Born to Run

by Bruce Springsteen

  • • •

  Those whose love we wanted but could not get, we emulate. It is dangerous but it makes us feel closer, gives us an illusion of the intimacy we never had. It stakes our claim upon that which was rightfully ours but denied. In my twenties, as my song and my story began to take shape, I searched for the voice I would blend with mine to do the telling. It is a moment when through creativity and will you can rework, repossess and rebirth the conflicting voices of your childhood, to turn them into something alive, powerful and seeking light. I’m a repairman. That’s part of my job. So I, who’d never done a week’s worth of manual labor in my life (hail, hail rock ’n’ roll!), put on a factory worker’s clothes, my father’s clothes, and went to work.

  One night I had a dream. I’m onstage in full flight, the night is burning and my dad, long dead, sits quietly in an aisle seat in the audience. Then . . . I’m kneeling next to him in the aisle, and for a moment, we both watch the man on fire onstage. I touch his forearm and say to my dad, who for so many years sat paralyzed by depression, “Look, Dad, look . . . that guy onstage . . . that’s you . . . that’s how I see you.”

  SIXTY-TWO

  EASTERN WOMAN

  When my mom went to California, she didn’t return to New Jersey until thirty years later, after my father’s death. A lot of water had gone under the bridge, but for my sister Virginia and me, our father’s primacy was a bitter pill. He came first . . . always. My mother has great and profound love for her children but she will tell you to this day, those were her choices; they were all she knew how to do.

  My mother had married my father by the age of twenty-three. By her generation’s standards, this was when people began families, went to war, went out on their own. When she left, my sister and I were eighteen and nineteen respectively and living under rather harsh circumstances. We had our lives handed to us. We took charge of them. My mother was married. Maybe she figured my father just needed her more than we did. Without her my dad’s illness could’ve killed him or left him living out on the street. More likely, he just would’ve come back home or would never have left. My dad was ill but wily. He held us all hostage for many years—in my mom’s case, right up until he died. And she never called him on it.

  The other life my mom seemed built for and could’ve had, the life of dining, dancing, laughter, adult partnership, the equal sharing of life’s burdens, she was not compelled to pursue. We don’t always want what seems best suited for us; we want what we “need.” You make your choices and you pay the piper. She chose and she paid. We all did.

  My mother stood behind my wildest dreams, accepted me at face value for who I truly was and nurtured the unlikely scenario I held deepest in my heart, that I was going to make music and that someone, somewhere, was going to want to hear it. She shone her light on me at a time when it was all the light there was.

  When I hit it big, my mom believed the saints had come marching in and blessed us for the hard times we’d endured. I suppose they had.

  Amongst many things, my mother taught me the dangerous but timely lesson that there is a love seemingly beyond love, beyond our control, and it will take us through our lives bestowing blessings and curses as they fall. It will set you on fire, confuse you, drive you to passion and extreme deeds, and may smite the reasonable, modestly loving parts of who you are. Love has a great deal to do with humility. In my parents’ love, there was kindness, a beyond-human compassion, an anger, a compulsive fidelity, a generosity and an unconditionality that scorched everything in its path. It was exclusive. It was not humble. It was their love.

  My mom remains magic; people love her when they meet her, as they should. At ninety-one and battling Alzheimer’s, she delivers a warmth and exuberance the world as it is may not merit. She continues to be filled with an indomitable spirit of optimism, a heartbreaking toughness, no cynicism, laughter and great humor (for Christmas one year she gave me the complete third season of Columbo—“You know, that guy in the raincoat!”). To this day she can give me a true, deeply hopeful feeling about life over the course of an otherwise-ordinary one-hour lunch at a local diner. My mom is very, very funny, always bringing laughs. She is a natural show woman, a dancer and stylishly put together to a T for even the most casual outing. She is democratic, egalitarian, without a clue as to how those words might pertain to her. She is heart, heart, heart. Since her return to New Jersey, she has learned (not easily) how to place herself amongst my family. We had our small showdowns, even an afternoon of some yelling (very rare in Springsteen households). Then I watched her work, contain herself, use her intelligence and love to give herself to us. My mother and father had outlaw in them, and despite my mother’s great warmth, such things don’t necessarily come easy to outlaws. Her resilience, good soul and desire to do right still guide her. She settled in as Mother and Grandma. If you met her, you would know her in an instant . . . and you would love her. Like I do. She is a raw, rough wonder.

  Shortly after my pop passed away, I met “Queenie” (my mom’s childhood alias) for the first time. It was payback time, and my mom enjoys the good life as much as anyone. She’s occasionally traveled around the world with us. She takes pride in the accomplishments of her children, her grandchildren—my youngest sister’s motherhood and photography career; Virginia’s motherhood, grandmotherhood and work life; and the exploits of her guitar-playing son. We share the laughter, memories and pain of the Freehold days and we take pride in the survival of our love.

  My youngest sister, Pam, still lives in California, where my mother visits often. My sister Virginia and I see my mom quite regularly at our Sunday evening family dinners, just after she’s returned from the headstones at St. Rose of Lima Cemetery, visiting my dad.

  SIXTY-THREE

  KING OF NEW JERSEY (HOLLYWOOD DAYS)

  There’s a tap on my shoulder. I turn around and get lost in a sea of blue. A Jersey-accented voice says, “It’s about time, kid,” and Frank Sinatra rattles the ice in his glass of Jack Daniel’s. Looking at the swirling deep-brown liquid, he whispers, “Ain’t it beautiful?” This is my introduction to the Chairman of the Board. We spend the next half hour talking Jersey, Hoboken, swimming in the Hudson River and the Shore. We then sit down for dinner at a table with Robert De Niro, Angie Dickinson and Frank and his wife, Barbara. This is all occurring at the Hollywood “Guinea Party” Patti and I have been invited to, courtesy of Tita Cahn. Patti had met Tita a few weeks previous at the nail parlor. She’s the wife of Sammy Cahn, famous for such songs as “All The Way,” “Teach Me Tonight” and “Only the Lonely.” She called one afternoon and told us she was hosting a private event. She said it would be very quiet and couldn’t tell us who would be there, but assured us we’d be very comfortable. So off into the LA night we went.

  During the evening, we befriend the Sinatras and are quietly invited into the circle of the last of the old Hollywood stars. Over the next several years we attend a few very private events where Frank and the remaining clan hold forth. The only other musician in the room is often Quincy Jones, and besides Patti and I there is rarely a rocker in sight. The Sinatras are gracious hosts and our acquaintance culminates in our being invited to Frank’s eightieth birthday party dinner. It’s a sedate event at the Sinatras’ Los Angeles home. Sometime after dinner, we find ourselves around the living room piano with Steve and Eydie Gorme and Bob Dylan. Steve is playing the piano and up close he and Eydie can really sing the great standards. Patti has been thoroughly schooled in jazz by Jerry Coker, one of the great jazz educators at the Frost School of Music at the University of Miami. She was there at the same time as Bruce Hornsby, Jaco Pastorius and Pat Metheny, and she learned her stuff. At Frank’s, as the music drifts on, she slips gently in on “My One and Only Love.” Patti is a secret weapon. She can sing torch like a cross between Peggy Lee and Julie London (I’m not kidding). Eydie Gorme hears Patti, stops the music and says, “Frank, come over here. We’ve got a singer!” Frank moves to the piano and I then get to watch m
y wife beautifully serenade Frank Sinatra and Bob Dylan, to be met by a torrent of applause when she’s finished. The next day we play Frank’s eightieth birthday celebration for ABC TV and I get to escort him to the stage along with Tony Bennett. It’s a beautiful evening and a fitting celebration for the greatest pop singer of all time.

  Two years later Frank passed away and we were generously invited to his funeral. A classic bright sunny day dawned in Los Angeles. But upon approaching the church, the scene outside looked like something out of Nathanael West’s The Day of the Locust. Television trucks and cameras were set up everywhere, with reporters stationed on the rooftops of nearby homes. There was a horde of protestors being kept on the far side of the street with signs blaming Frank for everything from God’s indifference to the decline of brown shoelaces. Inside the church, however, all was serene. There, along with Kirk Douglas, Don Rickles, Frank Jr. and the last of the old Hollywood stars, we said our goodbyes as Frank’s voice filled the church. At the end of the ceremony I stood for a moment with Jack Nicholson on the church’s front steps. He turned to me and said, “King of New Jersey.”

  SIXTY-FOUR

  BRINGING IT ALL BACK HOME

  There were two catalysts that got me thinking about reactivating the E Street Band. One late summer evening as I stepped out of Federici’s Pizza Parlor in Freehold, two young kids came up to me, introduced themselves and said they were big fans of the E Street Band but unfortunately were too young to have ever seen us live. They may have been in their early twenties. That meant at the last E Street Band show, perhaps they were ten years old. I started realizing there was a sea of young people out there who never saw the greatest thing I did: PLAY LIVE . . . with the E Street Band. Then, visiting my parents in San Francisco, I opened the newspaper to see Bob Dylan, Van Morrison and Joni Mitchell were performing at the San Jose Arena, an hour south of my folks’ house. That’s quite a bill. I asked my mom if she was game, and we drove down and took our seats stage right as the house lights lowered.

  Joni came on and did a beautiful set, followed by Van, swinging and lifting the house. Van Morrison has always been one of my great, great heroes and an enormous source of inspiration for everything I’ve done. Van put the white soul into our early E Street records. Without Van, there is no “New York City Serenade” or jazz soul of “Kitty’s Back.” Then out came Dylan in great form. Playing with a band he’d been working with for quite a while, he’d tightened his music into roadhouse poetry. They felt like they’d be at home in an arena this size or in the little bar down the road a ways. The band grooved joyous blues that even got their front man dancing a little! This music, his happiness, these artists, made me happy as I stood alongside my mom and we danced in our seats. Watching the crowd was funny and a little disorienting. I felt like I’d fallen asleep, a sixteen-year-old with Highway 61 Revisited spinning endlessly in the dark night of my bedroom, and woken up fifty years hence in a rock ’n’ roll, Rip Van Winkle–like dream. We’d all gotten . . . OLD! The seats were filled with middle-aged, wrinkled, out-of-shape, balding, gray-bearded rock fans straight out of the Beatles’ “When I’m Sixty-Four.” We all looked kind of . . . ridiculous! But something else was happening. Young hipsters and teenagers were scattered through the crowd. Little kids were there, brought by their parents to see and hear the great man. Some were bored, some sleeping and many dancing alongside Mom and Pop. People were filled with heart, good cheer and emotion. I thought about my gray hairs and the wrinkles on my face. I looked over at my mother, seventy-two, her face a loving map of all our pain and resilience. She was beaming ear to ear, her arm tucked in mine. The floor was a mass of smiles and swaying bodies, and as I watched, I thought, “I can do this. I can bring this, this happiness, these smiles.” I went home and called the E Street Band.

  SIXTY-FIVE

  REVIVAL

  . . . First, of course, I fretted, worried, questioned, discussed, debated, dismissed, rethought, reconsidered and thought some more. I wanted my reasoning to be sound and I did not want to reconstitute a nostalgia act to run the new oldies circuit. (Though I’ve actually gotten plenty of pleasure out of some of those oldies shows when the performers are laying down their hearts. If your heart is in it, it ain’t old.) Still, I was coming off a deeply satisfying solo tour that had felt very present, hadn’t played with the band in ten years, still held a few mild grudges and was worried about whether the whole thing would actually work.

  It came down to this: I’d studied, honed, worked and sweated to acquire a set of skills that when put into action made me one of the best in the world at what I did. Those skills were at their apex with a hard-driving band, and, I’d come to realize, not just any band. Time, history, memory, collective experience had made this so. Working with my band of the early nineties, I’d learned that as much as I enjoyed playing with a new set of musicians and as good as I thought we were, there would be, in my lifetime, no other group of musicians with whom I would step onto the stage with a quarter century of blood, sweat and tears under our belt but the E Street Band. There were only these eight men and women. Their style and playing abilities had long been hand stitched to fit me perfectly. More important, when the fans looked at those faces onstage, they saw themselves, their lives, their friends looking back at them. In the new digital world of three-second attention spans, where the cold, hard hand of impermanence and numbered anonymity holds sway, this was irreplaceable. It was real, and we’d built it the way real things are built, moment upon moment, hour upon hour, day after day, year after year. I came to the conclusion I’d need a pretty good reason to not exercise my skills at the still-very-young age of forty-eight with this group of musicians sitting at home. I didn’t have one. Everyone had found their own way but no one had found—and they wouldn’t, not now or ever—another E Street Band.

  There was residual tension in the band but a lot more love than in most, or any, I knew of. And . . . it had been ten years. I wasn’t hearing myself so regularly on the radio anymore. What we’d done was getting farther away, receding into rock’s glorious but embalmed past. I didn’t like that. We were far too formidable a unit to go gently into that good night. I remained too filled with ambition, ego, hunger, desire and a righteous sense of musical power to let a life’s work slip into the respectful annals of rock history. As surely as death, taxes and the hunger for new heroes, that day would come . . . but not . . . right . . . now! Not if I had anything to do with it. Not while I was a mighty, strapping, psychosis-filled rock ’n’ soul shouter. Not yet.

  It’s On!

  Rock ’n’ roll bands that last have to come to one basic human realization. It is: the guy standing next to you is more important than you think he is. And that man or woman must come to the same realization about the man or woman standing next to him or her, about you. Or: everyone must be broke, living far beyond their means and in need of hard currency. Or: both.

  A decade of seat-warming the ex–rock ’n’ roll gods’ bench sharpens the mind and softens everyone’s perspective on any mild mistreatments from the past. That is a good thing. We all must wake up one morning, or different mornings, and think, “You know, that thing, that thing I had, was one of the best things that ever happened to me. It was good for my life, it was good in my life and if the opportunity should ever again arise . . .” It arose, for all of us, and we were about to make the most of it, whatever each individual’s motivations may have been.

  In our last incarnation there had been no Steve Van Zandt. I had to think about that. If we were going, I wanted all of us to go. First I needed to make a courtesy call to Nils. Nils had done much more than step in and replace my old friend Steve over the years. He became a very responsible second lieutenant, fully committed to his position in the band and giving everything he had. On top of that, Nils was just a beautiful guy to be around. He was an assured, calming, inspiring presence and one of the world’s great guitarists. Within the band, he was ego-free. If an entire night passed without a solo, no prob
lem. He was a total team player who arrived at the hall hours before everyone else to ready himself for the work. He carried an archive of music for every possible song choice I might pull out of the hat, prepared himself and tutored others in chord structure and arrangements for the night’s specialty items. Between Nils and Max, another deep student of our work, I always had somewhere to go if I had any questions about something I’d written. I called Nils, told him what I wanted to do, assured him I appreciated and understood the great work and commitment he’d shown our band, explained his position would not change and asked his blessing. Nils, ever the gentleman and loyal soldier, told me if that’s what I thought was best, he was behind me. Then I called Steve.