Crash and Burn (38 page)

Unfortunately my anger and overall addict behavior took over the moment we landed in Paris. I started a massive fight with Adrienne at the airport that just kept going all the way to the hotel and resulted in her not coming to the Springsteen concert that night. This is something I’ll regret forever. She and I had talked about how much we wanted to hear “Thunder Road” together in Paris. I heard it, and she didn’t, because my knack for being an asshole ruined the evening. What’s even worse is that Nils, in addition to getting my friends and me passes for the E Street Lounge and whatever else we wanted, invited me to have a bite to eat with him and his wife before the show, where I got to meet Roy Bittan, the genius piano player in the band. After that my friends and I went backstage and we hung out with Steve Van Zandt, which was incredibly cool. I’ve gotten to know Steve over the years, so it wasn’t strange when he came up and said: “What? Were you just in the fuckin’ neighborhood?”

Steve has seen it all, and I’d been honest with him about my struggles with heroin, so for that reason I was excited to tell him that I’d beaten it and was finally clean. Steve grabbed my cheek and, in the way Silvio did when he scolded Christopher on
The Sopranos
, said the most simple, truthful thing anyone could ever say about heroin—take note of this.

“Why would you ever mess with that shit?” he said. “It ends one of two ways, and one is death.” He had one more observation that’s equally important: “Why would you mess with something that gets in the way of your fucking?”

The show, as any Springsteen fan who keeps up with the band can tell you, was amazing. There was no air-conditioning in the sold-out arena full of seventeen thousand for two nights. I’m overweight, so that kind of heat affects me, but I don’t care what anybody says: it
felt like it was about two hundred degrees in that place. The air was so hot it was almost visible. But let me tell you something: the first time I saw Bruce in concert was August 31, 1985, at Giants Stadium in New Jersey. He played for about four hours and I was sitting in the very last row of the upper deck with my friends Danny McGrath, Charlene Cole, and Sue Solofski. We were all seventeen. That is still the best show I’ve ever seen in my life. I’ve been to fifty-plus Springsteen shows since then and I can say with no doubt about it, that the Paris show on July 5, 2012, was easily the second-best Springsteen show I’ve ever seen. It’s a natural follow-up to my first show way back in the sumer of ’85.

Bruce opened that Paris set with “The Ties That Bind” off of
The River
. That is one of his greatest songs, if you ask me. It’s a track about being young and rebellious, and it’s something hard-core fans know and love. It’s the kind of song that would make sense for him to open with in Jersey, though it would still be a welcome surprise because it’s a very rare thing for him to do. But in Paris? I couldn’t believe what I was hearing! During the show he played about seven tunes off of
Born in the U.S.A.
and Nils outdid himself during the solo in “Because the Night.”

The most surreal thing of all was hearing seventeen thousand people sing “Born to Run” in thick French accents! And as he did throughout the tour, Bruce took the house down with a heart-wrenching video tribute to Clarence Clemons in the middle of “Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out” that came right after he sang the classic lyric, “When the change was made uptown / And the big man joined the band.” The show ran just under four hours with no intermission and no air-conditioning, and it was nothing short of amazing. I had to piss four times during the show, because it was that long. The man is sixty-three years old! I have no idea how he does that, I’m just glad he keeps doing it.

I figured I’d missed my chance to chat with Bruce, but after the show, Amy Lofgren, who was sitting near me, invited me to the band’s
after-party at the Four Seasons. She said the whole band would be there and Bruce would be too, since he had his mother and his in-laws in town for the show. I was missing Adrienne bad, but I had to go. I chose to ignore what was going on between us because I’d probably never get a chance like this again. I left my friends behind and went off on my own. It took me an hour to hail a cab to take me over there because it was chaos outside of the arena, but I did it and I’m glad I did. I was escorted into the bar, where the band was hanging out and Nils greeted me. As I was walking in, Ryan Seacrest was walking out. Fuck him.

The whole band was there, including Bruce, who was sitting quietly chatting and laughing with his mother. It was such a great hang, just talking about music and life with Nils and Amy. I also talked to “Mighty” Max Weinberg at length, as well as his wife and daughter. For a Springsteen fan like me it was seventh heaven. Nothing else in my life mattered just then. An unexpected bonus was meeting NBC anchor Brian Williams, who is really cool, really funny, and was a great guy to talk to.

The evening couldn’t have been better for me, just sitting there by the bar drinking water (at that point), chatting with all of these people that meant so much to me and made music that has been my life’s sound track since my teens. I didn’t think for a second I’d get a moment with Bruce, and it didn’t matter to me: I was having the time of my life. I couldn’t believe it when, over Amy Lofgren’s shoulder, I saw Bruce get up from his table and walk toward us. Surely he was just getting a drink? No, I was this lucky—he was coming to talk to me. He tapped Amy on the shoulder, pointed at yours truly, and said, “Excuse me, Amy, I wanna talk to this guy.” He shook my hand, asked how I was doing, and I got that chance to let him know just how much his call, his concern, and his words meant to me.

“Bruce, I just want you to know that your phone call saved my life. It really did. I’m out of hell now. Thank you, man.”

He didn’t say a word; he just gave me a hug.

“That’s great news, Artie. I’m glad you’re here.”

We talked for a while and had a few laughs and I asked him something I’ve always wondered about, because in my small way I can relate, though he’s on such another level. I asked him how he came down from performing.

“Yeah, that can be the hard part,” he said, grinning a little. “After all that it’s tough to relax.”

After a while Bruce said his good-byes, and the last thing he said to me was this: “Much good fortune.” What a cool way to say farewell. Bruce escorted his mother to the elevators, and watching that guy, arguably the greatest American rock star we have, do something so humble and natural warmed my heart. Of all the roads a rock star can take, of all the horrible self-indulgent places they can end up, of all the pitfalls that can take them too early, from Hendrix to Cobain, seeing Bruce Springsteen, age sixty-three, chivalrously walk his mother, who is in her eighties, to her room in the Four Seasons in Paris did my heart good. It made me want to stick around long enough to do the same with my ma one day.

Riding back to the hotel I was on cloud nine. And I can hear some of you fans of mine snickering as you read this. Yeah, I get it, I’m being corny. I’m a forty-four-year-old sappy sentimental loser. I know comedians are supposed to be cynical and sarcastic above all, and I agree with you. But also, I have this to say: Fuck you. Really, go fuck yourselves. No human with a heart and conscience can be that way all the time. Everyone must allow themselves to be romantic, at least about a few things in life. You get to choose what they are, and for me the music of Bruce Springsteen is one of them. It’s helped save my life and hopefully my soul. I’ll probably not be able to let you guys know if that happened, but if I can I will.

When I was eleven, I was hanging out at my cousin Jeff’s house because to me at that time in my life, Jeff was the coolest person in the world. I wanted to be exactly like him. I was waiting in his room while he took a shower or something when his mom, my aunt Jo
(who is simply one of the greatest human beings of all time), came in to clean up. She was dusting off a photo of a thin guy with long hair, sunglasses, and a guitar. That guy, whoever he was, looked to me like the only guy I’d ever seen who was probably cooler than Jeff.

“Aunt Jo? Who is that?”

“Artie, who’s that?” she said incredulously. “That’s the Boss!”

————

By the time I got back to my room, it was close to seven a.m. I found Adrienne, the only other thing I’m romantic about in this life, lying there, awake and upset. Actually she was half-asleep, half-crying, and completely mad at me. I’ve come to realize that it’s possible to be too in love with someone. That state of mind probably means different things to different people, but completely sober, in a foreign country, I discovered exactly what it means to me. I became controlling, I became obsessed, and I found out how destructive those emotions can be. We didn’t make up completely, but we tried our best and things remained tense for the next few days as we went sightseeing with our friends.

One night Adrienne wasn’t with me. Our group was supposed to go out together, but I didn’t follow that plan. I decided to go to the hotel and take a nap, so she had dinner with my cowriter, Anthony, and the plan was for me to meet them afterward when I woke up. But I didn’t take a nap; in a crazy, angry, resentful state I got some booze and started drinking in the room, hard, the way I used to when I had nothing to lose and didn’t care about shit. I must have downed a bottle of vodka in half an hour and was in a blackout state before I knew it. And then I got nutty enough to accuse her of cheating on me with Anthony, which could not be further from the truth. I was irrational.

I took a cab to where we were all going to meet, which was a burlesque show in the heart of Paris. When I got there I stood outside listening to music, screaming the lyrics at confused French passersby
on the street. I wanted to see Adrienne immediately and I started screaming that. I started screaming that I hated my friend Anthony and I wouldn’t talk to him when he came over to me to try and calm me down. Nothing I was saying made sense. I ran around the street, I ran at oncoming traffic, I ducked into an underground parking garage, and I would not listen to reason no matter who was talking. My friend Dan came down and he and Anthony both tried everything they could to get me out of harm’s way, but it was no use. I don’t know what I expected to happen at that point. All I wanted was for Adrienne to talk to me, but I was acting so insane that she was too terrified to come out of the theater.

She had every right to be scared; I was in a blind rage, standing in the street, harassing people, hoping a car would hit me, and yelling at two of my best friends as they tried to save me. I tore off my shirt at one point, threw it at someone, and began to walk directly at oncoming cars. The street was wide, with traffic going both ways, but there weren’t streetlights, so it’s a miracle that I wasn’t hit. At one point I lay down in the middle of the road, with my arms and legs spread, as cars passed on both sides of me, hoping one would run me over. My friends Dan and Anthony risked their lives, standing on either side of me, directing traffic away from me on a dark, busy Paris street. I found all of this out later, of course, because I don’t remember it. At the time I hated them both and I told them so in every possible way I could think of. I told them to leave me. I told them I wanted to be hit and that I hated them. At one point I even kicked Dan in the chest, nearly sending him into an oncoming car. He bumped the side of it but thankfully he didn’t get hurt. Those two were just trying to keep me from getting killed or arrested, and they did a pretty good job from what I understand, but there was no end to my spiral by that point. It was just a matter of time before the authorities got involved because I had become a spectacle.

The French police arrived, the gendarmes, which aren’t your average beat cops. They carry submachine guns like a paramilitary unit,
so when they show up, things change pretty quickly. By that time I’d stopped responding to my friends altogether apart from accusing them of things that made no sense and insisting that someone bring me Adrienne. I was shirtless, lying on my back in the center of a busy street, and it had begun to rain, so this was just a mess. Adrienne was inside the theater still, scared out of her mind, hiding in there with the managers.

I kept yelling that I didn’t want Dan or Anthony anywhere near me because I hated them, even as they talked to the gendarmes, begging them not to take me to jail. It took two gendarmes plus my two friends lifting me up by my arms and legs to drag me out of the street and harm’s way, into the gutter on the side of the road. As they put me down, I took a wild roundhouse swing at one of the officers. Let me tell you something, as different as Europe and the rest of the world is from America, certain rules remain the same. I’ve now taken a swing at a cop in LA, New York, New Jersey, Miami, and Paris, France, so I’m somewhat of an expert on this: it is NEVER a good idea. Trust me, if you swing at a cop it’s not going to work out well for you. It should be at the top of everyone’s list of worst ideas to ever do, wherever you’re from and wherever you are. Swinging at a cop eliminates every other alternative they have to taking you in. So that’s what happened. There was no longer anything my friends could do, once the gendarmes slapped the cuffs on me. They pulled me up out of the gutter, sat me down on the curb, and kept me subdued until the paddy wagon showed up. It was my first international arrest, which, in a sick way, is somewhat of an achievement that I have no right to be proud of.

Once I was carted off, Adrienne emerged from the theater and my friends escorted her back to the hotel. Despite all the names I called them and how much I told them I hated them, Dan and Anthony did everything they could to help me out. They went to bat for me with the gendarmes, which is probably why the cops decided that if I was only drunk and not on drugs, that they’d let me sleep it off and
release me without charge. The only problem was that apparently I kept insisting that I was on drugs. Every time my friends would say, in their best French, that I’d had a fight with my girlfriend and was just very drunk, I’d yell in English that I fucking hated them and that they were wrong because I was drunk and on all kinds of pills. That wasn’t true at all, I was just very, very drunk.