July 22, 2010

When Bruce Springsteen first signed with Columbia Records back in 1972, the label’s executives didn’t know what to do with him. A product of the heady rock & roll ferment of the 1960s - as a teenager, he was originally moved to perform by such monster British Invasion bands as the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, and the Who - Springsteen’s actual “product” was a wide-ranging amalgam that was influenced by everything from Van Morrison’s “Astral Weeks” to stacks of scratched 45s by garage bands like the Standells and the Swingin’ Medallions. Throw in a sense of musical space and time that suggested an inebriated jazz buff who couldn’t figure out how to end a tune once he started playing, and this guy was virtually unclassifiable.

For lack of a better idea, Columbia forced Springsteen to record semi-acoustically on his first album, “Greetings from Asbury Park, NJ,” and the disc he delivered was even stranger than what he might have created without their meddling; the cheap studio and slightly out-of-tune piano probably didn’t help matters, either.

No one bought the record, even though Springsteen’s word-packed tracks were often outrageously inventive— funky, funny, full of stark imagery, heartfelt vocals, and out-of-nowhere metaphors. The problem was that the half-committed recording process made them sound like oddly muffled representations of the artist’s true spirit.

Cliché-flinging critics, who were just as stumped as Springsteen’s overlords, decided to label Bruce yet another “new Dylan,” which served as a virtual kiss of death at the time. By the mid-1970s, careful “Rolling Stone” readers were well aware you could fill a stadium with failed “new Dylans,” and the old Dylan still walked the earth.

Poor Bobby Zimmerman had simply grown weary of the Messiah trip everybody was laying on him, and was too ground-down by his previous decade’s amphetamine-charged physical and emotional output to keep it up at such an exalted level. And Springsteen was more than smart enough to know you can’t usurp the King just because the crown has grown tarnished and he’s put it in the closet for a while. His edicts still stood, and, in this case, could easily be played on any workable hi-fi.

Still, as a live act, Springsteen was tearing it up, to a degree that left even Dylan eating dust. Bruce wasn’t merely “popular” in the northeastern United States. A rabid fan base raved about his shows as if they were danceable religious experiences, and the small clubs he played were packed to bursting every night. Columbia was rightfully convinced they could break Springsteen on a national level if people could just see him onstage…and if Bruce and a sharp producer could figure out how to transfer the gist of that live experience to vinyl.

With that in mind, Columbia began presenting Springsteen to anyone who was willing to sit down and experience him in his natural habitat. Here, then, is 23 year-old Bruce Springsteen, giving a private performance for a group of radio and music industry types at a Los Angeles club in 1973.

Springsteen has certainly written more impassioned and impactful tunes than “Spirit in the Night” in the past 37 years, and you no longer have to convince people in Iowa, or anywhere else in the world, to attend his concerts. They line up in droves. But, like virtually every great rock & roller, it’s the first burst of his extraordinary talent that most rattles me when I look back on it. Where on earth did this kind of song come from? And how could a raggedy New Jersey boardwalk denizen find it tumbling out of him when he was a mere five years removed from Freehold Borough High School?

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It’s often been said that rock & roll is a young man’s game, but I think it’s closer to the truth that it’s a hungry man’s game. Everybody from Dylan to the Stones to Lennon and McCartney made their best music when they were still hungry, and I don’t mean a hunger for something as ultimately empty as fame and fortune. I mean a desire to be heard, a desire to be discussed, a desire to be experienced and felt. This is ultimately what drives any artist in any field, and it shouldn’t come as a surprise that motivation doesn’t necessarily flow unhindered into old age, since with age comes other responsibilities, and other, much more private forms of fulfillment.

Sure, the creative fire makes sporadic return appearances, particularly with Springsteen and Dylan, because these are monumentally talented people, and they can sometimes reach down far enough to rekindle the flame. But the real magic - the real mystery - almost always lies in the initial Big Bang. And we as fans are lucky to be able to return to that magic over and over again to help re-charge our own batteries.

That's why I've been listening to great rock & roll since I was 16 years-old, and it's why I'll go on listening to it until the day I die. I want it to spur me on through an unknowable journey full of hope and joy and sadness and despair; I want it to remind me of just how bottomless my emotions can be when I’m connected to the people and things that are most important to me.

We don’t know when our personal end will come. But we do know when we’re living, and, as Springsteen would eventually get around to saying, “It ain’t no sin to be glad you’re alive.” So surround yourself with the good stuff, however you may define it, and try to embrace it with genuine abandon.

Be glad you’re alive. And, because life itself is a work of art, celebrate your journey.

Paul Tatara