Book review - Bruce, by Peter Ames Carlin Four Stars This is about the life of my absolute rock hero, Bruce Springsteen. I have to say I was a little disappointed. One example is the naming of the E-Street Band. It does go into detail about why Bruce wanted to be separated from the band name and then goes into how they couldn’t come up with a suitable name. A little later in the book, bang, there’s the band name with no explanation. It was actually “Big Man” by Clarence Clemons, an amazing book, that clears this issue (they’d always wait for ages for a band member to get ready – I can’t remember which, Carlin should have reminded me – and he lived in E-Street). Another example that is fully covered in Big Man is how Robert De Nero stole “You looking at me” from Bruce to use in the film Taxi. Carlin did explain how Springsteen wound the crowd into a frenzy before calling out to one area “You looking at me”, then the same to another area and then to another. But Carlin said nothing about how De Nero asked Clemons if he could keep a secret for at least ten years before owning up that he was at that concert, nor how Clarence kept the secret for even longer. The book covers Bruce’s early years in great detail and it is very good: his childhood and unorthodox relationship with parents and grandparents; how he got his mum to buy him his first guitar, an expense she could ill afford; his wayward and introvert ways at high school and his Vietnam fears. The early bands, including The Castiles, Steel Mill and of course Dr Zoom and the Sonic Boom are well covered, as is the relationship with Steve Appel and why the partnership rightly soured after the Born to Run album became a runaway success (with Springsteen and the band still near-destitute). Then came one of the most famous quotes in Rock history "I saw rock and roll future and its name is Bruce Springsteen" by Jon Landau, who took over management from Appel. The albums come, each fully described in one or two chapters. And this is where the alarm bells start to ring. There are only 27 chapters; surely there’s not going to be any late cramming. I’m afraid there was. Everything up to “Born in the USA” was very well covered. Tunnel of Love lost out a little, but the Human Touch/Lucky Town pair were adequately covered, even describing why two simultaneous release were created, rather than one double album. “Live in New York City” was, if I remember correctly, a subset of a paragraph; every Springsteen album has a tale attached and so the story should be told. The Rising, whilst covered with the delicacy it deserved, was absolutely not detailed enough. This was Bruce’s response to the 911 terror attack and something that he had to do, was told to do by fans (a passing motorist called to him “Bruce, we need you”), and whilst that motorist’s words are recorded, a whole plethora of conflicting emotions are not covered. Carlin spent time with Clarence Clemens shortly before his death, so I was surprised that less space was allocated to this great man’s demise with no mention whatsoever that “Land of hope and dreams” was the last piece of recording that Clemons ever performed on: an absolutely magnificent tribute to the man and one of my all-time favourite Springsteen tracks – listen to it and you will understand why. I get the feeling, reading the book, that there was a word-limit. Now that’s daft as a Volume One and Two would have generated additional sales. While I understand that a thicker book would have reduced profits, what is the point of an autobiography skewed towards one era? Why not strip out the boring bits (even I got a little impatient at times, but not for long). Four stars. It would have been five with a more balanced timeline and a little more care in the human tales.
Posted on: Mon, 22 Jul 2013 22:40:58 +0000
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