to global fame. He has spent nearly 30 years in therapy and the past 15 on antidepressants, yet today, aged 67, he is still “dogged by black moods”. Only on stage does he feel “fully alive”. “I can’t think of a more honest or revealing memoir by any rock musician: in comparison, it makes the efforts of Patti Smith, Keith Richards and Bob Dylan seem strangely commonplace.”
“As with many successful men, Springsteen’s father is the key,” said Janice Turner in The Times. An alcoholic Second World War veteran who flitted between menial jobs, Douglas Springsteen was a “bull-like” presence in the family home in Freehold, New Jersey. Described by his son as a “misanthrope who shunned most of mankind”, he would spend his time silently smoking in the corner, “souring family life”. Yet this lack of paternal approval is what spurred the young Springsteen to succeed, and it’s “impossible” not to read his career as a “never-ending” quest to prove himself. Even Springsteen’s decidedly un-rock’n’roll puritanism – he barely drinks and has always avoided drugs – was a response to his dad’s “mournful boozing”.
Springsteen has always been a more complicated figure than many have assumed, said Victoria Segal in The Sunday Times. Despite his “stars-and-stripes success”, he and the American Dream are “not natural allies”. Ronald Reagan failed to realise that Born in the USA wasn’t a patriot’s hymn but a “bitter requiem for neglected Vietnam veterans”. In Born to Run, Springsteen finally opens up about who he really is – and the result, though sentimental and overwrought in places, is also “funny”, “wise” and “evocative”. “For a man with an image to maintain, it is noble to show so much.”