Born to Run (41 page)

But now, Steve’s move to the center mike would be complicated further by those very years he’d spent at my side in the
E Street Band. It’s hard for an audience to accept you in a new role, to hear you without the veil of the established popular image that comes with being a part of a successful group. I understood Steve’s position. He wanted more influence in our work. But I’d gently played him and Jon off each other for a purpose. It was why they were
both
there. I wanted the tension of two complementarily conflicting
points of view. It bred a little intended professional friction in the studio and perhaps some unintended
personal
friction outside of it, but that was the way I needed it. We were all big boys, very dedicated, and I figured everyone could handle it. They did. But this, along with the intentional gray area I kept the band in, created a purgatory
I
was happy with but, perhaps, confused and unsettled
some of my bandmates. Each band member and every fan probably has their own definition of who and what we are (and for most, we’re probably just Bruce Springsteen . . .
and
the E Street Band), but at the end of the day, I get, and got, to
officially
decide. From the day I walked alone (and very aware of what I was doing) into John Hammond’s office, that’d been the setup.

These questions, along
with the maelstrom of emotions they brought forth, were at the heart of Steve’s and my estrangement and his absence from the band during the eighties and nineties. I loved and deeply love Steve. As we parted that night, he paused for a moment at the door. Filled with concern over the loss of my friend and right-hand man, I said that despite where we were headed, I was still the best friend he had,
we were still
each other’s
great friends, and I hoped we would not let that go. We didn’t.

FORTY-EIGHT

THE BIG BIG TIME

Born in the USA
went nuclear. I knew I had a real runner in the title cut but I didn’t expect the massive wave of response we received. Was it timing? The music? The muscles? I dunno, it’s always a bit of a mystery when something breaks that big. At thirty-four, I decided to ride it out and enjoy it. I’d grown strong and knew how to withstand the spotlight, but over
the next few years, I’d be rigorously tested.

Nils Lofgren came aboard and filled a difficult position perfectly. Our paths had first crossed in 1970 at the Fillmore West auditions, then again at the Bottom Line in 1975, where Nils was booked following our stand. One afternoon in the early eighties we’d run into each other at the Sunset Marquis. With an empty afternoon in front of us, we took
a drive north along the California coastline and stopped roadside off Highway 1. We climbed to the top of a sand dune looking out over the sparkling Pacific, sat and talked.
He’d had a run of misfortune with his record companies; solo work was a tough grind and he imagined someday he wouldn’t mind moonlighting in a great band. (I think he mentioned Bad Company.) This was long before the position
in our band came open, but I’d always remembered our afternoon conversation. Nils had been poised for stardom just as we began recording
Born to Run
, and Jon and I had referenced Nils’s first solo album for our sessions. We strove for its sharpness, cleanness and great drum sound. It became a part of our blueprint for
Born to Run
. Nils’s early career caught some bad breaks and he never reached
the broader audience his talents merited. He was a voracious student, one of the world’s great rock guitarists, with a voice like a rebel choirboy, and his wonderful stage presence took some of the sting out of Steve’s absence and was a perfect addition to the 1985 revamp of the E Street Band.

Bar-Hoppin’ Mama

One crowded evening I stood in front of the stage at the Stone Pony as a young redhead
joined the house band, took the mike, then smoked and sassed her way through the Exciters’ “Tell Him.” She had a voice filled with the blues, jazz, country and the great girl groups of the sixties. Patti Scialfa had it all. We met, flirted, had a drink and became bar pals. I’d drop by the Pony, where we’d have a cocktail and a dance. The night would end up with her riding shotgun on my lap as
Matt drove us for an after-hours cheeseburger and chat at the Inkwell. Around three a.m. Matt and I dropped her off at her mom’s; a few smiles, a kiss on the cheek, a “See you at the club,” and the night would come to a close.

After Steve left, I decided we needed to raise the bar on our harmony singing. I listened to a few local voices and invited Patti to an “audition” at my home (along with
Richie “La Bamba” Rosenberg; oh, the choices one must make). That was followed by an audition rehearsal, while we were preparing for our tour, on the Clair Brothers soundstage in Lititz, Pennsylvania. The
band holed up at the local motel, rehearsed in the afternoon and hung out in the evening. I drove around in my 1963 convertible Impala, “Dedication,” a gift from Gary US Bonds for writing and
helping produce, with Steve, his comeback hit, “This Little Girl.” The night before we headed home, after a dinner, I had the whole band in the car, the convertible top down and Garry Tallent at the wheel. As we crested a hill Patti and I, sitting in the rear, heads leaning back, drinking in the night sky, heard a collective “oooh” rise from the guys as the blue trail of a shooting star cut the Pennsylvania
sky in half. A good omen, all the way around.

Three days before we hit the road, Patti Scialfa joined the E Street Band. As the first woman in the band, she sent shock waves through the troops, broke the boys’ club, and everybody had to adjust, some more than others. Make no mistake, a rock band is a tight-knit, rigid little society with very specific rituals and unspoken rules. It is
designed
to ward off the world outside, and particularly
adult
life. The E Street Band carried its own muted misogyny (including my own), a very prevalent quality amongst rock groups of our generation. By 1984, we were a much tempered version of our earlier incarnations, but scratch the surface and the “way of the road” with all its pleasures, prejudices and punishments would slither into view. Patti handled
all of this exceedingly gracefully. She neither displaced nor ceded her place to my dedicated and long-standing bandmates.

Through Patti’s addition, I wanted to accomplish two things. One, I wanted to improve our musicality. I wanted dependable, well-sung harmony vocals. Two, I wanted my band to reflect my evolving audience, an audience that was becoming increasingly grown-up and whose lives
were about men
and
women. It was a tricky course to chart, for at the end of the day, a big part of rock music continues to be its value as escapist entertainment. It’s a house of dreams, of illusions, delusions, of role-playing and artist–audience transference. In my line of work, you serve at the behest of your audience’s imagination. That’s a very personal place. Once you’ve left your fingerprints
there, crossing that imagination can have grave
consequences (disillusionment, or worse . . . loss of record and ticket sales!). But in 1984, I wanted, on my stage, that world of men
and
women; so, I hoped, would my audience.

Opening Night

June 29, 1984, the Civic Center, St. Paul, Minnesota. We’d spent the afternoon filming “Dancing in the Dark,” our first formal music video. We’d released one
video previously, for “Atlantic City,” a beautiful black-and-white short, directed by Arnold Levine, but neither I nor the group appeared in it. I’d always been a little superstitious about filming the band. I believed the magician should not observe his trick too closely; he might forget where his magic lay. But MTV had arrived, was potent, pragmatic and demanded tribute. Suddenly we were in the
short-film business and new skills would be needed. Videos happen fast: an afternoon, a day, then it’s in the hands of the director and editor and there’s no going back. It’s a medium that’s more dependent on collaboration than record making, and
a lot
of money can be burned in a short time. The finished product can only be indirectly controlled by the recording artist. To do it well, you need
a team of directors, editors, art directors, stylists, who get what you’re about and can help you translate that to the screen. It had taken me fifteen years to put together a record production team that could do that for me; now I’d have to raise a complete film team in fifteen minutes. Still, the times and ambition demanded it. This collection of songs, accompanied by Bob Clearmountain’s mixes
and Annie Leibovitz’s images and cover photo, reached farther for a mass audience than I’d ever done before.

You never completely control the arc of your career. Events, historical and cultural, create an opportunity; a special song falls into your lap and a window for impact, communication, success, the expansion of your musical vision, opens. It may close as quickly, never to return. You don’t
get to completely decide
when
it’s your time. You may have worked unwaveringly,
honestly, all the while—consciously or unconsciously—positioning yourself, but you never really
know
if your “big” moment will come. Then, for the few,
it’s there
.

The night I counted the band into “Born in the USA,” we kicked one of those windows wide open, a big one. A breeze rife with possibility, danger, success,
humiliation, failure, lightly drifts in and rustles your hair. You look at that open window. Should you step closer? Should you look through? Should you lift yourself up and take the measure of the world being revealed? Should you climb through and drop down, feet on unknown terrain? Should you step forward? Those are big choices for the best musicians, and I know great ones who turned them down,
tempered them, took another route, made highly influential music and had important careers. The big road isn’t the only road. It’s just the
big
road.

So here I am, on the big road, and standing in front of me is Brian De Palma, a friend of Jon’s. The director of
The Untouchables
,
Scarface
and many other great films, is here to give us a leg up on “Dancing in the Dark.” We had a false start a
week or two previous with another director, so Brian’s come to make sure justice is done to what will turn out to be my greatest hit. He introduces me to a pixie-ish, dazzlingly blue-eyed young girl in a freshly minted
Born in the USA
shirt, deposits her at the front of the stage and says, “At the end of the song, pull her up onstage and dance with her.” He’s the director. So a baby-child Courteney
Cox takes her cue, while I white-man boogaloo and daddy-shuffle my way to the number two spot on the
Billboard
charts. Until Brian told me later he’d chosen her from a casting call in New York City, I thought she was a fan! (A star was born . . . make that two!)

We were held out of the number one spot only by Prince’s “When Doves Cry.” We would make many videos in the future—I’d even come
to enjoy them—but none would ever elicit the same knee-slapping guffaws and righteous, rolling laughter from my kids as me doing my Jersey James Brown in “Dancing in the Dark.” (“
Dad . . . you look ridiculous!
”)

Ridiculous or not, we were soon, once again, to be the biggest thing
since the last big thing. Our video complete, it was now time for the easy work. Three hours of fire-breathing rock
’n’ roll. Opening night for her first appearance as an E Streeter, Patti was, to say the least, “lightly rehearsed.” We just hadn’t had the time. A mere few hours before the show, a small monitor and a microphone were positioned for her somewhere between Roy and Max. It was a jig rig. Wardrobe? The
Born in the USA
tour was notable for the sartorial horror sweeping E Street nation. The band has
never looked and dressed so bad. I’d grown weary of being a wardrobe Nazi, coordinating the men into what was supposed to look like an effortless, unified front. In ’84, I abandoned everyone to their worst instincts and they came through glowingly. The eighties ruled! C’s Gap Band box cut, Nils’s bandana and satin jockey jacket, Max’s perm, Roy’s Cosby sweaters, and my soon-to-be-iconic bandana and
pumped muscles. Looking back on these photos now, I look simply . . . gay. I probably would have fit right in down on Christopher Street in any one of the leather bars. We were all certainly united—united to strike fear into the heart of the nearest hipper-than-thou stylist. It varied from night to night, and some evenings approached tolerable, but all in all, “fashion” mayhem reigned. Most bands
are at their most visually iconic when they are sitting on the borderline of caricature (or slightly over it). By 1984, we were working those fields, and I still see teenagers and young men, who couldn’t have even been a glint in Mom and Pop’s eyes in ’84, at my shows in headbands and sleeveless shirts today. They’re cute.

With five minutes to go to St. Paul showtime, Patti knocks on my dressing
room door. She enters wearing a pair of jeans and a simple white peasant blouse. “How’s this?” she asks with a smile. I pause; I’ve never had to do this before, critique a woman’s stage gear. I’m a little nervous . . . “Uhhhh,” I’m thinking to myself, “she looks kind of . . .
girly
. I want a woman in the band, but I don’t want her to
look
like one!” I notice at my feet my small Samsonite suitcase
stuffed with my T-shirts. I kick it open and, smiling, say, “Just pick one of these!”

The show starts and Nils immediately fucks up his first solo. It’s
Patti’s and his debut with the band, there are twenty thousand screaming Minnesotans and despite all his experience, he’s caught briefly, a deer in the headlights. He goes red, we laugh it off, he settles in and aces the rest of the evening.
It’s a great night. Patti looks terrific (in my T-shirt!) and does beautifully under difficult conditions. Our new edition is battle ready and prepared for what lies ahead.

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania