Walk like a Man (7 page)

10
. Nowhere is this more plain than in “Backstreets,” which, most nights, broke off in the middle for an extended monologue, part story, part genesis of a new song, “Drive All Night,” which would appear on
The River
two years later. That interlude, referred to by fans as “Sad Eyes,” was transcendent, show after show: it feels like it's coming straight from the man's soul, and the mere thought of it brings a tear to my eye.

11
. Springsteen introduced the song by saying, haltingly, “This is a song . . . this is called ‘The River.' This is new. This is for my brother-in-law, and my sister.” The song was written for and inspired by his younger sister Ginny, who got pregnant when she was seventeen, as the female character does in the song.

12
. It is a record matched by only two other albums, Michael Jackson's
Thriller
and Janet Jackson's
Rhythm Nation 1814.

13
. Sandford, in
Springsteen: Point Blank,
argues convincingly for a number of factors at play, including infidelity, neglect, conflicting careers, and others. I'm not going to quibble with his conclusions, so if you're interested, you're best off reading his book.

14
. That's a sweeping generalization, I know, and I'm something of an exception to this rule. I actually prefer my heroes to have feet of clay, human foibles, and skeletons in their closets. I don't take the delight in it that some writers, like Sandford, seem to, but there's something oddly comforting about flaws and weakness.

15
. Springsteen, to his credit, denies this.

16
. Springsteen announced the tour, and his participation in it, on stage during a global radio broadcast of the
Tunnel
tour date in Stockholm that July, before playing a stunning, moving version of Bob Dylan's “Chimes of Freedom.”

17
. It's also the finest rockabilly song about cunnilingus ever written by a global superstar in his forties.

18
. From his introduction to “The Wish,” November 8, 1996.

19
. Composed by Bruce Springsteen and Roy Bittan.

20
. I realize I should have considerable moral quandaries about bootleg recordings of Springsteen shows, but performances like the Christic benefits, and the debut of “Real World” in particular, make those questions moot. Quite simply, the world would be a poorer place were there no record of these performances. Yes, they are that good.

21
. The band on the world tour of 1992–93 is still referred to by many fans as, simply, “the other band.” You have to curl your lip slightly to say it correctly.

22
. In fact, it is—as of this writing—Springsteen's last top ten single.

23
. And those who heard or saw it on bootleg.

24
. The
Greatest Hits
album was neither a commercial nor a critical slam dunk. It was pleasantly, and politely, received, but anyone envisioning a chart-topper was disappointed. Worse still, the new songs were widely regarded as pale in comparison to such classics as “Born to Run,” “Atlantic City,” and “The River.”

25
. He made a couple of further concert appearances with the E Street Band, including a filmed gig at Sony Studios, and the opening ceremony concert for the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in Cleveland. But these had the feeling of obligation rather than passion. Curiously, he also spent almost a month on the road with Joe Grushecky and the Houserockers, playing sets which mixed originals from both men.

26
. Reportedly Springsteen, an inveterate movie junkie, was first inspired by John Ford's film of the novel, though he later read the book as well.
Journey to Nowhere: The
Saga of the New Underclass,
by journalist Dale Maharidge and photographer Michael Williamson was another key inspiration.

27
. Fans refer to the
Joad
tour as the Shut the Fuck Up Tour.

28
. Yes, “is”—I'm listening to the show as I write this, through the miracle of bootlegging.

29
. Which drew a deafening roar of approval from the audience.

30
. He has performed it since, but it's among the rarer songs in his catalogue.

31
. Well, once you know to look for it.

32
. This rapprochement had at least as much to do with a shift in the son as it did with any change in the father, which is often the way of these things. A turning point seems to have come, for Bruce, in the late 1970s, around the time he wrote “Independence Day,” with its critical line “I guess that we were too much of the same kind.”

33
. Springsteen credits these trips with increasing his awareness of the problems along the Mexican border, and cites them as one of the influences for the songs on
The Ghost
of Tom Joad.

34
. This move to arenas for the
Devils & Dust
tour was another of those decisions that some fans saw as sacrificing art on the altar of commerce.

35
. Interestingly, the album and tour fared much better in Europe than in the United States. Springsteen actually cut short the projected American tour, and toured Europe twice with The Sessions Band. It's no accident that the official DVD release of the tour was recorded in Dublin and not Duluth.

36
. The song picks up, stylistically and thematically, from
The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street
Shuffle
's “Wild Billy's Circus Story,” which was highlighted by Federici's accordion playing. Springsteen also supported the Danny Federici Melanoma Fund by donating all the proceeds from a digital ep entitled
Magic Tour Highlights,
which included the performance of “4th of July, Asbury Park (Sandy)” from Federici's last concert.

37
. I was alone in a hotel room in Vancouver, reading over the page proofs for this book when I heard the news. I spent the next few hours listening to some of Clemons's greatest moments on my cell phone and communing with fans on Twitter and Facebook. They say a grief shared is a grief halved, but I don't know if that's true.

WALK LIKE A MAN
A MIX-TAPE

Side One

“Rock and roll saved my

life when I was a teenager.

It's still saving it now.”

PATTERSON HOOD of Drive-by Truckers,

live in Seattle, 2008

Rosalita

(Come Out Tonight)

Album:
The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle

Released:
September 11, 1973

Recorded:
June–August 1973

Version discussed:
Video Recorded at the Arizona Veterans

Memorial Coliseum, Phoenix, July 8, 1978 (
Darkness
tour)

O
NE OF THE keys to a good mix-tape is to start off strong. And it doesn't get any stronger than this: “
Rosalita (Come Out Tonight)
” is perhaps
the
Springsteen concert warhorse. For a decade, it was the finale of virtually every show, six to eight minutes of rock and roll defiance and communion, a melodic, exultant cry against the people—his girlfriend's parents, in particular—who didn't believe in the narrator's musical dreams, plus a triumphant whoop at getting the fat advance from the record company, which finally proves his worth. It's difficult not to hear it as a personal song, although the lyrics don't mesh up against what we know of Springsteen's life. That doesn't matter, however: the song rings true, whether it's actually true or not.
¹

For me, “Rosalita” is where it all started.

In the spring of 1984, I was thirteen years old. My parents had separated, and my brothers and I were living with my mom, seeing my dad for dinner once a week and spending every second weekend at the place he shared with Sue, who would later become my stepmother.

One of the great things about my dad's place was that he had a satellite dish. Not one of those demure, dinner-plate-sized numbers you see affixed to urban apartment buildings and houses these days. His dish was a backyard monstrosity, eight feet in diameter. From the looks of it, my dad could have coordinated a nuclear first-strike from his recliner. Instead, we watched movies on hbo, Cinemax and The Movie Channel. We got addicted to professional wrestling and badly dubbed kung fu movies on one of the Atlanta superstations.

And we watched MTV.

To a chubby, glasses-wearing loner and scapegoat like me, growing up in a town of less than four thousand souls with neither a bookstore nor a record store (let alone a movie theatre or mall), those videos were literally a message from the beyond. There was a whole world out there, just out of reach, and it was being beamed into my life in three-and-a-half-minute chunks, twenty-four hours a day.

Let's not overlook one salient fact, though: the early eighties was a shitty, shitty time for music. I've grown to appreciate New Wave and the New Romantics as an adult (I'll even confess to a grudging fondness for Duran Duran, if pressed), but back in the day it was all skinny ties and synthesizers and pretty boys on sailboats. Nary a guitar nor an intelligent lyric in sight. Sure, I liked David Bowie, but he didn't speak to me, at least in his then-contemporary “Let's Dance”/
Serious Moonlight
stage.

That all changed in the spring of 1984.
²

In the run-up to the release of the first single from Springsteen's forthcoming album, MTV pulled out all the stops. I remember constant coverage, a contest (Be a Roadie with Bruce!), and “Rosalita.”

There are dozens of fantastic versions of “Rosalita,” but for me the definitive version is the grainy video that MTV played incessantly that spring. Filmed in Phoenix, Arizona, on July 8, 1978, during the
Darkness on the Edge of Town
tour, it was a Saul on the road to Damascus revelation for me. You've got to see it to believe it.
³
It is, to my mind, everything rock and roll is, and everything it can be. And really? Everything it should be.

The song starts with a crash, Springsteen slamming into the opening guitar chords, Clarence Clemons's saxophone wailing. The E Street Band is tight, navigating its way through hairpin changes, up-tempo, down-tempo, Springsteen playing his band-mates as surely as he plays his guitar. He stalks the stage, he jumps, he drops, he slides: this is a blood and guts performance, all the more impressive when you realize that there was nothing special about the concert. It was just another gig for Springsteen in the summer of 1978.

What comes across most strongly, however, is Springsteen's unfettered joy: he's entirely in the moment, and the power he brings to the song can barely be contained to the stage or the screen. In the “Rosalita” video, Springsteen is messianic, and a goof, and a true believer, all at the same time. It's almost impossible to look away as he digs into the verses, as he engages in a cross-stage face-off with the Big Man while standing atop Roy Bittan's piano, as he introduces the band. It's mesmerizing, and it makes you glad to be alive.
⁴

Throughout the performance, girls dodge security to tackle Springsteen at the microphone stand, to steal kisses. The video ends with him being piled upon by a group of women at the edge of the stage. With the help of security he manages to drag himself away, emerging from a full-on kiss with a dazed, pleased, what-the-fuck-just-happened look that says it all.

Seeing the video as a thirteen-year-old, I felt my brain explode. This wasn't the twee synth profundity of Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark, or the mock-operatic aspirations of Iron Maiden: this was honest, and true, and it made me feel. Really feel.

I watched that video as often as I could. MTV operated on a system of repeats every few hours, and when the time came around I would chase my brothers off the TV and take over the living room, turn the stereo up as loud as it would go, and lose myself into total rock-geek bliss. Even when I wasn't watching the video, I couldn't shake the song. I'd catch myself singing the chorus, making up words for the bits I didn't know. I sang myself hoarse on “Rosalita.”

I remember vividly being sent down to my grandmother's basement to get ice cream for dessert, and her yelling down the stairs, wondering what was taking me so long. I had surrendered to an air-guitar attack, my arms flailing wildly, making all the right rock star moves.

I air-guitared that motherfucker to death that spring.

It was the first Springsteen song that I ever heard,
⁵
and it was like I had been waiting for it my whole life.
⁶

Born in the U.S.A.
was released a couple of months later. I was primed for it, to say the least. In fact, it's the first record I can remember actively anticipating.

The release of the “Dancing in the Dark” single did give me pause as I waited: the song was so slick, so glossy, so commercial. Where was the grit? Where was that dork messiah shaking himself free of those screaming girls? And what the fuck: was that a
synthesizer?!

But those fears dissipated in about the time it took to count in the first bars of “Born in the U.S.A.” itself. There it was: fire, passion, integrity, grit. I was a goner, and I've never looked back.

Now I know your mama she don't like me 'cause I play in a rock
    
and roll band
And I know your daddy he don't dig me but he never did understand

1
. The line between “honest” and “true” is key to Springsteen's work.

2
. The fact that it was the spring of 1984, and not the summer, has, as any Springsteen fan will tell you, a certain significance. After the June release of
Born in the U.S.A.,
the world went Springsteen-crazy. The “Dancing in the Dark” video—with Courtney Cox at her winsome, non-speaking best—went into heavy rotation. Politicians name-checked him left and right, and the tour quickly made the transition from arenas to stadiums. If you “discovered” Springsteen during this time of media saturation, a whiff of bandwagon-jumping sticks to you in certain fan circles even twenty-five years later. Especially if you ever wore a bandanna to a concert, or you now state that “Glory Days” is your favorite Springsteen song. For the record, and just so we're clear: spring of 1984, no bandanna, loathe “Glory Days.”