Five times we very nearly didn’t have a Bruce Springsteen
We took the highway till the road went black
We’d marked, Truth or Consequences on our map
A voice drifted up from the radio
And I thought of a voice from long ago
Who’ll be the last to die for a mistake
Springsteen’s star is so utterly ubiquitous in the firmament of American rock that it is hard to imagine what the last forty or so years would have looked like without him. Here are five incidents that almost led to that very sad outcome.*
That time the bullet came through the front door
Bruce was about fourteen when one evening he climbed the stairs to his room at 68 South Street, Freehold. Just a moment later, a bullet came through the glass of the front door and hit the stair bannister. It was a mere matter of timing that he was not claimed by the shot.
In his autobiography, Springsteen later revealed that his father had been caught up in some trouble at work involving the Labour Unions. The shot was probably meant as a warning but could so easily have had tragic consequences for the world at large.
The very door.
That time the motorcycle didn’t make it through the intersection
A couple of years later – also on South Street, Bruce was riding his motorcycle home when a driver ran a stop sign at the intersection of South and Institute Streets and collected the young musician pitching him headlong through the air. Bruce was out cold for half an hour and suffered significant damage to his leg but, fortunately, lived to tell the tale.
That time Tinker took the backroads over the mountain
On Bruce’s first trip to California with the band, he and their then manager, Tinker West, got separated from the rest of the band who, at that point, were all travelling in a separate car. Without the benefit of yet to be invented cell phones or any plan on what to do should separation occur the two were forced to drive on to their ultimate destination and hopefully meet up with the band there.
They had a gig (their only guaranteed paying gig in California) just a few days hence and so they had no choice but to drive as fast as Tinker’s truck would go. Unfortunately, at this time Springsteen couldn’t drive. This meant three days of nonstop driving with only one licensed driver on board. Obviously, that was not feasible so…
Bruce got a crash-course in highway driving (something that as it turned out the future Born to Run writer absolutely sucked at) As Springsteen himself admits, he almost got them killed on several occasions Inspiring terror in the usually unflappable West.
That wasn’t the worst of it, however. When they came upon a washed out section of the highway, there was nothing for it but to take a dirt backroad over the mountains. As it turned out, it was more dirt than road and the two were forced to endure an ordeal which Bruce later compared to the movie Wages of Fear. Somehow, Tink got them through but by rights, the Springsteen legend probably should have been stillborn in one of the deep gullies they almost slid into over that nightmare drive.
That time the ocean tried to steal our hero
Before Steel mill had morphed into the E Street Band, Bruce was living a fairly beach-bum like existence in Asbury Park. Around this time he took up surfing (not surprising since he was living rent free in Tinker Wests surfboard factory). The surf being what it is – most of the time – on the East Coast, that should have been a fairly safe way to spend his time.
Unfortunately, on one particularly wild day (he describes it as a hurricane surf in his book), Bruce foolishly decided to go in. Predictably enough, a massive wave dumped him almost upon the stone jetty then two or three more came along and did exactly the same thing. He managed to drag his half drowned and badly bruised body up onto the beach eventually but it was a close-run thing
I suspect his enthusiasm for surfing waned somewhat after that.
That other time Tinker took the mountain road
What is it with these California trips with Tinker West? Just before the vaunted record deal with Columbia, Bruce and Tink took another run out to California. This time, coming off a broken romance, Bruce was seriously considering moving out that way for good. That alone would have spelt the death of any future entity known as the E Street Band but it would have been a moot point had the trip ended in the disaster Tinker West seemed to be courting.
Again the weather conditions drove them over the mountains via backroads and this time the threat was avalanches. They weren’t even in a truck this time but rather Tinker’s beat up old station waggon with a stripper in the back (seriously, don’t ask).
Somehow, they made it through the blizzard without anyone dying and eventually Bruce realised California was not for him. Upon his return, he signed with Mike Appel’s management company and the Columbia deal was soon arranged.
Springsteen had arrived and America would never be quite the same place again. However, if just one of the above events had taken a more serious turn, a good many people’s lives would have ended up very, very differently.
*I could have included the time he was almost drafted into the Vietnam War, a conflict that had already claimed the lives of two of his fellow Freehold musician friends (including a member of his own first band). However, Bruce brilliantly side-stepped that fate so I decided not to include it.
I’ve taken as my main source in this article, Springsteen’s excellent autobiography ‘Born to Run’.
Well Papa go to bed now it’s getting late Nothing we can say is gonna change anything now I’ll be leaving in the morning from St. Mary’s Gate We wouldn’t change this thing even if we could somehow Cause the darkness of this house has got the best of us There’s a darkness in this town that’s got us too But they can’t touch me now And you can’t touch me now They ain’t gonna do to me What I watched them do to you
In recent days, Springsteen and co. returned to NJ for two sellout concerts at East Rutherford’s Metlife Stadium, arguably E Street’s home ground. There they broke (and broke again) the standing record for their longest show on US soil (apparently they have played even longer somewhere else) with both shows coming in at around four hours each. This is a band whose core members (Jake Clemons excepted) are all sixty and up; incredible.
Springsteen concerts have always been legendary for the length of time the band spends on stage. Three-hour shows have been the norm for decades with Springsteen (to quote fellow New Jersian Jon Stewart) “emptying the tank every single night.”
This has led many to ponder what drives the man? What elemental force pushes him to give 110% every time he hits the stage? I don’t think the answer is out there beyond the footlights. I think it comes from a far more internal place. It’s not the love of the crowd he is chasing but rather a far more singular love.
I believe that it’s the approval of his father that has always been the driving motivation behind these marathon shows. I think that the roar of the crowd served to drown out his father’s internalised voice and that he has (at least in the past) clung to the spotlight for as long as he possibly could so as to forestall the inevitable return of that voice.
“When I was growing up, me and my dad used to go at it all the time over almost anything. But, ah, I used to have really long hair, way down past my shoulders. I was 17 or 18, oh man, he used to hate it. And we got to where we’d fight so much that I’d, that I’d spent a lot of time out of the house; and in the summertime it wasn’t so bad, ‘cause it was warm, and my friends were out, but in the winter, I remember standing downtown where it’d get so cold and, when the wind would blow, I had this phone booth I used to stand in. And I used to call my girl, like, for hours at a time, just talking to her all night long. And finally, I’d get my nerve up to go home. I’d stand there in the driveway and he’d be waiting for me in the kitchen and I’d tuck my hair down on my collar and I’d walk in and he’d call me back to sit down with him. And the first thing he’d always ask me was what did I think I was doing with myself. And the worst part of it was that I could never explain to him.” – Springsteen on stage in LA in 1985.
Though Springsteen has now largely come to terms with the familial conflicts of his early life and his father Doug has since passed away, for years he used the stage – and his audience’s adulation – to assuage the sense of low self-esteem instilled by his father’s constant Haranguing across that kitchen table back home in Freehold. The unrelenting interrogations as to the direction in which the teenage Bruce was heading left lasting scars on the young musician’s psyche.
“I could see the screen door, I could see my pop’s cigarette,” he would recount on stage in 1976 at the Palladium in New York. “We’d start talkin’ about nothin’ much. How I was doin’. Pretty soon he’d ask me what I thought I was doin’ with myself, and we’d always end up screamin’ at each other.”
This broken father-son dynamic literally haunted Bruce for years.
“I used to, uh, I had this habit for a long time. I would get in my car and I would drive back through my old neighborhood, back to the town that I grew up in. And, uh, I’d always drive past the old houses that I used to live in. Sometimes late at night … when I used to be up at night (laughs). And, uh, I got so I would do it really regularly … two, three, four times a week, for years. And I eventually got to wonderin’, What the hell am I doin’? And so, I went to see this psychiatrist, and, uh – this is true – and, uh, I sat down and I said, ‘Doc, uh, for years I’ve been getting in my car and I drive back to my town and I pass my houses late at night and, y’know, what am I doing?’ And he said, ‘I want you to tell me what you think that you’re doing.’ So I go, ‘That’s what I’m paying you for.’ So he says, ‘Well, what you’re doing is that something bad happened, and you’re goin’ back there, thinkin’ you can make it right again. Something went wrong, and you keep going back to see if you can fix it, or somehow make it right.’ And I sat there and I said, ‘That is what I’m doing.’ And he said, ‘Well, you can’t.’” – the Christic Benefit Concert, Los Angeles, November 1990
There is no denying that this largely negative influence upon Springsteen’s life has paid dividends to his fans. In his desire to prove his father wrong, he has given tens of thousands of people the concert experience of their lives but it wasn’t just Doug who gave the Boss his work ethic. His mother Adele was a major influence as well.
It might surprise his mother to learn that she was also a role model for the E Street Band. “The work part of what we did was intensely modelled on what she did, and the way she conducted herself on a daily basis,” Springsteen insists. “It was like, ‘Hey! We can’t be terrible one night and good the next night. We’ve got to be good every night.’ When somebody buys your ticket, it’s your handshake, it’s the old story, and they only have this night. They don’t care if you’re great the next night. What about tonight, y’know? I thought those things were real, and we took our fun very seriously. – Uncut Magazine 2002
Whereas the normally taciturn Doug would attempt to browbeat his son into doing what he believed was best for him, Adele led by example. Of the two parents, it may have been his father Bruce was desperate to prove himself to but it was his mother who earned his undying respect.
Eventually, Springsteen would be reconciled with his father. Doug, upon hearing that Bruce had become a millionaire from his musical endeavours famously said, “I’ll never tell anyone what to do again.” It’s a shame his son had to carry his hurtful and erroneous opinions around with him for so many years before he got to hear those words from his father’s lips.
I was thinking about bass players the other day. It seems to me, they don’t get anywhere near the recognition they deserve. It’s not surprising I suppose, they lack the flash of lead guitarists or the charisma of vocalists. Even the drummer is more front and center as a rule. Sure, some bassists also front; Sting, Suzi Quatro, Phil Lynott, but they are celebrated more for their fronting personas than their playing.
No, I’m thinking of a different breed; the ones who stand solidly to the side and just do their damned job; the rhythmic, throbbing engine room of any band. And a thankless job it is too sometimes. I’ve actually known people who can’t distinguish a bass line in the music they’re listening to – just can’t pick it out – and to those people, I generally say You’d certainly notice it if it wasn’t there.
With all this in mind, I thought I’d make this post about my five favourite bass players. Now, this is not open to debate, I’m not claiming these are the five best players of all time; just my personal favourites. Feel free to share yours in the comments.
In no particular order then, here they are:
Carol Kaye
Carol is a living legend. One of the first women to break through into the world of early Rock and Roll, her playing has appeared on a staggering 10,000 recordings. Still active today, her career has lasted over 50 years.
She’s shared studios with so many of the greats, from Frank Sinatra to Frank Zappa. Her bass can be heard on the Beach Boys Pet Sounds and several tracks by Simon and Garfunkel. She devised and played the classic intro to Glen Campbell’s Wichita Lineman. She contributed to the sound of the Righteous Brothers and was part of the famous Phil Spector house band the Wrecking Crew.
You can also add: The Doors, Quincy Jones, The Buckinghams, Ritchie Valens (she played guitar rather than bass on the timeless classic “La Bamba“), Nancy Sinatra, Sonny and Cher, Barbara Streisand, Ike and Tina Turner, Joe Cocker, Ray Charles, Herb Alpert, Buffalo Springfield, and the Monkees.
Like I said, she’s a legend.
Bruce Foxton
Bruce was, in my opinion, a fairly underrated contributor to the sound of The Jam. His Bass, for me, defined the sound of that punk-mod trio. As a band, they weren’t to everyone’s taste, but their aggressive, rumbling sound, largely attributable to Foxton’s bass playing, was a soundtrack to my laddish years.
Bruce and the boys will always hold a place in this old rocker’s affections.
Gail Ann Dorsey
Most famously an essential part of Bowie’s touring band over the past twenty years. Gail Ann Dorsey has also played with the likes of Tears for Fears, Lenny Kravitz, Bryan Ferry, The The, and The Indigo Girls.
I personally had the very real pleasure of meeting Gail (along with Mike Garson) at a side gig she and Bowie’s band played in Melbourne during the Australian leg of the Reality Tour.
The Philly girl (I love that about her) is a consummate player and her voice when she steps up to the mic is phenomenal. Bowie has wisely used her as his foil onstage for years, but no matter how elaborate their theatrical antics, her pumping bass lines never waver.
What can I say? Joy Division until I die. The sound of this band launched a thousand copycats. Without them, there would have been no Cure for starters. And Hook’s hooks were an essential component of their dark creations. Was he the most technically proficient bass man on the planet? Of course not, the band was famously messy onstage, but that sound…that terrible, portentously wrist slash inducing sound.
He was also part of the pop weirdness that was New Order.
Garry Tallent
The E Street band has consistently been hailed as one of the greatest live acts of the past thirty years and this is due partly to the not inconsiderable talents of Mr Tallent. Regarded as the quiet one in this stellar line-up (as is so often the case with wielders of the four stringed thunder stick) Tallent has lent grace and power to many of Springsteen’s greatest compositions.
Unforgivably, if you type great bass players into Google, Tallent doesn’t even come up. What further proof is needed that there is something deeply twisted and unjust about the state of the culture?
So there you have it; my top five. As I said, this is not open for debate. Each of these fine musicians have impacted my life in a positive way and have earned my undying loyalty.
Honourable mentions
Mick Karn, John Deacon, Flea, Tina Weymouth, Kim Deal, Dave Allan, John Entwistle, Jack Bruce, Mark King, and… whoever you happen to love most.
I have a theory; it’s wild and innocent and just might earn a fella a beat down in New Jersey were he to propose it to the wrong party. My theory is this; Bruce Springsteen is the American Bowie. It works the other way too; David Bowie is the British Springsteen.
Ok, at this point, at least half of you have snorted with disgust and are getting ready to move on to saner reading elsewhere but please, hear me out.
Though it may appear that you couldn’t choose two more different artists to compare, the simple fact is there are way more similarities than might be apparent from just a cursory examination.
Early years
Both men were born to working class families (lower middle would, perhaps, be more accurate in Bowie’s case) in the late forties; David in ’47 and Bruce in ’49. For both boys, it was their mothers who bought them their first musical instrument; a plastic Alto sax in Bowie’s case and a guitar in Springsteen’s. Both then joined their first bands at age 16; David, The Konrads and Bruce, The Castiles and both were able to procure enthusiastic managers who were instrumental in getting them early gigs. Bowie was taken on by Leslie Conn and Springsteen by local couple, Tex and Marion Vinyard.
Through various band line-ups, both artists evolved. Bowie went from The Konrads to The King Bees and then, in quick succession, The Manish Boys, The Lower Third, The Buzz and Riot Squad. Springsteen meanwhile went from various incarnations of The Castiles to Earth. Then (with future E Streeters Vinnie Lopez and Danny Federici), Child – which became his most successful pre-E Street Band, Steel Mill (future E Street guitarist Van Zandt joined at this point). Then, after a brief moment as Dr Zoom and the Sonic Boom, He formed The Bruce Springsteen Band, the core members of which would later (with the addition of Clarence Clemons on saxophone and Springsteen regular Danny Federici on organ) become E Street.
Bruce Springsteen: guitar, vocals
Garry Tallent: bass
Vini Lopez: drums
Steve Van Zandt: guitar, vocals
David Sancious: keyboards
During these rapid evolutionary periods, both men also explored solo folk performance. This was to earn them comparisons to Dylan (an influence on both artists).
The actor
We can see here that they both shared a fairly similar pre-history in regards to their musical evolutions. I’m sure, though, that you’re probably thinking “yeah sure, but these guys are fundamentally so different!”
Are they, though? Sure, Springsteen is about as homespun and no-nonsense as they come. And Bowie is – well Bowie, but it’s worth pointing out that, though the styling may be different, both are playing roles.
There’s no doubt that Bowie chose a far more flamboyant, avant-garde approach to his many characters. It’s hard to imagine Bruce attempting a Ziggy or Aladdin Sane persona, but nonetheless, he has, throughout his career, chosen to use characters to portray his music. All one has to do is listen to his recordings from the early seventies to hear how very different his voice was then compared to the far more countrified version you most often hear today.
It’s not just his singing either; multiple live recordings reveal that he has changed the way he speaks and between the Springsteen of first album Greetings and the Springsteen of recent times there has been a multitude of – sometimes subtly and sometimes glaringly – different personas.
Just like Bowie, Springsteen’s albums and shows have been ‘themed’. Nebraska isn’t just an album, it’s a concept; as surely as is Diamond Dogs. Can anybody who has listened to both honestly say they see no similarities between Darkness on the Edge of Town and Low?
At the end of the day, both artists have taken as their central theme alienation and have chosen to tell their stories through the eyes of outliers and misfits.
Albums
I would argue that Springsteen’s recording career has many touchstones with Bowie’s. Just as Hunky Dory, The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars, and Aladdin Sane all form a cohesive set, so too do Greetings from Asbury Park NJ, The Wild the Innocent and the E Street Shuffle, and Born to Run*.
Young Americans was a massive departure from Bowie’s previous works when all expected that he would continue on in the vein that had brought him his long-sought success. After the huge explosion that was Born to Run, people expected the same from Springsteen. Instead, he gave us Darkness.
Darkness on the Edge of Town, The River, and Nebraska form another set just as Bowie’s Berlin period albums Low, “Heroes”, and Lodger do.
In the eighties, both artists released huge breakthrough albums (Bowie’s Let’s Dance – 7 million sales worldwide and Springsteen’s Born in the USA – a staggering 30 million sales worldwide) which propelled them to new and slightly frightening heights**.
For both artists, this sudden ascent into the stratosphere led them to somewhat lose their compass’. This is reflected in Bowie’s case by the inferior output on Tonight and Never Let Me Down (an album which Bowie himself has described as his “nadir”, calling it “an awful album”). And in Springsteen’s case, Human Touch and – arguably – its sister album Lucky Town formed his creative low-point. He later acknowledged that the ‘90s were a “lost period” for him “I didn’t do a lot of work. Some people would say I didn’t do my best work”.
Both artists decided at that point to do something drastic to arrest their respective creative slides. Interestingly they chose to go in completely opposite directions. Springsteen who had already, broken with the E Street Band and worked for a time with other musicians, went fully solo acoustic. Bowie formed a band (Tin Machine) and refused to be billed for a time as David Bowie, preferring the anonymity of being a simple band member.
I believe for both artists, these ‘solutions’ were more of a palate cleanser, an attempt to get the taste of dissatisfaction off their tongues. The end result was that Bowie broke up Tin Machine after two albums and resumed his solo career and Springsteen – having shaken off his tick on his solo Ghost of Tom Joad tour – reformed the E Street Band.
In 2002, following the devastating events of September 2001, both artists released what have come to be known as their 9/11 albums. Springsteen released The Rising and Bowie released Heathen. Both are very much imbued with the grief and tension of those times and both capture the unease that the artists experienced at the paranoia that resulted.
Generous to a fault
Another similarity the two share is a willingness to almost cavalierly give away top shelf material to other acts. Bowie famously gifted All the Young Dudes to Mott the Hoople and completely revived their flagging career. Springsteen gave away Because the Night and Fire. The former gave Patti Smith her only chart success and the latter was eventually a hit for The Pointer Sisters.
Both have also patronised the careers of other bands and even produced albums for the likes of Lou Reed and Iggy Pop – in Bowie’s case – and Southside Johnny and the Asbury Dukes, Gary US Bonds, and Joe Grushecky & The Houserockers in Springsteen’s. As well as championing younger acts like The Gaslight Anthem and The Hold Steady (Springsteen) and Arcade fire and The Dandy Warhols (Bowie).
Now, these men are in their sixties and are, remarkably, still producing amazing, relevant music. Bowie surprised the world in 2013 with the excellent The Next Day album after a hiatus of nearly a decade and has another album Blackstar due for release on 8th January (his 68th birthday). Springsteen’s 2012 album Wrecking Ball was a minor revelation and his finest work since Magic.
The differences have grown less obvious as age has seasoned them; both stand out as consummate performers and thoughtful songwriters in a world grown ever more crass and disingenuous.
It’s hard to be a saint
So did they ever meet?
Yes, they did, in fact. For all I know, their paths have crossed many times in the intervening years, but I am personally aware of only two times that the two were ever in the same room together.
The first wasn’t an actual meeting, but it was to prove quite significant. Bowie went to Max’s Kansas City one night in 1974 to see his friend Biff Rose play. When he arrived, Springsteen was onstage doing a solo Piano performance. Bowie was unimpressed by what he termed “another Dylan clone”, but halfway through his set, Springsteen brought on the rest of his band and gave a performance that literally blew Bowie away.
Bowie was so impressed, in fact, that he got hold of a copy of Greetings and went so far as to cover Growin’ up. That cover didn’t immediately get an official release – finally appearing in about ’89 as a bonus track on a German reissue of Pinups.
The next time their paths crossed was a little more bizarre. The story has been recounted several times and goes something like this;
At Tony Visconti’s behest, local Philly DJ Ed Sciaky called Springsteen on 24 Nov 1974 and asked him to come to Philadelphia to meet Bowie. Bowie was in Philly recording Young Americans. Springsteen actually hitched into Asbury Park and then caught a bus to Philadelphia to spend a couple of days as Sciaky’s house-guest.
Bruce later reminisced: “That ride had a real cast of characters… every bus has a serviceman, an old lady in a brown coat with one of these little black things on her head, and the drunk who falls out next to you.”
After killing a couple of hours at Philly bus station with the local ‘wildlife’, Springsteen was finally picked up by Sciaky and they duly arrived around midnight at Sigma Sound Studios where they spent the early hours of 25 November with an extremely coked up Bowie. He’d just recorded a cover of Springsteen’s It’s hard to be a saint but apparently, it wasn’t finished (actually, Bowie later admitted he chickened out of playing it to him), so Bruce didn’t get to hear it.
The two artists sat out in the hallway together and tried to find common ground. It was fairly obvious the two were in very different head-spaces, but they eventually began to find their feet. Bowie told Bruce that he’d wanted to cover one of his songs since that night in MKC. Springsteen asked which other current American artists Bowie would consider covering and then let out a small grin when Bowie, after a moment’s consideration, replied, “there are none”.
The two then commiserated with each other over the unpredictable and sometimes scary nature of stage divers and after a time Bowie went back to finish recording and Bruce left and, to my knowledge, that was the last time they spoke (There actually is a photo circulating around the web of what appears to be Bowie visiting Springsteen backstage at one of The River shows, but frankly it looks ‘shopped’ to me – still it’s entirely possible that they’ve bumped into one another over the years, they both live in an extremely rarefied world after all and they also reside within the same 30 mile radius, so…).
And for the record, here’s how Bowie remembers the night in question: “Springsteen came down to hear what we were doing with his stuff. He was very shy. I remember sitting in the corridor with him, talking about his lifestyle, which was a very Dylanesque – you know, moving from town to town with a guitar on his back, all that kind of thing. Anyway, he didn’t like what we were doing, I remember that. At least, he didn’t express much enthusiasm. I guess he must have thought it was all kind of odd. I was in another universe at the time. I’ve got this extraordinarily strange photograph of us all – I look like I’m made out of wax.”
Mike Garson, Springsteen, Tony Visconti and Bowie
*Speaking of Born to Run, the other big commonality with these two is that both ended up in awful, career freezing, Lawsuits with their managers. Bowie had to sue Tony Defries to wrest back control of his music and career and Springsteen had to do the same with his manager and partner Mike Appel.
**I was just reading Clinton Heylin’s E Street Shuffle and came upon this passage. I thought it worth including here.
“Landau (Springsteen’s manager/producer) had learned well from recent history. If he had a campaign plan, it was closely modeled on the one another repeatedly inventive solo artist of the seventies, David Bowie, adhered to for his 1983 album/tour, Let’s Dance, which spawned three major hit singles and gained a whole new audience for an artist whose critical reputation Stateside had always exceeded his second-league album sales.” (page 316)
+Yet another Bowie/ Springsteen connection comes via Roy Bittan (Springsteen’s keyboardist since the Born to Run album) who played on two Bowie albums, Station to Station and the sublime Scary Monsters. Bittan is responsible for the eerie Piano riff on the amazing Ashes to Ashes as well as prominent piano on Teenage Wildlife,Up the Hill Backwards, and TVC15.
Runaway American Dream 