My Long Journey With The Boss

It was the summer of 1984, I was 13. As I sat in a campground sometime between fishing and the evening campfire, the radio was playing the current hits of the time.

Between Michael Jackson and Quiet Riot came something from someone out of nowhere. A voice like I never heard before, raspy with the slightest tinge of soul. He claimed that he was — ‘ just tired and bored with myself’. When he looked in the mirror, he wanted to change his clothes, his hair and his face. Hey that’s me! A scrawny, spectacled kid, with a mouth full of braces.

Somehow, he knew exactly how I felt about myself. But that sound, that sound was so… different. The heavy drumbeat keeping time, ‘You can’t start a fire worrying about your little world falling apart…. heeey baby’, then cue the sax. I was instantly hooked.

The D.J. came on the radio and announces to the world, “That’s the new one from The Boss, Bruce Springsteen”. I needed to hear it again. With pop radio being what it was, they played it over and over again. Each time, the song sounded better than the last. Yeah, I did hear what I thought I heard.

At the time on the radio, there was Michael Jackson, Hair Bands, VanHalen making the scene with heavy synthesizer on Jump, 99 Luft Ballons, and Boy George singing about a Karma Chameleon. All catchy, poppy, bubble gum songs that were aimed towards teenage girls and soon to be head bangers. But this guy, who was — ‘living in a dump like this’, spoke directly to me. The first thing I did when we got home was jump on my bike and pedal down to the dime store and buy the tape, Born In The USA.

My brother and I must have played both sides of that cassette tape three times in a row that first time. I was blown away. Then we saw the video. Here was a guy without the big hair, wearing jeans and engineer boots, with his soulful man on sax to his right. He was the epitome of cool to me. You could tell the band behind him was HIS band. The hook was set deeper. The die was cast. I was a Springnut and didn’t know it.

The stories on that tape were stories of despair. Almost like the blues, but with a gritty rock and roll feel to them. Songs with lyrics I wouldn’t fully comprehend until I was an adult. But at the time, somehow, they resonated with me. From a guy who stops by a friends house to say goodbye, only to find out from the friends mom he’s too late. To someone who relives his Glory Days sometimes on a Friday night. With the sadness of a man who lost everything and feels like a rider on a downbound train. The old American axiom of trains in the American songbook. One could hear the echoes of Johnny Cash. And lastly, the title song where a Vietnam Vet declares, as Springsteen puts it, their birthright as Americans. Nobody knew at the time (except the vets themselves) that this was a protest song. After the Hiring Man says there’s no work for him and The VA Man gives him the runaround, the Vet feels hopeless after - ‘ten years burning down the road’. It was 1984&85, and these men were not welcomed home yet. I saw it first hand in my father. Who is a Vietnam veteran. He was proud but felt abandoned. You could see it in his eyes when the war came up on television or with friends of his that were there. Bruce gave them a voice through Born In The USA. It screamed, literally, “Shame on you for abandoning us”. Later on, with a song called The Wall, a song he calls a prayer for his country. I saw my father cry when he first heard that song. Especially when the lines- ‘For the living, time must be served, life goes on…. skin on black stone’, were delivered in his prayer.

After we played the Born In The USA tape to tatters, it was time for Bruce’s masterpiece, Born To Run. I don’t remember what I was expecting. But what I got was transcendental. From the first song on that album to the epic finale, no other work of art has stuck with me throughout my life and has had different meanings as I got older. Thunder Road is the first song on the album. It’s the story about a guy asking a girl to just go for a ride with him. He promises that he is no hero, but together, they can make something happen. With the windows rolled down and nothing but the road ahead of them. Anything could happen. It was all up to them. Bruce has said that this song is an invitation to go on a ride and let the chips fall where they may. I danced with my wife at our wedding to this song. Then there’s the story of the legendary E Street Band, Tenth Avenue Freeze Out. Where Bad Scooter and the Big Man bust the city in half. To the title track Born To Run. ‘The girls combed their hair in rearview mirrors and the boys tried to look so hard’. Finally, there is the albums swansong, Jungleland. A rock opera inside of a rock opera. A nine minute and twenty three second epic, you didn’t want to end. A story about the Magic Rat and Barefoot Girl struggle through a night of youths unexpected trials and consequences. Only to have life let them down in the final act. The sax solo, by Clarence Clemmons, seems to take you with our hero’s through the night for two and a half minutes. Tonight in Jungleland…

In my early twenties, I was enthralled by Pearl Jam, Nirvanna, Soundgarden, and the whole Seattle grunge band sound. I loved hearing Alice in Chains and Stone Temple Pilots. These guys were my age, letting it all out. They were the last vestiges of Rock and Roll. But after a while, there was something missing. After their first CDs, it seemed like they tried too hard to follow up. Overdosing, sadly, ravaged a lot of these great bands. Pearl Jam, to me, was the one constant in that genre that still stands out.

One day, almost on a lark, I pulled out my Darkness on the Edge of Town tape and played it. A flood of emotions came to me all at once. It was like seeing an old friend again. One of those old friends who never changes. Someone who, when you see them after a long period of time and you talk to them, it’s like you saw them just yesterday. I don’t know why I chose that tape. But I was in my later twenties, a veteran, and a father. With a job, mortgage, and the weight of the world on my shoulders. Opening with Badlands, ‘You spend your life waiting for a moment that just won’t come, don’t waste you’re time waiting’. The Promised Land — ‘Mister I ain’t a boy, no I’m a man, and I believe in the Promised land’. To the title Darkness On the Edge of Town- ‘Some folks are born into a good life, and other folks get it anyway anyhow’. I have heard these songs before. Hundreds of times. But now, it was different. I was living the songs he had written twenty years before. And they started to make perfect sense to me.

In 2005, the Devils and Dust album came out. There wasn’t much pomp and pageantry to this album. But being a true Springnut, I got it. I played the first song and found tears running down my cheeks. I served as an infantryman in the Marine Corps and Devils and Dust grabbed me by the heart and didn’t let go. ‘Fears a powerful thing baby, it can turn your heart black you can trust, it’ll take a god filled soul and fill it with Devils and Dust’.

I’ve been to three Springsteen concerts. One was at the home of my loveable losers, the Chicago Cubs, Wrigley Field, where he promised to exercise some demons. In the middle of the set, Eddie Vedder joined the band on Atlantic City. I was in a rock and roll utopia. The last one was at Croke Park Ireland on our honeymoon. We danced to Thunder Road again. This time, Bruce serenaded us. Each concert was over three hours long. Even though his nickname is The Boss, it seems like he’s working for us.

He is a generational Woody Guthrie. Just listen to The Ghost of Tom Joad album.

My mother passed away in late October 2020. After the toughest month of my life, one Saturday night on SNL, the musical guest was going to be Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band. Great! Something to get my mind off things. A little Bruce would do me well. The host comes on and says ladies and gentlemen BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN AND THE E STREET BAND!!! As I heard the words of his new song, tears again. This time, they streamed down my face. As they had so many times the month before. The first lines put their arms around my shoulders and let me know, it’s gonna be alright. ‘The road is long and seeming without end, the days go on, I remember you my friend, and though you’re gone and my heart has been emptied it seems, I’ll see you in my dreams’. I couldn’t believe the sad ballad I just heard about losing someone so close after the loss of my dear mother. He did it again. I just sat there. My wife said softly to me, “he knew”.

“I’m in the middle of a long conversation with my audience. It will be a lifelong journey for both of us before we’re done” he once said. Thanks, Bruce, for letting me tag along.