The Ghosts of Monmouth County
/Bruce
By Peter Ames CarlinTouchstone, 2012About a year ago, my buddy Greg almost killed Bruce Springsteen. He was pulling out of a parallel parking space in Little Silver, NJ, when Bruce and his wife Patti stepped out into the street. They jumped back. Greg motioned them on. They motioned him on. He motioned them on. They motioned him on. Finally, he turned off the car, showed his keys to Bruce and Patti, and let them drop to the passenger seat, indicating that there was no friggin’ way in hell that he was going to jeopardize their safety and subsequently become the most hated person in New Jersey since Bruno Hauptmann.The courtesy standoff over, Bruce and Patti crossed the street. But schadenfreude being one of my vices, especially when it concerns my closest friends, it’s perversely fun to imagine what would have happened to Greg if he’d killed Springsteen, in Monmouth County, no less. My guess is some sort of extended lynching, and that killing would only be a start – New Jerseyans would probably do to Springsteen’s killer what the partisans did to Mussolini.This incident was left out of Peter James Carlin’s new biography, Bruce, so, as a guy who grew up in Monmouth County, I can hardly consider it comprehensive. But to be fair, it wouldn’t be possible for any book to include every Bruce anecdote from my home county. We all have a couple.Here’s one of mine: I used to hang out with a guy named Danny Stanton, a singer who used to record demos at a studio owned by Garry Tallent, Springsteen’s bass player. One day I went to the studio to pick Danny up. He introduced me to Garry, and in the course of our chat, mention was made of Springsteen living close by in the town of Rumson. I asked Garry if he thought Bruce was home, as Danny and I would swing by and take him to lunch. He laughed, then stopped, and said it wasn’t such a crazy idea; Springsteen had once gone to Graceland and hopped the fence in an attempt to meet Elvis, so Garry figured Bruce had no right to be angry if we decided to knock on his door.Danny went pale. He knew that I was only a casual fan, could be flippant, and had my own passionate tastes, which could result in my saying something to Springsteen like, ‘You guys are good, but you’re no Butthole Surfers.’ But with Garry’s sort-of blessing and even the remotest possibility of Bruce saying yes, he was too numb to object.We made it to Rumson, then had no idea where to go. Some kids got off a school bus and I called to them, “Where’s Bruce live?” Their arms raised simultaneously and I followed the general direction to which they’d pointed.Springsteen’s house was large, a lot of brick, with a big lawn, set back a ways from the street. I parked directly in front, and turned off the ignition. I undid my seat belt, got out of the car, and stood there, alone.Danny was gazing out the window, offering a look of dread usually reserved for convicts arriving at a state penitentiary. I knocked on his window. He rolled it down. “I’m going up there,” I said slowly, motioning towards the house, “and if he’s home, I’m not coming back to get you.” Danny dawdled, stared at the house in his last indecisive moments, then got out and joined me on the walk to the front door.I didn’t think we’d actually get there. I assumed some security measure would kick in – alarm, guard, dog, or some combination thereof – but no, we just crossed the empty lawn, and then I knocked. Danny hissed, “Just don’t mention Garry!” and stood erect, as if preparing to be inspected. I knocked again. Nothing. I turned to the video camera in the corner of the porch, introduced the two of us, assured Bruce that we weren’t insane, and asked if he’d like to join us for pizza. We waited a few minutes, then I offered to pay. We waited a few more minutes, gave up, and trod back over the grass.Flush with relief and disappointment, Danny finally relaxed. He put his hand on my shoulder as if we had just emerged from scaling Everest. I looked at him and sighed, grateful that I hadn’t instigated a full coronary.We reached the car, and found that there was to be some compensation after all. A guy from around town that we knew and hated, Eric Krantz, was in his car, idling parallel to mine. Eric was rich, shallow, obtuse, and humorless, but he did have an impossibly beautiful girl in the car with him. He leaned across her when he saw us coming down the lawn, and said out the passenger window, “Were you guys just up there?” Sarcastically, I said, “No.” Danny laughed. The girl wrinkled her lips, trying not to smile. Eric looked angry, but just said, “Can you take us up there?” And I said, “Eric. We were just there.” Defeated, looking at the house, he nodded sadly. I looked at the girl and said, “Do you want to meet Springsteen?” Eric pulled away so fast, he left skids.“Danny,” I said, “we just became legends.”Of course, we didn’t. Eric never told anyone his assumption, and I couldn’t get much mileage out of the story, since I wasn’t going to lie about dining with Bruce, and it wasn’t really so much a story about him as about his doorknob. It was no big deal. Like I said, everyone had stories.And for a while, there was no escaping them. After college, I lived in Freehold for a few years. I used to get my hair cut down the block from 68 South Street, the two-family house next to a gas station, with the window on the side looking out over the pumps, where Springsteen lived when he was a teenager. The barber shop guys, many of whom had lived in town their entire lives and knew Bruce as a boy, would tell Bruce stories, usually variations of, “He was a weird kid. First time I heard him play, at the Elk’s Lodge, I couldn’t believe it was him.” Every time I came in and waited my turn, they would ask if I was a fan. I would say, “Sure.” They’d say, “He was a weird kid…”From there, the stories continued. Things he’d done for the fire department, local food banks. Bruce spotted on the boardwalk,
Clemons’s death, Christie says, crushed him. “I felt like all the energy was drained out of my body. I just lay there silent on the bed, and [my wife] said to me, ‘I just want to understand what you’re feeling,’ and I said, ‘My youth is over. He’s dead and anything that is left of me being young is over.’”
As a middle aged guy who’s been hearing Springsteen stories from friends and neighbors for most of his life, it’s difficult not for me to read Bruce as a litany of loss. It starts with the death of the little girl, Virginia, that would have been Springsteen’s aunt, and is followed by, among many other events, the death of Springsteen’s grandfather, Fred, Springsteen’s troubled father Doug’s withdrawal into a depressive fog, the once-vibrant seaside resort Asbury Park ravaged by violence and drug abuse, the firing of bandmate Vini Lopez, who becomes a kind of Pete Best of the Jersey shore, the end of Bruce’s first marriage to Julianne Phillips, the distancing between Bruce and the E Street Band following his monumental success, and the deaths of Danny Federici and Clarence Clemons. But of course, there’s quite a bit of triumph as well, and those not inclined towards melancholy will find just as much to laugh over as to mourn.Born in Long Branch, New Jersey, raised in Freehold, Springsteen lived in a family that never recovered from losing Virginia, in a home “clotted with loss, memory, and regret”, where “death was a regular presence.” His first home was one of “eccentric rhythms” and bizarre leniency, where the unmonitored infant could stay up all night playing with toys or watching television. His grandmother “sensed the presence of Satan in lightning and thunder” and would huddle with the children, clutching bottles of holy water. His grandfather took Bruce “troll[ing] for cast-off radios and electronic parts in neighborhood trash cans.” Both grandparents “abandoned clocks altogether”, and felt that “Bruce…didn’t have to go to school at all if he didn’t want to,” reasoning that, “Fred hadn’t spent much time in school, and neither had Doug. So why make such a fuss getting an education Bruce wouldn’t need?” As things turned out, they were kind of right. But Bruce’s mother, Adele, insisted, so Bruce and his parents moved to a new home, where Bruce was soon to confront the two great adversaries of his young life: his father’s inscrutability, and nuns.Springsteen attended the St. Rose of Lima parochial school, and suddenly being in a place with rules and work requirements “first confused, then enraged the boy.” He was utterly unprepared for a world built on regularity and responsibility, and the strict dictates resulted in a painful shyness and inability to adjust. There’s a heartbreaking anecdote of Adele spying on her son during recess and seeing him “against the fence, all by himself, not playing with anybody,” but Springsteen had more to contend with than shyness on the playground. Despite Carlin noting later that Springsteen “had been singing about the school, one way or another for his entire adult life,” he doesn’t offer much elaboration, which is odd, considering the possibilities; an oft-told example has a nun stuffing Bruce into a garbage can, and supposedly, John Hammond’s first comments to Springsteen after his Columbia Records audition were a somber, “You went to Catholic school, didn’t you?” Bruce’s time at St. Rose of Lima was not of minor significance - “traumatic” seems like an apt word to sum up the experience - and Carlin’s sparse treatment creates a strange void in an otherwise inclusive biography.However, his descriptions of Doug make Kafka’s father seem like Mike Brady. Doug drifted between menial jobs - factory work, prison guard, bus driver - and retreated nightly into his kitchen, where he would sit for hours in the dark drinking beer, smoking cigarettes, and staring off into nothing. His main involvement with his son was chastising him for having long hair and wasting his life playing music, and the stories of their non-communication are pitiful, even when tainted by Carlin’s occasional penchant for melodrama:
For [Doug] to see his son come up the back-door steps, guitar in hand, his long hair so unkempt, his clothes so fancy, and his youthful face so untroubled, whispering ‘Hey, Pop,’ on his way up to his room grated against the open wounds in his psyche. Needing to prepare his son to confront the bleak grind that had claimed him, Doug stiffened in his chair and asked Bruce to come back and chat for a bit. The music and applause fast fading from his ears, Bruce would lay down his guitar, grit his teeth, and walk dutifully back into his father’s charred and ruined vision of life and the world.…Doug’s gruff demeanor was the thinnest veneer over his own sense of torment. And while he was ashamed of his weakness and desperate to keep his oldest child from suffering the fate he’d been dealt, it was all but impossible for Doug to connect with Bruce in a meaningful way. So it wasn’t the lectures, criticism, and occasionally heated arguments that cut into Bruce’s kin. It was the vacancy that swam into his father’s eyes whenever he came into the room. When Bruce turned toward his father hoping to see something – a spark of affection, pride, a glimmer of love, a nod of recognition, even – only emptiness stared back.
Bruce knew his own life was going to exist somewhere other than in a room with the lights turned off. He had seen Elvis Presley on The Ed Sullivan Show, taken up guitar, and almost immediately had begun a practically unimpeded ascent to fame. But even years into his success, he would,
[C]limb into his car and drive the streets of Freehold, visiting the empty space on Randolph Street, where he had once lived with his grandparents; the duplex on Institute Street, where he had been a schoolboy; and then the duplex on South Street, next to the gas station, where he’d lived as a teenager. He had no idea what he was looking for... But that didn’t stop him from going back. No matter where he was, memories of the Randolph Street house and the shattered remnants of the life his grandparents had lost when their daughter died, fell over him.
Returning to Freehold – physically, emotionally, spiritually – is the leitmotif of Springsteen’s life, and while Bruce relates the events vividly, much of this material will already be familiar. Springsteen’s never been shy about telling the stories of his life, and I don’t know how many more times fans will need to hear about the usual markers on his road to rock godhood. But readers new to the story will find it fascinating, and if, like me, you’ve heard it all so many times that it’s lost all the romance, there’s pleasure to be found in Carlin’s attention to detail and often refreshing irreverence.
“I’m gonna move on now, to a great song about a great subject…Cunny-lingus.” He let that hang in the air for a beat. “I know, I know. You’re sayin’, ‘Bruce, how can you stand up in your Catholic school and sing a song about cunny-lingus?’ But I talked to Father McCarron, and I said, ‘Father, can I sing a song about cunny-lingus in your school?’ He said [speaking stonily], ‘I’m not sure.’ So I took that for a yes.’”
Springsteen sang “Red Headed Woman” and Father McCarron left, perhaps to find the garbage can they had stuffed Bruce into forty years previously.Bruce is rife with such anecdotes, and it’s no backhanded compliment, especially given the relentlessly solemn fervor blighting most Springsteen biographies, to praise Carlin’s style for its readability. While sometimes lost in the Springsteen myth, Carlin is also frank about Springteen’s less admirable traits, avoids explaining what it all ‘means’, and shows the career as a triumph of passion and pragmatism. Springsteen is a natural musician with preternatural charisma, and his life reads like rock ‘n roll’s perfect storm, an amalgam of stardom’s usual prerequisites - talent, luck, discipline, determination, and fruitful collaborations – uninfected with the usual self-destructive causes of rock star ruin – drugs, profligate spending, drugs, financial mismanagement, drugs, hubris, complacency, a desire for an acting career, drugs. His greatest self-indulgence seems to be his habit of offering “public service announcements” of dubious political insight during his marathon shows, which I’m told are welcomed by fans, as it gives them a chance to go to the restroom. His shtick is often corny, but anyone who complains about this doesn’t understand Bruce’s audience. From the beginning of his career, he realized how devoted his fans were, and he respected them. He had issues with his love life, he went to therapy, and he got past them. He treats his neighbors with respect, and he’s respected in turn. If Bruce Springsteen was a character in a work of fiction, the sheer reasonableness of his career would seem implausible. The great mystery of his life is how it can be so devoid of mystery, and Carlin, in his matter-of-fact recountings, serves the material well.But after 500 pages of expansive biography, what I can’t get over are the names.Carlin has mined the early years, and seems to have put in the name of every person or place he could find with even a peripheral connection to Springsteen - Barney DiBenedetto, Caizzo’s Music, the Karagheusian Rug Mill, Triangle Chevron, Hullabaloo Club, Le Teendezvous, Vinny Maniello, Michael “Mickey” Shave, the Upstage, Fran Duffy, Rick Spachner, the Ink Well, Wendell John, Margaret Potter, Big Bad Bobby Williams, the Pandemonium Club, the Student
