Peter Ames Carlin: Bruce

Peter Ames Carlin Bruce, Simon & Schuster 2012, Hardback 494 pages £20.

When someone is as well known and widely recognised as Bruce Springsteen, it might be wondered what is to be learned from a new biography.  Surely the stories of the journey from the early days of the rock and roll Rat Pack on the Jersey Shore to stadium megastar and cultural symbol have all been well mined and assigned to the Springsteen canon?  However, what distinguishes this latest contribution from many earlier offerings is the unprecedented access to Springsteen that Peter Ames Carlin enjoyed, and the fact that he is an excellent storyteller. 

Speaking at the Glory Days Symposium at Monmouth University, New Jersey, back in September, Carlin read aloud from the opening chapter, and it was more like listening to a novel or a screenplay.  Carlin established his focus not by immediately describing the arrival of Bruce Springsteen (on the 23^rd September 1949), but by examining events that had happened in his family a generation earlier.  The death in 1927 of five year old Virginia Springsteen (the older sister of Bruce’s father Douglas) as the result of her tricycle being hit by a truck, cast a long shadow that arguably shaped the psychology and character first of Douglas (effectively rejected by his grieving parents, Fred and Alice, and brought up in his early years by aunts), and later of Bruce himself who became the obsessive focus of his grandparents’ love for their lost child and was all but stolen as an infant from his parents.  The grandparents did more than love the child – they worshipped him; he could do no wrong and had no boundaries.  It was a strange life for a small boy and one destined to shape him as an introspective outsider with a “very vibrant internal life.”

Springsteen has spoken frequently – particularly in recent years – of the ferocious work ethic which drives him and ensures he always gives his utmost all the time (particularly evident in the legendary live shows of an intensity and duration unmatched by other bands).  He learnt that ethic from his mother; he certainly didn’t see any evidence of it in his early years in his grandparents’ home where “no one goes to work and no one is coming home, the clock is never relevant.”  The young Bruce had no structure, no rules, no constraints and no expectations of his behaviour.  No wonder when his mother reclaimed him aged six from Fred and Alice and enrolled him in school (something the grandparents had viewed as totally unnecessary) that Bruce’s relationship with authority in general and the Catholic Church in particular (he was educated by nuns) would be confrontational and miserable, and a matter of huge ambivalence to this day.

Such a childhood certainly provided fertile ground for Springsteen’s creative development and the references in his work to these early experiences are everywhere.  His relationship with his father too surfaces in many of his songs.  Often describing the tensions and their mutual lack of understanding (captured in the song Independence Day), while also respecting and acknowledging the battles Doug had in finding work and keeping his family together (Factory and Used Cars for example).  It was clear that Bruce struggled to find a connection with his father who had major demons and psychological traumas of his own and was probably bipolar.  While Doug hated the music his teenage son tried to play, his Mother Adele indulged her only son but also shared and encouraged his joy of music.

Carlin tells the full story from Bruce’s early bands of The Castilles, Earth, Child, Steel Mill, and Dr Zoom and the Sonic Boom, and many followers of Springsteen will be familiar with many of the tales.  Carlin, however, seems to have spoken to everyone still living who had anything to do with those days, and the richness of the multi-layered stories is striking.

When Springsteen signed to Columbia records as a solo artist in 1972 he also signed the now infamous management contract with Mike Appel and Laurel Canyon, and did so without the benefit of independent legal advice.  Astonishingly, the contract assigned outright ownership of Bruce’s songs to Appel.  The naive Springsteen went along with it, trusting Appel’s word that the contract was fair and honourable.  Perhaps because Bruce’s desire for success had always been about the music and recognition rather than the pursuit of money or ‘stardom’, he failed to take seriously the implications of a contract.  It was something he would come to regret deeply.  The painful experience that led to the total breakdown of trust between the two men in 1976, saw Appel issuing an injunction preventing Bruce entering a recording studio with his new producer Jon Landau, while Springsteen responded by citing multiple counts of fraud and breach of trust. Eventually in May 1977 the case was settled out of court, and while Springsteen regained his creative freedom in production and publishing, he lost his innocence and someone he had thought to be a friend.  The two eventually reconciled, or perhaps reached an accommodation, but the damage ran deep and the betrayal is etched in Springsteen’s work (particularly in The Promise).

Some of the stories re-told here have already attained near legendary status – like the tale of the night Bruce met the Big Man – saxophonist Clarence Clemons - on a stormy night in Asbury Park.  Playing at the Student Prince, the wind was howling, and – so the story goes – as Clarence pulled open the door to step into the club, it flew off its hinges and according to Clemons “blew down Kingsley.  Tumbling north toward the Wonder Bar.”  It’s one way to make a memorable entrance.  If it isn’t true – and both the late Clarence Clemons and Bruce swear it is gospel – then it should be true.  As Carlin observes, “Given the gleam in his eyes, it was difficult to figure if Clemons intended the story to be a journalistic account of actual events or an allegorical tall tale about his spiritual bond to Bruce.”  

There have been hints over the years of the darkness that lurks in Bruce (most recently in July in the extended profile for The New Yorker by David Remnick).  His need to be in control (and hence his avoidance of drugs throughout his life); his obsessive tendencies, his need to seek solitude, and his demands for perfection (what Carlin terms “the extreme focus” he brings to his work), all point towards significant issues and – at times – a troubled soul.  On the occasions when his control breaks, the resulting melt down has frequently been intense and sometimes in full public view.  Carlin relates the time when Springsteen went berserk during the depositions with Appel, and climbed on the conference table while screaming his fury.  It is hard not to think about the barely socialised pre-schooler who had never been taught control or learnt boundaries.  The other notorious incident was played out to a concert crowd on 23 September 1979 – already irritated by turning 30 and enduring public celebrations, Springsteen snapped when he saw his former girlfriend the photographer Lynn Goldsmith in the crowd.  Springsteen apparently dragged her roughly on stage, announced to the audience that this was his ex-girlfriend, and then ordered security to throw her out of the building.

His lack of skill in dealing with other people and their emotions is a recurrent theme, and the members of the E Street band have – for the first time in public - shared their hurt and distress with Carlin over the apparently peremptory manner in which he dismissed them in 1989 (and summonsed them in the same vein to return in 1995).  Some of the comments from E Street members shared with Carlin reveal the continuing pain.  Even Bruce’s beloved wingman Clarence Clemons couldn’t help but express his irritation that Bruce is in the Rock and Roll Hall of fame and deservedly so,  but what about the E Street Band?  The fact that Bruce is literally the boss and employs the other band members is also significant; and the stories of the demands he makes of everyone and “the allegations about Bruce’s penchant for fining employees who disappointed him” are at times less than edifying.

Springsteen’s response to the events of 9/11 are well known – they would lead to the release of The Rising, but in the immediate aftermath he was there to open the Telethon (with My City of Ruins), and in the days that followed a new mythology grew up around Bruce comforting the bereaved and heartbroken like some latter day Clarence Odbody.  He made unannounced telephone calls to the families of deceased fans; it is something that had considerable impact for many but something Bruce remains reluctant to discuss and which perhaps even he struggles to  understand, but maybe the obvious empathy and humanity of a mature individual was finally in charge.  When he spoke to an advance listening party with the Columbia/Sony executives prior to the record’s launch in July 2002 Bruce made it clear he wanted the disc to reach as wide an audience as possible: “It ain’t business”, he said “It’s personal.”

Carlin’s book is the first to really lift the veil on how Springsteen has dealt with his inner contradictions and turmoil.  He remains a man haunted by his early life; even at the height of his success he would drive back to his hometown of Freehold late at night and visit the empty space on Randolph Street where the house he had lived in with his grandparents used to stand, and to drive past other childhood homes.  He has had periods of intense psychological turmoil, and recognises that “things can come from way down in the well.  It’s in your DNA, in the way your body cycles.  You’re going along fine, and then, boom, it hits you.”  Springsteen has worked on finding redemption – both psychological and physical.  His pumped up intensely muscular body of Born in the USA era was the result of him discovering salvation in the gym and becoming “a big fan of meaningless, repetitive behaviour.”

Carlin observes that Bruce has “wrestled with his moods, and a psyche genetically prone to extremes, for most of his adult life.  Decades of psychotherapy helped reveal and cast light on some of his most primal traumas and conflicts, but his raw moods, and occasional descents into full-blown depression, never quite went away.”  Despite an extraordinarily productive period of his career since 2005, Springsteen knows he isn’t free of his black dog: “You manage it, you learn and evolve, but another recognition you gotta have is that these are the cards you were dealt.  These things are never going to be out of your life.  You gotta be constantly vigilant and realistic about these things.”

He is flawed, as we all are, but the periodic revelations of those flaws are – Carlin suggests – disconcerting.  There is a tension or mismatch between “the Bruce in your head” – the one created by magazine profiles, “tales of regular-guy benevolence” and by “his own musical meditations on right and wrong.”  That Bruce “doesn’t do that kind of thing.”  The expectation would be too great for anyone to bear, and as Carlin acknowledges it creates “a nearly impossible burden.” Springsteen describes at one point feeling ‘Bruced out’ by the way his image took over while he felt “Hey, that’s not me. It was never me.”  Only to add in his next breath that “It might be a little more of me than I think.”

This is a book that will be seized upon by the many loyal fans that follow Springsteen through the years, but it will also find a wider audience perhaps of those intrigued by this enigmatic, at times troubled, but essentially brilliantly creative musician and story teller.  Carlin has woven a tight and compelling tale but not hidden from view some of the contradictions, tensions and paradoxes which characterise Springsteen.  Springsteen himself welcomed Carlin into his world, shared his reflections and experiences and did all he could to ensure the writer could do his job.  As Carlin observes, in return “Bruce Springsteen made it clear that the only thing I owed him was an honest account of his life.”  Carlin seems to have honoured that expectation and deserves full credit for doing so, but the greatest respect perhaps should be given to Springsteen himself for being prepared to reveal himself so fully and imperfectly. 

Mike Appel's Darkness

In the vexatious and litigious world that often surrounds the music industry, few cases are more notorious than the 1976 lawsuit between Bruce Springsteen and his former manager and producer, Mike Appel. The contracts that Springsteen had signed when starting out gave him a poor deal on royalties, but more shockingly took away the publishing rights to his own songs.  Springsteen had been young and naive; he had also believed mistakenly that the legal document of a contract was less important than what might be agreed informally and accepted on trust.  Finding this was an error was hugely expensive in many ways, not least in an injunction that prevented Bruce from entering a recording studio with new producer Jon Landau while the lawsuit progressed.  Eventually in May 1977 the case was settled out of court, and while Springsteen regained his creative freedom in production and publishing, he lost his innocence and someone he had thought to be a friend.  These days the two men are said to be reconciled, or to have found an accommodation.  Appel described when he and Springsteen met for lunch after the extended estrangement and “it was like there had never, ever been any problems between us whatsoever”; but the reality may be rather different and certainly more complex.

A few days ago (15^th September) Mike Appel addressed a symposium on Bruce Springsteen gathered at Monmouth University, West Long Branch, New Jersey.  His anecdotes and recollections of the early days were amusing enough – some familiar tales (the story behind securing the covers of Time and Newsweek in the same week), and others less so, and they bear repetition. But his comments on Springsteen’s character and creative output since 1977 suggest more than a little ongoing resentment and disrespect. “Nice to be among kindred spirits for a change” Appel said at the start of his talk, but he may have misinterpreted the welcoming applause for support and assumed he would be met with uncritical acceptance.  He has a book to sell (Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band: A rock and roll manifesto), and it seems this is his chance to put his side of the story and he wasn’t about to admit he had got anything wrong 35 years ago.  In fairness, Appel acknowledges the enormous contribution of Springsteen, his commitment to performance, and his integrity in being committed to music and avoiding the worst excesses of commercial involvement and sponsorship, compared to many contemporary “hucksters” and “bankers with guitars”.  The comment that Bruce had not been writing songs with a prime motivation to make money and become wealthy, but for the sheer love of his craft, although fundamentally true, began to sound more than a little like self-justification coming from Appel.

The background to the breakup of the Springsteen/Appel partnership was recalled in Appel’s account of the heavily pressured and endless recording sessions around Born to Run, and in what Appel referred to obliquely as “all the subterfuge” that was going on and the high price that “each was paying and would pay individually.”  Bruce himself has spoken about the agony of creating the Born to Run album (particularly on the ‘Wings for Wheels’ DVD), as have other members of the E Street Band, with the endless takes and remixing to find the perfect sound.  Appel referenced the “tedious, strained, many times completely unproductive or counter-productive, emotionally upsetting, juvenile recording sessions.”  And he wondered what might have been concocted “in a more pleasant atmosphere.”

There were some apparently throw away lines – Appel commented that Bruce is not obstinate for the sake of being obstinate “most of the time”, but there were clearly some underlying feelings running here.  In the Q&A session following his talk he was asked who is the most stubborn, Mike Appel or Bruce Springsteen?  Appel said “I actually think I am; I have more Irish in me than he does”, but this was far from being a mea culpa moment.  Asked if he had regrets, or if there were things he wished he had done differently Appel was defiant: “No; I wish there were a few things he did differently!”  He repeated the familiar story about how he had wanted Bruce to tour with a circus tent and he regretted Bruce wanted none of it; and he is still convinced it would have been the right thing to do: “It would have been – should have been – a great event in his career, but there were other people that thought it was too silly (...) that’s one of my regrets, that we were not able to do that.”

It is well documented that Appel did not want Springsteen to do the album that would become Darkness on the Edge of Town, and Appel referred to this issue and his preference at the time for Bruce instead to release a live album, giving him enough time to “write commensurate songs to those that were on ‘Born to Run’.”  Appel is dismissive of Darkness, claiming that Springsteen himself has said if there was one record he could take back it would be that one.  This seems a ludicrous claim; in 2010 Springsteen released The Promise collection that included the ‘lost sessions’ of 1977/78 that could have been on Darkness.  There were more than 40 songs that had been written, but only one album was released, although Springsteen is unequivocal: “I still believe it’s the right one.”

It could have been a different record, continued Appel, and added that he “can’t judge Bruce Springsteen’s other records because I wasn’t a part of that.”  No one would argue that Born to Run is not an outstanding record and in many ways the defining album of Springsteen’s career, but it is churlish and petty to suggest – as Appel seemed to be – that everything has been downhill since.  At this point Appel spoke – astonishingly - as if addressing Bruce directly and continued: “there are a couple [of songs] on Darkness that are OK...but there is not quite the lyrical excitement – the graphic lyrics and imagery isn’t quite there.  So for me, if you were trying to copy Born to Run, you didn’t make it.  If you were trying to go some other way, then OK, that’s your focus, who am I to say anything about it?” But it was already said; for Appel, Springsteen’s genius ended with Born to Run; he cannot see past the end of their professional relationship.  That is sad on a personal level, but to dismiss the creative output of everything that Springsteen has gone on to achieve because it isn’t Born to Run is both hugely arrogant and extraordinarily misguided.  In the sleeve notes to The Promise Springsteen wrote about how he hoped aged 27 he had written something “that would continue to fill me with purpose and meaning in the years to come”; looking back over the years Darkness has done that for him and he acknowledged that he owed “the choices we made then and that young man” respect.  It is unfortunate that after all these years Mike Appel still seems unable to acknowledge the same.   

Hyde Park Thunder

You remember particular gigs for different reasons.  Saturday’s Hyde Park show at Hard Rock Calling for Bruce Springsteen and the E-Street Band is already infamous for the peremptory nature of its ending (of which more later), but that should not overshadow what was – by any standard – an extraordinary show and one of those that in years to come we’ll just sit around talking about the old times, telling boring stories of glory days and saying ‘Yes, I was there’.

Bruce had kept us on a string all day.  We were convinced he would come on stage during Tom Morello’s set, but he didn’t, and it would perhaps have been an anti-climax when Tom joined Bruce and the Band during the main show.  We weren’t anticipating Bruce introducing John Fogerty’s set, nor returning for ‘Rocking all over the world’; but that was a great taster of things to come.  By the time Bruce arrived on stage at 7.20, we were more than ready.  But what an entrance!  It would have been too predictable to repeat the opening of three years ago (with The Clash’s ‘London Calling’), but for Bruce to begin a show by chatting to a hushed audience and explaining that he was going to do a song that he first performed on British soil was both unexpected and a total gift. A frisson rippled through the crowd at the realisation that he was about to do ‘Thunder Road’; a lovely, stripped down and poetic version with Bruce almost a cappella – starting himself off with a single note on the harmonica, and Roy Bittan quietly accompanying him on piano.  And 70,000 word-perfect fans singing like a massed choir.  My all-time favourite Bruce song, and he even played air guitar while singing it.

Could it get any better?  Practically everything you would want was there: some terrific songs all the way through – both old and new, and the much anticipated Tom Morello doing his thing on ‘Ghost of Tom Joad’ was unforgettable.  I would have loved to hear Jungleland, particularly with Jake Clemons being on such great form and stepping into the Big Man’s shoes so well and with such respect (and being received with great affection and warmth by the audience); he would have nailed that sax solo.  I was desperate too for ‘10^th Avenue Freeze out’ but that was not to be.

The one request that Bruce picked from the crowd was a great moment – Bruce had some fun commenting on all the places the requestor had followed them around Europe making the same obscure plea but to no avail.  Tonight was his night and ‘Take ‘em as they come’ (unknown to all but the most dedicated fans and released on Tracks in 1998) took off.  Not played live for almost a decade, but you would never have known – Bruce was on the money with the lyrics and the band was right with him.  And the guy in the front row who had asked for this song, and his young son were singing their hearts out all the way through.  And shedding a few tears.  That’s what a Bruce gig is all about.

The biggest surprise came after ‘Dancing in the Dark’ with the arrival of Sir Paul McCartney – a gracious Bruce remarking he has waited 50 years for this moment to happen. ‘I saw her standing there’ and an extended ‘Twist and Shout’ were history-making moments, even for cynics like me who think Macca is past his prime – he was rejuvenated by the magic powers of the E-Street Band playing live.  As Bruce has often pointed out, miracles happen when they walk out on stage, and suddenly they are all 16 years old again; it isn’t really about tricks – it’s really about magic, and the spell was working on Saturday night.  And then, as we know, the show organisers pulled the plug on the amplifiers and the show was killed stone dead for the crime of busting through an absurdly early curfew.  Another 15 minutes or so and things would have ended anyway and done so on a proper high rather than as a damp squib.  The real shame was that the closer would no doubt have included the anticipated ‘10^th Avenue Freeze Out’ – always a classic of Bruce’s live set, but since the death of wingman Clarence Clemons last year, this has been included in the tour as a particular tribute to the Big Man.  The officiousness of Westminster City Council and concert organisers Live Nation in unplugging Springsteen robbed everyone of an extraordinary finale, but ensured this particular show will be legendary.

Hard times come again

For die-hard fans of Bruce Springsteen the release of a new album is a rare and much anticipated event.  Some three years since his last studio album (Working on a Dream), Wrecking Ball is set for release on March 5. The mood this time could not be more different.  Working on a Dream captured the hope for the future with the new Obama administration (and Springsteen performed it on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial at the inauguration), but Wrecking Ball is altogether darker and angrier; an anguished howl against the fragmentation and inequities of society following the worldwide financial meltdown.  Springsteen speaks of “the distance between American reality and the American dream”, but this social conscience has much wider resonance.

It is astonishingly rare these days to find a writer providing relevant social commentary in music.  The legacy of folk music and protest songs is evident throughout the album and Springsteen’s immersion in the work of Woody Guthrie has left a ghostly signature, particularly on Shackled and Drawn, and Jack of All Trades.   The homage to Stephen Foster’s ‘Hard Times Come Again No More’ embedded in the title track of Wrecking Ball and resurfacing in Rocky Ground is also a nice touch.

This is not a bleak collection that harks back to the ilk of Darkness on the Edge of Town (reprised so brilliantly on The Promise in 2010).  Rather it rages with a defiance – take your best shot, let me see what you’ve got – and a refusal to give up.

Much has been written about the likely misinterpretation of We take care of our own for a flag waving patriotic anthem.  This was the same fate that infamously befell Born in the USA more than 25 years ago.  Springsteen is unfazed about such matters, telling a press conference in Paris last week that anyone who thinks this is about celebrating national glory is missing the message and “not quite thinking hard enough.”   But this, like many of the songs, demands that people pay attention and listen to the lyrics; don’t be taken in by some of the upbeat and apparently rousing chorus lines, or the lilting waltz melodies, these belie a tough and gritty narrative.

Despite the hard and angry roar of the album, the music is often remarkably light and uplifting and ambitious.  The Irish folk influence of tin whistles and drums that characterised The Seeger Sessions recordings feature here once more, but there are also new and innovative techniques: a robust horn section, the extraordinary electric guitar of guest Tom Morello, and a looping electronic drumbeat.  At 62 Springsteen is not afraid to push the boundaries and try new things.  He has spoken about these years being ‘the victory laps’ with nothing left to prove.  For some that would be a cue for complacency and trading on past glories, but Springsteen still has causes to fight and injustices to condemn.  

Springsteen is an enigma.  An intelligent but largely self-educated observer and commentator; he is the eponymous ‘rich man in a poor man’s shirt’ who – despite his huge success and significant personal wealth - remains in touch not only with his origins but with the concerns of ordinary working people.  He has spoken often of growing up in a Catholic household where his father was broken by his working life and where his mother just got on with the daily demands of keeping the family together and food on the table. 

Religious imagery steeps this album with its references to confession, judgement day and blood on our hands.  The gospel choir style of Rocky Ground is stunningly punctuated with the unexpected input from a background female rapper, and the strangled cry from Springsteen of ‘I’m a soldier!’  Sometimes the messages are too complex and layered to be immediately obvious but the resulting blend is less about the apocalypse than about hope and redemption (‘you pray that hard times, hard times come no more’).  It is a perfect segue from Rocky Ground to Land of Hope and Dreams.  This has long been a rare gem of the live shows, and the reworking for the album suits the mood.  Saints and sinners, losers and winners, whores and gamblers; lost souls and broken hearted, we’re all there.  And we’re not alone; among the ‘sweet souls departed’ on this train is the late Big Man Clarence Clemons, and his haunting saxophone. The long time member of the E-Street Band whose death last summer Springsteen described as “losing something elemental.”  His presence on the album is a fitting tribute to all the years of standing shoulder to shoulder with Bruce. The void that Clemons has left is still obvious and the nature of the band and its line-up have changed forever, but “the currents of life affect even the dream of popular music; there’s no escape.” 

Springsteen has never talked about the band stopping; stating instead that they will keep going “until they open up the ground for us and we march on down the hole.”  Even that may not be the end; We are Alive proclaims the closing track, giving voice to the dead of past conflicts and battles and offering hope of resurrection, or at least of spiritual rebirth and renewed solidarity.