Turn Down the Music and Read: Born To Run

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Turn Down the Music and Read: Born To Run

When I popped into one of my favorite indie bookstores in Oakland to buy Bruce Springsteen’s new memoir, BORN TO RUN (Simon & Schuster, 2016,) two dudes were working behind the counter. I knew all I had to say was, “I’m looking for Bruce” to get one of the guys to lead me right to the book, which is exactly how it went down. This supports my long-held theory that Bruce is truly a guy’s guy, which I need, to rationalize all the years I wasted not listening to his music until my husband put a stop to my obstinacy.

As I paid, I asked the two clerks whether anyone knew if Bruce wrote it. (Ghostwriters are real, people, even for the artists you love the most.) The same man who led me to the Bruce book took mortal offense. “NO! He’s such a good songwriter! He wouldn’t need a ghostwriter.” I said, as gently as I could, “That’s a different kind of writing, though, isn’t it?”

Guess what. Bruce did write this terrific memoir, and even if I hadn’t fact-checked that to be sure (check out the great Terry Gross “Fresh Air” interview in which she asks him,) BORN TO RUN reads like Bruce sings: sincere, maybe not entirely polished, but with such creativity, and in a voice that you’d mistake for no one else’s. The book is honest, sometimes brutally so, wide-ranging, and makes clear that Bruce envisioned his path to success and put in every bit of himself along the way. He cut his teeth gigging along the Jersey Shore, and takes justified pride in his ability to make his audience feel something, a skill honed in a million little bars where no one was paying him any attention.

The initial chapters, about his life in Freehold, New Jersey in an Italian-Irish mixed marriage household, read like plain good memoir, with fully realized characters and tensions and nostalgic descriptions of American life in the ‘50s. His father’s shortcomings and disappointments, the strength of his mother and her family, and the ethos of the New Jersey working man – which, at the end of the day, is exactly what Bruce considers himself even if his factory happens to be a stage – are described in a way that make the creation of songs from “Thunder Road” to “Death to My Hometown” seem almost a foregone conclusion.

If Bruce held his friends and band mates to high standards through the years, this book makes it seem like he didn’t let himself off the hook either. He points to mistakes made, shortcomings in his performances, lessons he had to learn and relearn. I especially appreciated the frank accounting he gave of how depression – perhaps a legacy from his father? – finally caught up to him in his sixties, and how he coped/copes with the help of doctors, medicine, and Ms. Patti, the bandmate-turned-wife who keeps him tethered. I also loved when he writes about his three kids because, at the end of the day, aren’t we all blathering idiots when we’re given a chance to brag about the kids?

Old time Bruce fans, newish ones like me, people who have never heard Bruce before (I’m talking to you, Planet Mars) – BORN TO RUN offers an entertaining, rich look at the life of a true American original.

And makes it clear that the only one who missed out by insisting that Bruce was for the dudes was me.

Always and forever my favorite Bruce song.