Racing in the Street: The Bruce Springsteen Reader

For more than three decades, Bruce Springsteen’s ability to express in words and music the deepest hopes, fears, loves, and sorrows of average Americans has made him a hero to his millions of devoted fans. Racing in the Street is the first comprehensive collection of writings about Springsteen, featuring the most insightful, revealing, famous, and infamous articles, interviews, reviews, and other writings. This nostalgic journey through the career of a rock-’n’-roll legend chronicles every album and each stage of Springsteen’s career. It’s all here—Dave Marsh’s Rolling Stone review of Springsteen’s ten sold-out Bottom Line shows in 1975 in New York City, Jay Cocks’s and Maureen Orth’s dueling Time and Newsweek cover stories, George Will’s gross misinterpretation of Springsteen’s message on his Born in the USA tour, and Will Percy’s 1999 interview for Double Take, plus much, much more.

June Skinner Sawyers is an editor and journalist who writes frequently about music and the arts. She is a regular contributor to the Chicago Tribune, for which she wrote a nightlife column for two years, and is the editor of several literary anthologies.

Martin Scorsese entered a seminary in 1956, but then opted to channel his passions into film. He is the acclaimed director of such classic films as Mean Streets, Taxi Driver, Raging Bull, and Goodfellas.

Foreword by Martin Scorcese

Acknowledgments

A Note on Selections

Chronology

"Newark by the Sea" by Gene Lazo

Maps

Introduction

PART ONE: GROWIN' UP

Peter Knobler, with Greg Mitchell

Who Is Bruce Springsteen and Why Are We Saying All These Wonderful Things About Him? (Crawdaddy!) Paul Williams

Lost in the Flood John Rockwell

Springsteen's Rock Poetry at Its Best (New York Times) Dave Marsh

Bruce Springsteen: A Rock "Star Is Born" (Rolling Stone) Maureen Orth, Janet Huck, and Peter S. Greenberg

Making of a Rock Star (Newsweek) Jay Cocks

Rock's New Sensation: The Backstreet Phantom of Rock (Time) Lester Bangs

Hot Rod Rumble in the Promised Land (CREEM) Ariel Swartley

The Wild, the Innocent and the E Street Shuffle (from Stranded: Rock and Roll for a Desert Island) Dave Marsh

Thunder Road (from Born to Run: The Bruce Springsteen Story)

PART TWO: GLORY DAYS

Robert Hilburn

Out in the Streets (Los Angeles Times) Don McLeese

Abdicating the Rock 'n' Roll Pedestal: Bruce Springsteen Gets Down (Chicago Reader) Greil Marcus

The Next President of the United States (New West) George F. Will

Bruuuuuce T. Coraghessan Boyle

Greasy Lake (from Greasy Lake and Other Stories) Bobbie Ann Mason

from In Country James Wolcott

The Hagiography of Bruce Springsteen (Vanity Fair) Simon Frith

The Real Thing - Bruce Springsteen (from Music for Pleasure) Kevin Major

from Dear Bruce Springsteen Jefferson Morley

Darkness on the Edge of the Shining City: Bruce Springsteen and the End of Reaganism (New Republic) Jack Ridl

Video Mama Andrew M. Greeley

The Catholic Imagination of Bruce Springsteen Robert Santelli

Twenty Years Burning Down the Road: The Complete History of Jersey Shore Rock 'n' Roll (from Backstreets: Springsteen - The Man and His Music) Charles R. Cross

The Promise (Backstreets) Dave Barry

Glory Days (Miami Herald) Elizabeth Wurtzel

from Prozac Nation: Young and Depressed in America Neil Strauss

Springsteen Looks Back But Keeps Walking On (New York Times) Hope Edelman

Bruce Springsteen and the Story of Us (Iowa Review) Judy Wieder

Bruce Springsteen: The Advocate Interview (The Advocate) Bryan K. Garman

The Ghost of History: Bruce Springsteen, Woody Guthrie, and the Hurt Song (Popular Music and Society) Jim Cullen

Tom Joad's Children

The Bars of Graceland (from Born in the U.S.A.: Bruce Springsteen and the American Tradition) Tom Perrotta

from The Wishbones Nicholas Dawidoff

The Pop Populist (New York Times Magazine) Mikal Gilmore

Bruce Springsteen's America (from Night Beat: A Shadow History of Rock and Roll) R. C. Ringer

Asbury Park (from Shore Stories: An Anthology of the Jersey Shore) Sheri Tabachnik, Joseph Sapia, and Kelly Jane Cotter

Father of Bruce Springsteen Dies at 73 (Asbury Park Press)

PART THREE: REBIRTH

Pellegrino d'Acierno

Roll Over, Rossini: Italian American Rock 'n' Roll

After the Long Good-bye: From Frank Zappa to Bruce Springsteen and Madonna (from The Italian American Heritage) Will Percy

Rock and Read: Will Percy Interviews Bruce Springsteen (DoubleTake) Nadine Epstein

Asbury Park, My Hometown (Christian Science Monitor) Frederick Reiken

from The Lost Legends of New Jersey Samuele F. S. Pardini

Bruce Springsteen's "American Skin" (Artvoice) Bob Crane

from A Place to Stand: A Guide to Bruce Springsteen's Sense of Place Nick Hornby

Thunder Road (from Songbook) Colleen Sheehy

Springsteen: Troubadour of the Highway Alan Light

The Missing (The New Yorker) A. O. Scott

The Poet Laureate of 9/11: Apocalypse and Salvation on Springsteen's New Album (Slate) Kevin Coyne

His Hometown (New Jersey Monthly) Eric Alterman

from It Ain't No Sin to Be Glad You're Alive: The Promise of Bruce Springsteen Christopher Phillips

The Real World

Afterword by Robert Santelli

Web Sites

Credits

Bibliography