Born to Run | Bruce Springsteen

episode SUMMARY:

In this episode of the Books for Men podcast, host Douglas Vigliotti discusses the rock memoir genre and highlights Born to Run by Bruce Springsteen as one of the best rock autobiographies he has read. He praises Springsteen's longevity and cultural relevance, noting that he continues to release new music and put on captivating live shows. Vigliotti shares his personal experience of seeing Springsteen live for the first time and describes the authenticity and earnestness that Springsteen brings to his performances. He also mentions some key themes and influences covered in the memoir, including Springsteen's childhood, his musical influences such as Elvis, The Beatles, and Bob Dylan, and his relationship with the E Street Band. Vigliotti concludes by recommending the book to anyone who appreciates storytelling and vulnerability and reminds listeners they can connect with him on Instagram @douglasvigliotti.

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Welcome back to Books for Men, a podcast to inspire more men to read and bring together men who do. So this week we are circling back to a genre that has been well covered on the podcast and that is the Rock Memoir or the Rock Autobiography, and this is a big one at around 500, 550 pages. It came out in 2016 and it's probably one of the best that I've read. It's definitely right at the top of the list along with the Keith Richards autobiography, which was a past episode actually on Books for Men, and the Dylan memoir, which I have not featured yet on the podcast, but something tells me I will in the future. Interestingly, both of those individuals, Keith Richards and Bob Dylan are cited a few times in the book that I am featuring today. Born to Run by Bruce Springsteen. Bruce cites these guys as big influences at different points in his career.

(01:10)

I'm sure I'll talk a little bit more about that as this episode goes on. Look, Springsteen probably doesn't need much of an introduction, at least not from me. I don't know how much I'm going to be able to say in this episode that probably hasn't been said before, but like Springsteen says in the book: “My business is SHOW business, and this is a business of showing, not telling you don't tell people anything you show them and let them decide. That's how I got here. By showing people.” And so why I said that is because I think the best thing to show you how influential and iconic Bruce Springsteen is, the fact that he first came out with an album in 1973, that was 50 years ago, and he's still culturally relevant today, meaning he's still in the zeitgeist in the conversation when people talk about music and culture.

(02:06)

And to me, that's just super impressive. But it's funny, I was having this conversation with my dad actually recently, and we were talking about legacy acts, and the one thing Springsteen isn't even to this day, is a legacy act. And so what is a legacy act? A legacy act is somebody who is performing their old hits and their old music and they're on tour and they're probably a great artist, but they're not making new music today. They're just kind of living off of the past, so to speak. And that's fine. I have nothing wrong with legacy acts by the way. I love a lot of them who were great musicians, making great culturally relevant music for a long time. But I say this is because Springsteen is not only still coming out with new music, but I believe that his last two albums, or original albums I should say, Letter to You and Western Stars are probably some of the better albums that he's come out within the last 15 to 20 years, which is pretty remarkable when you consider that most artists of his caliber or his stance in society usually just peter off and are satisfied with the art that they've put out into the world.

(03:18)

Maybe they're, again, like I had mentioned, becoming a legacy act or they're just doing different things. Sure, he did the whole Springsteen on Broadway thing and had a break from touring with the E Street band and all that stuff. But even that, the Springsteen on Broadway thing, that was a culturally relevant thing. It was something that was a hot ticket in New York City, like this is someone who again, has sustained over a long period of time, and I honestly didn't have the full picture of what Bruce Springsteen is or represent to a large fan base of people until last week when I saw him live for the first time, which is the whole reason why I'm sharing the book right now. It prompted me to really think about it and go back and review the four to five pages of notes that I have on the actual memoir.

(04:12)

I read it a couple of years ago, and the reason why I say that about not having the full picture live is because everyone says you've got to see Bruce Springsteen and the E Street band. It's like a thing of its own. I have to admit that I'm not the biggest Bruce Springsteen fan, but I can say pretty much unequivocally that I will never see something like that ever again. I know that that's a big bold statement, but the 20-piece band, the sound, him being the frontman, the 50-year history, the natural shorthand that he has with the audience, it almost feels religious when you're in that stadium listening to that band play. And he's the one telling stories in between songs, interacting with the crowd. Some artists that I've seen live, most artists call it 95% of them have this wall up between them and the audience, and it's not intentional, or maybe it is, but it's definitely there as in I'm the mystical rock God and you are the fan base.

(05:22)

And it's not that the fans don't look at Springsteen as that, but unlike any artist that I've ever seen before, he works really hard to remove that wall and make you feel like he's just one of you. My brother said it best when we were on our way back from the show and said, he's just really earnest, and that is a quality that I agree with. He has that very earnest, true, authentic nature to him. Whether you like his messages, whether you like what he sings about or not, or even his music the way it sounds, these human qualities are sort of undeniable. One of the things I love the most about the show or about Springsteen is he's not pandering to the audience. What I mean by pandering in this way is yes, he's breaking down that wall, but he's not giving you exactly what you want.

(06:12)

He's putting on a show and he knows he's putting on a show, and that 20-piece band, it's like an eight-person choir, a trumpet, a saxophone, three guitars, a bass, a piano player. It's a wall of sound that's coming at you for three hours and it's curated and crafted to give you this experience. And it's not just someone up there who's running through their greatest hits. In fact, there are a lot of greatest hits that he didn't even play songs like “Glory Days” or “Hungry Heart” or “Tougher Than The Rest” or “My Hometown” or “Born in the U.S.A.” Those songs didn't even make it into the setlist, but when you left that show, you didn't feel slighted one bit because you knew that this was a crafted experience that was produced and put on for you.

(07:01)

He has a very interesting quote in the autobiography that kind of talks about this, and he says: “The show provides me an illusion of intimacy without risk and consequences. During the show, as good as it is, as real as the emotions called upon are, as physically moving, and as hopefully inspirational as I work to make it, it's fiction. Theater. A creation. It isn't reality. And at the end of the day, life trumps art always.” I love that because that is the very reason why people love him, that authenticity, that earnestness, as my brother called it. It's an openness and honesty to just tell you this isn't real and you still love him for it. You don't feel slighted by it at all because what you appreciate is the emotion and the human quality that he's conveying, and that comes through in his music and it comes through in his show, and it comes through in this autobiography as you read it, you hear his voice as you're reading 500 pages, unlike many people in his shoes.

(08:13)

He didn't hire a ghostwriter to write this book. He actually wrote it. And you could tell when you read a line that says something like this, “I come from a boardwalk town where almost everything is tinged with a bit of fraud. So am I. By twenty no race-car-driving-rebel, I was a guitar player on the streets of Asbury Park and already a member in good standing amongst those who lie in service of the truth, artists with a small a. But I held four clean aces. I had youth, almost a decade of hardcore bar band experience, and a good group of homegrown musicians who were attuned to my performance style. And, I had a story to tell.” And even as I was reading that I could hear Springsteen saying it in his voice. Here's another one that just lets you know that this is by Bruce Springsteen.

(09:05)

“I've been around long enough to know history is sealed and unchangeable. You can move on with a heart stronger in places it's been broken, create new love. You can hammer pain and trauma into a righteous sword and use it in defense of life, love, human grace, and God's blessings. But nobody gets a do-over. Nobody gets to go back and there's only one road out. Ahead, into the dark.” So if you enjoy those excerpts in that type of language, then you're probably going to really like this book. I have way too many quotes, as you can probably imagine from this book, and a lot of them will be featured in the newsletter at the end of the month. But before we wrap this up, I did want to tell you a little bit about what you can expect in the memoir. And so you could definitely expect stuff on his childhood early, Bruce, right?

(09:58)

So when he saw Elvis in 1956 on the Ed Sullivan Show and how that was the turning point for him and how he hated lessons, guitar lessons, he quit the guitar. Still can't read music to this day. I always love hearing that because I have sort of a familiar experience with writing and literature and grammar, so I always love hearing those things, but that's selfish. Other influences, of course, were the Beatles in 64 on Ed Sullivan, which was kind of the domino effect as he might call it. And the Stones were another huge influence for him, something that I sort of alluded to. They were the Holy Grail or the Blueprint of Cool is what he called it. Later on in life, there's a passage at the end of the book when he is asked to first sit in with the Stones and he responds, like, Are you kidding me? “They invented my job!”

(10:43)

Of course, I want to sit in with them. And so he has a lot to say about his influences, Dylan being another one. He speaks specifically on the fact that when he was first coming up, he was sort of ped to be the new Dylan, and obviously he knew he wasn't. And there was a time period when he transitioned into his own voice and he documents the feeling and the experience of when an individual steps into their own voice, and they're not positioned as somebody else anymore. They're just Bruce Springsteen or whoever. And so obviously you'll get a lot on his albums as well. Born to Run is probably one of the most important in his catalog as it was the album that catapulted him into popular culture and relevance in rock music. He had two, I don't want to say bombs, but albums that weren't received very well before that third album came out.

(11:49)

And it's interesting, he has a quote in the book that shows his hesitancy to even release the album. He says, Jimmy, John, and Mike, and he's talking about Jimmy Iovine, Jon Landau, who was his iconic manager. Really, you can't have a conversation about Springsteen without talking about Jon Landau, and there's a lot of that in the book as well. And Mike Appel is the other person that he's talking about as he starts this, and that was his first manager who had him in a really bad contractual way. He talks about how he was broke early in his career, and he didn't actually make any money until 1982, which was about 10 years after he started making music publicly or releasing albums. So you get all that too. But anyway, the quote says, Jimmy John and Mike got crazy, but I still just couldn't release it.

(12:32)

And he's talking about Born to Run. “All I could hear was what I perceived as the records flaws, the bombastic big rock sound, the Jersey-Pavarotti-via Roy-Orbison singing the same things that gave it its beauty, power in magic. It was a puzzle it seemed. You couldn't have one without the other. John tried to patiently explained to me that art often works in mysterious ways. What makes something great may also be one of its weaknesses, just like in people, I let it go.” So even in that passage, there's just so much you could break down and dive into. This type of stuff is peppered all throughout the book. And of course, there's a large portion about his relationship with his bandmates when he met Stevie Van Zandt and his relationship with Clarence Clemons, who was an instrumental part of the E Street band.

(13:25)

Just as said moments ago, you can't talk about Bruce Springsteen without talking about Jon Landau. You also can't talk about Bruce Springsteen without talking about the E Street band. And with that being said, I have to start wrapping this up because I've been going on way too long. But I did just want to say this book is not just for fans, it's for any dreamer, loner, rebel, tireless worker who sacrifices themselves, a parent, or anyone who wants to be vulnerable, but struggles with opening themselves up. He talks a lot about battling his depression, artistry, and all kinds of stuff. It's a really encompassing read, and there's probably nobody who is a more natural-born storyteller than Bruce Springsteen. That's just one of the things that makes him great. And it's also why I'm so confident in suggesting that you should read this book and give it a shot.

(14:16)

Alright, so I have a lot more to share with you, but I'm going to wrap this up. And this is the time when I remind you if you enjoyed the episode please share it with a friend, a family member, or somebody who you think might enjoy it because word of mouth is everything and we're trying to spread awareness. This podcast specifically, it's to inspire more men to read. And if you want to double down on that support, you can by liking, rating, subscribing, following, and reviewing. Take 30 seconds to do it. It helps more people find the show. Lastly, actually, I want to add something to this ending. I know that podcasting can sort of sound like a black hole like I'm just talking to you. So if you want to reach out to me, go connect with me on Instagram @douglasvigliotti. It's the only social media platform that I'm active on. I'll continually remind you guys of this in other episodes because I do want to open up the line of communication with you. Okay, now lastly, you could visit BooksforMen.org where you can get full transcripts for all these episodes, as well as sign up for the newsletter, which is a monthly roundup of every episode complete with full book and author information, all of the best quotes, plus additional quotes, as well as newsletter only book recommendations. And again, you could sign up for that at BooksforMen.org.