duncan228
08-20-2009, 07:36 PM
Red, White, and Bruce (http://www.aarpmagazine.org/entertainment/bruce_springsteen.html)
He's our blue-collar conscience, our rock 'n' roll sage. Why America needs Bruce Springsteen now more than ever
By Ariel Swartley
The laptop video is shaky, and I've seen the song performed a dozen times—so my tears catch me by surprise. When Bruce Springsteen wrote "Badlands" more than 30 years ago, he said he was inspired by the "everyday kind of heroism" of family and friends he saw struggling to eke out a living in the decaying, blue-collar, north-central New Jersey neighborhoods where his father worked as a bus driver. Today, in the wake of the financial meltdown, Springsteen's badlands have a longer reach. The middle-of-the-night fears the lyrics describe mirror the experiences of many of us now.
But "Badlands" is an anthem, not a dirge. Its bitter observations are buoyed by ringing guitars. Sitting in my Los Angeles apartment, I watch the vast, multigenerational crowd on the computer screen shout the chorus as Springsteen performs in April in San Jose. Their excitement grabs me and pulls me in. My tears are happy ones. Hope, the song insists, is possible. Change can come.
This September, Springsteen will turn 60. In the months before his birthday, he will have traveled across America and Europe, putting on more than 50 concerts. At every one he will play several roles—hero, leader, preacher, rebel—the performances unfolding like a novel. His audiences will hold up homemade signs naming rare B sides and rock classics, and he and the band will play them from memory. He will ask fans to "remember your neighbors," and food-bank reps will traverse the crowds in search of donations.
By writing about his roots, he moved from seedy shore-town gigs to the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. His first hero was Elvis, yet the songs—such as "It's Hard to Be a Saint in the City"—that won him a recording contract were full of religious imagery. The first time I heard one of those songs, the pounding drums and urgent voice thrilled me. "For You," released in 1973, was about a girl who threatened suicide. I was in my mid-20s, and what struck me was the singer's understanding of the dangerous glamour of self-destructive behavior. Jimi and Janis were dead, but there was Springsteen, holding out the possibility that rock 'n' roll and I could grow up together. "Thunder Road," released in '75, suggested "maybe we ain't that young anymore." Springsteen had just turned 26, but he was already reaching beyond rock's traditional trust-no-one-over-30 audience. Over the years the guitars would still ring and the live shows rock, but Springsteen's audiences were pushed to think, too—and later, to act.
When Springsteen read Vietnam vet Ron Kovic's memoir Born on the Fourth of July, it inspired an L.A. benefit concert as well as the 1984 hit "Born in the U.S.A." Its verses are an angry commentary on the treatment of returning vets, but many listeners—including Ronald Reagan—mistook the title for an upbeat slogan. Springsteen later expressed resentment for people who attributed to their own party "anything and everything that seemed fundamentally American, and if you were on the other side, you were somehow unpatriotic." His own "American music," he said, was written "about the place I live and who I am in my lifetime."
But who is he? Songs from his current tour have him adopting the voice of a carpenter, a murderer, a laid-off steelworker. He finds in his own experiences enough parallels to sing with conviction. In inviting audiences to connect with his characters, he's inviting them to connect with themselves.
My friend Steve saw Springsteen perform in Los Angeles in April. He and his wife arrived early to get a number for the general-seating lottery. Because they're grownups and getting loaded in a parking lot no longer appeals, they visited a nearby museum. Their lottery number yielded seats in the third row—a Bucket List moment, Steve said. They were close enough to Springsteen to see streams of sweat "pour off his hands." We feed off his energy, he said, and in turn become energized. Suddenly we can dance all night—or even change the world.
Ariel Swartley wrote "The Wild, the Innocent and the E Street Shuffle" for the essay collection Stranded: Rock and Roll for a Desert Island (Da Capo Press, 2007).
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Photo Gallery
Springsteen: From 'Darkness' To 'Dust'
Photographer Frank Stefanko first worked with Bruce Springsteen in 1978, when he shot the iconic cover and liner art for Darkness on the Edge of Town. Over the years, the two New Jersey natives have reconnected several times, and the pictures from their sessions trace the arc of an astonishing rock 'n' roll career. Stefanko shares his memories of his favorite Springsteen shots here (http://www.aarpmagazine.org/entertainment/springsteen_photo_gallery.html).
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Glory Days (http://www.aarpmagazine.org/entertainment/springsteen_glory_days.html)
by Meg Guroff, Jim Jerome, and Lyndon Stambler
Friends of the Boss share their most intimate insights
Jon Landau
Musical Partner
A music critic, Landau became Springsteen's producer in '75 and manager in '77.
"I'd written a favorable review for Rolling Stone of Bruce's second album, but I'd never seen him perform. I went to a club where he was playing in Cambridge [Massachusetts]. They'd put the article in the window. Bruce was outside the club, hopping up and down, trying to stay warm while he read the article. I strolled up to him and asked how the article was.
" 'Pretty good,' he said. 'This guy is usually pretty good.' There were 15 or 20 people in the club. Afterwards we had a chance to talk about the performance, which was fantastic. He called me the next day, and we talked for several hours. That was the beginning of a conversation that we're still having about how to relate to the world around us and how to nurture who you are and what you want to do in the context of a universe that may or may not be sympathetic or interested.
"A few months later I saw him perform at the Harvard Square Theatre. He had this incredibly innate connection to the innermost parts of rock music experience. Although I came to know how much effort went into it, he had the humility to make it look effortless. You feel like you're in the presence of this unique and incredibly honest and authentic voice."
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Luke Russert
NBC News Correspondent
Russert's dad, the late TV journalist Tim Russert, became an avid Springsteen fan after booking him to play at John Carroll University, Tim's alma mater, in 1975. Springsteen played "Thunder Road" via satellite at Russert's memorial in 2008.
"My father deeply identified with the blue-collar, working-class stories Springsteen tells in his music. They were all part of his life growing up in South Buffalo. The other attachment was the authenticity of the music. My dad always valued substance over style, and in a world of rock 'n' roll where you had Jimi Hendrix lighting guitars on fire and God knows what during disco and the '80s, you could identify with Springsteen: he never forgot where he came from. I find comfort in Bruce's music and, specifically, in 'Thunder Road.' "
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Ron Kovic
Author and Vietnam Vet
Kovic's 1976 book Born on the Fourth of July inspired Springsteen to write the 1984 hit song "Born in the U.S.A."
"In the late 1970s I was living in Hollywood at the Sunset Marquis Hotel. I'd sleep in and then write every day. I'd take a break in the afternoon and sit at the pool to clear my head. One afternoon I was watching this young man in the pool, swimming up a storm. He looked familiar, like Bruce Springsteen. I went over to him in my wheelchair. 'Excuse me, you probably don't know me, but my name is Ron Kovic. I'm a Vietnam veteran, and I wrote a book called Born on the Fourth of July.'
"He looked surprised. 'You're that guy? I just read your book. I couldn't put it down.' Two or three days later I opened up the front door of my hotel room. An album and a bunch of tapes fell down. He had picked up Darkness on the Edge of Town and some of his earlier albums. He had written: 'If my music can touch you and move you as much as your book moved me, that will mean a lot to me. Bruce Springsteen.'
"He invited me to see him at Winterland in San Francisco. All of a sudden he told the story to the audience about how he picked up Born on the Fourth of July and how much it had meant to him. He went on to talk about how he met a guy named Ron Kovic. Then he sang 'Darkness on the Edge of Town.' He said, 'This one's for you, Ron.' I sat there in my wheelchair with tears in my eyes."
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Bonnie Raitt
Singer-Songwriter
Raitt shared the stage with Springsteen for the No Nukes concert in 1979 and the 2004 Vote for Change tour.
"It was an incredible boost when Bruce committed to joining the No Nukes concerts. From the groundbreaking Amnesty International tour, to helping stop Contra aid in the '80s, to a steady stream of benefits, I don't know if any other American artist has made as profound a difference. I think he taps into the promise of who we want to be. In a world where persona is so carefully calculated, Bruce is the real deal. And people love him for it."
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Donna Summer
Disco Goddess
Springsteen wrote "Protection" for Summer's 1982 LP Donna Summer.
"My producer, Quincy Jones, called and said, 'I got a song for you called "Protection." Bruce is going to come over.' My husband, Bruce Sudano, just loved Bruce's music, so I had gotten very into it as well. When Bruce came into my house, he played the song. We sang it. He told me to make it my own.
"Bruce was humble. I think he always sees himself as a kid from Jersey. Then, when he's onstage, once he flips that switch, boy, it's like a tornado roars through there. You can tell by his words, you can tell by the rasp in his voice, that he's been through something, and behind that quiet there's a storm brewing.
"When Bruce Springsteen performs, you're getting a workingman. That grit tells you you don't get that way from nothing. You get that way from abuse, use, work, getting through things. When people see him onstage, they relate and align themselves with him, no matter where he goes in life, because he started in a place they all understand."
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Nils Lofgren
Guitarist
Lofgren has played with the E Street Band since 1984 (and offers online lessons through the Nils Lofgren Guitar School).
"When I joined the E Street Band, I moved into Bruce's house in New Jersey to get ready for the Born in the U.S.A. tour. He suggested we wake up and go for a leisurely five-mile jog every morning. We'd eat breakfast by 9:30, then get our tennis shoes on and run down near the Jersey Shore. Then I'd shower up and get on with my studies of the songs because we had these massive rehearsals headed our way. Early on in the rehearsals Bruce approached me. He knew I'd been doing a backflip while I played the guitar in my own show. He asked me: 'If you did it 100 nights, how many times are you going to fall?'
" 'Probably in 100 nights I might fall once on my ass and get embarrassed but not hurt,' I said.
" 'Okay, let's put it in the show,' he said.
"During a lot of the Born in the U.S.A. tour, I also did dive rolls across the stage. It takes quite a bit of sprint velocity to do them without your hands while you're playing the guitar so you don't crush your neck. One night he stopped me before I was going to do it. He gets down on all fours and dares me to dive over him. Like a fool I ran and did it. Over the next dozen shows it became a nightly bit. Then the voice of reason, Phil Dunphy, our trainer on the tour, pulled me and Bruce aside and informed us that we were out of our minds. If we kept this up there was going to be a paralyzed guitar player soon, and we'd better knock it off.
"Bruce is pretty consistent about working out daily and maintaining a high level of physical health. He's living proof it's not some voodoo. It's just a good work ethic and a reality check. If you're going to be 60 and do shows like this, it requires some work and energy."
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Jonathan Demme
Filmmaker
The self-proclaimed "number one Bruce Springsteen fan" directed Philadelphia, for which Springsteen composed the Academy Award-winning theme song "The Streets of Philadelphia" in 1993.
"When I was doing Philadelphia, I called Neil Young to get him to write a real kick-ass, American-dude anthem that would put all the homophobic white males who had come to the movie in a reassured mode. A week later I got this hauntingly beautiful, delicate song called 'Philadelphia' that was at the end of that movie. It was extraordinary. But we still needed that reassuring, hard-driving song. So I got in touch with Springsteen. I leveled with him. You know you've got to level with the Boss. I sent him the movie with Neil's music. He said, 'Okay, I'll send you something back in a week or so.'
"The tape arrived. My wife and I got in the car and put the cassette in. We started driving. Here comes 'The Streets of Philadelphia.' I had to pull over because we were both so overwhelmed. I thought, 'Bruce Springsteen trusts this movie and the audience more than I do. Enough with the anthem already.'
"Bruce is the greatest American filmmaker who has yet to make his first film."
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Kadiatou Diallo
Mother
In 1999, Diallo's 23-year-old son, Amadou, a Guinean immigrant, was shot and killed by four New York City plainclothes officers, who mistook him for a rape suspect and fired 41 rounds. Springsteen wrote a song about it, "American Skin (41 Shots)."
"The first time I heard the whole song was at Madison Square Garden. One of my friends contacted Bruce's management, and he invited us to meet him backstage. He hugged me in a very warm, affectionate way. He also introduced his wife and members of his band. I was stunned because I thought, 'He's going to come and be like this big celebrity singer.' He escorted us to sit in the VIP section. We listened to the music. It really got into my heart and soul.
"I never expected to hear from him after that. But he did something that I have never shared with the public. He sent us pictures that he took with us, and he donated money in Amadou's honor for scholarships at four colleges in New York City."
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Kristen Breitweiser
9/11 Activist
Breitweiser lost her husband, Ronald, in the attacks on the World Trade Center. She and fellow activists known as the Jersey Girls fought for the creation of the government's 9/11 Commission.
"I got introduced to Bruce the last night before the 2004 election. He said, 'I followed everything that you and [the Jersey Girls] did. Every time you had a setback, I was rooting you on, praying for you.'
"When The Rising came out I was just so busy with so many other things. When I finally listened to it, it was overwhelming. It truly captures what it was like to have lost someone on 9/11. I felt like an older brother was giving me a comforting hug and saying, 'It's going to be okay.' "
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Frank Stefanko
Longtime Friend and Photographer
[I]Stefanko's work with the Boss includes two album covers in addition to a 2003 book, Days of Hopes and Dreams: An Intimate Portrait of Bruce Springsteen (Billboard Books).
"Bruce is a great photographer. When we started working together in 1978, [we were] in the darkroom and I had finished shooting a session for Nebraska. He saw me project the light onto the photographic paper and put the paper into the developer, and he saw the image come up. He slapped me on the shoulder and said, 'Frank, this is magic.' And I said, 'No, this is photography; this is darkroom chemistry.' And he says, 'No, it's darkroom magic.'
"He was fascinated by the medium and soon got his camera. Riding in my car he'll notice unusual things—weird Jersey billboards, funny signs on the sides of diners—and it's all registering. A [nonphotographer] will just walk by and never see it. Bruce travels all over the world, taking pictures—it's quite a collection of work. Will he ever show it? I don't know. He doesn't make a fuss over it. But I know he has that artist's eye—his eyes, his brain, they're always working."
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Senator John Kerry
2004 Presidential Candidate
Springsteen supported Kerry's campaign with 2004's Vote for Change tour.
"For the first time in his career, Bruce shed his public political neutrality and put his good name on the line campaigning with me in 2004. We stood together in front of crowds that stretched as far as the eye can see in Wisconsin, Ohio, and Florida, and his guitar pumped out our anthem, 'No Surrender,' with heart and grit and belief. But what you might not know is that in the aftermath of that bruising race, when I was pretty bruised myself, long after the crowds had gone away, Bruce was one of the first to visit me, and he brought that guitar I'd listened to on the campaign trail. That's the real deal—being there when it's hard and when the sun isn't shining. And you know that guitar he gave me remains my proudest possession of the whole campaign. In good times and bad, he had my back, and that's all the honor in your life you can ever hope for."
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Darren Aronofsky
Director of The Wrestler
Mickey Rourke asked Springsteen to write the theme song for his 2008 comeback film, The Wrestler, which led to a meeting with Aronofsky.
"Mickey and Bruce met about 20 years ago—over beers at the Stone Pony in Asbury Park—but they hadn't been in touch for a long time. Mickey's had quite a hard trip since then. to Bruce, his brutal honesty resounded with the Boss.
"Next thing I know, we were in the front row at a Springsteen concert at Giants Stadium, surrounded by 80,000 people rocking out. After the show, Mickey introduced us and said, 'I'll leave you two guys alone. I know you have some business to talk.' I kinda lost my tongue, overwhelmed by stage fright. Pretty quick, Bruce pulled out an acoustic guitar and sang the tune. I remember thinking, 'I'm getting serenaded by the Boss in the Giants locker room—and he's singing an amazing song.' He had only read the script, but he completely captured the spirit. When Mickey first got a copy of the song, he listened to it about 80 times in a row. He loved it.
"The Boss did [the theme] for nothing because he wanted to help Mickey. He knew we couldn't afford him. But he felt Mickey was trying to redeem himself, so he made it work for us."
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John Hall
[I]A singer/songwriter who founded the band Orleans, he's in his second term as Democratic U.S. representative from New York's 19th Congressional District, in the Hudson Valley.
"When Bruce and I were starting out, I was in a band called Kangaroo, and Bruce was the leader of a band called the Castilles. We used to do six shows a day, starting about two in the afternoon at Café Wha?, a Greenwich Village coffeehouse where kids from Long Island and New Jersey would come in and hear up-and-coming rock bands. We would alternate, six sets each, going on into the night. I think each man got paid six dollars a day and all the potato chips he could eat.
"Looking back, was there something that would indicate success and the longevity of his career and the standards that he has lived up to? Sure there was. Every step of the way he ignored trends and what record executives were telling him, instead following his own inspirations. It's been evident in how long he takes to make a recording, because he doesn't rush them out. He's notorious for taking his time until it's perfect. He works like an artist and performs like one, and that's what kept him the loyal audience that he has had all these years.
"I think Bruce has been very careful to pick and choose when to advocate the cause. When we did the No Nukes concerts in 1979, Bruce was responsible for selling out two or three of those nights. It is a tough tightrope to walk. Bruce has been more veiled and subtle and artistic in his way of doing it, and that's the sign of an artist, to be able to say something and leave blanks for the listener to fill in."
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Ruth Pointer
In 1978, the Pointer Sisters, looking to move from a jazz-R&B sound into pop, recorded "Fire," written by Springsteen. The song became the Pointers' first-ever gold single.
"We were surprised a little because the song is a bit sexual and a bit not. We got different reactions, but mostly people wondering, what did you mean by that? You could take it any number of ways, not only sexually. People just need gentleness in their lives, they need to be touched—babies, seniors, animals. People like to be touched softly. In the gentleness of that song is something every living thing can relate to: with the slow hand and a gentle approach you can aspire to do anything. That's the way I look at the song, and it lets me know that Bruce has a lot of gentleness in his heart."
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Anita Pointer
"Bruce was just so sweet when I met him. I went to a big concert of his in Chicago, and I sent a note backstage saying 'Anita Pointer is here.' We had just done 'Fire,' and I was so nervous to meet him: it was like I was going to meet God. There was a mob of people waiting. Finally, he signaled for me and my friend to come in first—and I was so thrilled. Oh my God, me, Anita Pointer, 'Come back in here, yeah you, Anita Pointer, you come on in.' Oh, wow! We went into the dressing room and he was just finishing his massage. He was so sweet. He gave me a note saying something like, 'I love the way you did the song,' and that he was glad I'd come to see him. I still have that note.
"I just hugged him and thanked him for getting us that song and letting us record it. We never had a gold single till 'Fire,' and it just sent us sailing. I love Bruce. I wish he would give me the publishing [royalties] on 'Fire' for one year. Now that would be nice!"
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Steve Earle
Earle says Springsteen inspired him to write the songs for Guitar Town, the first of his 13 albums. Known for his opposition to the death penalty, Earle contributed "Ellis Unit One" to the Dead Man Walking soundtrack, which featured Springsteen's title track.
"I was in Nashville for 12 or 13 years and never got a record deal. Then, in 1985, I saw something on the 'Born in the USA' tour that made everything click for me. I watched Bruce turn a 20,000-seat arena at Middle Tennessee State University into a coffeehouse. He brought everything down to this conversational level. He told stories. I realized that I could apply skills that I had learned in coffeehouses to a bigger audience and to fronting a band. I went home and wrote 'Guitar Town' to be the opening of that record. I finally got a record deal and had a career.
"I didn't meet Bruce until 1988 when my third record came out. We were playing the Palace in L.A. Someone said 'Springsteen and John Fogerty just came in.' I'd been playing [Springsteen's] 'Nebraska' encores on that tour. My steel player came back and said, 'You're not going to play "Nebraska," are you?'
" 'F_ _ yeah, I'm going to play it,' I said. And I did.
"Afterward, Bruce walks into my dressing room and the first thing he says to me was, 'Ballsy cover, man.' It was pretty overwhelming.
"Bruce was the last man standing in the '80s. I think we could have forgotten about how powerful songs were, as disco had a stranglehold on everything. I think Bruce being there, pounding away at it and making those records during that era, sort of helped the idea of the singer/songwriter survive."
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President William Jefferson Clinton
A sax player himself, Clinton became a Boss fan early in his political career.
"Bruce Springsteen's music has influenced generations and provided an authentic soundtrack to the lives of hardworking Americans for decades. But equally as iconic as his anthology is his enormous support for progressive causes, from giving back to the communities in his home state of New Jersey to advocating for issues such as poverty or human rights globally. He's always willing to lend his talents and music to support the good causes of others, and arguably has done even more for the world than he has for rock and roll."
He's our blue-collar conscience, our rock 'n' roll sage. Why America needs Bruce Springsteen now more than ever
By Ariel Swartley
The laptop video is shaky, and I've seen the song performed a dozen times—so my tears catch me by surprise. When Bruce Springsteen wrote "Badlands" more than 30 years ago, he said he was inspired by the "everyday kind of heroism" of family and friends he saw struggling to eke out a living in the decaying, blue-collar, north-central New Jersey neighborhoods where his father worked as a bus driver. Today, in the wake of the financial meltdown, Springsteen's badlands have a longer reach. The middle-of-the-night fears the lyrics describe mirror the experiences of many of us now.
But "Badlands" is an anthem, not a dirge. Its bitter observations are buoyed by ringing guitars. Sitting in my Los Angeles apartment, I watch the vast, multigenerational crowd on the computer screen shout the chorus as Springsteen performs in April in San Jose. Their excitement grabs me and pulls me in. My tears are happy ones. Hope, the song insists, is possible. Change can come.
This September, Springsteen will turn 60. In the months before his birthday, he will have traveled across America and Europe, putting on more than 50 concerts. At every one he will play several roles—hero, leader, preacher, rebel—the performances unfolding like a novel. His audiences will hold up homemade signs naming rare B sides and rock classics, and he and the band will play them from memory. He will ask fans to "remember your neighbors," and food-bank reps will traverse the crowds in search of donations.
By writing about his roots, he moved from seedy shore-town gigs to the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. His first hero was Elvis, yet the songs—such as "It's Hard to Be a Saint in the City"—that won him a recording contract were full of religious imagery. The first time I heard one of those songs, the pounding drums and urgent voice thrilled me. "For You," released in 1973, was about a girl who threatened suicide. I was in my mid-20s, and what struck me was the singer's understanding of the dangerous glamour of self-destructive behavior. Jimi and Janis were dead, but there was Springsteen, holding out the possibility that rock 'n' roll and I could grow up together. "Thunder Road," released in '75, suggested "maybe we ain't that young anymore." Springsteen had just turned 26, but he was already reaching beyond rock's traditional trust-no-one-over-30 audience. Over the years the guitars would still ring and the live shows rock, but Springsteen's audiences were pushed to think, too—and later, to act.
When Springsteen read Vietnam vet Ron Kovic's memoir Born on the Fourth of July, it inspired an L.A. benefit concert as well as the 1984 hit "Born in the U.S.A." Its verses are an angry commentary on the treatment of returning vets, but many listeners—including Ronald Reagan—mistook the title for an upbeat slogan. Springsteen later expressed resentment for people who attributed to their own party "anything and everything that seemed fundamentally American, and if you were on the other side, you were somehow unpatriotic." His own "American music," he said, was written "about the place I live and who I am in my lifetime."
But who is he? Songs from his current tour have him adopting the voice of a carpenter, a murderer, a laid-off steelworker. He finds in his own experiences enough parallels to sing with conviction. In inviting audiences to connect with his characters, he's inviting them to connect with themselves.
My friend Steve saw Springsteen perform in Los Angeles in April. He and his wife arrived early to get a number for the general-seating lottery. Because they're grownups and getting loaded in a parking lot no longer appeals, they visited a nearby museum. Their lottery number yielded seats in the third row—a Bucket List moment, Steve said. They were close enough to Springsteen to see streams of sweat "pour off his hands." We feed off his energy, he said, and in turn become energized. Suddenly we can dance all night—or even change the world.
Ariel Swartley wrote "The Wild, the Innocent and the E Street Shuffle" for the essay collection Stranded: Rock and Roll for a Desert Island (Da Capo Press, 2007).
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Photo Gallery
Springsteen: From 'Darkness' To 'Dust'
Photographer Frank Stefanko first worked with Bruce Springsteen in 1978, when he shot the iconic cover and liner art for Darkness on the Edge of Town. Over the years, the two New Jersey natives have reconnected several times, and the pictures from their sessions trace the arc of an astonishing rock 'n' roll career. Stefanko shares his memories of his favorite Springsteen shots here (http://www.aarpmagazine.org/entertainment/springsteen_photo_gallery.html).
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Glory Days (http://www.aarpmagazine.org/entertainment/springsteen_glory_days.html)
by Meg Guroff, Jim Jerome, and Lyndon Stambler
Friends of the Boss share their most intimate insights
Jon Landau
Musical Partner
A music critic, Landau became Springsteen's producer in '75 and manager in '77.
"I'd written a favorable review for Rolling Stone of Bruce's second album, but I'd never seen him perform. I went to a club where he was playing in Cambridge [Massachusetts]. They'd put the article in the window. Bruce was outside the club, hopping up and down, trying to stay warm while he read the article. I strolled up to him and asked how the article was.
" 'Pretty good,' he said. 'This guy is usually pretty good.' There were 15 or 20 people in the club. Afterwards we had a chance to talk about the performance, which was fantastic. He called me the next day, and we talked for several hours. That was the beginning of a conversation that we're still having about how to relate to the world around us and how to nurture who you are and what you want to do in the context of a universe that may or may not be sympathetic or interested.
"A few months later I saw him perform at the Harvard Square Theatre. He had this incredibly innate connection to the innermost parts of rock music experience. Although I came to know how much effort went into it, he had the humility to make it look effortless. You feel like you're in the presence of this unique and incredibly honest and authentic voice."
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Luke Russert
NBC News Correspondent
Russert's dad, the late TV journalist Tim Russert, became an avid Springsteen fan after booking him to play at John Carroll University, Tim's alma mater, in 1975. Springsteen played "Thunder Road" via satellite at Russert's memorial in 2008.
"My father deeply identified with the blue-collar, working-class stories Springsteen tells in his music. They were all part of his life growing up in South Buffalo. The other attachment was the authenticity of the music. My dad always valued substance over style, and in a world of rock 'n' roll where you had Jimi Hendrix lighting guitars on fire and God knows what during disco and the '80s, you could identify with Springsteen: he never forgot where he came from. I find comfort in Bruce's music and, specifically, in 'Thunder Road.' "
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Ron Kovic
Author and Vietnam Vet
Kovic's 1976 book Born on the Fourth of July inspired Springsteen to write the 1984 hit song "Born in the U.S.A."
"In the late 1970s I was living in Hollywood at the Sunset Marquis Hotel. I'd sleep in and then write every day. I'd take a break in the afternoon and sit at the pool to clear my head. One afternoon I was watching this young man in the pool, swimming up a storm. He looked familiar, like Bruce Springsteen. I went over to him in my wheelchair. 'Excuse me, you probably don't know me, but my name is Ron Kovic. I'm a Vietnam veteran, and I wrote a book called Born on the Fourth of July.'
"He looked surprised. 'You're that guy? I just read your book. I couldn't put it down.' Two or three days later I opened up the front door of my hotel room. An album and a bunch of tapes fell down. He had picked up Darkness on the Edge of Town and some of his earlier albums. He had written: 'If my music can touch you and move you as much as your book moved me, that will mean a lot to me. Bruce Springsteen.'
"He invited me to see him at Winterland in San Francisco. All of a sudden he told the story to the audience about how he picked up Born on the Fourth of July and how much it had meant to him. He went on to talk about how he met a guy named Ron Kovic. Then he sang 'Darkness on the Edge of Town.' He said, 'This one's for you, Ron.' I sat there in my wheelchair with tears in my eyes."
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Bonnie Raitt
Singer-Songwriter
Raitt shared the stage with Springsteen for the No Nukes concert in 1979 and the 2004 Vote for Change tour.
"It was an incredible boost when Bruce committed to joining the No Nukes concerts. From the groundbreaking Amnesty International tour, to helping stop Contra aid in the '80s, to a steady stream of benefits, I don't know if any other American artist has made as profound a difference. I think he taps into the promise of who we want to be. In a world where persona is so carefully calculated, Bruce is the real deal. And people love him for it."
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Donna Summer
Disco Goddess
Springsteen wrote "Protection" for Summer's 1982 LP Donna Summer.
"My producer, Quincy Jones, called and said, 'I got a song for you called "Protection." Bruce is going to come over.' My husband, Bruce Sudano, just loved Bruce's music, so I had gotten very into it as well. When Bruce came into my house, he played the song. We sang it. He told me to make it my own.
"Bruce was humble. I think he always sees himself as a kid from Jersey. Then, when he's onstage, once he flips that switch, boy, it's like a tornado roars through there. You can tell by his words, you can tell by the rasp in his voice, that he's been through something, and behind that quiet there's a storm brewing.
"When Bruce Springsteen performs, you're getting a workingman. That grit tells you you don't get that way from nothing. You get that way from abuse, use, work, getting through things. When people see him onstage, they relate and align themselves with him, no matter where he goes in life, because he started in a place they all understand."
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Nils Lofgren
Guitarist
Lofgren has played with the E Street Band since 1984 (and offers online lessons through the Nils Lofgren Guitar School).
"When I joined the E Street Band, I moved into Bruce's house in New Jersey to get ready for the Born in the U.S.A. tour. He suggested we wake up and go for a leisurely five-mile jog every morning. We'd eat breakfast by 9:30, then get our tennis shoes on and run down near the Jersey Shore. Then I'd shower up and get on with my studies of the songs because we had these massive rehearsals headed our way. Early on in the rehearsals Bruce approached me. He knew I'd been doing a backflip while I played the guitar in my own show. He asked me: 'If you did it 100 nights, how many times are you going to fall?'
" 'Probably in 100 nights I might fall once on my ass and get embarrassed but not hurt,' I said.
" 'Okay, let's put it in the show,' he said.
"During a lot of the Born in the U.S.A. tour, I also did dive rolls across the stage. It takes quite a bit of sprint velocity to do them without your hands while you're playing the guitar so you don't crush your neck. One night he stopped me before I was going to do it. He gets down on all fours and dares me to dive over him. Like a fool I ran and did it. Over the next dozen shows it became a nightly bit. Then the voice of reason, Phil Dunphy, our trainer on the tour, pulled me and Bruce aside and informed us that we were out of our minds. If we kept this up there was going to be a paralyzed guitar player soon, and we'd better knock it off.
"Bruce is pretty consistent about working out daily and maintaining a high level of physical health. He's living proof it's not some voodoo. It's just a good work ethic and a reality check. If you're going to be 60 and do shows like this, it requires some work and energy."
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Jonathan Demme
Filmmaker
The self-proclaimed "number one Bruce Springsteen fan" directed Philadelphia, for which Springsteen composed the Academy Award-winning theme song "The Streets of Philadelphia" in 1993.
"When I was doing Philadelphia, I called Neil Young to get him to write a real kick-ass, American-dude anthem that would put all the homophobic white males who had come to the movie in a reassured mode. A week later I got this hauntingly beautiful, delicate song called 'Philadelphia' that was at the end of that movie. It was extraordinary. But we still needed that reassuring, hard-driving song. So I got in touch with Springsteen. I leveled with him. You know you've got to level with the Boss. I sent him the movie with Neil's music. He said, 'Okay, I'll send you something back in a week or so.'
"The tape arrived. My wife and I got in the car and put the cassette in. We started driving. Here comes 'The Streets of Philadelphia.' I had to pull over because we were both so overwhelmed. I thought, 'Bruce Springsteen trusts this movie and the audience more than I do. Enough with the anthem already.'
"Bruce is the greatest American filmmaker who has yet to make his first film."
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Kadiatou Diallo
Mother
In 1999, Diallo's 23-year-old son, Amadou, a Guinean immigrant, was shot and killed by four New York City plainclothes officers, who mistook him for a rape suspect and fired 41 rounds. Springsteen wrote a song about it, "American Skin (41 Shots)."
"The first time I heard the whole song was at Madison Square Garden. One of my friends contacted Bruce's management, and he invited us to meet him backstage. He hugged me in a very warm, affectionate way. He also introduced his wife and members of his band. I was stunned because I thought, 'He's going to come and be like this big celebrity singer.' He escorted us to sit in the VIP section. We listened to the music. It really got into my heart and soul.
"I never expected to hear from him after that. But he did something that I have never shared with the public. He sent us pictures that he took with us, and he donated money in Amadou's honor for scholarships at four colleges in New York City."
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Kristen Breitweiser
9/11 Activist
Breitweiser lost her husband, Ronald, in the attacks on the World Trade Center. She and fellow activists known as the Jersey Girls fought for the creation of the government's 9/11 Commission.
"I got introduced to Bruce the last night before the 2004 election. He said, 'I followed everything that you and [the Jersey Girls] did. Every time you had a setback, I was rooting you on, praying for you.'
"When The Rising came out I was just so busy with so many other things. When I finally listened to it, it was overwhelming. It truly captures what it was like to have lost someone on 9/11. I felt like an older brother was giving me a comforting hug and saying, 'It's going to be okay.' "
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Frank Stefanko
Longtime Friend and Photographer
[I]Stefanko's work with the Boss includes two album covers in addition to a 2003 book, Days of Hopes and Dreams: An Intimate Portrait of Bruce Springsteen (Billboard Books).
"Bruce is a great photographer. When we started working together in 1978, [we were] in the darkroom and I had finished shooting a session for Nebraska. He saw me project the light onto the photographic paper and put the paper into the developer, and he saw the image come up. He slapped me on the shoulder and said, 'Frank, this is magic.' And I said, 'No, this is photography; this is darkroom chemistry.' And he says, 'No, it's darkroom magic.'
"He was fascinated by the medium and soon got his camera. Riding in my car he'll notice unusual things—weird Jersey billboards, funny signs on the sides of diners—and it's all registering. A [nonphotographer] will just walk by and never see it. Bruce travels all over the world, taking pictures—it's quite a collection of work. Will he ever show it? I don't know. He doesn't make a fuss over it. But I know he has that artist's eye—his eyes, his brain, they're always working."
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Senator John Kerry
2004 Presidential Candidate
Springsteen supported Kerry's campaign with 2004's Vote for Change tour.
"For the first time in his career, Bruce shed his public political neutrality and put his good name on the line campaigning with me in 2004. We stood together in front of crowds that stretched as far as the eye can see in Wisconsin, Ohio, and Florida, and his guitar pumped out our anthem, 'No Surrender,' with heart and grit and belief. But what you might not know is that in the aftermath of that bruising race, when I was pretty bruised myself, long after the crowds had gone away, Bruce was one of the first to visit me, and he brought that guitar I'd listened to on the campaign trail. That's the real deal—being there when it's hard and when the sun isn't shining. And you know that guitar he gave me remains my proudest possession of the whole campaign. In good times and bad, he had my back, and that's all the honor in your life you can ever hope for."
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Darren Aronofsky
Director of The Wrestler
Mickey Rourke asked Springsteen to write the theme song for his 2008 comeback film, The Wrestler, which led to a meeting with Aronofsky.
"Mickey and Bruce met about 20 years ago—over beers at the Stone Pony in Asbury Park—but they hadn't been in touch for a long time. Mickey's had quite a hard trip since then. to Bruce, his brutal honesty resounded with the Boss.
"Next thing I know, we were in the front row at a Springsteen concert at Giants Stadium, surrounded by 80,000 people rocking out. After the show, Mickey introduced us and said, 'I'll leave you two guys alone. I know you have some business to talk.' I kinda lost my tongue, overwhelmed by stage fright. Pretty quick, Bruce pulled out an acoustic guitar and sang the tune. I remember thinking, 'I'm getting serenaded by the Boss in the Giants locker room—and he's singing an amazing song.' He had only read the script, but he completely captured the spirit. When Mickey first got a copy of the song, he listened to it about 80 times in a row. He loved it.
"The Boss did [the theme] for nothing because he wanted to help Mickey. He knew we couldn't afford him. But he felt Mickey was trying to redeem himself, so he made it work for us."
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John Hall
[I]A singer/songwriter who founded the band Orleans, he's in his second term as Democratic U.S. representative from New York's 19th Congressional District, in the Hudson Valley.
"When Bruce and I were starting out, I was in a band called Kangaroo, and Bruce was the leader of a band called the Castilles. We used to do six shows a day, starting about two in the afternoon at Café Wha?, a Greenwich Village coffeehouse where kids from Long Island and New Jersey would come in and hear up-and-coming rock bands. We would alternate, six sets each, going on into the night. I think each man got paid six dollars a day and all the potato chips he could eat.
"Looking back, was there something that would indicate success and the longevity of his career and the standards that he has lived up to? Sure there was. Every step of the way he ignored trends and what record executives were telling him, instead following his own inspirations. It's been evident in how long he takes to make a recording, because he doesn't rush them out. He's notorious for taking his time until it's perfect. He works like an artist and performs like one, and that's what kept him the loyal audience that he has had all these years.
"I think Bruce has been very careful to pick and choose when to advocate the cause. When we did the No Nukes concerts in 1979, Bruce was responsible for selling out two or three of those nights. It is a tough tightrope to walk. Bruce has been more veiled and subtle and artistic in his way of doing it, and that's the sign of an artist, to be able to say something and leave blanks for the listener to fill in."
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Ruth Pointer
In 1978, the Pointer Sisters, looking to move from a jazz-R&B sound into pop, recorded "Fire," written by Springsteen. The song became the Pointers' first-ever gold single.
"We were surprised a little because the song is a bit sexual and a bit not. We got different reactions, but mostly people wondering, what did you mean by that? You could take it any number of ways, not only sexually. People just need gentleness in their lives, they need to be touched—babies, seniors, animals. People like to be touched softly. In the gentleness of that song is something every living thing can relate to: with the slow hand and a gentle approach you can aspire to do anything. That's the way I look at the song, and it lets me know that Bruce has a lot of gentleness in his heart."
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Anita Pointer
"Bruce was just so sweet when I met him. I went to a big concert of his in Chicago, and I sent a note backstage saying 'Anita Pointer is here.' We had just done 'Fire,' and I was so nervous to meet him: it was like I was going to meet God. There was a mob of people waiting. Finally, he signaled for me and my friend to come in first—and I was so thrilled. Oh my God, me, Anita Pointer, 'Come back in here, yeah you, Anita Pointer, you come on in.' Oh, wow! We went into the dressing room and he was just finishing his massage. He was so sweet. He gave me a note saying something like, 'I love the way you did the song,' and that he was glad I'd come to see him. I still have that note.
"I just hugged him and thanked him for getting us that song and letting us record it. We never had a gold single till 'Fire,' and it just sent us sailing. I love Bruce. I wish he would give me the publishing [royalties] on 'Fire' for one year. Now that would be nice!"
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Steve Earle
Earle says Springsteen inspired him to write the songs for Guitar Town, the first of his 13 albums. Known for his opposition to the death penalty, Earle contributed "Ellis Unit One" to the Dead Man Walking soundtrack, which featured Springsteen's title track.
"I was in Nashville for 12 or 13 years and never got a record deal. Then, in 1985, I saw something on the 'Born in the USA' tour that made everything click for me. I watched Bruce turn a 20,000-seat arena at Middle Tennessee State University into a coffeehouse. He brought everything down to this conversational level. He told stories. I realized that I could apply skills that I had learned in coffeehouses to a bigger audience and to fronting a band. I went home and wrote 'Guitar Town' to be the opening of that record. I finally got a record deal and had a career.
"I didn't meet Bruce until 1988 when my third record came out. We were playing the Palace in L.A. Someone said 'Springsteen and John Fogerty just came in.' I'd been playing [Springsteen's] 'Nebraska' encores on that tour. My steel player came back and said, 'You're not going to play "Nebraska," are you?'
" 'F_ _ yeah, I'm going to play it,' I said. And I did.
"Afterward, Bruce walks into my dressing room and the first thing he says to me was, 'Ballsy cover, man.' It was pretty overwhelming.
"Bruce was the last man standing in the '80s. I think we could have forgotten about how powerful songs were, as disco had a stranglehold on everything. I think Bruce being there, pounding away at it and making those records during that era, sort of helped the idea of the singer/songwriter survive."
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President William Jefferson Clinton
A sax player himself, Clinton became a Boss fan early in his political career.
"Bruce Springsteen's music has influenced generations and provided an authentic soundtrack to the lives of hardworking Americans for decades. But equally as iconic as his anthology is his enormous support for progressive causes, from giving back to the communities in his home state of New Jersey to advocating for issues such as poverty or human rights globally. He's always willing to lend his talents and music to support the good causes of others, and arguably has done even more for the world than he has for rock and roll."