Bruce (67 page)

The afternoon of the official tour opener in Atlanta on March 18, Bruce led the band through portions of a few songs, focusing mostly on the transitions from one tune to the next. Between songs, he looked around the stage for a moment, and then stepped to his microphone and summoned one of his crew members with Mighty Oz–ian volume. “Light man, come forth! I have an idea.” The guy ran in from his board at the center of the arena floor and took note of Bruce’s direction, retreating as Bruce counted off the relevant part of the song, looking for the stage lights to follow the new cue. When it didn’t happen, he held up a hand and called again into the mike, “C’mon, I just wanna entertain my fuckin’ self up here!” Another count-off. The band fired up, the lights did not, and when Bruce stopped the music, he wasn’t kidding at all. “Okay, I want someone to come down
now
to fuckin’ explain this.” He stalked to the front of the stage and hunkered down on his haunches, counting the seconds until a man with a clipboard sprinted up to explain the lapse.
⁸
Hardly the worst meltdown in rock ’n’ roll history, but disconcerting nonetheless. The Bruce in your head, given shape by so many books, magazine profiles, tales of regular-guy benevolence, and his own musical meditations on right and wrong, doesn’t do that kind of thing.

Except of course he does. He can be selfless and selfish in equal measures. If you’re in crisis, he’ll drop everything to help make it right and then stay at your side until it is. But on another day, he’s just as liable to not care that you promised to pick up the kid at school in fifteen minutes. “Not my problem. I need you here.” “When you’re in your kitchen, you know there’s a stove and a pot to boil water in,” longtime engineer Toby Scott says. “For Bruce, the studio is his kitchen, and I’m part of the furniture. So he needs to know I’ll be there, ready to work, when he’s
ready to go.” Most often Bruce is more even-keeled than he seemed in Atlanta. But not all the time, and woe to anyone who can’t read his mood. Particularly in a high-stress performance situation. Not just because he’s more than a little narcissistic, but also because Bruce is so committed to the idea that music, particularly his music, really does have the power to change lives. To be in the position to possibly do that is both a high privilege and nearly impossible burden. “Tonight I’m the custodian of all those people’s feelings and memories,” he said in Atlanta. “That’s my responsibility. There are so many things I have to honor. This has been the most complicated stretch of the band’s life, this past year or so. And the E Street Band is a purpose-based organization, you know.”

The arena house lights went dark just after eight o’clock and the band came out in darkness, each member finding his or her place in the murky light. When the floor lights came up behind him, the backlit Bruce rose bigger than life, holding for a moment before the pounding intro to “We Take Care of Our Own” hoisted the arena crowd to their feet and kept them up there, marveling at the sight of a man whose black boots seemed as rooted in American history as in their own record collections and pop culture memories.

The concrete walls shook even harder two and a half hours later when Bruce and his extra large E Street Band draped the entire hall in the gospel vision of thundering to the promised land with a load of saints, sinners, losers, winners, whores, gamblers, and sweet souls. Then came “Born to Run,” with the house lights on full, connecting the front of the stage to the back of the hall, everyone up and dancing to the sound of their own adolescent rebellion; then “Dancing in the Dark”; then the immigrant Irish folk rock of “American Land”; and finally, “Tenth Avenue Freeze-Out,” the story of Scooter and the Big Man, of Bruce and the E Street Band, of rock ’n’ roll and everyone who ever heard their own thoughts, dreams, and heartbreak coming through the front of a radio. It’s probably trite to point out that tears flowed across faces that night. Maybe it had less to do with Bruce (and his light cues) than the memories of vanished times, friends, lovers, and strong, agile hearts. Or maybe some fragile vision of what life could still bring. Or perhaps it really did come down to that guy up there, the guitar-wielding, boot-stomping
sixty-two-year-old as proof that Thunder Road is still out there, still leading the way to the place we really want to go.

Focus on that, and everything else makes sense. Which is why tour director George Travis
⁹
makes certain that every new crew member, or a down-in-the-dumps veteran, walks with him to the back of the arena in midshow. Standing there, he tells them all the same thing: that between them and Bruce stand
x
thousand people. Among them, a small but important segment will go home with something that will be with them for their entire lives. It could be the buddies who experience something together. It could be the guy who chose this night and place to propose to his girlfriend. Being a part of this with Bruce makes you a part of what made that happen, Travis tells them. “And I want all the guys who work with me to take that into account,” he says. “That’s what makes their job, no matter what it is, important.”

He’s describing the same feeling that inspired Tinker West to open his surfboard factory to the quartet of hairy boardwalk freaks in 1969, and then invest his time and money in building them a sound system and driving them up and down the Eastern Seaboard and all the way across the United States. That compelled Mike Appel and Jim Cretecos to drop everything and stake their lives on this skinny New Jersey kid; that inspired those Columbia executives to grab their bosses by the lapels and insist they keep him on the label’s roster. That sent an emotionally reeling Jon Landau to his typewriter to risk his own reputation by designating a virtual unknown the living future of rock ’n’ roll. When he hears the word
apostle
used to describe the first generations of Bruce’s supporters Jon Landau grins. “You know what that makes me, don’t you?” he jokes. “I’m Paul.”

Landau has made a life, career, and thriving industry out of Bruce and his music. Known widely as one of the best, and toughest, managers in popular music, the former critic is both a fierce defender of his main
client’s life and work, and also a canny packager of his music work and its ancillary products. His understanding of, and advocacy for, Bruce’s creative vision helped ease the artist’s resistance to large halls, hit singles, promotion, stadiums, and the superstardom he secretly craved, while still encouraging the less commercial instincts that created
Nebraska
,
The Ghost of Tom Joad,
and more experimental works. As the music industry grew, evolved, fell apart, and became something else entirely, Landau (with partner Barbara Carr contributing ideas, projects, and occasional tough-cop exterior) kept the Springsteen industry in high cotton, using Bruce’s peerless legacy to keep interest in his new work at a far higher level than most artists of his generation can summon. Bruce’s own abilities, personality, and unceasing creative drive gave the manager plenty to work with, just as Landau’s planning and strict negotiating enhanced the musician’s image and kept it afloat, and sometimes at the fore of the cultural mainstream. The screwups along the way, particularly an ill-considered deal to allow the corporate imperialist Walmart to market a greatest-hits collection under its own imprint, were most notable for their rarity.

“If Jon is not the best manager in my time in the business, he’s certainly tied for it,” says Danny Goldberg, who has run record labels and managed the careers of Nirvana, Tom Morello, Bonnie Raitt, and many others. “But there’s no question in my mind that if Jon hadn’t existed, then Bruce would have found somebody else and . . . still would have been Bruce Springsteen.” Landau says he sees it like that too. “My life has been so incredibly benefited by our friendship and working relationship, I couldn’t adequately put that into words,” he says. “I think when the dust is settled, to me he’s a great man. He’s done great things, he has a great heart and a great mind, and having a chance to make my contribution to the overall project, the thrill of a lifetime.”
¹⁰

It’s hard to imagine Landau leaving, or being asked to leave, Bruce’s organization. But others have cycled in and out, some leaving for new jobs and opportunities made possible by their association with him.
Others stuck around for decades with no intention of going anywhere. Engineer Toby Scott is well past the thirty-year mark, while George Travis has nearly thirty-five years under his belt, and some of his staffers have been around even longer than that. The E Street Band tells the same story: with Steve Van Zandt back in the fold, no member has left voluntarily since David Sancious and “Boom” Carter quit in 1974. Many of the longtime employees who left for reasons beyond their own describe the departure in the terms of a romantic breakup, or even a death. The lighting designer Marc Brickman says his 1984 departure (a subject that still makes everyone involved visibly uncomfortable) as being far more emotionally devastating than any of his actual divorces. Chuck Plotkin, who mixed and then coproduced Bruce’s music for nearly twenty-five years, left under more collegial circumstances, but he still gets teary eyed when he talks about the day Bruce told him he needed to work with new producers for a while. “I miss it,” Plotkin says. “I miss him. There were hours and hours, days, weeks, months, years when we spent time together, and I miss that, and it’s sad. And there is the dimension of the work: the meaningfulness of the work. And I miss being involved in something as meaningful to me as that.”

• • •

Bruce was back in Freehold, standing on the sidewalk in front of the small but well-tended house his aunt Dora Kirby has lived in for more than fifty years. On this patch of McLean Street, he was fifty yards from the spot where the door of 87 Randolph Street once stood, and within sight of the corner where young Virginia Springsteen’s tricycle veered onto the macadam that spring afternoon in 1927. When he walked around to the kitchen door, he knuckled the screen door as he opened it. “Hey, kid!” he said when his aunt appeared. Then it was kisses and hugs and introductions, and he headed out to run some errands. Dora led the way into her cozy living room, pointing out the spinet piano her nephew ran to as a boy, reaching over his head until his little fingers could press the keys. “He’s just an ordinary person that has a beautiful talent and loves his music,” she said. “He’s just a nice, ordinary boy to me.”

And yet so extraordinary too. Given the histories of the Springsteen and Zerilli families, the long pattern of work and sacrifice, of ill health,
psychic demons, and death, the one boy’s radiant spirit changed the meaning of his ancestors’ lives and labors. Nearly four centuries since Caspar Springsteen’s ship set sail from Holland, it found purchase on the golden shore of the American land. Ann Garrity’s Irish beech tree bore magical fruit. Anthony Zerilli’s investment hit a bigger jackpot than he could have imagined.

“So is that God’s gift to us? Is it a gift, or were we chosen?”

Bruce’s aunt Eda, sitting in her living room not far from Dora’s place on McLean Street, traded her customary smile for the solemn cast of a woman trying to account for the wisdom of the ages. For the death of the little girl on the tricycle, the fractured lives of her parents, the husband she lost to World War II, the burdens she and her sisters shouldered for so many decades. Now she’s ninety and, according to what her doctor told her yesterday, might not be celebrating her ninety-first birthday. Eda is remarkably cheerful given the circumstances but in moments like these, it’s hard not to search for some overarching wisdom in it all. “Why is a person chosen? Are you chosen in this world to do good for other people? Bruce is gifted, but was he chosen? I don’t know. I just know that he has a big responsibility. God gave it to him, and he has to live up to that. When the band gets done, the audience is so happy. If they were sad when they went there, when they’re done they’re so happy. We’re happy too. And that’s a big responsibility.”

Particularly in a world where pain and loss never quite go away. The Springsteen-Zerilli clan suffered another blow in 2008 when a cousin named Lenny Sullivan, who had worked as one of Bruce’s assistant tour managers for ten years, overdosed on amphetamines and heroin in the midst of the Magic tour, dying in a Kansas City, Missouri, hotel room. “When my nephew died, I had no idea,” Eda says. “I always want to fix things, and if I had any inkling, no way would I have let that boy die. I worked with young people; had I known he was on drugs . . .” She shook her head. “But I was not so knowledgeable, and I have no idea why I was so stupid.”

So close to the unquenchable black hole, the strangely blessed life of the other nephew. “Bruce was chosen, but did it come through Douglas’s side? Was it Douglas? Was it the mother and father who were so
heartbroken? What made Adele able to do what she did? I don’t know if I could’ve done it.”
¹¹

Adele Springsteen had no choice but to wake up every morning and do what was needed to keep her family alive, healthy, and growing. The years of labor turned to decades, life became an ordinary blur, and then a very extraordinary blur. She lost her husband, gained a legion of grandchildren, and as she neared her tenth decade of life and recognized the shadow of her own mortality, Adele felt entirely blessed. “I think with all the problems we had in our lives, God has rewarded me. I thank God for that; I could cry over it. It’s terrible to brag. But I can brag because I’m the mother, right? It’s hard to believe he’s my son.”

• • •

A small but bustling factory town. A tree-lined neighborhood of humble but well-tended homes. The church on this corner, the sub shop here, the gas station there, the high school around this corner. It’s a warm summer afternoon in 1968, and in this yard behind 68 South Street, a little girl sat with her big brother on the lawn, both of them watching the butterflies and, every so often, tossing a ball from hand to hand. Pam Springsteen was six years old, Bruce was eighteen, a month or two from turning nineteen. His dark hair hung thick across his shoulders, but she knew nothing of hippies and straights, of wars between generations or anything like that. Bruce told her stories when she was bored and fixed her snacks when she was hungry. He tied her shoes and picked her up, he played her songs on his guitar and put it down when she wanted to go outside to play.