Making it up with Bruce Springsteen
Letter to Bruce,
I’d like us to be friends, but that won’t happen.
Nothing happens quite like it’s supposed to. This time it could have, but we’re both Jersey boys, hardasses with no recourse or remorse.
We have a lot in common and a lot in conflict. Illustration. First heard your spectacular explosion on the scene with the simultaneous covers on Time and Newsweek. Cool. Jersey boy makes good. I was head down at the time at the Cornell Graduate School of Business. Went to sleep and woke up to “Born to Run.” Every day. Loved it.
I didn’t finish business school. I became a successful international management consultant instead. Not bragging. I was always a Jersey motorhead. Wrote two books about punk writers in Philadelphia, on South Street, one of which sold nearly a hundred thousand copies. There’s a character in there called Johnny Dodge. Only recently realized the model for him might have been you.
Cosmetically, he was Billy Idol. But here’s what I wrote about him:
“Johnny bragged that his father could lick the doctor’s son’s old man and they squared off as if it was a matter of honor. The doctor’s son didn’t know about fighting to the death against a chain link fence under the smell of burning leaves. Maybe he’d been too many places, Florida and skiing in Colorado, too many toys shining under the tree. Dealey had scraped his knuckles on the Dodge alternator, felt the vivid mistake of twelve volts coursing through his body, and the world is a real live place where they fire your old man for getting drunk on his shift. And maybe some blood on the chain links doesn’t do a damned thing to erase the distance between you and a doctor’s son, but he’ll remember this, and you, and not to laugh.”
I never saw you perform but my best Philly friend did and he told me of four hour concerts where you rarely left the stage. Johnny Dodge was one of the stars of a punk literary movement on South Street, which remade writing with computer input devices resembling guitars and drums, and he was also the leader of punk warriors on silent bikes who crushed the Pagans and every other gang in South Philadelphia. He was called the Snake Man, the Fast Finisher, and the only survivor of a 1985 federal extermination of the entire community.
It was only recently, and somewhat sadly, that I belatedly realized you were the real model for my fictional hero Johnny Dodge. By then I knew where you lived in Rumsen, knew your daughter was in my wife’s world of show jumping, and that you had become a crazed leftwing ideologue.
Confessions. I’ve been to five Stones concerts. Never one of yours. I thought you were out of line trying to steal ‘Jersey Girl’ from Tom Waits in your orchestrated duet. Only later did I realize you made him a bunch of money in the process. Forgiven. Good performance by both of you. Still not liking you much. Just kind of stuck with you, I guess.
We do have things in common. Both Jersey, through and through. You Asbury Park. Me Seven Mile Island south, featuring Wildwood and all those amusements, including Mac’s Pizza. Motorcycles. Me? One Honda 350, one Yamaha 250, one Triumph Bonneville, one Norton Commando, and two Harley Sportsters, both displacements. And a ton of cars. Every exotic you can think of before 1980. I got old after that.
Forgot to mention. I went to Harvard and wrote a bunch of books (20+), including one called The Boomer Bible. Which probably paints everything you’ve ever done into a corner.
The Boomer Bible enshrined forever.
I also drove everything you never did. I was the one who was born to run more than you ever were. I could specify but I’m too old and don’t really care anyway. Airboats, tractors, every British sports car, Bugatti and Rolls, every muscle car but the AMC junk, and I nearly died at sea in a hurricane. Show horses too. I jumped in my day. I still have a Harley I can no longer ride because my knees don’t work anymore. I’m you without the money. Which I don’t begrudge you. I just think you’re an A-List asshole hypocrite. Remember, I’ve seen your Rumsen mansion.
BUT. I love your music. At the most basic level, we are both Jersey boys. I know why you’re not keen on the USA. I’m also from a town more black than white, with a keen sense of historical injustice. I get it. In my opinion, Wildwood was more fun than Asbury Park. And Salem was curiouser than Freehold. But I could get where you were coming from.
My favorite songs. The ones that still speak to me, no matter how our paths have diverged. You’re the part of me I can never get rid of. Inescapable union.
No matter where and how far you go, you always come back to Jersey.
My Hometown
No Retreat, No Surrender
And you could check in with my fictional version of you. Johnny Dodge, who went from here to here, quite amazingly. I’ll add in some other audio files for this later on. Probably won’t, actually. I just wanted to tell you that I know you and benefited by that fact. Which you’ve heard before.
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