The old men who narrate the songs of Bruce Springsteen's cinematic "Western Stars" are broken, physically, emotionally, and spiritually. Seeking a land of sunshine, open roads, and new beginnings, they find that the fabled American West cannot provide salvation for the lost and lonely. But "Western Stars" will surely provide balm for the soul. Western Stars, [...]
When I was eight years old I had an experience that set a trajectory for my whole life. I was lying in bed, I had the radio on—this was the 1970s—and Bruce Springsteen comes on with his 70s anthem “Born to Run.” Something broke open in my soul. Something grabbed a hold of me and [...]
Bruce Springsteen released the song "Jesus Was An Only Son" on his 2005 album, Devils and Dust. Words and music follow below. —Editor Well Jesus was an only son As he walked up Calvary Hill His mother Mary walking beside him In the path where his blood spilled Jesus was an only son In the [...]
Asbury Park postcard, sometime between 1930-1945. When I was a teenager, in the late 1990s, Asbury Park, New Jersey had fallen on hard times. The kinetic energy of the small shore city—Ferris wheels and carousels, breezy counters with young people selling waffle cones and hamburgers to beachgoers in the salty air—was largely gone. [...]
Here are four recently-published books and four new classical music albums that I have greatly enjoyed this past year… Books I’ve read several excellent biographies (and one great autobiography) this past year. Foremost among the former is Jan Swafford’s magisterial Beethoven: Anguish and Triumph, which could easily be termed the definitive biography of perhaps the [...]
Bruce Springsteen wrote the song "Brothers Under the Bridge" in 1995. It tells the story of a group of homeless Vietnam veterans who set up a camp in the San Gabriel mountains near Los Angeles. "This is the story about one of them who has a grown daughter that he's never seen," Mr. Springsteen explains, [...]
Though his fans will undoubtedly enjoy this engrossing autobiography, it deserves a broader audience because of the beauty of Mr. Springsteen's writing, his penetrating observations about human nature, and his well-crafted history of an interesting and important life... "We remain in the air, the empty space, in the dusty, roots and deep earth, in the [...]
Bruce Springsteen composed "The Wall" in honor of Walter Cichon, a fellow guitarist and friend from his home town of Freehold, New Jersey, who was killed in the Vietnam War. —Editor Cigarettes and a bottle of beer this poem that I wrote for you This black stone and these hard tears are all I got [...]
The story of one’s life has no end. It is simply told in your own blood until it is passed along to be told in the blood of those you love, who inherit it. As it’s told, it is altered, as all stories are in the telling. It continues to be told because along with [...]
"When it rains, the moisture in the humid air blankets our town with the smell of damp coffee grounds wafting in from the Nescafé factory at the town’s eastern edge. I don’t like coffee but I like that smell. It’s comforting; it unites the town in a common sensory experience; it’s good industry, like the [...]
The spiritual life is going to be a life of mystery. Why would you not be humble in the face of that mystery? Why would you assume that the answers can be handed down to you, A to Z, no room for doubt? That’s child-like, that desire for answers. Adult life is dealing with [...]
Novelist Walker Percy was a fan of Bruce Springsteen, calling him “my favorite American philosopher.” Percy even wrote a letter to Mr. Springsteen, seeking information about his interest in Flannery O’Connor and his spiritual journey as a baptized Roman Catholic. Percy was also impressed by Mr. Springsteen’s song-writing, seeing the New Jersey native as a sort of [...]
The great Southern novelist Walker Percy called singer-writer Bruce Springsteen his “favorite American philosopher.” Raised in a blue-collar household in central New Jersey, Mr. Springsteen was not exposed to literature by his parents and attended a junior college only briefly; yet he began reading seriously in his late-twenties and at age sixty-seven continues to [...]
On July 19, 1988, Bruce Springsteen played a concert in East Berlin, telling the crowd: “I came to play rock ‘n’ roll for you East Berliners in the hope that one day all the barriers will be torn down.” The program included Bob Dylan’s “Chimes of Freedom.” An East German concertgoer recalled: “What I [...]