Word: springsteen
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Dates: during 1974-1974
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...Bruce Springsteen appeared a few years ago, he might have been an important person in each of our lives. As it is, he is a "rising young star." We are to catalogue his influences (allegedly Dylan, but sounds like Van Morrison with laryngitis) and praise the accomplishments of his brilliant talent. But luckily Springsteen is better than all this. He has walled off the cultural miasma which surrounds him, and has created a music which is anachronistically exciting without being a historical relic...
...intense personal warmth permeating Springsteen's songs is rooted not in social anger but in the pure passion to make music...
While other songwriters are heading for country creeks and watermelon vines, Springsteen celebrates urban lowlife. His songs are ambitious mini-operas populated by punk saints and Go-Kart Mozarts in scenarios laced with schmalz and violence. His territory: the streets of Harlem, tenements, the funky world of the boardwalk's pinball way with its dusty arcades and machines. Bursting with words, images rush along in cinematic streams of consciousness...
...Offstage Springsteen's lyric virtuosity reduced to a mumble in hip, tough dude tones. "We had a bathroom with a big gaping hole in it that looked right out into this convent. I used to tell kids that during the war an airplane crashed into it. To save face, y'know?" Thus he describes the Freehold, N.J., home where he was born in 1949. Home life was not easy, and when his folks went West prospecting for better jobs, Springsteen remained behind. At 16 he was commuting to Greenwich Village to play guitar in cafes. Self-taught, Springsteen...
...loner, Springsteen's lifestyle is music. "I love traveling and performing, love being on the road. The thing I don't like is the business side." Home is a rented apartment in Bradley Beach, N.J. If the commotion over his music has sometimes flattered, sometimes irritated him, he shows no ill effects. He remembers calling his mother in California to tell her he had signed a big record contract...