BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN — LIVE!

BRUCE POLLOCK | March 1973, Rock (US)

"Not since Dylan had I seen a guy who moved me so much," Pollock continued. "Moved me to attend almost every concert in the area for probably seven years after that, many of them at Max's Kansas City, where I'd sit at a table in the back with his manager, Mike Appel. When I asked him if Bruce would like to be included in the book on songwriting I was finishing up for Macmillan, In Their Own Words, he declined, stating that Bruce should have his own book. Unfortunately, fourteen other scribes beat me to writing that book. But I'm not sure he would have been his own best interpreter when it came to parsing his style and working habits. At that point, and for many years after, he was running on fumes and instinct, the way the best rock and roll always does." — Ed.

On the night of January 31, 1973, we were present at a little bit of rock-and-roll history.

The "we" I refer to are a few dozen of the New York City pop culture cognoscenti who were urged, cajoled, tipped, hipped, or otherwise hyped into joining the paying customers who saw Columbia recording artist Bruce Springsteen open up a five-day stint at Max's Kansas City — one of the last remaining oases of good music in a city of deserted singles bars, beat-up coffeehouses, and broken-down concert halls.

Already something of a word-of-mouth, trade press, and underground instant legend, Springsteen seems about to leap into the daylight of mass acceptance, household status, and Bandstand furor via the resounding clatter of praise issuing forth from some of your favorite magazines. The crowd at Max's was prepared then — somewhat — for his set, armed and waiting to fling the hype back into his face like a custard pie.

"It's strange, it's very strange. Let me tell you, Max's was the first gig where people came to see the band. Before that, it was like we were playing at football games, you know ... really terrible. People just didn't relate. And I figured it would be that kind of scene. But then people started to get interested. In a way it's good. I've met a lot of nice people who honestly like the music and are really excited about the band. But just the same, you get the other people who come on with attitudes toward us. I just get up and play every night — if somebody runs around saying it's good or it's bad, I don't have a whole lot of control."

Clad in dungarees, baseball cap, and shirt, Springsteen — twenty-four [Twenty-three, actually. — Ed.] — ascended to the spotlight with acoustic guitar in hand, accompanied only by an accordion player. He dedicated his set to John Hammond Sr. — Columbia's musical tastemaker supreme — who hasn't been this high on a discovery since he flipped his superlatives at Folk City some eleven years or so ago over Bob Dylan. Dylan advanced from Folk City to the Gaslight, where Sam Hood put him to work. Eventually Bobby departed for the western skies of New Jersey. Bruce is from Asbury Park. Sam Hood now takes care of business at Max's. And John Hammond Sr. came down early in the evening just to shake Springsteen's hand.

"The [New York] Times compared me to El Topo. They said, 'If you like El Topo, you'll like Bruce Springsteen.' I think they compared me to Allen Ginsberg, Rod Stewart, and El Topo in the same article. There's a cat with an original point of view. My songs have been compared to Ginsberg's poem "Howl" — but I just write what comes out of me ... because of some things I've seen. The kind of stuff I write might not be the kind of stuff I'd read. I'm not really a literary type of cat. A lot of people ask me what I read — what poets. I never read any, hardly. One time I tried to make a conscious effort because I was starting to get involved in it and I went down to the library and picked out a few books and I read 'em — I can't even remember the books. Rather than pick up a book that has poems, I'd rather pick up anything else ... any magazine ... whatever is around. I was never a heavy, serious reader. I went through a year and a half of college, which I don't remember a darn thing from. All I remember was getting hassled to no end. I've been playing music since I was about fourteen. I was really terrible at everything else."

After his opening number, a dirge called "Mary, Queen of Arkansas," which is one of the nine songs on his debut album, Greetings from Asbury Park, the pace picked up with a rocker about Indians and flapjacks made 'em fat and bishops and James Garner's one-eyed bride. Following this was a piece on the big top, complete with flute and tuba (provided by the adept members of his band) chilling the air just enough to set the stage for some electricity.

With the band joining him now in full blast, Springsteen put down his guitar for piano and began to show this crowd what he was really all about. Before he was through with "Spirit in the Night," the halfway laid-back, still somewhat unconvinced and cynical New York audience came to life. He did a song about a bus ride (now playing electric guitar) before slamming into his epic opus, "Her Brains They Rattle and Her Bones They Shake," and while this stomping, romping gut-rocker was going on the realization came upon you that the kid and his band were only warming up, getting loose. This was but the first set of three tonight, of five days here, of other days and weeks, present glory ... future fame.

"I was into messing around with words when I was eighteen, nineteen ... but I quit and did something else. I got into R&B. It wasn't until now that I figured out a way to fuse the two. It didn't come together easy for me then. I've been playing for ten years, which isn't real long but it's a little bit of a while. I was out there by myself for about five ... that's how I made my living ... by playing hard and sometimes getting groups. I played down South a whole lot, Tennessee, Carolina ... went out to California when I was about twenty with a band. We played the old Matrix ... second billing to Boz Scaggs.

"But it got to a point where things got tough. In 1966, '67, '68 ... it was easier, kids wanted to go to concerts and it was very exciting. But times changed and it got increasingly more difficult to get by. It got to a point where we had no way to get the equipment around. We had no PA system and no manager and no nothing so I said, well maybe I'll try it myself for a while. The only club I really played by myself was Max's. Sam would give me some jobs. If he had an open space, he'd put me in there, you know, give me some money. It seems kind of funny now. In a way, I don't know if I dig all this commotion, you know?"

Part of the magic is the relationship between Springsteen and his group. More than organ, drums, bass, guitar, and sax, more than just a bunch of good musicians, they are a greaseball, dancehall jazz band five, who relate like they've been playing together for years, like they grew up together in the Jersey flats, shared the same vision forever, and are just now getting around to laying it on the unsuspecting public. They seem to be having a ball, too. Especially Clarence Clemons on the big fat black sax — he's too funky — much!

"There used to be a little club around town in Asbury, a joint called the Upstage — three floors of solid black light. I would go down there quite a bit. This was four or five years ago. That's where I met Vini [Lopez, the drummer] and that's where I also met the organ player, Danny [Federici]. I met the bass player there too. Well, me and Vini's been playing together about four years. Me and Danny played together about three years, then we used another cat for a while ... and now Danny's come back again to this band ... all of them are local cats from Asbury. And Clarence ... last year sometime ... wandered into this club where I was playing, a place called the Student Prince, and he said, 'Hey, man, can I sit in?' He sat in and we got something going ... and that's the band.

"Now we've got tubas, accordions — the accordion used to be Danny's main axe. They've each at one time played some ridiculous little thing they can still vaguely play. All the guy's gotta do is be able to hit a note, put that note in the right place ... and it's all right! We're going to add bagpipes pretty soon ... and a bugle.

"I love to play and the band is the greatest. They're great guys and they push. They work as hard as I do. It's the kind of scene where we're all in the same boat. If it happens, it happens for everybody."

Bruce Springsteen's intensity and humor onstage is contagious. You can bet he won't be playing second billings for long. After leaving Max's he starts on the winding uphill route of roadside dives, college gyms, and noisy after-dinner clubs. Watch for him soon in your town. After a return to Asbury Park and a tour of the East Coast, the Springsteen Five will be like a basketball team playing fourteen games in twelve days, covering Denver, L.A., San Francisco, Seattle, and Portland. They will need more Wheaties to keep up.

"Lately you know what I do when I'm not playing — I sleep, period. I go home and go to sleep, get up, and play again. Run to Baltimore to play, run back. Believe it or not, at one time I used to be a real 'solitaire' freak, but I haven't been lately. This week I've got three days off, which is a really big vacation."

If Springsteen's crew of managers, press agents, publicists, grooms, and groupies can keep his head and his band together, can disregard the frantic hype that's bound to trail him, can manage to avoid falling prey to the nitpicker vultures who like to snipe at any moving target, they might bring him home again to the metropolitan area a winner. But it will be no easy road.

"All I want to do is write some good songs. It's my trade, you know? It's how I get my satisfaction. The main problem is not to lose sight of what is actually going on. All the ads and the hype ... anyone with any sense just ignores them. It's just one of the unpleasant things you have to do so you can make a record. I've never been a door-knocker. I don't try to push myself on anybody. I think it's the wrong way to do anything. I just don't believe in it. I mean, if people want what you've got, that's good. I'm at a point where this is all very new to me."

America is not the best place to make a run at becoming a superstar. James Taylor started in England, as did Jimi Hendrix. Janis Joplin and Jim Morrison did not survive it. Dylan did, in a way, but where is he now? And now Bruce Springsteen, who's been compared to Dylan, the Band, Van Morrison, Leon Russell, Rod Stewart, El Topo, and Allen Ginsberg, throws his chips in the game. And the wheel goes around.

WAS BOB DYLAN THE PREVIOUS BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN?

STEVE TURNER | October 6, 1973, New Musical Express (UK)

"I didn't want a new one, I wanted the old one, and I have to admit that the songs on Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J., irritated me because they seemed to self-consciously emulate Dylan's technique of rubbing nouns together ('ragamuffin drummers,' etc.). You didn't get a new Dylan, I reasoned, by copying the old one.