And my life was never the same.
It’s with this hero-worship that I’ve had all my life for this man that I approached the recent biography simply titled Bruce by Peter Ames Carlin. The medial talks about performers who can be identified by just one name. When we hear the name Bruce, does anyone think of anyone else? That’s how much of an icon he has become in our American culture, and even the world. It wasn’t such an easy trip, though.
Carlin was given unprecedented access to Bruce’s friends, family, band-mates, and the Boss himself. The result is a deeper understanding of the man. I must admit that at times it was difficult to read that my hero has feet of clay, but it gave a more realistic portrait. Yes, at times he can be difficult. Yes, at times he might not have been the nicest person. Yes, there are times in his life when he might have made decisions he later regretted. There’s no real apologies here for anything nor does Carlin fall into the trap of trying to cast even the darker moments in a good light. It simply is what it is, for better or worse.
I got the picture of Springsteen as the quintessential tortured artist in many ways by reading about his childhood. It wasn’t all sunshine and roses for the family when he grew up in New Jersey. There were moments of great loss for the boy, a degree of difficulty with a mentally ill father that seems to be in dark contrast with the stories Springsteen often tells on stage, and a few moments of clarity that would in the end help propel him to write some of the greatest lyrics I’ve ever heard.
Carlin delves deeply into the personal side of Springsteen, and not just the growing-up years. Although there’s something to be said that even all this years later his ex-wife seems not to want to speak ill of him, Carlin doesn’t hold back telling the story of how Springsteen publicly embarrassed a former girlfriend who happened to be an official photographer at one of his concerts. For the most part, though, even though Springsteen tangled with on some level seem to speak highly of the man. It’s not a book loaded with gossip and back-stabbing, but rather has the feel of trying to get a well-rounded portrait of a celebrity.
Music-wise, Carlin manages to pull apart Springsteen: The Early Years and show just how those classic songs were crafted. It often took years until Springsteen was satisfied with how a recording sounded, and even then it seems like at he was just declaring he was done working on it rather than completely satisfied. The various techniques he used are explored in detail as well as the various personnel he worked with.
Bruce seemed like a long read, but at the end I felt I had a more realistic image of the musician I admire the most. At times it felt like “No, I do not want to hear this” but Carlin’s portrait is a realistic one. I really took to learning how Springsteen barely made it through school and in a sense educated himself in college and afterward by what spoke to him. Through the people he encountered in his life he developed his sense of social justice and as much as he tried to resist becoming political in his younger days, as he grew older he found it impossible to stay neutral. Albums such as The Ghost of Tom Joad and The Rising speak to this as does much of his recent work, although Carlin doesn’t seem to concentrate on that recent work all that much. His last few chapters seem to be more about the changes taking place, including the loss of Clarence Clemons in the band. Still, the background into Springsteen’s political activity prompted this reader to check out John Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath.
If you’re a Springsteen fan, I think you’ll want to read Bruce. There’s a depth to it that no other biography before has had. It is probably the best biography we will ever see about The Boss as even an auto-biography would likely be less impartial. He’s candid, the people Carlin talks to are candid including Bruce’s family and friends, and the end result tries to be fair. For the most part it succeeds.
And I’ve learned my hero is most definitely human.
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