Having a hard time believing todays birthday is his 65th. I have friends who love him, friends who cant stand him and never could. Me? I loved his early stuff -- this guy who sang songs about a wild, restless life, yearning to escape from the drudgery and despair of middle-class life in Jersey. Jungleland was my favorite song in high school. Candys Room, a combination of his and Maxs strengths, was as close to an orgasmic explosion as ever interpreted in a song. The songs he wrote in the three-year period he couldnt record, and songs he left off albums that were better than some peoples best -- Because the Night, Fire, Rendezvous, The Promise, Roulette, Loose Ends, Where the Bands Are, Doll House, Restless Nights. The River. The euphoria I felt hearing Hungry Heart when it premiered on WNEW-FM that October afternoon in 1980. Out in the Streets, The Ties That Bind, Jackson Cage, Im a Rocker. And the shows? I saw him at his peak, on that tour. Twice in December 1980 -- Friday the 12th at the Hartford Civic Center, coming home from school on Long Island that afternoon and driving in the snow to the show, a 2 1/2-hour blast where, four days after John Lennons murder, Bruce shouted out This ones for Johnny! and broke into Twist and Shout -- and the following Thursday at the Garden, one of the legendary four-hour blowouts, where I sat in the infamous blue seats where the Rangers fans had their homecoming 40 nights a season, plus Christmas songs and people showering the stage with gifts. I had a feeling Id never see a show again like that; I was right. I saw Bruce four times after that -- in 84, 92 (both at the Civic Center), a solo Tom Joad show in 96 at Oakdale and the first event at UConns Rentschler Field in 2003, from the first row -- and it was never the same. I liked Nebraska for what it was -- a break from the hamster wheel and his way of saying Theres more to me than you know, so dont pigeonhole me -- but something was missing. Maybe it wasnt evident on Born in the U.S.A., but the further along he went, the more his handlers crafted this image of Steinbeck in Black Leather, as The Times called him in a magazine cover story, the more weighed-down he was by life, the less he mattered to me. Save for The Rising, his 9/11 response, I moved further and further away from him. But he still has something. For someone whose peak was nearly 35 years ago, as much as he seems so much more an aged warhorse now than a Jersey Devil, he sure has carved out a pretty goddamned long and successful career. Theres something to be said for that. But in some ways, I wish time couldve been frozen in the fall of 1980. https://youtube/watch?v=ilk6MCW1nAE
Posted on: Tue, 23 Sep 2014 06:51:55 +0000
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