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June 22, 2024 Tonight at 8pm ET, "Silvio" finally returns to HBO, along with "Miami," "Sugar," "The Kid," the "RockNRoll Rebel," and of course "Little Steven." At that time, the epic-length documentary Stevie Van Zandt: Disciple will get its broadcast/streaming premiere on HBO/Max. We got to screen the film last week, and trust us... If you're a Van Zandt fan (and who reading this isn't?,) you will want to see Stevie Van Zandt: Disciple as soon as possible. (Click here for information on getting access to the Max streaming service, if you don't have it already. You also can see the film with access to HBO, if HBO subscriptions are available through your television provider. Contact your specific provider for more information and pricing details, if needed.) The film tells the multi-faceted story of Stevie's life and career from childhood through present day. And even if you're a fan who's familiar with that story, there is so much to see here that few to no fans have ever seen before: archival family images and recordings, film/video footage never or rarely shared publicly (with a bit of it courtesy of Thom Zimny, not surprisingly, as you can hear below,) beautifully restored vintage footage, and newly filmed interviews with the likes of Bruce Springsteen, Paul McCartney, "Southside Johnny" Lyon, Gary "U.S." Bonds, Darlene Love, Jackson Browne, David Chase, Vincent Pastore, Maureen Van Zandt, Eddie Vedder, Bill Wyman, Peter Wolf, Bono, Joan Jett, Kenny Laguna, Jon Landau, Jimmy Iovine, Peter Gabriel, Ruben Blades, Arthur Baker, Bob Clearmountain, Ted Sarandos, longtime Van Zandt collaborator Zoe Thrall, Rich Russo, Palmyra Delran, Eddie Brigati, Chris Columbus, Michael Des Barres, Jesse Malin, Melle Mel, Scott Kempner, Richie Sambora, and - of course - Stevie Van Zandt himself. After screening the film last week, Letters To You editor/publisher Shawn Poole also got to chat with Disciple director/producer Bill Teck (One Day Since Yesterday: Peter Bogdanovich & the Lost American Film) about his almost-two-decades-long effort to make the Van Zandt documentary happen. Like his documentary's subject, Bill Teck is also a "true believer," to use Bruce Springsteen's words: a longtime Stevie fan whose persistence and professionalism eventually paid off in getting Van Zandt's approval for the film to be made. In the conversation, Teck shared many interesting behind-the-scenes anecdotes about the making of Stevie Van Zandt: Disciple. You can click below to hear the entire conversation on either our SoundCloud or YouTube platforms: Shortly after we recorded that conversation, Bill Teck also sent us an interesting message with some additional behind-the-scenes information about three potenttial interviewees who unfortunately didn't make it into the film: "[Among the] folks I wanted most were Bob Dylan [with whom Stevie and Roy Bittan recorded a great alternate take of "When The Night Comes Falling From The Sky,"] Pete Townshend [who was a member of Artists United Against Apartheid,] and [longtime SVZ friend/collaborator] Steve Jordan. We couldn’t get Pete's and Steve’s schedules to work, but not for lack of trying. Steve and I went back and forth a lot, and he really wanted to do it, but we ran outta time. My understanding was that Bob Dylan hadn’t sat for an interview for anyone in a long time, and I thought it might be tricky to get him, but I just didn’t dare try. I’m so in awe of him. I guess I couldn’t believe I’d have all these amazing cats in one movie. But then... when I read [what Dylan wrote for the book-cover of Unrequited Infatuations,] I was like… I shoulda tried! And then at Bob’s most recent New York show he praised Stevie from the stage; said beautiful things about him and the Disciples of Soul. And I was like, 'I’m an idiot - I shoulda tried harder.'" But while Bill Teck may be regretting a few missed opportunities, as all great documentary filmmakers occasionally do, ultimately what's most important - and great - is not anything that's missing from Stevie Van Zandt: Disciple, but everything that is in it. Teck has done a stellar job of assembling an astounding amount of treasures into a fresh, complete, and inspiring tale of one of E Street's - and rock-and-roll's - greatest heroes. Again, we can't recommend it highly enough; check it out as soon as you can.

June 21, 2024 From his first E Street Band gigs with the launch of the Born in the U.S.A. Tour (and the filming of the "Dancing in the Dark" music-video) forty years ago this month to the current tour - with many more stellar concerts, recordings, and other projects in between, of course - the "new guy on the guitar" never loses heart and keeps rockin' all night. Best wishes for a happy birthday and many, many more to the Godfather of the Guitar, the Minister of Heart and Spirit: the great, great Nils Lofgren! With both his 73rd birthday and the 40th anniversary of his joining the E Street Band occurring this month, we recently asked Nils if he'd like to share any special thoughts with our readers. Here's a special message from the "birthday boy" himself, written in the wee hours of this morning, as he relaxed and reflected in Barcelona, Spain, after performing the first of two scheduled 2024 Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band concerts there: I can’t really describe adequately how grateful I am to celebrate 40 years in the amazing E Street Band, with Bruce as our leader. I’ve never seen anyone work harder at sharing such formidable music gifts as Bruce, and it remains a great honor to be on the road currently, with these dear friends and great musicians, after 55 years on the road. Turning 73 today, I just played a three-hour concert in Barcelona with Bruce and E Street. I got a gift for music I didn’t ask for, and I’m eternally grateful. Only thing missing is my wonderful wife, Amy, our son Dylan, and our beautiful dogs. Glad they’re all safe at home, as I work my way back to them. So bless all you wonderful listeners who keep coming to hear me play music at my own shows, with E Street, Crazy Horse, and all the great bands I’ve been blessed to work with. See you all soon, I hope. Love and Thanks, All… Nils Much love and thanks rightbackatcha, Nils! Happy birthday and many, many more to you, good sir. Long may you run! Official 2024 tour photography by Rob DeMartin; used with permission

June 19, 2024 In commemoration of Juneteenth, Jake Clemons has released a new music-video for his 2022 single, "Born Like Me." The single was written by Clemons, and he was joined on the track by Allison Russell, members of the Highlander Research and Education Center, and Tom Morello. It remains available for purchase and/or streaming on all major platforms. The new music-video was shot at Jake’s high-school alma mater, The Virginia Governor’s School for the Arts (GSA) in Norfolk, VA. It was written and directed by GSA alumnus Daniel Russell (Missy Elliot, SZA, Cardi B, Khalid and Jason Derulo/Meghan Trainor.) The “Born Like Me” video features Jake Clemons' original song with 25¢ String Quartet performing an additional musical intro composed by Chace Moss, as well as a musical outro composed by Courtney Jay Connor, and visual performances by members of the school’s theatre, film, dance visual arts and music departments. You can watch the new music-video below: In his official press-release, Jake states, "'Born Like Me’ as both a song and a music-video is one of my most deep-reaching artistic efforts to date. The song was written at a time when the turmoils of the unjust executions of our American brothers and sisters were being captured on camera and highlighted amongst a wide media backdrop. A time when the realities of such painful discrepancies in our justice system were being brought into focus as voices crying for a stronger sense of humanity were ringing in the streets. "The stories of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor’s last moments among the living drew me in to recount the harshness of their earthly departures. This was happening to the folks ‘born like me.’ "I firmly believe that each of us are connected. All of humanity is ultimately made up of one single beautiful family, and it requires us to love and protect every part of it to make us whole.” In addition to being written and directed by Russell, the music-video for “Born Like Me” was produced by Lachlan McClellan and Matt Friedman, and was executive-produced by Deborah Thorpe and Michelle Cihak, with Ethan Wen serving as the director of photography. Jake also states in his official press-release, “While envisioning a vehicle to communicate the sentiment of this song visually, I chose to reach out to my high-school alma mater, the Governor’s School for the Arts (GSA) in Norfolk, VA. I felt strongly about the importance of a powerful youthful representation coupled with a sincere level of artistic excellence to help tell the story, and there is no better resource for this than GSA. We teamed up with a fellow alumnus, award winning director Daniel Russell, and featured the incredible talents of each artistic department of GSA: Film, Theatre, Dance, Visual Arts and the Music. "I am extremely proud of the profound efforts put forth by these amazing high-school students, as well as the incredible leadership of the amazing staff. The goal was to connect every viewer to these stories, for them to feel a deeper sense of humanity as a part of a family, to fuel a conviction as they look at their neighbors and broader communities. I wanted for each viewer to feel compelled to declare for themselves that these terrible atrocities are not happening to ‘those people’ but, in order to make the statement true in their own voice, that all of this is happening to those ‘Born Like Me.’”

June 12, 2024 When you think about a party celebrating the publication of a book, what comes to mind? Folks sipping an oaky chardonnay in a bookstore or library-type setting, perhaps some wearing corduroy blazers, listening to the author expound voraciously and in a circumlocutory manner about their work? That's not how The Stone Pony does a book-publication party. Not at all. Swap out the library-type setting for arguably the most famous seaside bar in the word, the oaky chardonnay for ice-cold Asbury Park Sea Dragon ale, and corduroy blazers for denim. Lotsa denim. And kick it all off with a three-piece brass band, The Ocean Avenue Stompers, marching from the boardwalk right in through the front doors of 913 Ocean Avenue, Mardi Gras-style. Last Saturday night, The Stone Pony hosted a book-publication party for New York Times journalist Nick Corasaniti and his new book, I Don’t Want to Go Home: The Oral History of The Stone Pony. Corasaniti himself was on hand for the event, along with various legends and local legends from the Asbury Park music scene, representing many different periods of the Pony’s fifty-years-and-counting history. Over the course of three hours, a boatload of musicians led by the night’s band director, Marc Ribler of Little Steven’s Disciples of Soul, would jump on stage to do a song. A few, like Billy Hector and Bobby Bandiera, did more than a couple of songs, but generally it was a fast-moving night of music. And famed music photographer Danny Clinch was on hand both behind the lens and behind his harp to add his verve to a number of songs. Perhaps the most emphatic performance, and one that got the biggest ovation, as Lord Gunner himself, Lance Larson, sang an absolutely incredible version of “With A Little Help From My Friends,” based on Joe Cocker’s arrangement of The Beatles’ classic. Lance’s voice was strong, his face passionate, and the crowd loved it. Here’s the complete June 8, 2024 book-publication party's set list: Marc Ribler and Friends - “Trapped Again” and “Talk To Me” Bobby Bandiera - “Arms of Your Love” and “Like A Hurricane” Billy Hector - “Someday Baby” and “I Know How To Party” Stringbean - “Mystery Train” Vini "Mad Dog" Lopez - “Strange Brew” Lance Larson - “With A Little Help From My Friends” Renee Maskin - “Atlantic City” Dave DiPietro (of TT Quick) - “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” Rachel Bolan (of Skid Row) - “Highway Star” (with DiPietro, and Lily Slix of Arkist) Pam Flores - “18 & Life” (with Bolan, and Darrin Bell of Arkist) Paul Ritchie and Eric Rudie (of Parlor Mob,) and Slix - “Rock and Roll” (the Led Zeppelin song, not the Velvet Underground one) Brian Fallon, Alex Levine (of Gaslight Anthem), Bryan Kienlen (of Bouncing Souls) - “Bonzo Goes to Bitburg” Jim Babjak, Dennis Diken (of The Smithereens) - “Blood and Roses” and “Behind The Walls of Sleep” Harry Filkin and Peter Schulle - “Bitch” and “No Surrender” The night then ended with a crowded stage that included Corasaniti on guitar, and everyone performing “The Promised Land,” “Born to Run,” and a wonderful long version of “I Don’t Want to Go Home,” of course. Finally, the house lights at the Pony flickered on, and people did indeed have to go home. They left, however, with another great Stone Pony memory – a book-publication party that included genre-and-generation-spanning music and musicians, one that nodded to the big history of that little bar on Ocean Avenue, in that sand-dusted town that many call Little Eden. Unless noted otherwise, all text and photos above by Mark Krajnak | JerseyStyle Photography; used with permission. Click here to follow Mark on Instagram. And click here for a slideshow containing even more of Mark's photos from The Stone Pony's June 8, 2024 book-publication party for I Don’t Want to Go Home: The Oral History of The Stone Pony.

June 12, 2024 As we post this, Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band are back onstage, performing the first of three scheduled concerts in Madrid, Spain after being forced to postpone four shows under doctor's directions, due to Springsteen's recent vocal issues. All four postponed shows also have been rescheduled, with the new dates recently announced as follows: Marseille, France - May 31, 2025 Prague, Czech Republic - June 15, 2025 Milan, Italy - June 30, 2025 Milan, Italy - July 3, 2025 These four rescheduled shows, of course, are the first Springsteen/E Street Band concerts to be confirmed officially for the spring/summer of 2025. They strongly indicate, however, yet another full-scale visit to European concert venues next year. Will Bruce and the E Streeters perform another full schedule of European shows for the third year in a row built around the same basic set of material they've been performing since 2023, with their sets' most recent studio-recorded material coming from 2020's Letter to You and 2022's Only The Strong Survive - Covers, Vol. 1? Or might there be some additional options from which they could draw by then, in the form of a new album of newly written/recorded material, a second covers album, and/or one or more collections of older but previously unreleased material? And will those 2025 European dates also be preceded by long-anticipated Australia/New Zealand dates earlier that year, as well as possibly even some more U.S. ballpark/stadium shows after Europe '25? Only time will tell for sure, fellow Springsteen fanatics. When it comes to answering such enticing questions, not even Madam Marie's fortune-telling could help us right now. Nevertheless, we hope everyone still has some fun speculating and anticipating while we wait for all to be revealed in due course.

June 10, 2024 Summer 2024 in the U.S. doesn't begin officially until June 20, but The Bruce Springsteen Archives & Center for American Music at Monmouth University (BSACAM) 's Conversations with our Curator series already has its online "summer sessions" lined up for this year, starting with tomorrow night's online event. Here for your easy reference and registration are the details on the monthly series, hosted by BSACAM Curator Melissa Ziobro, from June through August: Each of the Conversations with our Curator events listed below will begin promptly at 7pm ET on the respective date. Ziobro's online conversation with each author will be followed by an audience Q&A session. Registration to attend any of these online events is free and open to the public. Individual links to register for each event are available below. Tuesday, June 11 - Laura Flam & Emily Sieu Liebowitz, authors of But Will You Love Me Tomorrow?: An Oral History of the ’60s Girl Groups - Click here to register to attend online. Monday, July 8 - Warren Zanes, author of Deliver Me From Nowhere: The Making of Bruce Springsteen's Nebraska - Click here to register to attend online. Monday, August 5 - Holly George-Warren, co-author (with Dolly Parton and Rebecca Seaver) of Behind the Seams: My Life in Rhinestones and author of Janis: Her Life and Music - Click here to register to attend online. All past Conversations with our Curator events also are archived at BSACAM's YouTube channel, so you always can catch up on any event that you might have missed, or re-watch any event. Click here to view the Archives' Conversations with our Curator  YouTube playlist.

June 8, 2024 Not surprisingly, this week has yielded some interesting online reporting related to the 40th anniversary of Born in the U.S.A.'s release. Two of the best features can be found at RollingStone.com and TheSecondDisc.com. And towards the end of the week, Springsteen himself provided his own 40th-anniversary "explainer" for the album, via his official online platforms. In case you missed any of it, here's our detailed weekend review/roundup, with direct links provided, as well: Rolling Stone's Brian Hiatt, author of Bruce Springsteen: The Stories Behind The Songs, recently chatted with Roy Bittan and Max Weinberg about the recording of Springsteen's all-time-biggest-selling album. The exclusive, wide-ranging interviews touch upon the strength of simplicity found in the title track's memorable riff ("To be able to just get down right down into your gut, and just lay into two chords and one riff, it’s elemental rock & roll," says Bittan,) the importance of Stevie Van Zandt's Keith-Richards-like rhythm guitar playing, and Weinberg's insistence - contradicting Springsteen's own 2022 Rolling Stone assessment of the still-unreleased material from the circa-1982 full-band sessions - that the legendary "electric Nebraska" material remains worthy of release. “[T]he sort of legend that has grown up around that material is that [the full-band versions] weren’t very good,” says Weinberg. “It’s actually incredibly good! It was just completely wrong for what Bruce wanted to do...and it was very much in the E Street Band style, and very similar to what we do now when we play those songs. It was great, and it was a rock record.” Mighty Max also relates the experience of staying at Springsteen's Los Angeles home and hearing Bruce creating "My Hometown," singing and playing it on his acoustic guitar as he composed it. Click here to hear Brian Hiatt's full RollingStone.com podcast with Roy Bittan and Max Weinberg, and to read transcribed excerpts from it, in "40 Years of ‘Born in the U.S.A.’: The E Street Band Looks Back at Bruce Springsteen’s Biggest Album." Hiatt also posted some additional transcribed excerpts here today. Meanwhile, Mike Duquette over at TheSecondDisc.com has delivered an excellent history of three of the most underappreciated and - due to their never having received any official re-releases in the digital-audio age - now virtually lost artifacts from the period when Born in the U.S.A. and its string of hit-singles began their historic chart performances: those Arthur Baker-produced 12-inch dance remixes of the album's first three singles ("Dancing in the Dark," "Cover Me," and "Born in the U.S.A.") Duquette conducted a new and extensive interview with Baker for this article, in which Baker provided many interesting behind-the-scenes details - warts and all - on producing each of the dance remixes for these three Springsteen singles. Among our favorite "fun facts" to be found here... Baker, a Boston native, is such a longtime Springsteen fan that he was in attendance at the same 1974 Harvard Square Theatre concert that inspired Jon Landau to write his famous "I saw rock and roll future" essay. And among the backing vocalists on Baker's "Dancing in the Dark" remix was former E Street Choir member and legendary backing vocalist Cindy Mizelle. (Incidentally, Mizelle and her fellow backing singers' "oh-oh-oh"s from that remix now often get sung back to Springsteen from audiences during his live performances of "Dancing in the Dark," despite his '84-remix-sessions request to Baker & Co. to downplay those very same "oh-oh-oh"s.) While Baker's candor throughout the new interview is admirable, it's a shame that he undervalues his and his collaborators' work on the "Born in the U.S.A." remixes. The "Freedom Mix" of that track, a YouTube link to which the article provides, pulled out and spotlighted some crucial, brutally beautiful elements that were fully buried in the originally released mix found on the album, such as Springsteen's mournfully sung "Oh, my God, no, no" (which he would then begin adding to his live performances of the song on the '84-'85 tour,) and even a bit of that Van Zandt-channels-Richards rhythm guitar of which Max Weinberg spoke to RollingStone.com. Click here to read Mike Duquette's "You Can't Start a Fire Without a Spark: Arthur Baker on the 'Born in the U.S.A.' Dance Remixes," exclusively at The SecondDisc.com. And finally, as Bruce often noted while introducing his The Ghost of Tom Joad Tour performances of "Born in the U.S.A.," the songwriter always gets the last shot. (At least for now, that is, since we at Letters To You aren't quite done with Born in the U.S.A.'s 40th anniversary ourselves. But more on that later; stay tuned.) Here's the newly dropped official Springsteen take on BITUSA@40, aka the "Born in the U.S.A. Explainer," released on June 6 via his social-media and YouTube platforms:

May 25, 2024 Updated on May 26, 2024: Complete transcripts of Paul McCartney's and Bruce Springsteen's remarks have been added below. Below we've embedded all audio/video/imagery that's been released officially so far from last Thursday's Ivors Academy Fellowship presentation to Bruce Springsteen, via the Academy's and Springsteen's social-media platforms. As we reported previously, Springsteen is now the first-ever non-UK-native songwriter that the Ivors Academy, the UK’s professional association for songwriters and composers, has inducted into Fellowship since its founding eighty years ago. (U.S.-born contemporary-classical-music composer John Adams and the late French contemporary-classical-music composer/conductor Pierre Boulez also are non-UK-native Fellows.) He joins a prestigious group that includes Joan Armatrading CBE, John Barry OBE, Kate Bush CBE, Peter Gabriel, Sir Barry Gibb CBE, Maurice Gibb CBE, Robin Gibb CBE, Sir Elton John, Annie Lennox OBE, Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber, Sir Paul McCartney, Sir Tim Rice, and Sting. McCartney was on hand to officially induct Springsteen into the Fellowship, and Bruce delivered an acceptance speech in a manner that conveyed just how deeply moved and honored he is to have been inducted. Even in the edited forms in which the speech has been released officially so far, it is still one of his best summations of not only why he loves British music, culture, and his UK audiences, but also of the essential element in his music and live performances wherever they are or have been heard and witnessed: "the people I've written for and about, and that I can still find them standing in front of me as the clock strikes seven and we go on... That remains one of the greatest privileges and honors in my life as a musician." The emotions of the evening, as well as a slight cold and the rigors of recent live performances, affected Bruce's voice during both the speech and his solo-acoustic performance of "Thunder Road" that followed it. Nevertheless, the deep, long-forged, and long-standing connections between the artist and his audience are what dominated the night, and appropriately so. Below you can see and hear the officially released audio/video/imagery to date, and we hope to post even more as it becomes available. Congratulations, Bruce! And courtesy of NME, here are full transcripts (re-edited to correct some of NME's errors and misquotes) of both McCartney's induction remarks and Springsteen's acceptance speech: McCartney: Springsteen is a Dutch name. Did you know that? In Dutch it means "man in charge." [Editor's note: Macca must've been joking here; "Springsteen" actually translates from Dutch as "jump stone," a type of stepping stone used in unpaved streets, possibly applied as a surname for stonecutters, historically.] So he’s the man in charge. So unlike Bruce’s concerts, I’m gonna keep this brief. I said to him, "I blame you, man; we used to play an hour, an hour and a half. The Beatles used to play a half hour.’" He starts doing one and we’re all playing three hours now. Anyway, I’ll get on with it... I can’t think of a more fitting person to be the first international songwriter fellowship except maybe Bob Dylan, or Paul Simon, or Billy Joel, or Beyoncé, or Taylor Swift. The list goes on. Just kidding, Bruce. Anyway, I was wondering how Bruce would fit into The Beatles. When it comes to talent, he was definitely in the Top Five. Anyway, as I say, he is a mate, and me and my wife Nancy go out to their place in New Jersey, and him and Patti are just the best hosts. I mean, they really look after you, you know? When you go there, it’s like in the winter, he’s got a great big fire going in the fire pit, so we sit outside and drink and chat about things. He is a fantastic guy. He’s a really nice guy, and he showed up for me at Glastonbury, and he promised to do that about three years before. Then COVID hit. And I thought, "Well, he’s never gonna show up," and then he shows up. He’s a lovely boy. He’s known as being the American working man, you know? But he admits he’s never worked a day in his life. It’s true. So he’s a lovely, lovely boy. You know what, it’s great for me to be back here because I came here in the sixties. I know I don’t look that old. So it’s a great pleasure for me to present this to Bruce, and he is a Fellow. Springsteen: Back in 1975, I went on the long flight from New Jersey to the UK, with two different guys who had never been on an airplane. The airplane food was not so great, and my first thought when we landed at Heathrow was, "Where’s all the cheeseburgers?" The cheeseburgers had either been hidden or replaced by something called fish and chips. I knew what a fish was, but I didn’t know what a chip was. It was a little disconcerting. Our next stop was the Hammersmith Odeon, where I was greeted by a huge sign announcing, "London is finally ready for Bruce Springsteen." And all I thought was, "If London isn’t ready for a cheeseburger, they may not be ready for me." Me and my 25-year-old American cousins, who were visiting the land of the musical giants: The Beatles, The Stones, The Animals... They all met us, took us to school, told us their deep appreciation of our own American roots and music, taught us the right way to dress and wear our hair. For a young New Jersey rocker, you came to Mecca. We thought we had died and gone to heaven. Youth, loud, hipness, girls. And while I was stone-cold born in the bowels of the U.S.A., at sixteen I desperately yearned to be British. I had a pretty good fake British accent. That’s what the checkout girls at the local supermarket thought. But I have had a lot of wonderful history here. Next year is going to mark fifty years that I’ve been coming here to entertain you, and win your trust and confidence, I hope. I must first thank our extraordinary fans and audiences. They've been with me since that first night at Hammersmith, all the way to the great gigs that we did at Hyde Park last summer. Their depth of knowledge of my work and their dedication constantly keeps me invested here. It keeps me coming back to these shores, so that I can dig deeper, and so that I can deal more faithfully with my audience’s joys and their concerns. Now I want to be at the top of my game, and thanks to the inspiration that I see from so many musicians and writers who hail from the UK, we've tried hard to do that. Now, I’ve met many folks over the last fifty years, who worked at all levels at Sony Music, and one thing they all have in common is the dedication and respect that they’ve shown me, my songs, and my work, none more, of course, than Sony Music chairman Rob Stringer. Rob, thanks... I mean... I sold all my music and they still treat it like it’s mine. But being the first international artist to be granted this Fellowship – especially as an American, who I always suspected the British were always a little suspicious of our strange ways – makes today a meaningful experience for me. As we flew towards the UK in 1975, all I was wondering was, "What do I have that I could conceivably give back to those people who gave me so much?" And the answer is, I said, "Everything I got." We just came out of playing Sunderland last night… Hellacious weather, however; hellacious. A driving rainstorm, wind blowin', blowin', blowin'... But standing in front of me in the rain, I realized... These are my people. Now some of them are young, some of them were children, and some of them weren’t. Many wore the lines of their faces of lives hard-weathered and well-lived. Those are my people here in the UK, and I love to come and visit them. They’re the people I’ve written for and about, and that I can still find them standing in front of me as the clock strikes seven and we go on... That remains one of the greatest privileges and honors in my life as a musician. I want to thank you for taking my music into your hearts and into your souls. I want to thank you for including me in the challenging and beautiful cultural life of the UK. Once it was only a dream I had. Today it’s real, and I want to thank you for looking at me and seeing one of yours. I guess London is finally ready for cheeseburgers.

May 28, 2024 "Born in the U.S.A. changed my life and gave me my largest audience. It forced me to question the way I presented my music and made me think harder about what I was doing." -Bruce Springsteen, Songs He's just over three pages in, still in preface territory, but in There Was Nothing You Could Do: Bruce Springsteen’s “Born in the U.S.A.” and the End of the Heartland, which becomes officially available to all readers today, music-writer Steven Hyden quickly makes it plain just exactly why the upcoming fortieth anniversary of Bruce Springsteen's Born in the U.S.A. album, in the same year in which Springsteen will celebrate a landmark 75th birthday, remains such a big, important deal. "Although the question of 'best' Springsteen LP," writes Hyden, "is forever open to subjective judgment, there is no question about which one is most significant. This is true on a macro level— [Born in the U.S.A.] is a landmark in American pop culture, an all-time bestseller that placed Bruce Springsteen at an elevated position more analogous to a national monument than a pop star. It influenced how music sounded in the era, but more than that, it informed the national political discourse as well as the idea that monocultural phenomena can unite different and wide-ranging constituencies. Ultimately, it ensured that the most respected singer-songwriter of the eighties would be the world’s definitive arena rocker well into the next century." For my money, besides of course blasting the album itself and singing along this coming June 4, I can't think of a better way to mark this important anniversary than reading, re-reading, and discussing Hyden's excellent book. (But hey, if vinyl-based re-packaging is your thing, then you do you. No judgment here... seriously; I just strongly encourage you to order a copy of this book in addition to ordering that razzle-dazzle repackage, too.) One big reason that Hyden's book appeals so strongly to me is its relatively fresh and contemporary perspectives on the best-selling Springsteen album and its enduring significance. It probably helps greatly in that regard that Hyden is a decade younger than I am. In 1984, I first experienced Born in the U.S.A. and everything that surrounded it as a seventeen-year-old somewhat "newbie" Springsteen fan. (I really got into his music beginning 'round 1980, but didn't see my first show 'til '84.) Meanwhile, Hyden was first encountering this album - and its creator - as a six-year-old child, initially via the cassette-tape version in his father's car. Age aside, however, Hyden's since grown up to be just one damned smart music-writer, drawing important musical, cultural, and socio-political connections between Born in the U.S.A., what preceded it and what followed it in U.S.-culture-based popular music. Hyden not only looks back as far as Woody Guthrie and Hank Williams; he looks as far forward to, in his words, "the pop and hip-hop behemoths that supplanted rock stars in the twenty-first century." And he sees those connections not just from the perspective of a Springsteen fan following the various twists and turns of Bruce's fifty-plus years of recording and performing in the ever-shifting universe of popular music, but also now of that same fan/critic as an adult citizen and parent still very much concerned about the state of a nation - and planet - where the whole world's still out there, just tryin' to score. Nevertheless, it's certainly a very different world than the one that Born in the U.S.A. entered four decades ago. In some important ways, it's better of course, but in far too many other important ways, it's gotten much worse. "Born In The U.S.A.," Hyden continues in his preface, "now feels like an anachronism. Though if that’s true, why does the album still sound so vital? There are songs on Born in the U.S.A. that are prescient statements about the path America took beyond the eighties and into the twenty-first century. But the overall package evokes longing for an era where we could at least all bond over the greatness of Bruce Springsteen." That last sentence echoes - deliberately, I'm sure, since Hyden references and explores it directly later in the book - Lester Bangs' famous "we will never agree on anything as we agreed on Elvis" line. And then in his concluding paragraph, he previews the destination that anyone who digs as deeply as Hyden does in exploring this album's socio-political impact must eventually reach: "This is an album that managed to capture the center of American life. But the center did not hold. Perhaps it never did." Lester Bangs isn't the only other music-writer whom Hyden cites in his work. For example, he's wise enough to explore some of Ellen Willis' insightful writing about Creedence Clearwater Revival, which prophetically described exactly what Springsteen sought to achieve with Born in the U.S.A.: "Being a best-selling rock band was not enough. A serious rock star not only aspired to entertain the public but to alter its consciousness and so in some sense affect history." Unfortunately, Hyden - like Warren Zanes before him in last year's Deliver Me From Nowhere - also asserts that, upon the release of Nebraska in 1982, rock-critics like Greil Marcus and Dave Marsh erroneously overemphasized the contemporary political aspects of the Springsteen album that directly preceded and remains deeply connected to Born in the U.S.A. The songs on Nebraska, writes Hyden, instead "unfold either as distant memories or as imagined vignettes from another time." Hyden, Zanes, and even Springsteen himself seem to be in accordance on this idea, forgetting or ignoring that in 1982 there was nothing imagined or distant about what happened in "Atlantic City," to name the most obvious example, which also was Nebraska's only version of a U.S. single (actually more like an early version of a "featured track" via its MTV video) and one of the few Nebraska songs consistently performed live on the Born in the U.S.A. Tour. The same could be said about "Johnny 99," which is the Nebraska song that Bruce chose to perform onstage during the same tour's stop in Pittsburgh on September 21, 1984, in direct response to Ronald Reagan having invoked Springsteen's name during a New Jersey re-election campaign stop a few days earlier. ("I kinda got to wondering what his favorite album of mine must've been," said Bruce before performing the song. "I don't think it was the Nebraska album; I don't think he's been listening to this one.") And even Nebraska's songs with distant-memory aspects like "Mansion On The Hill" and "Used Cars" have their last verses set in the present day, with a clear sense that nothing's gotten or getting any better for the song's protagonist or his community. On the other hand, Hyden does an absolutely stellar job of debunking some enduring myths surrounding both Nebraska and Born in the U.S.A. In the book's longest chapter, he skillfully deflates the pretensions and presumptions of those whom he calls the "people who think Nebraska is the best,” including Bruce Springsteen himself, and brilliantly refutes Springsteen's revisionist description of Born in the U.S.A. as merely a "grab bag" album. And yes, all of those Electric Nebraska proselytizers get schooled summarily and succinctly; hallelujah! (In that same chapter, Hyden's extensive research also reminds us of a cinematic influence on Nebraska that not only Warren Zanes missed, but so did we here at Letters To You: 1981's True Confessions, starring DeNiro and Duvall.) Obviously I don't agree with all of Hyden's theories and arguments, given what's written two paragraphs above. I also still fail to understand why Hyden, or anyone else, would use a word like "exuberance" in describing the music made by Springsteen and the E Street Band on Born in the U.S.A.'s title track, which always has sounded appropriately blistering and angry to me, even if I probably didn't get quite all of its lyrics clearly on the first listen or two, lo those many years ago. And at times, Hyden writes about the origins of Nebraska in a way that I feel doesn't make it clear enough just how unintentional an album it was, in spite of its greatness. (This is why it's especially absurd for any other musicians to talk about purposefully making an album like Springsteen made Nebraska, since Springsteen didn't intentionally "make" Nebraska at all. It's the very definition of a happy accident.) In addition, I think he underestimates the enduring importance, purpose, and greatness of Live 1975-85 and its beautifully powerful Bob Clearmountain mix, which incidentally has virtually no "piped-in crowd noise," as Hyden alleges. But disagreements like this (and yes, I have a few more of 'em up my sleeve) are actually part of everything that makes Hyden's book so great. It fits that same wonderful description that Bruce Springsteen provided for popular music itself in his 2012 SXSW keynote address: "a joyous argument-starter... a subject for long, booze-filled nights of debate with [a companion or companions as knowledgeable as somebody like] Steve Van Zandt." Fittingly, the book has a very moving - if not downright heartbreaking - ending, set at Springsteen's March 5, 2023 concert in St. Paul, Minnesota, the city where the Born in the U.S.A. tour began way back in '84. Hyden takes us both inside and outside the venue of that 2023 concert, reflecting on just how far the rock-and-roll dreams that created Born in the U.S.A. - and the dreams that it in turn has inspired - remain so distanced from our present-day reality, even more so than they were four decades ago, of course. As the album itself does, Hyden ends by simply describing as best as he can what currently is, leaving at best just a glimmer of hope as to whether and to what extent Bruce Springsteen and his audience still can do anything about it. In other words, take a good look around...but also remember that you still can't start a fire without a spark. Again, I highly recommend Steven Hyden's There Was Nothing You Could Do: Bruce Springsteen’s “Born in the U.S.A.” and the End of the Heartland as essential reading for anyone interested in Springsteen's enduring, all-time-best-selling album and everything that's accompanied it through the years. Click here to purchase your copy.

June 4, 2024 I just re-listened to Born in the U.S.A., released forty years ago today back in 1984. Yeah, that year, the one we all grew up worrying about since all of us had read George Orwell’s alarming novel, 1984. Afraid that the omnipresent Big Brother would make an appearance, and our lives would never be the same again. But Bruce Springsteen’s best-selling, chart-topping 1984 album was different…Or was it? During my recent listen, my head was filled with vivid images of broken down cars and endless highways, dead end jobs and burned out romances, deserted streets and hard luck towns. Aching hearts... unrequited love…lust and hopelessness. Many of us share happier Born in the U.S.A. reveries and memories, as well. But recently as I listened again, and I mean really listened, I recognized that Born in the U.S.A.—the entire album, and not just its oft-misinterpreted title track—really could be about old soldiers like me, guys in our thirties in the 1980s, trying to navigate America after we’d spent the best years of our youth at war, both in Vietnam and back home in a divided America. And, crazily, all of what’s in Born in the U.S.A. hits me harder now, as I turn 77 in 2024. Not just because of that brutal, divisive, unwinnable war that I and others of my generation were sent to fight, but because America has become the gloomy, dystopian place Springsteen portrays in much of Born in the U.S.A. His is a world of lost love, hard work, and the staggered pursuit of happiness. Even the humor—and there is humor in Born in the U.S.A.—reminds me of the gallows humor we used as a coping mechanism in Vietnam when you had to find something to laugh about in the absurdity of that ugly war. That's why the Country Joe & The Fish song, “I-Feel-Like-I’m-Fixin'-to-Die Rag,” was so popular with us GIs. “Ain’t no time to wonder why/Whoopee, we’re all gonna die…” Glory days indeed… I kept trying to tell myself I was wrong, that I was overreacting, much as I had when I came home from Vietnam and was so angry at my country. That helped to explain why, like so many of the narrators in the Born in the U.S.A. songs, I would get in my car and try to drive away the pain and the hurt. Go searching for something that would give me a reason to live. And, for many of us Vietnam vets, we found that hope and sustenance in a woman. Someone who didn’t judge or question but listened. Held us tight and got us through the night. Nowhere is that accentuated better than in “Cover Me:” “I’ve seen enough, I don’t want to see any more; cover me…” Our wives/lovers did that for us. Covered us with their love. Protected us. Brought us back home. And they did that each and every day… Lord knows we needed it. After all, we were born in the U.S.A. It was our hometown, our playground, in the 1950s and 1960s. We sat on our World War II daddies' laps and felt their surge of relief, hope, and optimism. We did what we were told and pledged allegiance to the flag. And when Uncle Sam told us we had to follow in our fathers' footsteps and go and stop Communism in Southeast Asia, three million of us did. Little did we know that we were “goin’ down,” that being a soldier in Vietnam and a Vietnam veteran bought you a ticket on that “downbound train.” That we were all on fire, needed a spark. We were guns for hire, alright, but was the joke on us? Where was the U.S.A. when we needed it? Now I don’t quite know if I dreamed all of that, or if I actually felt that way when I first heard Born in the U.S.A. in 1984. Or even if I finally realized it all when I just recently played the album again. And again... And again... “There’s a war outside still raging..." Was that then, 1984, or is it now? Don’t we all still want to "sleep beneath peaceful skies?” “Time slips away and leaves you with nothing…” I know this better now in my late seventies than I did forty years ago in my late thirties. And just as I did back then, I still often feel like turning out the light, bolting the door, and going out there no more. But then I look around, at today, and I say, no, not yet. Forty years on, we still need to listen, to heed the warnings of both Springsteen and Orwell. To speak out and stand up. In 1984, Orwell warned us about Newspeak, how it would control our minds, believing that war is peace, freedom is slavery, and ignorance is strength. And Bruce reminds us that we’d not only lost our innocence but we also lost the American dream. That part of being born in the U.S.A. is a struggle against brutality and injustice. That’s why we have to keep on fighting, no matter how many times we hit the ground. So I join arms with Bruce, with my Vietnam brothers and sisters, reminding the U.S.A. that I’m still a soldier in the winter’s night, and I still have a vow to defend. No retreat, baby; no surrender. ---------- Vietnam veteran Doug Bradley is the author of Who’ll Stop the Rain: Respect, Remembrance, and Reconciliation in Post-Vietnam America, co-author with Craig Werner of We Gotta Get Out of This Place: The Soundtrack of the Vietnam War, which was named best music book of 2015 by Rolling Stone magazine, and author of DEROS Vietnam: Dispatches from the Air-Conditioned Jungle, now also available as an audiobook. His music-based memoir, The Tracks of My Years, will be released by Legacy Book Press in the spring of 2025.

June 3, 2024 Seattle-based Gillian Gaar is one of the premier rock journalists of the rock’n’roll era. She’s been doing the work for forty years, publishing countless articles for periodicals like Rolling Stone, Mojo, and No Depression, and nearly twenty books, beginning with She's A Rebel: The History of Women in Rock and Roll in 1992. She's written liner notes for the likes of Judy Collins and Laurie Anderson. She also was a senior editor for the seminal Seattle music journal The Rocket, published by Backstreets magazine founder Charles R. Cross. Her most recent book, Bruce Springsteen @75, was published by Motorbooks in April, in advance of Springsteen's landmark birthday this coming September. Motorbooks is a division of Quarto, a British publisher that specializes in large format “coffee table” style books, and was, as the name implies, originally focused on content dealing with cars and motorcycles. Bruce Springsteen @ 75 is part of a recent initiative launched in part by executive editor Dennis Pernu, who began a music-book program at the imprint in 2021 with Fender 75 Years. The program is designed to provide a retrospective view of artists who, in addition to their longevity, have both cross-generational and international appeal, charting the highs and lows of their careers by highlighting significant events in sequential order. So, while these books might not always satisfy hardcore fans, they should not be dismissed out of hand. Bruce Springsteen @ 75  is the work of a writer who is most definitely not a lifelong fan, but the perspective of a “Bruce outsider” is valuable. They see things that longtime fans don’t notice, question things that are taken for granted, and can bring under-examined topics to the forefront, like Bruce’s From My Home to Yours radio shows on SiriusXM, or his friendship with former President Barack Obama and the podcast and book that resulted. Gaar knows how to conduct research, and it shows. There are tidbits scattered throughout the book that even the most dedicated fans may not be familiar with (details from former manager Mike Appel’s memoir, for example), from a variety of sources not often seen in a “coffee table” book, like dozens of magazine articles from the U.S. and abroad. And while she cites Dave Marsh’s groundbreaking work, there is not the overreliance on his pair of in-depth biographies from which previous publications have suffered. Gaar had written an earlier book on Bruce for another Quarto imprint, Voyageur Press, with the somewhat unwieldy title Boss: Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band—The Illustrated History. This helped her in securing the opportunity to do the @ 75 book, which she was interested in writing because she already had done so much work on Bruce’s career and had read his Born to Run memoir, which she found revelatory. "...His memoir," Gaar told me during our recent conversation about both her newest Springsteen book and her work in general, "which I was really impressed with - I think anyone who’s interested in rock music in the ‘70s and ‘80s would probably enjoy it even if they are not necessarily a Bruce fan. I was impressed with how... What really comes across is how thoughtfully he thinks about his work and his craft, and you don’t often hear rock musicians talking about creating things that way. I mean, you might expect it from someone like David Bowie, who obviously had this keen artistic sensibility, but you wouldn’t necessarily think of it from a rock and roller like Bruce, and yet you do get that. It showed how carefully he considered things, and chose what he was going to do next. ‘Well I’ve done this kind of music for long enough, I want to get into some other areas.’ And just how - you almost want to say [he was] just consumed by it. Because really when you think about it, he was one of the few people I’ve written about in depth - maybe the only one - who never really had a day job [laughs]. You know, throughout his whole life. You know, even Kurt Cobain worked as a janitor and he would get tired and just walk off his jobs and maybe get fired at times, but he has [had] them, you know. And I don’t think Bruce really had any other kind of job but music." There are not any photos in Bruce Springsteen @ 75 that one could call rare, which is rather frustrating since that’s a big selling point for large format books. This is not Gaar’s fault, however. The task of locating, selecting and licensing photos was farmed out to a design company, which she says was “a relief” since “it’s hard tracking down images.” And while the book is remarkably error-free, there are definitely some notable factual omissions. You won’t find coverage of career highlights like his memorable appearance at JazzFest in 2006, or of his support for the Jersey Shore music scene and dozens of guest appearances at seminal venues like The Fast Lane, The Stone Pony, and Big Man’s West. And there is no discussion of rehearsal shows and holiday shows at Convention Hall, or of his decades-long commitment to the Light of Day benefit series, either. There are some offbeat inclusions in the book, as well. For example, a 2016 appearance on Desert Island Discs (a British radio show that’s been aired since 1942) in which Bruce chooses eight recordings he’d take with him to a desert island. “Well, it was just something people might not necessarily know about, and I've always been an Anglophile,” she explained. However, it’s clear that Gaar has done some thinking about musicians and their careers, and about the music business in general, and is interested in how Bruce fits into that world. She’s concerned with how artists with lengthy careers maintain fan interest and how their artistic choices affect their relationship with them over time. Bruce has definitely made choices that have challenged and confounded some fans: touring with different band lineups, solo shows, and more recently, the Broadway gig. "The show on Broadway - that was that kind of residency," said Gaar during her recent conversation with me. "I think also, he just liked the different setting. He liked to present the songs in a different way that was just him [by himself,] as opposed to when he goes out on the road with the band. I would think as long as his health is pretty good, he will probably continue to make those kinds of live performances because of what you get from doing a live show with a band like that. The interaction with the audience, but the band as well, which is different from a solo show; [as a performer] you get more out of it. So I don't know if he’ll ever completely leave that, but it’ll be interesting to see what he does with records, because he no longer has to put out any new records, but he's obviously a thinking individual who cares about a lot of things and probably has things he'd like to say to a larger audience, so I think that’s the impetus for continuing to write songs. But it must be kind of a relief that you don't have to worry about its chart position or something." When it comes down to it, this is not an essential book for fans by any means. But you’re not buying this book for detailed analysis. It’s a “coffee table” book, an overview, a collection of thumbnail sketches. And it’s the work of a veteran, dedicated writer who takes her work seriously, and a great place to begin if you’re just starting to dip into Bruce’s career. Bearing all of that in mind, take a look; you won’t be disappointed. ---------- You can click here to purchase a copy of Bruce Springsteen @75. You also can click here and here to learn more about Gillian Gaar via her social-media platforms.

May 26, 2024 As per the official announcement made earlier today: Again, here's hoping that you're feeling better as soon as possible, Bruce.