Born to Run

"I fought my whole life . . . because I wanted to hear and know the whole story, my story, our story, and understand as much of it as I could. This, I presented as my long and noisy prayer, my magic trick. Hoping it would rock your very soul and then pass on, to be read, heard, sung and altered by you and your blood, that it might strengthen and help make sense of your story. Go tell it."

These are the concluding sentences of Bruce Springsteen's Born To Run, his new, unapologetic and beautifully written memoir. After reading the last few words, I am inspired to write, so here I am.

Whenever I hear a great new album or read an inspiring book, I always feel like I need to share the good news; there is hope out there! People are still writing and creating good stuff! I realize most folks couldn't care less, but that's okay. I am who I am.

I was given Born to Run as a Christmas gift and I was anxious to read it, not because I am a big Springsteen fan, because I'm not. That may sound sacrilege from someone who came of age when "Born in the U.S.A." was rocketing up the charts. Don't get me wrong... I don't dislike Springsteen, I just never found his sound that exciting to my teenage ears.

However, I have always respected "the Boss" and his career. He's consistently been in the spotlight for more than 40 years and that isn't easy in the music business. So I was curious to see what made this guy tick and I was hoping this book would give me a hint.

What I got was much, much more than that. Revealed in the next 508 pages was a man who is human. A man with problems and passions, successes and failures, just like everyone else. Just like me and you.

Springsteen holds nothing back in this book. He is brutally honest about himself, his life and his relationships. The string connecting each page is anchored in his difficult relationship with his father, a man who never showed real emotion (except anger) and who fell victim to mental illness in his later years. Springsteen himself admits to "having the same demons" and has struggled with bouts of deep, clinical depression only corrected by prescription medications to stabilize his mood swings.

Springsteen was able to reconcile his relationship with his father in later years and he was able to see "Pop" grow close to his grandchildren.

Just before his father's death, Springsteen writes a beautiful passage about his dad as he lay in his hospice bed:

"Protruding from the bottom of that sheet are elephant stumps for calves and clubs for feet. The feet are red and yellow, scarred by psoriasis. Shaped in stone, they have no more miles left in them. They are the feet of my foe, and of my hero. They are crumbling now at their base. I scan back up to see puffed armored slits holding reddened brown eyes. I stand there for a long moment and I lean over and lift a weighted, scaly hand between my palms. I feel warm breath as my lips kiss a sandpaper cheek and I whisper my good-bye."

It is extremely difficult to step out of your own skin and see yourself as others see you, but Springsteen does just that. He never hails himself as a legend or a genius. If anything, he is self-deprecating to a fault. He admits to "being a pain in the ass" as a husband and as a father (aren't all men?), but his love for his family and friends is never in question. Indeed, this man loves deeply.

He's at once self-confident and self-doubting. He feels he and his band can still blow anyone off a stage, yet at the same time, he's never believed his voice was good enough to front a band. ("When you hear yourself on tape, that's the ultimate bullshit detector"). Early on, he even held auditions for a lead singer, but ultimately decided singing his songs was more about feel than being "tonally impeccable" and "hitting all the high notes." So he remained front and center at the microphone. He's still there today.

[A little side note here: Out of sheer coincidence, I finished Clive Davis's excellent memoir The Soundtrack of My Life earlier this month. Mr. Davis actually signed Bruce Springsteen to Columbia Records in 1972. In back-to-back books, I read the same story (although told from two very different perspectives!) of how Springsteen auditioned -- successfully -- for Davis.]

Springsteen never really talks about being "famous" in so many words, but he does state that when he goes out in public, he is occasionally "greeted by friends known and unknown. It comes with the turf."

 "Friends" not "fans."

Bruce Springsteen is now 67 years old. He's still recording and touring with the E Street Band and most of those musicians have been with him for 40 years. That says everything you need to know about the man's character.

Springsteen's story is a success story. He grew up in the small city of Freehold, New Jersey; his working class parents had very little money. When he was a teenager, he began playing in bar bands, chasing a dream which he simply never stopped pursuing. He eventually hit the big time, or as Springsteen calls it, "the BIG big time."

But that's just part of it. More than anything, his story is a human story. Or, in his words:

"This kind of story has no end. It is simply told in your own blood until it is passed along to be told in the blood of those you love, who inherit it. Slowly, a new story emerges from the old, of differently realized lives, building upon the rough experience of those who've come before and stepping over the battle-worn carcasses of the past. This is love. This is what life is."

Bruce Springsteen has lived one heck of a life and it was a privilege to be given a guided tour in Born to Run. Read it if you can!