I think the first Bruce Springsteen song I ever heard was “It’s Hard to Be a Saint in the City” from 1973’s “Greetings From Asbury Park, NJ.” I can’t claim any great prescience about Bruce’s stellar future; I was drawn by the album title because my nephew Josh happened to be born in Asbury Park. But I’m a sucker for a song that tells a story, and I loved that one. Somehow I missed the next album until later, “The Wild, the Innocent, & the E Street Shuffle,” but boy was I blown away by 1975’s album, “Born to Run.” I kept bugging the crap out of everybody–have you heard this guy, Bruce Springsteen? He’s GREAT! And everybody pretty much ignored me. I think I was living in the wrong place. However, my early faith has been reaffirmed millions of times over by Springsteen’s long career and many brilliant albums.
I always go back and forth between saying my favorite song of all time is Simon and Garfunkel’s “The Boxer” and Springsteen’s “Thunder Road.” I used to teach “Thunder Road” alongside Andrew Marvell’s poem “To His Coy Mistress” to college freshmen as great examples of the carpe diem theme.
I’ll never forget the excitement of driving from Tuscaloosa to Starkville for this–so many cars on the highway had “BOSS” and “SPRINGSTEEN” and “BRUUUUCE” written on the windows in white shoe polish, making strangers seem like fellow pilgrims.
Notice those tickets cost $9.50 each–you wouldn’t see that today! But as an indicator of how much I loved Bruce, you should know that my budget for buying groceries for two people at that time was SEVEN dollars a week. A WEEK. Times were hard, but Bruce was worth it.
Along about the time my mother took this photo of Debby holding up my Bruce Springsteen calendar in Mother’s apartment just outside Tuscaloosa (an apartment I’m pretty sure was wiped out in 2011’s monster tornado), my love for Bruce had a little tarnish marring its shine. I was put off by the scandal of his first marriage breaking up when paparazzi caught him nuzzling bandmate and future wife Patti Scialfa on a balcony in Rome. I still bought his music, but it wasn’t until a few years later, when I was older and wiser, that I realized while watching a video of Springsteen and Patti singing together how powerful their bond is. The expression on her face and the love in her eyes was the stuff novels–and songs–are written about. In fact, they’ve now been married for almost twenty-one years and raised three children outside the glare of publicity, so kudos to them for that.
Also: This is a totally great article (including wisdom for those who create) in Rolling Stone: an interview of Bruce by Jon Stewart. My take-away quote, about how our formative years remain with us:
I have a metaphor. I say, “Look, you’re in a car, your new selves can get in, but your old selves can’t get out.” You can bring new vision and guidance into your life, but you can’t lose or forget who you’ve been or what you’ve seen. New people can get in, but nobody can get out: The child from 1950, he doesn’t get out. The teenager, the adolescent boy, no one can get out. They are with you until the end of the ride, and you’re going to pass a certain amount of them on.”
Bruuuuuuce!
I have to say, my initial reaction reading this, and getting to the Bruce divorce part was it wasn’t that long ago and then being horrified to realize that, why yes, indeed, it WAS that long ago.
Lord.
I saw Bruce live on the Born in the USA tour–my second favorite concert of all time after Fleetwood Mac’s Tusk tour in 1980…
And Bruce played STARKVILLE? STARKVILLE???
Madness….
I know–it’s hard for me to keep up, too, when I’ve turned 35 so many times. I saw him in 1981; his divorce was in 1988.
I have a lot of affection for Starkville because I had plenty of fun visits there growing up. (Family.) Plus MSU and UA are practically neighbors. I’ll bet Humphrey’s 10,000-plus seats were filled that night–Bruce was AMAZING–as was the E Street Band. They also played Pete Maravich (to about 3000 more seats) at LSU on The River tour (though I think at that time, it was still the LSU Assembly Center). Colleges LOVED Bruce.
I just always think of Starkville as wretched. Maybe I am mixing it up with Hattiesburg.
I’ve only driven through Hattiesburg, though I’ve always wondered about it.
I think the places we’ve been are only as inviting as our memories of them.
Hattiesburg is wretched.
Think Beaumont without the charm.
But it’s such a beautiful name! Only…I’m never sure why anything near the coast has words like “mont, mount, mountain, valley, ridge, canyon, hill, crest, cliff, plateau, or bluff” in its name. But I see it all the time.
Also–to put the times in perspective–I saw that Tusk tour in 1980 in Birmingham, but only a few years earlier, Buckingham Nicks played to about 500 people in Morgan Auditorium in Tuscaloosa. Crazy, huh?
I saw the Go-Go’s play at a BAR a week before Beauty and the Beat came out.
I think back to how many concerts I went to between 1975 and 1988 and it floors me.
I know! And now I’m all, Too loud!
That’s what I blame my hearing loss on!
Bruce owes us. I’d like a red pickup for me and an iPad for Tom, please, Mr. Springsteen.
I can honestly say that Springsteen is one of the few recording stars that I have bought every album he released. He’s not getting old, he’s getting better.
I never would have pegged you for a Springsteen fan. Rock on!
I had won a sunkist t-shirt once, via the soda machine. It was quite a surprise! (Although I shouldn’t have been buying that in the first place since the food coloring makes me hyper, but that’s another story.) Sometime later in High School, a past friend and I were at the Marine Corps base’s exchange (I was still and Army brat then) and “won” two t-shirts from a machine that had Marine Corps stuff all over them, when all we really wanted was the soda. I put the “won” in quotation marks because the machine was loaded with those shirts and not the soda we were looking for.
I don’t wear T-shirts, so I’d rather have the soda, too. Probably not Sunkist, though.
It was a great article. I passed the issue on to my son-in-law.
I always wish I knew someone who wants to read the magazine when I’m done. I don’t like just recycling them.
On 13th February 1981 I was 8 years old. :o)
I remember reading To His Coy Mistress at nightschool. Dirty sod.
What’s 2012 minus 35?–I guess I must have been four! And going to concerts. I’m pretty amazing. 😉