Walk like a Man (2 page)

The mix-tape is a means of communication, a code at times so intricate its true intentions might never be known.

Mix-tapes can also serve as repositories of personal meaning. Writer-director Cameron Crowe
¹⁴
apparently has a closet full of aging mix-tapes. Every few months he'd compile what he'd been listening to lately, writing the date on each tape case. Thus, each collection is a snapshot of a moment in time, not only of the music, but of the meaning, a glimpse—like a fading journal—of the past. Mix-tapes such as these are touchstones, repositories of memory and experience, with each listening drawing forth events and emotions with Proustian clarity.

A month or so ago, Peter and I found one of my old mix-tapes in his mom's car.
¹⁵
We figured out, eventually, that I'd made it for him twelve or thirteen years before. Playing it was like opening a door, stepping back into our earlier lives.

That's what writing this book has been like: opening a door into the past. And I've had to resist the almost overwhelming temptation to slam it shut again as quickly as I can, because along with the good memories, there are ghosts behind that door, things I've spent a lot of years running from.

We can't control what meaning attaches itself to songs, and sometimes the feelings elicited by a piece of music aren't the sort to make the clouds part and the rain go away. That's all right, though. Any mix-tape is gonna rise and fall. They're like life that way.

So here's how this book works. I'm going to start with a brief biography of Springsteen himself. Nothing too in-depth, but enough to get everyone on the same page as to where he comes from and what's happened to him along the way. Bruce 101, if you will.

And then we'll get to the meat of the thing:
Walk Like a Man.
A mix-tape. Liner notes by yours truly.

Just to be clear, in no way is this intended as a generic “greatest hits” package. It's not just a collection of my favorite Springsteen songs either. “Incident on 57th Street,” for example, is easily in my top five songs from the man. But it's not here because it doesn't resonate for me the way “My Hometown,” a song I don't particularly care for, does. The version of “Born to Run” here isn't the anthem most people would recognize, and “Dancing in the Dark” appears in a later, guitar-driven live version rather than the familiar, synth-heavy top ten hit from 1984. There are also a handful of lesser-known songs, including “Living Proof” and “Thundercrack,” that are among the most meaningful of Springsteen's oeuvre, for me.

I've added enough information about each song to allow you to make a copy of
Walk Like a Man
for yourself. I hope you do. I hope you load the songs onto your mp3 player and have them playing as you read. And I hope my stories add a little something to your own.

1
. Unless otherwise noted, all lyrics quoted in this book were written by Bruce Springsteen. These, however, were composed by The Hold Steady.

2
. I also managed not to sing along, which, given the song's refrain, likely would have gotten me thrown off the bus.

3
. That, for the record,
is
pathetic fallacy.

4
. Danceability isn't, as a rule, a crucial thing for me when it comes to music. With the exception of two songs, I don't really dance.

5
. They swear it's not the case, but I suspect an ironic tone nonetheless.

6
. The song is composed by James Ash, Elvis Costello, and Steve Davis.

7
. In fairness, we've been indoctrinating Xander into music from the time he was wee. He's been attending Broadway shows—on Broadway—since he was three. He can sing whole books—
rent, Next to Normal
—and judge one performance against another. But this was the first music he had discovered himself. There's a difference.

8
. As I go over these pages with a red pen, I'm sitting outside Xander's weekly tap-dancing class. He and his instructor, Alyssa, are working up a routine for the spring recital, set, naturally enough, to “Voodoo Child.” And significance layers over significance.

9
. There are a bunch of reasons, actually: I was asked to write this book; I viewed it as a challenge; I like to keep busy, etc., etc. But the two reasons above are the important ones. Let's go with it, okay?

10
. I don't drive said minivan, though. I don't drive at all. Never have. Take a moment to allow that irony to sink in: a guy who doesn't drive writing about Bruce Springsteen, who has an almost fetishistic interest in cars.

11
. This is as good a time as any to emphasize a key point: these are
my
stories, from my perspective, and subject to the ravages of time and memory. The people who experienced these events with me might have different recollections, or attach different significance.

12
. Of course, to a lot of folks, I barely register as a fan at all. I know people who have gone to hundreds of shows, who have flown across the country for an acoustic benefit performance, who have followed a Springsteen tour through Europe. I would like to say, as most people would, that those people are nuts. I can't, though: I envy them. Hell, I know people who were at Winterland in 1978! How can you not envy them?

13
. Yes, the spirit remains: kids—and adults—are still compiling sets of songs to send messages, as they have since the invention of recordable media. Kids these days, though? They'll never have to include the length of a tape side as a factor in their song selection. They'll never have to do tape math, never have to worry about forgetting to include the length of the cleaner lead. They'll never have to worry about synching a turntable and a tape deck. Kids these days, they've got it so easy. Why, when I was young . . .

14
. Crowe started out as a teenage rock journalist in the early seventies before becoming a film writer and director. The man has forgotten more about music than most people will ever know, and it shows in his work, from the breathtaking John-Cusack-with-a-boom-box-over-his-head scene in
Say Anything
to the whole of the autobiographical
Almost Famous,
easily the best film ever made about what it means to love rock and roll. For the record? I want to be Cameron Crowe when I grow up.

15
. You'll meet Peter in a bit. He's my oldest, dearest friend, and he's lived in Toronto for the last twelve years or so, which, frankly, is way too damn far away.

Three-Minute Records
¹

A BASIC DISCOGRAPHY
²

Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J.
(1973)

The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle
(1973)

Born to Run
(1975)

Darkness on the Edge of Town
(1978)

The River
(1980)

Nebraska
(1982)

Born in the U.S.A.
(1984)

Live 1975–85
(1986)

Tunnel of Love
(1987)

Chimes of Freedom
(ep; 1988)

Human Touch
(1992)

Lucky Town
(1992)

In Concert:
MTV
Plugged
(1993; DVD released 2004)

Greatest Hits
(1995)

The Ghost of Tom Joad
(1995)

Blood Brothers
(EP; 1996; DVD released 2001)

Tracks
(1998)

18 Tracks
(1999)

The Complete Video Anthology 1978–2000
(DVD; 2001)

Live in New York City
(CD/DVD; 2001)

The Rising
(2002)

The Essential Bruce Springsteen
(2003)

Live in Barcelona
(DVD; 2003)

Devils & Dust
(2005)

VH
1 Storytellers
(DVD; 2005)

Born to Run: 30th Anniversary 3 Disc Set
(2005)

Hammersmith Odeon London '75
(2006)

We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions
(2006)

Live in Dublin
(CD/DVD; 2007)

Magic
(2007)

Working on a Dream
(2009)

London Calling: Live in Hyde Park
(DVD/Blu-ray; 2010)

The Promise: The Darkness on the Edge of Town Story
(2010)

1
. I have a special spot in my heart for the opening lines of “No Surrender,” especially “We learned more from a three-minute record than we ever learned in school.” No disrespect to my teachers, but it rings true to me. And yes, I know that “three-minute records” technically refers to singles, but it seemed like a perfect title for a discography.

2
. As “basic” might indicate, this isn't an exhaustive discography. I've purposefully ignored singles, twelve-inchers, repackagings, and the like. If you're looking for that sort of a resource, lists are available online. (See Sources.)

Growin' Up

A SHORT LIFE OF

BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN
¹

B
RUCE FREDERICK SPRINGSTEEN was born September 23, 1949, in Long Branch, New Jersey, the oldest child and only son of parents Douglas and Adele (née Zerilli). They had two daughters as well, Virginia (Ginny) and Pam.

Adele was a legal secretary, and Douglas worked a long series of short-term jobs, including stints at a rug mill, at the county jail, and as a bus driver. The Springsteens weren't poor, exactly, but they maintained a bare-minimum level of financial stability when they weren't downwardly mobile. They lived in Freehold, N.J., an ethnically mixed, working-class town. It was a life of austerity, with Adele making regular visits to the loan company. When things got too dire—such as when the family was evicted—they would temporarily move in with Bruce Springsteen's Italian grandparents.

From his mother and her family, Springsteen got not only his religious faith—the Zerillis were devout Catholics, and Adele never missed Mass—but also openness, compassion, and an early love of music,
²
country and western in particular.

Springsteen's relationship with his father was very different. Where his mother was warm and kindly, his father was cold and forbidding. It wasn't just that Douglas struggled to provide for his family and was prone to drinking; he had an active animosity for his son. “When I was growing up,” Springsteen has said in concert, “there were two things that were unpopular in my house. One was me, and the other was my guitar.”
³

Things weren't any better at school. His peers at St. Rose of Lima elementary school ostracized him, both for his poverty and for a social awkwardness that made him seem odd and aloof. His teachers, the nuns, were worse, and his education reads like a surreal litany of mistreatment: as recounted in
Point Blank,
Christopher Sandford's 2000 biography, for example, Springsteen has told of how one sister stuffed him into a garbage can under her desk, “because, she said, that's where I belong.” His experiences at school with the sisters, the day-to-day exemplars of his faith, contributed greatly to the lifelong conflict with Catholicism reflected in Springsteen's music, the pull of the religious imagery and beliefs, as opposed to his scorn of its hypocrises and his refutation of its teachings.

Problems at home and confirmed status as a brutalized outsider at school: these could have been the crucial ingredients in the making of a juvenile delinquent. In 1958, though, Springsteen was saved, and I use the word with its the full religious connotation. “I remember when I was nine and I was sittin' in front of the TV and my mother had Ed Sullivan on and on came Elvis,” Springsteen is quoted as saying in Sandford's biography. “I remember right from that time, I looked at her and I said, ‘I wanna be just . . . like . . . that.' ”

Adele bought her nine-year-old son his first guitar and paid for lessons. They didn't really take—Springsteen's hands were too small for proper chording, and he was frustrated by rote practice. Four years later, she repeated the gift, this time giving him a yellow Fender from a pawnshop. Springsteen had found his calling.

Freehold Regional High School was as rough on the shy, socially awkward Springsteen as St. Rose of Lima had been. “Basically, I was pretty ostracized in my hometown,” Springsteen recalled in a 1995 interview for
The Advocate.
“Me and a few other guys were the town freaks—and there were many occasions when we were dodging getting beaten up ourselves.” At home, his parents were at odds, and Springsteen was often the subject of their arguments. He made jokes about this later in his songs and monologues, but it can't have been easy being the subject of so much support, at times stifling, from his mother and such scorn, from his father.
⁴
When Springsteen was involved in a motorcycle accident, for example, Douglas sent a barber to cut his son's hair while he was recuperating in hospital and powerless to resist.

Springsteen disappeared into music, spending hours every day practicing his guitar, conditioning himself to play note-perfect versions of the songs spilling out of the radio. “Until I realized that rock was my connection, I felt like I was dying . . . and I didn't really know why.” Sandford writes of Springsteen going further, in the introduction to his 1998 public reading of “We Wear This Mask” by poet Paul Dunbar, when he said, “This is a poem about not feeling free to be yourself. It's about the pain of not being accepted. When I was young, I felt like I needed a mask to be accepted . . . I was a zero.” That imagery, of using a mask to move through the world, of multiple faces, surfaces often in Springsteen's work.

In the mid-sixties, Springsteen joined The Castiles, a garage band loosely managed by Tex Vinyard. The band played the local small gig circuit, cranking out covers of the Motown and British Invasion songs that would appear in Springsteen's sets for the next four decades. It wasn't the big time, but Springsteen was a musician, and he discovered one of the fundamental truths of the second half of the twentieth century: chicks dig a guy in a band.