Back in the 1980s, when India’s only tenuous connections to music from the West were the annual Grammy Awards telecast on Doordarshan and a series of books called Archie’s Hits that printed lyrics, two men stood taller than the rest
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Back in the 1980s, when India’s only tenuous connections to music from the West were the annual Grammy Awards telecast on Doordarshan and a series of books called Archie’s Hits that printed lyrics, two men stood taller than the rest.
Michael Jackson passed away in 2009. The other, Bruce Springsteen, just played his longest US concert in history a few weeks ago, ploughing through 34 songs with his legendary E Street Band for four hours and four minutes. It’s sometimes hard to think of a time when Springsteen wasn’t looked at as a force of nature.
Reviews of his stopover in Delhi for the Human Rights Now Tour in 1988, where he reportedly played 15 songs, say much the same thing that reviewers say about his current shows today, three decades later — that they immerse his audience into what many of them describe as a near-spiritual experience.
This reverence for a musician referred to as the future of rock and roll way back in 1974 is what made this critic hesitant to pick up Born To Run. Not all singer songwriters make the transition to long form autobiography seamlessly.
The pithy lyric becomes ponderous in prose. The Rock God ego begins to get in the way of the story. Biography becomes hagiography.
That hesitation vanished seconds after this foreword: “I come from a boardwalk town where almost everything is tinged with a bit of fraud. So am I.” The rest of the biography passes by in a blur, with the legend opening up about everything from his family and music to his long struggle with depression.
You can see why Springsteen names his memoir after one of his most iconic songs. It’s the kind of anthem that continues to give him life on stage, energising his audiences around the world, four decades after its release. Isn’t that something?
Born To Run, Bruce Springsteen, Simon & Schuster, 799
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