Book Review: Lawrence Kirsch, “The Light in Darkness”
by Dave Lifton
On last month’s Popdose Podcast, I endorsed The Light in Darkness, an oral history about Bruce Springsteen’s 1978 album Darkness on the Edge of Town album and its subsequent tour as told by Springsteen fans. In full disclosure, its editor, Lawrence Kirsch, is a friend and I contributed an essay to the book (as did Popdose’s Farkate Film Flashback columnist, “Outlaw” Pete Chianca). But even though I’ve had my copy for about a month, it took a while for me to finally get through it. The reason isn’t (entirely) due to my laziness, but rather that I wanted to savor every word.
You see, compiling fan stories about a favorite artist, as Lawrence did in 2007 with For You, can be difficult. There’s the potential for repetition, and that possibility increases when you decide to narrow the scope of the book to one year in the artist’s life. So when you read it, you don’t want the stories bleeding into each other. You just take it in about ten pages at a time.
But Kirsch does a fantastic job of mixing things up. In between the memories of the concerts are analyses of the main themes found in the album, why the tour was such a pivotal moment in his career, and even an account of the songs that were recorded but didn’t make the final cut. Every Springsteen fan will be able to see themselves in the stories here. I got goosebumps plenty of times while reading because they hit so close to home. The book also serves as a cool document of what being a fan was like in the late ’70s now that virtually everything about the music industry has changed. Yeah, TicketMaster sucks, but does anybody else remember mail-order ticket lotteries?
Many of the dates on the seven-month tour are represented, but special attention is given to the nights that have achieved iconic status among Springsteen fans through bootlegs, including the Roxy, Capitol Theatre, and Winterland shows. But the highlight of the book is the 16 pages devoted to the legendary show at the Agora in Cleveland on August 9, widely considered to be Bruce’s greatest show. I call it The Night Rock Achieved Perfection, a belief that, according to the book, I share with Bob Seger (take that, Homer Simpson!). That bootleg kickstarted my collection back in 2000. I had only had a few cassettes up to that point, and that night’s show, especially the four-song, 55-minute roller coaster ride between “She’s the One” and “Rosalita,” made me want to track down as many as I can find, especially from the Darkness tour. And I finally learned exactly what caused Bruce to say, “I’m working here!” before the last verse of “Spirit in the Night.”
And if you do somehow get tired of reading, there are over 200 photos of the Boss and the E Street Band in action. For those of us who didn’t get to experience the shows firsthand, the shots are revelatory. They portray Springsteen simultaneously out of control and in complete command of his craft. On one page he’s sprawled out across the stage (or the piano…or the crowd) and on the next he’s staring down the audience, wielding his Telecaster like a weapon.
The Light in Darkness is a collector’s edition in a limited run, and is available exclusively through its website for $40 plus shipping and handling. With so many Springsteen-related books available this holiday season, you might not know where to begin to get the perfect gift for the Bruce fan in your life. You cannot do better than The Light in Darkness.
A popular subplot in “The Light in Darkness” – I touch on it in the essay I wrote for the book – is that there are a lot of people out there who really, really wish they were around and of concert-going age in 1978. That was the year Bruce Springsteen released “Darkness on the Edge of Town” and mounted a seven-month tour that many fans say eclipsed any other before or since, and cemented Springsteen’s reputation as a live act for the ages.
But there were also a lot of people who were around, who experienced that tour, and who say to this day that it changed their life. It’s those people whose reminiscences make up the bulk of the stories in editor Lawrence Kirsch’s latest fan-driven Springsteen anthology, and believe me: If you weren’t there, they will make you feel worse.
Oddly enough, though, like the “Darkness” album itself – on which Springsteen’s ragged baritone manages to wring hope out of the direst of circumstances – the stories in Kirsch’s book make you feel better at the same time, to know that an artist could touch people in the way Springsteen did during that seminal tour, and still does for newer generations of fans.
It’s worth getting your hands on “The Light in Darkness” for the amazing photos alone, both amateur and professional – they capture Springsteen and his bandmates at turns both jubilant and intense, often possessed of a fervor that seems to go beyond religious. The Springsteen in these photos was at the top of his game, and the best of these pictures, with his face taut and his guitar thrust forward like a weapon of mass destruction, paint a picture of man so in command of a room it looks like he could make it spontaneously combust at will.
But it’s the stories, in my opinion, that make up the heart of the book, just as they did in Kirsch’s last collection, “For You.” That book was more general, which meant a wider variety of submissions, some more moving or funny than those you’ll find in “The Light …” But if there’s a certain sameness that comes from this volume’s laser focus, it’s just indicative of what a galvanizing force this album and tour were to the fans who got to experience it.
Of course, there are any number who say “their” show was the best of the bunch – fans from Boston, New York, Philly, New Jersey (of course) and even Augusta, Maine all make good cases. But a long and rollicking account of Springsteen’s famous Agora Theater concert in Cleveland by Brian Schmuck may best capture the way these shows grabbed people and haven’t let them go to this day. Writes Schmuck of the famous “meeting with God” story Springsteen tells during “Growin’ Up”:
“Still 30 years after the show, when I hear this song played, like Pavlov’s dog, I get a physical reaction … it’s when Bruce comes to the end of the story, where he belts out the message he got from God himself about what he should do with his life, ‘And then I heard just three words: Let it rock!’ Hearing these words always send a release of adrenaline or endorphins shooting through me in waves."
“The Light in Darkness” isn’t only about the tour, though. Plenty of the writing focuses on the album, so different from “Born to Run” and its lyrical tales of escape. “Darkness,” which deals with what happens after you realize there may be nowhere to escape to, is, well, dark – and the stories in this book show how much its songs have meant to people going through dark times.
“‘Darkness’ is haunting, listening to it hurts,” writes Stefanie Oepen. “It opens a wound deep in my heart and then tells me how to mend.” And Annabel Nanninga, a Dutch woman who says the album pulled her out of severe depression at 15, says she “found my fears and worries expressed on this album, better than anybody could have put it.”
The book also has its share of untold stories – Dick Roberts reveals he’s the one who provided the stretcher the first time Bruce pulled his “exhaustion” shtick, only to bounce up again, guitar humming (the stretcher was never returned, not that Roberts cared). And photographer Mark Neuling tells of visiting Bruce’s parents’ home in California with a mutual friend, and something that surprised him after having heard of the strained relationship between the singer and his father, Douglas:
“The Light …” boasts its share of professional writers, including “A History of Violence” screenwriter Josh Olson and “Runaway Dream” author Louis Masur. (And me, I guess.) Those pieces are a welcome part of Kirsch’s attempts to piece together the “Darkness” puzzle, but it’s the regular fans whose words pack the greatest punch. “I had no idea what I was witnessing at the time, but I felt sanctified,” writes super-fan Gina Giambone of her first Springsteen concert, capturing the feelings of so many of her fellow converted.Douglas “took me into a small area just off the living room. It was a shrine. Gold and platinum records hung from the walls … as Douglas Springsteen showed me around the awards and industry accolades amassed by his son, I couldn’t help but feel the pride he held for his boy.”
In the end, “The Light in Darkness” may not have the emotional heft of the wider-ranging “For You.” But as a time capsule and testament to the power and the glory of what may be the greatest chapter in a storied career, it’s an invaluable souvenir for those who were there at a time, as John Huffman writes, “when the E Street Band was young and so were we.”
And as for those of us who weren’t there? If you’ve been touched by the album and by Springsteen’s work since, that doesn’t matter. “I may have missed the ‘Darkness on the Edge of Town’ tour,” writes Jeffrey Blout, “but it didn’t miss me.” Get this book and it won’t have to miss you either.
“The Light in Darkness” is a limited-run collector’s edition, and available only at thelightindarkness.com.
Like its predecessor For You, Lawrence Kirsch's The Light In Darkness is a beautifully put-together, limited edition coffee-table sized collection of reminisces from Bruce Springsteen fans. What makes this a must-have for the Springsteen fan on your holiday shopping list are the hundreds of photographs here — many of which were shot by fans as well, and thus are seen here for the very first time.
The difference with The Light In Darkness is the fact that this volume focuses specifically on the 1978 tour behind the album Darkness On The Edge Of Town. As most longtime Boss fans will tell you, this was the tour where Springsteen and the E Street Band largely solidified their reputation as one of the greatest live attractions in rock.
On this tour, Springsteen shows rarely ran under 3½ hours, and when multiple encores were factored in, would often push closer to the five-hour mark.
These were the days so fondly remembered by the fans who were there, when songs like "Prove It All Night" began with a blistering guitar intro that was longer than the song itself, and where "Backstreets" included a lengthy mid-song rap (then called "Sad Eyes") which eventually formed the foundation for the song "Drive All Night" on the 1980 album, The River.
Here, on page after lovingly assembled page, these same fans recall their memories of seeing such legendary performances as the oft-bootlegged December 15, 1978 show at San Francisco's Winterland Ballroom — one of the very final rock concerts to take place at the legendary venue. In the case of this particular show, several stories are recounted, including a beautiful photo essay of the show from Backstreets photographer P. Jay Plutzer, that includes many never-before-seen photos.
In addition to the hundreds of images and personal anecdotes from fans, there is a list of every show and every song played during the Darkness tour. In another section, writer Roy Opichinski examines the songs left over from the original sessions for the Darkness album that failed to make the final cut — including both the ones Springsteen gave away to other artists like Patti Smith ("Because The Night"), and such lost masterpieces as "The Promise" and "Iceman."
The release of The Light In Darkness comes at a time where there is a renewed interest in the 1978 Bruce Springsteen album which forms its central theme.Springsteen and the E Street Band have been recently featuring the album played in its entirety — most recently at the Spectrum in Philadelphia and at Giants Stadium in New Jersey — as part of the theme nights closing their current tour, where a classic album is performed from start to stop. It is also widely expected that a deluxe, remastered edition of Darkness will see the light of day sometime next year.
In the meantime, this beautifully done new volume from Lawrence Kirsch serves as the next best thing. For those who were there, it serves as a reminder of a time where great rock and roll seemed to make anything possible. For those who weren't, it does a nice job of telling the story of just why Springsteen and the E Street Band are so revered by the fans who were.
As a postscript here, a few Blogcritics have stories of their own that made the cut in the book. Look for Mark Saleski on page 96, and yours truly on page 52. The Light In Darkness can be ordered at the author's website.
Come and meet publisher Lawrence Kirsch
Date: Saturday October 24
Time: 2-5pm
Venue: The Horseshoe Tavern, 370 Queen Street West, Toronto
Come and join us for a beer, meet Bruce fans and listen to the live broadcast of SpringsteenRadio.com
Books available for purchase. PLUS: a Limited Edition Springsteen poster with every book purchase,
while they last.
Door Prizes.
Much like your favorite fellow Springsteen fans, The Light In Darkness features stories that come in all shapes and sizes. The common theme throughout the book is the sincerity of the submissions. Sure, some are better written than others but that matters not. There are friend stories and loner stories and love stories and break-up stories and sad stories and happy stories, and yet they are all of a common voice. The very best parts of the Springsteen community are represented in this book.
And then there are the pictures. An overwhelming majority of the photographs in this book have never been seen before. The pictures alone are worth the price of admission. The Darkness tour is pretty much chronicled in pictures from beginning to end. It’s the photographs that capture the urgency of this man and this band and this music in 1978.
Shared art is powerful. Yet again, Lawrence Kirsch has enabled us to share a place and time that deserves to be held in high esteem with the release of The Light In Darkness.
http://www.thelightinDarkness.com
New York, NY (PRWEB) September 17, 2009 -- "With "Darkness on the Edge of Town" Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band took a stand at a time and place where everything was on the line," writes Vike Savoth in the foreword to "The Light in Darkness." "They were prepared to pay the price of hurtling headlong into rock and roll oblivion by walking away from the sound and look that took them to the heights of fame and fortune."
Often overlooked in favor of other classic Springsteen records, "Darkness on the Edge of Town" provided a much rawer and angrier sound than anything Springsteen had done previously. Coming at the end of a bitter, three-year legal battle with Springsteen's first manager, the album's darker sound was difficult at first for many fans and critics to grasp.
"I really had to listen to that album, hard, over and over again, to find where I could meet him, or really, where he was meeting me," writes Suzanne Scala. "This was when listening to an album meant lying on the floor, head between your speakers, dropping that needle over and over to play that song again and again. Skipping this one or that one, it's formulaic and tired, or is it? Play it again and realize, no, there's something different here."
Despite that, the album has grown on many fans during the last 30 years, with many finding comfort in it's difficult messages.
"The songs on "Darkness" spoke to me personally," said the book's editor, Lawrence Kirsch. "Yes, the mood is darker than previous albums, but not entirely without hope. "Darkness on the Edge of Town" is pure, energetic rock and roll and one of the best works that Springsteen would create."
Despite the album's darker tones, the accompanying tour was one the most raucous and energetic of Springsteen's career. With more than 200 photos, "The Light in Darkness" shows Springsteen at his peak, bounding across the stage, leaping from pianos and wading into the crowd. With the 1978 tour, Springsteen began a tradition of epic, three-plus-hour shows, something so incomprehensible to fans at the time that many, thinking the show was over, got up to leave at the intermission. As Springsteen turns 60 this year, he continues the tradition of epically long shows that outdo all other musicians.
"It was like lightning flashing through the darkness and the band was the thunder," writes Ron Wells. "I had never seem any performer so full of energy and joy. He was definitely on a mission. This was not just a gig for him; it was freedom and exhilaration personified."
Chronicling some of his most famous shows, such as the Agora in Cleveland, The Roxy in L.A. and San Francisco's Winterland Ballroom, "The Light in Darkness" brings to life some of the final concerts Springsteen would play in small venues.
"The book will give readers at least a small perspective of what we experienced in 1978," Kirsch said. "The connection and bond made between performer and audience during this tour set the stage for all future albums and tours to come."
More than 30 years later, the excitement and passion this album and tour invoke in fans has not diminished. "The Light in Darkness" brings to life the incredible connection fans have with this period in Springsteen's career, making it one book fans don't want to miss.
About the book: Limited Collector's Edition
This 208 page, large format, 9.25" x 12" full-color book is printed on EuroArt Silk 200m paper stock and contains more than 200 photographs reproduced from the original negatives and slides. The book is only available online for purchase at: www.thelightindarkness.com
BOOK LAUNCH IN SEPTEMBER: THE LIGHT IN DARKNESS Lawrence Kirsch Communications, publisher of the recent book For You, is finishing work on a new book called The Light in Darkness, to focus specifically on the Darkness on the Edge of Town era. Like For You, the forth coming book will feature concert photography and stories from fans The Light in Darkness
ERIC R. DANTON
The Hartford Courant
August,2009
Louis Masur, the William R. Kenan Jr. professor Masur, the William R. Kenan Jr. professor of American institutions and values at Trinity College, is so taken with Springsteen's work that he has merged his academic research with his favorite artist. The result is Masur's latest book, "Runaway Dream: 'Born to Run' and Bruce Springsteen's American Vision" (Bloomsbury Press, $23), set for publication Sept. 1.
It's an exceedingly detailed analysis of the singer's breakthrough album: how it was created, its cultural context and what it means today.
"Writing it was just an absolute labor of love for me," Masur says from New Jersey during a conversation about his research, before returning to Hartford to see Springsteen perform Wednesday at Comcast Theatre.
Q. How long did it take to research and write the book?
A. It's an interesting question, because I've been a Springsteen fan ever since I was 16 years old, and I'm 52 now. So in one sense, the book is a kind of accumulation of being a lifelong fan of Springsteen and his music. I finally started to think seriously about writing about Springsteen about 2005, around the 30th anniversary of "Born to Run." I wrote a couple of essays and had the chance at Trinity College to teach a course on Presley, Dylan and Springsteen, and that sort of got me going. Once I started to do that, the full research and writing only took a couple of years.
Q. You mention the 30th anniversary. There was a lot written about "Born to Run" then, in 2005. What does your book add to the conversation?
A. Springsteen
actually brought out an anniversary edition with a terrific documentary in which they interviewed a lot of the band members today looking back. What I do is a little bit different. While some of the information about the making of "Born to Run" and the agonies the band went through was revealed in 2005, I go into great detail about that.I also talk at great length, and I think this is the most original part of it, about Springsteen's American vision. It's an analysis of that album and it situates that album both in the context of its times and in the longer, historical trajectory of understanding why it is that Springsteen is not just a great rock 'n' roll musician, he's really one of the most important cultural figures in American history. I offer a reading of the album, an analysis of the songs. Springsteen himself has said that that is the album where he first identified the themes and the issues that he would continue to address throughout his career. The last part of the book picks up on that challenge and basically traces out the ways in which the lyrical and musical themes of "Born to Run" have continued to shape and influence his music.
Q. Rock 'n' roll comes with a certain mystique. What effect does such close analysis have on that mystique?
A. I don't think it takes it apart, in the sense of ruining it. I think it adds to it. What I'm trying to understand is, what does it mean to say that a song or an album changed your life? What does it mean to say that music, that a particular song or artist, is the defining music of your life. I really just wanted to look at it for myself, but I also want to look at it for the legions of fans who have identified so deeply with this music, and that gets us into the work I do as a cultural historian, as a student of American studies. What are these themes, this runaway dream of escape, the idea of hitting the road, at some point needing to come back, to build community? These are just classic archetypal themes, and not just American themes, but universal themes, that I think explain why Springsteen has an international fan base. Almost anyone who's human can identify that basic search. "Born to Run" says, "I want to know if love is wild, I want to know if love is real," and in many ways, we've all been on that journey in one way or another throughout our lives.
Q. How did you go about quantifying the mystique of such a seminal album?
A. I'd say it's less quantifying than adding a qualitative element. It's analyzing, it's unpacking, it's taking those lyrics and really probing them and exploring them and connecting them up to other things. Springsteen is not operating in a vacuum, he's operating in a cultural context, he's operating in a historical context. He understands, and that's part of the power of his music, bringing sounds and voices from '50s and the '60s into his music in the '70s, which help to explain his kind of explosion. He understands he's working in a trajectory that goes back to Walt Whitman, to Woody Guthrie, and he's taking some of these things and making them relevant again, but in a different way in our own time. So what I try to do is a deep analysis. It's kind of like the world in a grain of sand. You just have this moment, this album, and this iconic record, and photograph, the cover of that album is one of the great photographs in the world when people bought albums and people listened to them in their entirety and studied the album. Analyzing that photograph allows us to understand something more deeply. It doesn't demystify it. What it does is add layers to the mystery.
Q. What was your initial reaction to first hearing the title track from "Born to Run?"
A. I first heard "Born to Run" the radio and it literally just came over me like a wave. I had never heard anything that majestic, that soaring, that glorious. I couldn't wait to hear it again. I eventually got the album, and the thing about albums back then, they were designed to be listened to straight through. It's very important: there's a story being told here, and the story carries you through, so to hear these epics on that album, the fact that I was 18 years old, I was a sophomore in college, young, confused, not certain of the future, involved in a complicated relationship with a girl, the songs seemed to capture exactly what I was feeling and what I was going through in music that made you want to move, to dance, to go faster.
Dylan Detained By N.J. Cops on Springsteen's 'Backstreets'
By CHRIS FRANCESCANI
Aug. 15, 2009 —
Was Bob Dylan looking for the home where Bruce Springsteen wrote "Born to Run" in 1974 when he was detained by police near the Jersey shore last month?
The 68-year-old music legend was picked up one Thursday last month by a 24-year-old cop who failed to recognize him as he walked the streets of Long Branch, N.J. in the pouring rain.
It may have been as simple as it appears: Dylan told police he was talking a walk and looking at a home for sale.
But the area where Dylan was picked up was just a couple blocks from the beachside bungalow where Bruce Springsteen wrote the material for his landmark 1975 album "Born to Run."
In the past nine months, Dylan has visited the childhood homes of Neil Young and John Lennon, in both cases appearing without fanfare and barely identifying himself after he was recognized.
Last November, Winnipeg homeowner John Kiernan told Simon Fuller that Dylan and a friend arrived unannounced in a taxi to his Grosvenor Ave. home, where songwriter Neil Young grew up.
Dylan, Kiernan said, was unshaved and had the brim of his hat pulled down over his head. He asked for a look inside and inquired about Young's bedroom and where he would have played his guitar.
Dylan has shown a deep affinity for the Canadian rocker over the years, most recently in his 2001 song "Highlands." And Young said at a Nashville concert in 2005 that he once lent Dylan one of his most precious musical treasures -- Hank Williams' guitar, for which Young wrote the ballad "This Old Guitar." Both men revere Williams, a country music legend.
In May, Dylan joined a public tour of John Lennon's childhood home, according to the BBC. A spokeswoman for the National Trust, which runs the home as London landmark, said Dylan "took one of our general minibus tours.
"People on the minibus did not recognize him apparently," the spokeswoman told the British news agency. "He could have booked a private tour, but he was happy to go on the bus with everyone else."
Springsteen spent two of the most creative years of his young career in the house on West Court in Long Branch in 1974 and 1975, penning "Born to Run," "Thunder Road" and "Backstreets" while living there.
Dylan's spokesman did not immediately return a call or e-mail for comment.
Charles A. Hohman
Two minutes and ten seconds into Born in the U.S.A., the first of the album’s many female characters appears. She is given no physical or character traits; just two lines detailing her relationship with a fallen male hero. “He had a woman he loved in Saigon / I got a picture of him in her arms,” Bruce Springsteen proclaims, in the voice of a destitute Vietnam vet recalling his departed brother, killed in the same war that ruined the narrator’s life. It is a telling image, and properly foreshadows the role of women in the U.S.A. where Springsteen and his characters were born.
That is the U.S.A. of the American Dream, where meritocracy is accepted as gospel until it’s proven as myth, where all men may be created equal, but are born into grossly unequal circumstances. It is also the U.S.A. of rock and roll, which helped liberate bored teenagers like Springsteen, and even helped ignite a sexual revolution. Throughout his career, Springsteen has grappled with the shortcomings of the American Dream: that great myth that hard work will pay off with material comforts and prosperity. What is less established is that sexual satisfaction is an integral part of Springsteen’s American Dream; a basic human right every bit as essential as life and liberty.
His ouevre is teeming with vaginal metaphors (“The River”, “Candy’s Room”, “Tunnel of Love”, “Pink Cadillac”) where the female anatomy provides some sort of sanctuary from a dark, spirit-crushing world where innocent, hard-working men are denied their entitlement. Like rock and roll itself, women are a surrogate release, pillars of stability and tokens of success. In women, both Springsteen and his characters (as much as they can be objectively separated) often find the promise that has been denied them elsewhere, but they just as often get denied here as well. Sex, like the other aspects of the American Dream, offers a lot of seductive promises, but no inalienable guarantees.
Side 1: “I Got a Bad Desire”
Born in the U.S.A. is a masculine album, and even the cover asserts this. The tight, ass-hugging blue jeans, the tucked white t-shirt, the bulging bared biceps, the red cap dangling off the back pocket, all converging before a giant American flag: it’s an assertive, in-your-face image, one that evokes the superpower that had won World War II and was about to win the Cold War, and its ethos of rugged individualism. Viewed from the back, Springsteen could be any of a million salt-of-the-earth guys who, often thanklessly, keep that superpower thriving. But guys is the operative word here: the various perspectives on the album are uniformly male, and within their viewpoints, women are limited in their capacity, doomed to sexual subservience and distressing domesticity. And yet, the pursuit of these women motivates much of the action on Born’s powerful first side.
Nowhere is this more blatant than “Cover Me”, which follows the title track, and turns “Born”’s brief image of woman-as-protector into a motif. In it, Springsteen recoils at the horrors of this rough old world, and pleads for the most desirable solution: “I’m looking for a lover who will come on in and cover me.” Here, a woman, that one special woman and the sex she would ideally provide, offers asylum from natural disasters and manmade catastrophes. When Springsteen sings, “Promise me baby you won’t let them find us/ Hold me in your arms, let our love blind us”, one can almost envision the “Born” soldier’s late brother whispering those very words to his Saigon sweetie, as sniper fire audibly rages in the distance.
But just as women can protect from the storms raging in the cutthroat, rough-and-tumble working world, they can be the storm as well. The pursuit of women, like the pursuit of money and prosperity, can lead to danger, corruption, even punishment. And so after championing the safeguarding contentment that women can provide once attained, Born launches into two hard-luck delinquent tales, tragicomic and almost cinematic narratives of men chasing women as one more essential piece to their ideal American life. “Darlington County” and “Working on the Highway” are Born’s most linear, and arguably most obscure, compositions, but both illustrate the troubles that can trap men in search of female companionship.
In “Darlington County”, two scofflaws flee New York City in search of “work on the county line”, and yes, women. Complains the narrator about the Big Apple: “The girls are pretty but they just wanna know your name.” In other words, they ask too many questions: who you are, what you do, where you’re going, and once your answers are insufficient, they quickly move on to men with bigger wallets than dreams. And so the narrator and his buddy Wayne drive 800 miles to South Carolina, where conditions are a bit more desperate. In this new setting, plunking down 200 dollars in one night makes them “big spenders”, big enough for girls to believe their fathers own the World Trade Center towers. But while the narrator grabs a girl, and makes her enough lofty promises that she not only puts out but breaks away from Darlington with him, Wayne ends up “handcuffed to the bumper of a state trooper’s Ford”.
“Darlington County” contains the album’s first mention of “rock and roll”, which triggers an infectious chorus of “sha la la/ sha la la la la la”s. That seems anachronistic in 1984, until one considers that rock and roll’s “sha la la”s, among its coded language of nonsense syllables, often signify sexual ecstasy, the kind that negates mere English. Springsteen concedes as much before the second chorus, when he promises his newfound female conquest, “Just me and you we could… sha la la / Sha la la la la.” By the end, both the driving music and unison voices fade out in an ad-nauseam string of “sha la la la la”s, as Wayne heads to jail and the narrator “sees the glory of the coming of the Lord”, as he and his newfound girl drive into their uncertain but sky’s-the-limit future.
The forces that captured Wayne rear their ugly, oppressive heads again on “Working on the Highway”, a jaunty story of a road laborer, who spends his day “laying down the blacktop”. He’s out sweating, working his body raw, while promising his girl “a better life than this”. That girl is his main motivator—he keeps a picture of her in his back pocket, just to remind him of the purpose of all that backbreaking labor. But like Wayne, he too gets punished for trying to subvert his position. He elopes with the girl, and her disapproving family calls the authorities, landing him in jail doing the exact same physical labor he was doing before, this time with no lovelight to get him through the day.
“I had a girl / I had a job” recalls Joe, the storyteller on “Downbound Train”, the album’s most somber and melodramatic track. Those opening lines encapsulate Springsteen’s vision of the American dream: financial and sexual security, albeit a fragile one. For when the job goes, the girl goes as well, and Joe cannot get his life back on track. He labors for chump change at the car wash during the day, and at night, has intense visions of the girl’s return, the kind of miraculous dreams from which waking up is life’s ultimate curse.
“I’m on Fire” is an anomaly on the album: the most sonically quiet and melodically simple of its twelve tracks, with a pulsating beat, a barely-there finger-picked guitar, and a haunting synth riff. The song sounds naked, apropos for an uncommonly frank confession of sexual desire. Springsteen’s vocal is alternately frisky and creepy, as the girl’s wishes remain willfully obscure. “Hey, little girl, is your daddy home / Did he go away and leave you all alone,” he asks, before insisting his own sexual prowess, and his overwhelming desperation to get in there and fuck her. “At night I wake up with the sheets soaking wet and a freight train running through the middle of my head,” he rambles, as though his proto-emo histrionics will sway her. It fades out with brief falsetto “ooh-ooh-oohs”, once again nonsense syllables, the kind of uninhibited noises a man would make when being pleasured, or more likely in the song’s context, pleasuring himself. That side one closes with a sexual act is significant: here is fun unfettered, not tempered with tragedy, a penalty-free release from the struggles that have thus far commanded the disc. Unlike the previous three narrators, the horndog of “I’m on Fire” suffers no consequences for his bad desires. He simply funnels his aggression into sexual release, and in a forecast of the second side, sounds positively youthful.
Side 2: "Ready to Grow Young Again"
Side 2: “Ready to Grow Young Again”
The dark clouds that overcast Born’s first side lift somewhat when you flip the record over (or progress to the second half of the CD). Every song on the second side on Born is nostalgic: dealing with the difficulties of (primarily male) aging, the resignation and sometimes the tragedy of maturity. While side one features men attempting, however fruitlessly, to flee their fates, side two offers men accepting them, finding comfort where they can, in memories, in music, and yes, in sex. Ennui and uneasiness give way to equanimity and compliance: the once inflated American Dream is adjusted and revised. And so attitudes towards male sexuality shift somewhat as well, but remain every bit as vital to the characters’ motives.
“No Surrender” proudly announces this perspective shift, as Springsteen pleads for his “blood brother” to keep fighting for their adolescent dreams. It could be the Wayne from “Darlington County” singing to its mellowing narrator, once both have a few more years under their respective belts. Maturity is often a process of retreating, of surrendering, of compromising your dreams of escape and accepting your place in the world. Fighting for those grandiose hopes can be grueling, and after some hard-fought battles, domestic stability can seem mighty appealing. And so Springsteen revisits the sentiments of “Cover Me” in the final verse: “There’s a war outside still raging / You say it ain’t ours anymore to win / I want to sleep beneath peaceful skies in my lover’s bed / With a wide open country in my eyes / And these romantic dreams in my head.” At a certain point in life, one’s most romantic dreams are permanently confined to the head, to the realm of memory and fantasy rather than reality.
Memory also fuels the unsent love letter that is “Bobby Jean”, another tribute to a friend from yesteryear, this time female and probably a former sexual partner. After considerable time apart, the narrator realizes Bobby Jean as the one that got away, the right girl for him. As he states, “There ain’t nobody, nowhere, nohow / Gonna ever understand me the way you did.” His rambling days are over, and his thirst for adult tranquility has brought him back to his teenage love, but in Springsteen’s world, it’s never that easy: Bobby Jean has escaped, finally off chasing her own dreams instead of settling for her circumstances—whatever life the narrator could provide her would not be good enough. Here, the implicit subtext of rock-music-as-power, which underscores much of the album, is made explicit, as Springsteen exhausts his only avenue to reach her: the airwaves. He vows:
<a href="http://www.quantcast.com/p-c4o3Jsf
Photo: Fisker/AFP/Getty
Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, U2, Paul Simon, Metallica, Eric Clapton, Aretha Franklin, Stevie Wonder, Crosby, Stills, Nash and Friends and Simon and Garfunkel are among the legendary artists confirmed for a landmark
two-night concert event celebrating the 25th anniversary of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.
Sprawling across October 29th and 30th at New York’s Madison Square Garden, the shows will feature Hall of Fame acts sharing the stage with guests and collaborators, honoring their influences and essentially retracing the
history of rock in the process. For example, Crosby, Stills and Nash will share the stage with California-based artists while Metallica will lead a hard rock portion of the concerts. Stevie Wonder and Aretha Franklin will also each front a soul revue with Paul Shaffer and the CBS Orchestra.
“These once-in-a-lifetime concerts are designed to celebrate the artists and their music,” said Jann S. Wenner, founder and editor of Rolling Stone and the event’s executive producer.
Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band, Simon & Garfunkel, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Friends, Paul Simon and Stevie Wonder will perform on October 29th, while Eric Clapton, Aretha Franklin, Metallica and U2 will take the stage on October 30th. (Look back at Springsteen’s remarkable career in photos, plus trace Metallica’s rise from fledgling thrashers to Rock Hall inductees and check out three decades of U2.)
The shows are presented by American Express and shaped by a creative team that includes Tom Hanks, his producing partner Gary Goetzman, Robbie Robertson, Cameron Crowe and Wenner himself, among others. Joel Gallen, the producer behind the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremonies, will direct the shows, which will be cut into one highlight special airing on HBO.
All proceeds from the concerts go towards creating a permanent endowment for the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Foundation and Museum. “Twenty-five years ago a group led by legendary Atlantic Records founder Ahmet Ertegun created this foundation to recognize and celebrate the music and careers of artists whose music helped shape and define our generation,” Wenner said.
AMEX cardholders get first crack at tickets on July 27th, and ticket sales will open to the general public on August 3rd.
The Rock Hall is also planning a book and deluxe DVD set to mark its 25th anniversary. The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame: The First 25 Years will be published by Collins Design in September, and in August, Time Life will issue a nine-disc box set of highlights of the past induction ceremonies including never-before-seen footage.
The idea that Springsteen was manipulated into acting out his mentor's literary fantasies is tempting, but the initial results can't be faulted. Darkness on the Edge of Town (1978), The River (1980) and Nebraska (1982) are his work's core. The previously apolitical singer wrote Nebraska under Guthrie's influence, as a stark tour of the small-town America he grew up in, laid waste by Reaganomics. The River's title song remains his best. Its young married couple in a closing factory town have no future in a way more crushingly solid than punk's teenage mantra. "Is a dream a lie if it don't come true/Or is it something worse..." the man wonders, of an American Dream he has been forced awake from. It was a heartbreaking political song because it barely looked up from personal concerns; as good as Guthrie, but Springsteen's own."
Nick Hasted
The Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum will open the world’s first exhibit devoted to the life and music of Bruce Springsteen: From Asbury Park to the Promised Land: The Life and Music of Bruce Springsteen. This will be the first major artifact-driven exhibit about Springsteen’s legendary career. It will be a comprehensive look at his music, from such early bands as Child, the Castiles and Steel Mill through his work with the E Street Band and as a solo artist. The exhibit will include several of Springsteen’s guitars, including the Fender Telecaster that is on the cover of Born to Run. It will also include the outfit he wore on the cover of Born in the U.S.A., as well as numerous handwritten lyric manuscripts, posters and handbills from all phases of his career, and various awards and honors. In addition, the exhibit will include Springsteen’s 1960 Chevrolet Corvette, which he purchased after the success of Born to Run. The exhibit will run through the spring of 2010.
Experts restore a river of the Boss' ephemera
Inside the Conservation Center for Art and Historic Artifacts in Center City, dozens of the Boss' notebooks containing lyrics, phone numbers, personal notes, doodles, set lists, and tour information are getting the same types of careful treatment.
Jim Hinz, who heads the nonprofit organization's book section, said conservators are akin to book doctors, taking a "Hippocratic Oath of Paper."
"We handle everything the same," Hinz said. "We have to be just as careful with someone's daughter's drawing as we have to be with a Rembrandt etching."
Some of the cleaned pieces are already on display at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum in Cleveland. The show "From Asbury Park to the Promised Land: The Life and Music of Bruce Springsteen" runs through next spring.
It is the most extensive exhibition on a rocker the hall has ever done, occupying two floors of the seven-story museum. It includes the 1960 Chevy Corvette Springsteen purchased after his success in 1975 and a round table where, he says, he's written a majority of his songs.
Among the treated paper products on display is a typed petition, signed primarily by girls from Springsteen's high school, arguing that his band at the time, the Castiles, deserved more attention and respect.
"He's obviously a major figure of 20th- and 21st-century American life," said Jim Henke, the hall's curator and vice president of exhibitions. Because of that, taking steps to preserve Springsteen's writings make sense, he said.
"It's important to keep them for generations to come," he said.
A Springsteen associate brought the more than 40 spiral notebooks, binders, folders, and scrapbooks to the conservation center's attention last year. The materials date from 1966 to 2005. Springsteen was archiving his collections, and the materials he sent to the center have personal notes, letters from fans both famous and not, and even a few vinyl recordings tucked between pages.
"He's very forward-thinking to consider preserving his legacy for future generations," said Ingrid Bogel, the center's executive director. "The type of musical things we've worked on in the past are Bach manuscripts."
For a Springsteen fan, the documents are a trove that gives insight into not only Springsteen the artist, but also Springsteen the man.
These everyday items include a "to do" list that has "extra garage door openers," a note to bring a camera and "vests - blue, purple, gray, black" on the tour supporting The Rising, and a typed series of phone messages for "Bruce and Patti," with a reminder to attend a parent-teacher conference.
There's a notebook from a University of Pennsylvania shop, another bearing a map of New Jersey, at least two with Snoopy on the cover. One orange composition book has lines on the cover for the user to fill in a name, address, and subject. Someone filled those spaces in to read: "Bossinheimer Jones / Cool Street / Your Mama."
"It's like looking into the past of a common human being who had common methods and common materials, and in a way it's kind of appropriate for who he is and what he does with his music," Hinz said.
On a recent day, conservation technician Val Kremser was working on one of Springsteen's tour notebooks, which contained set lists and notes on how to play certain songs. Springsteen often went back to the lists, putting down exactly how long a given concert had lasted. And he prepared for his overseas tours: One notebook has English-to-Italian translations of common stage phrases such as "Be right back." (Torno subito, although Springsteen spelled it differently.)
He sometimes included a few words about the weather or the crowd: "Wild night" reads a notation next to a New Jersey show, the words circled by what seem to be stars. (Two Philadelphia shows from the same period might not have gone as well: "Humid" was the notation next to one show; "new stadium," read the other.)
Kremser's job is to repair and clean, not alter. The tools of the conservator's trade are wheat starch paste, Japanese paper, and vulcanized rubber. Folded pages are unfolded. Dirty pages are cleaned. Then each page is scanned and a digital photo taken. Each finished notebook is placed in a custom-made cloth box.
Kremser delicately reattached a perforated notebook cover. She showed an imperfection she was planning to fix, a minuscule blemish that probably would go unnoticed by most observers.
"That little tear, someone grabs a page too roughly and it's torn," she said.
While she's a little young to be part of Springsteen Nation, Kremser said, she likes working on documents belonging to a living person, someone she saw on TV just the other night. "It's nice to see he's a real person who makes lists about things. I make lists, too," she said.
Among the Springsteenabilia were two scrapbooks, covering 1965 to 1968, put together by the wife of the man who managed the Castiles, one of Springsteen's early groups. The woman considered the five band members part of her family, labeling pictures "my sons" and including birthday-party photos and locks from each teenager's hair.
The paper conservators' worst enemy - or best friend, since it keeps them in business - is pressure-sensitive adhesive, what the rest of us call tape.
Senior conservation assistants Jilliann Wilcox and Anna Krain took on the scrapbooks. Some pages had as many as eight layers of tape, which stained pages and marred images.
"There were a lot of challenges, and that was the fun part," said Krain, who met Springsteen after a Philadelphia concert and kissed his cheek, which she recalled as "sweaty."
Each scrapbook was unbound so its pages could be addressed individually. After a surface cleaning with the vulcanized rubber, the tedious tape removal began, manually or with a heated spatula.
"Adhesive tends to yellow and brittle and disfigure the object by staining it," Hinz said. "If you don't remove it, it could release on its own, and the item that it attached could fall off and be quite possibly lost forever."
Each scrapbook required at least 80 man-hours. After the pages were cleaned and repaired, the items - photos, newspaper clippings, ads such as one for a Castiles show at a VFW for 50 cents - were reattached with black photo corners or tiny hinges in their original positions.
Conservators often don't have time to analyze what they're preserving, Hinz said. "We can't luxuriate in the reading of artifacts," he said.
But he did notice, for instance, that the words Well, they, which kick off "Atlantic City," were used in multiple songs. And Springsteen has hundreds of songs scrawled in his notebooks, many unrecorded or unreleased.
The Hall of Fame's Henke said the papers gave glimpses into Springsteen's songwriting style. Henke has seen songwriters who cross out and revise a song on paper. Springsteen is more likely to write out an entire song, move on to something else, and then rewrite the earlier song in full with changes. A song can appear three times in a notebook, with slight revisions each time.
Henke also noted a difference as Springsteen matured. "Going back to the earlier years, he'd write and rewrite and rewrite, and there's far less of that by The Rising," Henke said. "He sort of gets it out much quicker now."
As she surface-cleaned a black-and-white composition book that still contained Springsteen's high school schedule - steno was first period, and he had two English classes - Krain noted that the artist's simplest personal writings had a certain timing and rhythm.
"Even the notes he wrote had the potential to be songs," she said. "They had the quality of lyrics."
Following the well-documented ticket fiasco of Springsteen's recent New Jersey dates, where fans were shut out or directed immediately to Ticketmaster's resale site, TicketExchange, New Jersey Rep. Bill Pascrell is introducing the BOSS ACT into Congress. While the acronym stands for Better Oversight of Secondary Sales and Accountability in Concert Ticketing, it's an obvious nod to Springsteen, who's nicknamed the Boss.
The legislation could be a potential boom for ticket buyers frustrated by scalpers and hard-to-get tickets. Among the bill's most important aspects is a requirement by ticket agencies like Ticketmaster to reveal -- seven days before the on-sale date -- exactly how many seats are being sold, how many are being held for fan clubs, presales and industry, and the total number of service charges. The legislation would also attempt to prohibit brokers from buying tickets in the first 48 hours following an on-sale.
The New Jersey Attorney General has already filed five lawsuits against people attempting to resell tickets to the just-announced Springsteen Giants Stadium shows on Sept. 30, and Oct 2-3.
Springsteen has yet to comment on the bill, but there is one down side: The veteran rocker has long lamented the Boss nickname, even frequently changing the lyrics in the live version of 'Rosalita' to "You don't have to call me lieutenant, Rosie/Just don't call me Boss!" No chance of shaking that name now. The Light in Darkness
Come per "For You", in questo nuovo libro, l'autore raccoglierà le testimonianze di chi ha vissuto quel periodo musicale e di chi ha assistito ai concerti di quello che è ritenuto uno dei migliori, se non il miglior tour di Bruce.
Memorabilia e foto, moltissime delle quali inedite, arrichiranno il volume già atteso dai fans. The Light in Darkness
Lawrence Kirsch Communications, creator of the recent book For You, is beginning work on a new book called The Light in Darkness, to focus specifically on the Darkness on the Edge of Town era. Like For You, the forthcoming book will feature concert photography and stories from fans. Kirsch tells Backstreets, "This tribute to Darkness will be something special: more passionate stories, breathtaking never-seen-before photos, and some discovered artwork and memorabilia gems that will be of great interest to fans no matter when they were introduced to Bruce's music." Visit thelightindarkness.com for more information and to contribute.
April 05, 2009  Gary Graff, Cleveland Max Weinberg was happy to play the proud papa at Saturday's Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony, accepting well-wishes about his 18-year-old son Jay's appointment as his fill-in in the E Street Band for a selection of dates on Bruce Springsteen's current world tour. "What can I say? I'm very proud," Weinberg told Billboard.com after inducting Elvis Presley's drummer DJ Fontana into the Hall -- while E Street Band bassist Garry Tallent did the honors for Presley's bassist, Bill Black. "I never taught him to play drums. He did it all by himself. He did all the work. He started less than four years ago and basically taught himself. He's like a prodigy or something. "I give my wife more credit than me. Maybe it's in the genes. It could be genetic." Weinberg, who has to miss the shows to help Conan O'Brien make his move to "The Tonight Show," acknowledged that he idea of an E Street Band concert happening without him was odd -- but less so because it will be his son filling in for him. "As Bruce said to me one night, 'It's good to know there'll always be a Weinberg on the drums in the E Street Band," the drummer said. "It's just a scheduling thing, but to have your child acquit himself so well and do it his own way...it's a wonderful feeling. There's nothing negative about it. He sounds great with the band." And the silver lining? "I've never seen the band," notes Weinberg, who during the recent rehearsal shows in Asbury Park "stepped down front to watch, and it's a helluva show." The Springsteen tour, he reports, is off to a strong start, too. "We found that with very little rehearsal, the first night it was largely there, the second night, boom, it was all there," Weinberg says. "The new material's going over great. 'Kingdom of Days' is an instant, epic song for us. People seem to really respond to that song. 'Outlaw Pete' has taken on a whole other dimension playing live. It's quite a different show for us, very exciting." |
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