Walk like a Man (6 page)

The
Joad
tour continued well into 1997, and after that Springsteen turned himself to a project that surprised many people: combing his vaults and compiling a box set of outtakes and alternate versions.
Tracks,
upon its 1998 release, was something akin to the Holy Grail for fans, something for which they had desperately wished and had largely, given Springsteen's long history of perfectionism, given up on ever seeing.

Tracks
was a treasure trove, covering from Springsteen's earliest days as a recording artist (the set begins with John Hammond's voice, from Springsteen's audition tape), through his over-prolific days from 1976 to 1984. A lot of fan bootleg favorites were present and accounted for, including “Thundercrack,” “Iceman,” and the original solo acoustic recording of “Born in the U.S.A.,” and a handful of missing B-sides, including “Roulette,” “Pink Cadillac,” and “Be True.” The real revelation, though, were the songs from the
Tunnel of Love
sessions, and almost a disc worth of tracks from the missing years, 1989–93.

The past was clearly on Springsteen's mind through 1998, and for a good, non-musical reason: late in May, his father Douglas died, at age seventy-three. The relationship between the Springsteen men had warmed somewhat, starting in the early 1980s,
³²
reaching a final, loving rapprochement around the time of the birth of Bruce's first son. He would visit his parents in California often, and the two men would take off on road trips,
³³
driving without a destination, just spending time together. “I feel lucky to have been so close to my dad as I became a man and a father myself,” Springsteen said in a carefully worded statement.

This sense of conciliation with and openness to his past extended to his former cohorts. Shortly after he completed the media rounds to promote the
Tracks
set, Springsteen began calling the former members of The E Street Band, asking them if they would be interested in touring. Despite the circumstances of their firing, and some lingering hard feelings, everyone said yes, including Miami Steve Van Zandt, who had left the band in 1984 and was by then appearing on
The Sopranos.
Springsteen also added violinist Soozie Tyrell, who had appeared on
The Ghost of Tom Joad,
to the band.

The reunion tour stretched over 1999 and 2000, and took Springsteen and the reconstituted band around the world yet again. Unlike previous tours, there was no “new” music to play—instead, the band drew on
Tracks
and the wealth of Springsteen's now sizable catalogue. The shows were, on many levels, stunningly successful. Financially, they were an unparalleled success, selling out almost every night, with Springsteen taking an unprecedentedly high cut from the venues. Musically, they were as powerful as ever, with The E Street Band performing at very near the top of their game every night (though nothing comes close to the 1978 tour in terms of sheer headlong rush). There was, however, something a bit too professional about the shows, especially as the tour continued. It's not that the performances became hidebound, but they began to lack the spontaneity of Springsteen at his best.

Springsteen seemed to have no plans following the conclusion of the reunion tour in July 2001. However, the terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, D.C., on September 11, 2001, galvanized Springsteen into artistic action. He immersed himself in his community, and began writing songs.

Less than a year after the attacks, Springsteen released
The Rising,
the first new album from Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band in eighteen years.
The Rising
was released on a massive wave of hype, which exceeded in its directness even
Born in the U.S.A.
–mania at its peak, and the album and tour conferred a new status on Springsteen: national healer. The album, which drew from the stories of the victim's families and chronicled acts of faith and heroism, was Springsteen's best-selling album since
Tunnel of Love,
and with the blast of public exposure Springsteen regained whatever position of pre-eminence he had lost in the early 1990s.

The band toured for more than a year.

In 2004, Springsteen entered the political fray, throwing the full force of his celebrity behind presidential candidate John Kerry, who was running against incumbent George W. Bush. Springsteen not only endorsed the Vietnam veteran and protestor turned senator, he and The E Street Band also headlined one of several traveling rock and roll caravans under the banner of the Vote for Change tour. While the tours were very effective in raising money and awareness, they didn't succeed in getting Kerry elected.

Despite this failure, Springsteen's position as a member of the rock and roll aristocracy carried him through the rest of the decade, and allowed him to take substantial artistic risks. When touring behind 2005's largely acoustic
Devils & Dust,
for example, Springsteen played arenas,
³⁴
rather than the theatres of the
Joad
tour, relying only on his guitar, piano, and talents (and a deep look back into the catalogue for rarities and one-offs) to conquer the at-times cavernous spaces.

Less well-received was his 2006 foray into the world of traditional folk and roots music with
We Shall Overcome: The Seeger
Sessions.
Performing with an ad hoc band of local performers, as well as Soozie Tyrell, The Miami Horns, and Patti Scialfa, Springsteen recorded an album's worth of songs affiliated with folk icon and firebrand Pete Seeger, including “Eyes on the Prize,” “Shenandoah,” “Froggie Went a-Courtin',” and the title track. It's a joyous and enthusiastic album, and was met with considerable critical acclaim upon its release. The public response was much more muted. Not only did the album fail to sell at Springsteen's usual level, but tickets for the ensuing tour were readily available, even in traditionally strong Springsteen markets.
³⁵

Scarcely pausing to take a breath, Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band released a new album,
Magic,
in October of 2007, less than a year after the conclusion of the
Sessions
tour. The bulk of the songs were written in late 2006, and many reflect a deep unease with the state of American politics and society in the waning years of the Bush administration. Spiritually,
Magic
is close kin to
Darkness
on the Edge of Town,
though sharply topical, with songs like “Gypsy Biker,” “Last to Die,” and “Long Walk Home” capturing the zeitgeist as cannily as
The Rising
had, though with much less fanfare.

Propelled by the intense lead-off single, “
Radio Nowhere
” (as close as Springsteen has ever come to writing a punk song),
Magic
returned Springsteen to the charts, and resulted in a run of near-sellout arenas for the ensuing tour.

All was not rosy, however. In November 2007, on the eve of the European tour, Danny Federici was forced to withdraw from the band, unable to travel while seeking treatment for aggressive melanoma; he died in 2008. The band was still on the road, and the shows following Federici's death all opened with a photo tribute to the organist, set to “Blood Brothers,” which had become a band theme since the finale of the reunion tour. Springsteen also delivered a eulogy at Federici's funeral, and “The Last Carnival,” from 2009's
Working on a Dream
,
is a tribute to his fallen friend.
³⁶

After the conclusion of the
Magic
tour in mid-2008, Springsteen went to work in support of Barack Obama's bid for the presidency. Springsteen played numerous rallies and speeches, and his November 2 appearance featured the debut of the song “Working on a Dream.” While the campaign didn't feature anything quite as ambitious as the Vote For Change tour, it met with decidedly better—if you were Springsteen, or a Democrat—results.

In a period of three weeks in January and February 2009, Springsteen had the unique fortune of winning a Golden Globe (for his song “The Wrestler,” from the film of the same name), playing at an inaugural celebration for President-elect Obama (on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial), releasing a new album (
Working on a Dream
), and performing the halftime show at the Super Bowl. Not a bad way to start a year that would see another mammoth tour, this time with headlining performances at England's Glastonbury Festival and the Hard Rock Calling concert in London's Hyde Park.

The latter show, which was released on DVD in 2010, shows a performer clearly at ease with himself. Three months before his sixtieth birthday, he jokes about his age while delivering a performance that would humble most younger rockers: twenty-seven songs, stretching more than three hours from the opening cover of The Clash's “London Calling” to a closing “Dancing in the Dark,” from the heat of the late afternoon well into the cool of a summer evening. Springsteen left yet another crowd—this one estimated at more than fifty thousand people—utterly sated, hoarse-voiced, and likely barely able to stand.

Just another day at the office for the boy from Freehold. Just another gig. It's what he does; it's what he's always done. From his childhood bedroom in a shotgun house on the wrong side of the tracks, through every two-bit bar in the United States, then into the White House and to Hyde Park, once again, on stage, it's who he is.

“What will he do next?” has long been the great question when it comes to Springsteen. On June 18, 2011, that question took on a sad weight with the death of Clarence Clemons, age sixty-nine, from the aftereffects of a recent stroke. Clemons was widely regarded as the heart and soul of the E Street Band; his death made headlines worldwide.
³⁷

Springsteen left no doubt as to the depth of his loss. In a statement on brucespringsteen.net, he said, “He was my great friend, my partner, and with Clarence at my side, my band and I were able to tell a story far deeper than those simply contained in our music. His life, his memory, and his love will live on in that story and in our band.”

As always, for Bruce Springsteen, it comes down to people, and love, and stories.

1
. For the record, there is no such thing as a “straight” biography—such a thing would be a bullet-point list of names and dates without any context whatsoever. Every biography has a point of view, and an agenda, and I'm going to be clear about mine right off the top: this overview of Springsteen's life is going to attempt to locate, in the details of the man's life and world, the roots of elements that run throughout his work, while also giving the reader unfamiliar with Springsteen's background enough context to make the following pages coherent, at the very least.

2
. “Pony Boy,” the closing track on 1992's
Human Touch,
was a reworking of a traditional lullaby his grandmother used to sing him.

3
. The Roxy, Los Angeles, July 7, 1978, as released on
Live 1975–85.

4
. One of the classic “bits” about his parents was recorded at the Roxy in L.A., July 7, 1978, and included in the
Live 1975–85
box set. Late in “
Growin' Up
”—one of the vaguely autobiographical songs from his first album—Springsteen drops into a monologue. “I think—I ain't sure, but I think my mother and father and my sister, they're here again tonight . . . For six years they've been following me around California, trying to get me to come back home. Hey Ma, give it up, huh? Gimme a break! . . . They're still tryin' to get me to go back to college. Everytime I come in the house. ‘You know, it's not too late, you can still go back to college,' they tell me . . . My father always said ‘You know, you should be a lawyer, get a little something for yourself, you know,' and my mother, she used to say, ‘No, no, no, he should be an author, he should write books. That's a good life, you can get a little something for yourself.' But what they didn't understand was, was that I wanted everything. And so, you guys, one of you wanted a lawyer and the other one wanted an author, well, tonight, youse are both just gonna have to settle for rock and roll.”

5
. How Springsteen avoided the draft is the subject of much discussion, and it forms the subject of one of Springsteen's most haunting monologues, the introduction to “
The River
” on the
Live 1975–85
box set. He talks, in a heartbroken voice, about the constant struggle with his father, who'd often said, “I can't wait till the army gets you . . . When the army gets you, they're gonna make a man out of you.” The story builds in intensity, covering Springsteen's fear of attending his draft physical, and his eventual failure to be accepted, then coming home and telling his father. “My dad said ‘Where you been?' I said, ‘I went to take my physical.' And he said, ‘What happened?' I said, ‘They didn't take me.' And he said, ‘That's good.'”

6
. Godless pinko commie union-boosting bastard that he is, Springsteen isn't fond of the nickname. I'm not either, and I think this is the only point in this book I use it, save for as ironic effect.

7
.
The Promise,
the 2010 film by Thom Zimny that opened at the Toronto Film Festival before being included on
The Promise: The Darkness on the Edge of Town Story,
documents this period of Springsteen's career with disarming clarity and candor. It's well worth watching, even for just the grainy footage of a shirtless Springsteen in his living room leading the band through songs that would later appear on
Darkness on the Edge of Town.

8
. Springsteen wrote and recorded more than seventy songs during the
Darkness
sessions, with a mere ten appearing on the album.

9
. In excusing the absence of “The Promise” from the album, Springsteen says, simply, that he was “too close” to it.