On The 40th Anniversary Of Bruce Springsteen’s First Album Born To Run- And More

On The 40^th Anniversary Of Bruce Springsteen’s First Album Born To Run- And More

From The Pen Of Frank Jackman

 I got my “religion” on Bruce Springsteen ass-backward (something unkind souls of my acquaintance would say was a more generalized condition), meaning, my meaning anyway, was that I was not an E Street Irregular back in the day, the day we are commemorating with this post, the day when Bruce Springsteen sprung his Jersey boy of a different kind magic on the rock and roll scene with the issuance of the album Born To Run to a candid world. You see I was in a monastery then, or might as well have been, and did not get the news of the new dispensation, that there was a new “max daddy” rock and roll star out in the firmament and so I let that past.

Here comes that ass-backward part though. See I really was “unavailable” in that 1975 year since I was one among some guys, some Vietnam veterans who were living under bridges, along the riverbanks, along the railroad tracks of the East Coast trying to cope as best we could with the “real” world and not doing a very good job of it mostly not succeeding against the drugs, the liquors, the petty robberies, and the fight to stay away from the labor market. Yeah, tough times, tough times indeed, and a lot of guys had a close call, including me, and a lot of guys like now with our brethren Afghan and Iraq soldier brothers and sisters didn’t make it, didn’t make it but are not on the walls in black marble  down in D.C.-although maybe they should be. Of course Brother Springsteen immortalized the Brothers Under The Bridge living out in Southern California along the arroyos, riverbanks, and railroad tracks of the West in a song which I heard some guys playing one night when I was at a VA hospital trying to get well for about the fifteenth time and that was that. The next step was easy because ever since I was kid once I grabbed onto something that moved me some song, some novel, some film I checked out everything by the songwriter, author, director I could get my hands on.          

Once I did grab a serious chunk of Springsteen’s work I admit I got embarrassed. How could I not have gravitated earlier to a guy who was singing the song of the holy goof corner boys who I grew up with, the guys out making all that noise (and where are they now). Singing about getting out on that Jack Keroauc-drenched hitchhike highway that I dreamed of from my youth, of hitting the open road and searching for the great American West blue-pink night, of hitting thunder road in some crash out Chevy looking for Mary or whatever that dish’s name was, taking that girl down to the Jersey shore going hard into the sweated carnival night. Later looking for the wide Missouri, looking for the heart of Saturday night with some Rosalita, and looking, I swear that he must have known my story for my own ghost of Tom Joad coming home out of the John Steinbeck Okie night, coming home from Thunder Road, coming home from down in Jungleland. Yeah, thanks Bruce, thanks from a brother under the bridge.