Bruce

by Peter Ames Carlin

  Chapter 2

  1Bruce says he was in third grade when he saw Presley on the Sullivan show, but this is difficult to square with Presley’s TV appearance schedule. The rock idol’s third and final appearance with Sullivan took place in January 1957, when Bruce was in first grade. Elvis entered the military in March 1958 and didn’t make any TV appearances until 1960, when he starred in Frank Sinatra’s “Welcome Home Elvis” episode of Timex Special. And that doesn’t seem likely, given that the songs Elvis performed on that show did not include any of the truly explosive hits that might have signaled the dawn of anything beyond a trip to Miami Beach’s Fontainebleau hotel, where the show was taped.

  2Subsequent years of reading and experiencing cultural and political processes sparked an even deeper analysis of Elvis and the 1950s rock ’n’ roll revolution. “There’s an element of early rock star that was simultaneously democratic, myth-like, and majestic,” Bruce says. “The King! Not the president of the United States. The King of Rock and Roll! So there was a fabulous sort of twisted aristocracy that said, This. Rules. Now. I’m the King! And you are all going to be subjected to the new rules that I have written.”

  3A British variation on American rockabilly music, with washtub bass, harmonica, banjo, and other front-porch-style instruments.

  4Western Auto sold its own line of electric guitars.

  5And for decades a standby in the encore-to-end-all-encores slot of his shows.

  6One promotional photo shot by Tex during the summer of 1965 shows Bruce slouched on a teeter-totter, his outstretched legs cloaked in skintight pants that were obviously several shades lighter than everyone else’s, tucked into suede boots that didn’t match the other guys’ shiny black shoes.

  7George Theiss also told the Brucebase website that one female patient worked intently to seduce the band members, while another guy ran around the floor screaming “Banzai!”

  8Born in Boston as Steven Lento, Steve’s parents broke up when he was a toddler. His mother moved her family to New Jersey when her son was seven, and soon married William Van Zandt, who adopted her son and gave him his Dutch surname. Steve never contacted or saw his biological father again. “He was just some kinda lazy fuck, I guess,” he explains.

  9The lead guitarist of the Beach Boys, whose Chuck Berry–meets–Dick Dale sound helped define 1960s surf guitar (though Carl was channeling his brother Brian’s directions, which often filtered through LA session guitarists first).

  10Also note the line where the singer says, “I fall down on my knees and I cry,” which would be repeated more or less word for word in Bruce’s “Downbound Train” nearly two decades later.

  11Much to the aggravation of his mother, Adele, not just because she was so excited to see her son graduate but also because she took a half day off from work to prepare for the large house party she had planned. The party, at least, came off without a hitch, becoming especially festive later in the evening when Bruce showed up, just in time to claim the beginner’s motorcycle Adele bought him as a graduation present. Still, she remains a bit peeved about Bruce’s teenaged thoughtlessness. “I was crying and everything,” she says. “Let him tell you that story.”

  12This entire paragraph is derived from Coyne’s Marching Home, a history of Freehold and the soldiers it sent to American wars (Viking, 2003).

  Chapter 3

  1While simultaneously keeping the military and the working world at bay with his college deferment.

  2Ginny and Mickey are still married, forty-four years later, with three kids and three grandchildren.

  3Obviously, the details have been changed. But anyone familiar with the Springsteens’ family story must think immediately of Virginia Springsteen, another little girl whose death came at the hands of a (faceless) truck on the pavement of McLean Street.

  4Then an up-and-coming hard rock band signed to Elektra Records whose structure and sound would soon become a significant influence on Bruce’s writing and performing.

  5Burke and Graham recall that the labels were Columbia and Elektra.

  6How Bruce could continue to be ridiculed by a student body that had so many opportunities to see him playing lead guitar and singing with an increasingly popular rock band is anyone’s guess.

  Chapter 4

  1He’s talking about Charles Dickens’s A Christmas Carol’s Tiny Tim, not the ukulele-playing, late-sixties curiosity.

  Chapter 5

  1Bruce speaks often about watching his father struggle to get his car moving in the mornings. One Springsteen car wouldn’t shift into reverse, so if Doug had left the car in the driveway, it had to be pushed into the street before he could go anywhere else.

  2Although certain melodies, chord progressions, and a few phrases of lyrics would be recycled over the years.

  3Lofgren also joined the Young-less iteration of Crazy Horse for a short stint, and played on the drug-fueled sessions for Young’s Tonight’s the Night album and accompanying tour.

  Chapter 6

  1Details on Anthony’s postprison work and life are a bit murky, due both to his estrangement from the rest of the family and to the fact that no one in the younger generations is quite sure exactly what he was up to.

  2After decades of being divorced and distant from each other, the couple reconnected at a family wedding in the late 1960s. Anthony had just buried his third wife (the secretary for whom he had left Adela in the late 1930s had also died), and once they started talking again, the couple reestablished their bond. They never remarried but did live together in the House on the Hill for the final ten years of Anthony’s life.

  3Bruce: “That doesn’t sound completely plausible to me. If they offered us an opening slot we would have jumped at it.”

  Chapter 7

  1He celebrated his birthday on September 23.

  2The Highlands is distinguished from nearby Atlantic Highlands by actually being on the Atlantic, and significantly lower than the AH.

  3Despite the popular assumption that Appel and Cretecos were hoping to piggyback on the then-overwhelming popularity of the artists based in Los Angeles’s Laurel Canyon (Joni Mitchell, Jackson Browne, Graham Nash, Carole King, and so on), Appel swears that his inspiration came from a weekend visit to a rural house that was surrounded by the most beautiful laurel bushes he’d ever seen.

  Chapter 8

  1Also known as the Riot House, which gives you an idea as to the general vibe of the place, which was loud, rowdy, and, for many guests of the era, fogged over in Tequila Sunrises, appealingly slinky women, and narcotics.

  Chapter 9

  1A bright green liqueur distilled by Carthusian monks in France, who use 132 plants to flavor the stuff, which gets its color from the plants’ chlorophyll.

  2Not according to Clarence: “It was so powerful, we were like—Holy shit! That guy shoulda stopped us from drinking this! So then we stopped drinking for a little while.”

  3Apparently confusing Bruce with Australian musician factor Rick Springfield, whose first hit song “Speak to the Sky” had just been released.

  4An exaggeration, to put it mildly.

  5In search of a new look and sound to launch his career as a recording musician in late 1972/early 1973, Bruce paid a visit to Petillo’s music store in Ocean Township, New Jersey, in search of a new instrument. He came away with a rebuilt 1953 Fender Telecaster, its original neck replaced with one from a ’50s-era Fender Esquire. He’d seen, and heard, the guitar played by other Asbury Park musicians before. “It just made its way round the local music scene ’til it ended up at Petillo’s,” he says. “That’s where I found it, for a hundred and eighty five bucks.” The very legible “Esquire” on the tuning peg head has long led fans to believe the guitar is a full-blooded Esquire. “I say it’s a Telecaster, though that’s a little incorrect,” he continues. “It’s a mutt, if you will.”

  Chapter 10

  1Who, it bears mentioning, was only thirty-one at the time, quite productive, and nowhere near needing an inherit
or.

  2Named for the quiet, residential Belmar street where Sancious lived with his mother.

  3Whose literary antecedents are made clear in the second verse, as Johnny acts the “cool Romeo” while Jane follows her heart like “a late Juliet.”

  Chapter 11

  1Both Albee Tellone and Big Danny Gallagher had moved on by the end of 1973.

  2Stemming either from Clemons’s unwillingness to clean up the kitchen after a marathon session of marijuana smoking or because, in the sax player’s words, “Vini finally just pissed me off.”

  3Intracompany rumor and anecdotal accounts from shop owners indicated that someone high in Columbia/CBS’s power structure had ordered the sales reps to compel retailers to trade their copies of Greetings and Wild for Billy Joel’s first Columbia album, Piano Man, released the same week as Springsteen’s second LP.

  4And also created a big opportunity for local entrepreneurs to retail their own Springsteen/E Street Band T-shirts, stickers, and so on to the fans, often at a nice profit.

  5Revised to “Then She Kissed Me.”

  Chapter 12

  1The criminality of the Nixon administration, the inglorious end of the Vietnam War, the gnawing economic and environmental crises, the Watergate scandal, and Nixon’s humiliating resignation in 1974.

  2An early title for “Thunder Road,” with sloppier lyrics and a “Rosalita”-like dance party ending.

  3Both of which featured verses and digressions that would eventually be repurposed into entirely different songs, such as the middle section of the early “She’s the One,” which led to “Backstreets.”

  4Williams, also a student, was almost certainly the first American writer-editor-publisher to even attempt such a thing.

  5Not for lack of sales of the band’s debut album, Kick Out the Jams, but because its title song, and the album version of its cleaned-up lead single, included the prominent use of the word motherfucker, which at the time made them too hot to handle.

  6Though they would soon become an acclaimed and then top-selling band.

  7Louis Lahav’s wife, who had been playing shows with the band since the fall of 1974, most strikingly on a lovely piano-violin-voice arrangement of “Incident on 57th Street.”

  8Including brothers Michael and Randy Brecker (trumpet and saxophone, respectively), sax player Dave Sanborn, and trombonist Wayne Andre.

  9Already installed as president of Arista Records.

  Chapter 13

  1Arguably unfair and yet interesting aside: Edwards’s next major project was writing the screenplay for the Bee Gees/Peter Frampton movie adaptation of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, the most reviled rock ’n’ roll–based movie ever. Completely unexpected punchline: Edwards was a friend of, and continues to be spoken of generously by, Dave Marsh. Go figure.

  2Save for the suggestion that Born to Run would benefit from the sort of ironic detachment Bette Midler put into her act. Which is akin to criticizing Midler for not having Neil Young’s jagged way with a guitar solo.

  3The interior lid of which had been signed by Bruce and every member of the E Street Band to mark the completion of Born to Run, according to house owner Marilyn Rocky. The piano stayed there for years until one departing tenant took it out to the street with the trash. It may or may not survive somewhere on the Jersey Shore.

  Chapter 14

  1An appointment made by CBS president Walter Yetnikoff as a reward for Philbin’s pre-science and fierce dedication to Columbia’s new smash artist. “You were right, and I was wrong,” Yetnikoff said. “I want you signing bands for this label.”

  2The Chevy is now owned by a private collector, and tours as part of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame’s 2009 (and now traveling) exhibit, “From Asbury Park to the Promised Land: The Life and Music of Bruce Springsteen.”

  3Bruce shook up the legal team soon after his disastrous deposition, taking up with a more litigation-savvy team that included Benjamin, seasoned litigator Peter Parcher, and Mike Tannen, the latter of whom worked closely with Paul Simon during the 1970s.

  4Which eventually rode its Born to Run–esque sound to septuple-platinum status.

  5Whether all of this talk was limited to this informal conversation or if it led to another, more organized band meeting, is unclear—memories differ. Van Zandt, who has the most precise version of events, says that there was a real meeting, with Bruce not in attendance, and then a straw poll kind of vote that resulted in an even 3–3 split, with Clemons, Bittan, and Federici thinking it was time to go, and Weinberg, Tallent, and Van Zandt voting to hold things together. But Tallent and Weinberg have zero recollection of being at any kind of meeting and dismiss the entire notion that there would even be anything for anyone to vote about, since they were individual players working for Bruce.

  6Bell first met Bruce, and got to know Appel and the rest of the organization, while working with Sam McKeith at William Morris, and so the story of his jump to Premier and into what had been McKeith’s chief agent status is a bit complex. Bell had first agreed to join forces with Appel to form an independent booking agency with a roster headlined by, but not limited to, Bruce. Those plans crumbled when Appel refused Bruce’s offer of a handshake contract. Meanwhile, Bell socialized with Bruce (their respective girlfriends were neighbors), quit his job at William Morris, and accepted a better job at Premier. McKeith’s defenestration, according to Bell, was a result of Bruce’s disenchantment with the Morris agency and for his being too close to Appel. McKeith, on the other hand, believes that Bell, like many junior agents before and since, simply built his own personal bond with Bruce and used it to leverage him away from McKeith and William Morris, and into Premier, where he would serve as Bruce’s chief agent. That said, other factors were also in play, and McKeith still seems peeved by how it all went down. And given the personal/professional travails he was on the verge of encountering, the whole episode is one of the less cheerful in Bruce’s long career. But, as Mike Tannen says, such is life in the entertainment industry.

  Chapter 15

  1The best non-Springsteen example of Landau’s signature sound can be found on Jackson Browne’s The Pretender, produced by Landau in 1976. As compared to Browne’s more rustic albums, The Pretender fleshed out his usual acoustic guitar, piano, fiddle, and lap-steel-guitar blend with enough strings, horns, gospel, and cross-cultural exotica to give the artist’s self-revelatory lyrics a global sweep.

  2“Adam Raised a Cain” being the obvious exception to this rule, but even here, Bruce’s screaming evocation of emotional chaos serves a distinct purpose in the song’s narrative.

  3Bruce didn’t get around to reading John Steinbeck’s original 1939 novel until he met the author’s widow many years later.

  4Seguso admits that he was also drinking more than usual that winter, and thus landing in some regrettable situations, none of which helped his case around Holmdel.

  5Which Bruce had written thinking he might pitch the song to his boyhood hero as a possible new single.

  6Coaching mixer Chuck Plotkin on how the song should sound, Bruce described a movie scene showing two young lovers sharing a picnic in a sunlit park. The sun would be shining, the grass would be emerald, the ducks paddled across the pond before them. Then the camera would zoom out to reveal, just behind them, a human corpse lying in the bushes behind them. Aiieee! “This song,” Bruce told Plotkin, “is the dead body.”

  Chapter 16

  1Following a monthslong mixing session that again cycled through confidence, frustration, gloom, anguish, and then surrender, before a nearly panicked Landau called Los Angeles–based producer Chuck Plotkin and told him “The album won’t mix!” Sitting at the panel a day or two later, Plotkin queued up “Prove It All Night,” listened to Bruce chatter about how screwed up the song was, and how maybe only a new guitar solo could fix it, and then waved him aside. “Look, we’ll push some buttons and move some levers, and it’s not gonna be hard.” Two hours later Bruce and Landau were so happy wi
th what they heard that Plotkin became a pillar of a Springsteen-Landau-Plotkin-Toby Scott (Bruce’s chief engineer) team that remained more or less in place until 2001.

  2The album went through a variety of alternate titles, including (jokingly) Viva Las Vegas, an idea that got started when Bruce led the band on a jammed version of the old Elvis tune and Landau imagined a cover illustration showing Bruce’s name on the old International Hotel’s marquee, with the rest of the Vegas strip reduced to a ghost town. A more serious option, Badlands, bit the dust when former Asbury musician Billy Chinnock (by then relocated in Maine) turned up with an album and single called Badlands too. Knowing that Chinnock was close to Garry Tallent, Bruce blamed his bass player for tipping the name to the other musician. Tallent swears he did no such thing. “I said, ‘Maybe he saw the same Martin Sheen movie you did!’” Tallent says. Bruce didn’t, and apparently still doesn’t, buy it. Tallent: “He says, ‘Say what you will, but I know that you did it.’ And I say, ‘Believe what you want, but I still didn’t do it.’”

  3“It was perfectly obvious that I was granted a great deal of access,” Marsh writes. “It was, or should be, perfectly obvious that any writer given that access is a ‘friend’ of the person being written about, or perceived as one.” Still, in later books and articles, Marsh was careful to acknowledge his connections to Bruce and company.